As Usual Ezra Klein is Wrong

The Scoreboard Says Different

Ezra Klein is a progressive writer. He spins stuff, and Democrats echo him. In the case of the recent article he wrote, Presidential hopeful Ro Khanna echoed him. Here is a link. It is a NY Times article, so paywalled. I don’t read, nor have I ever read, the NY Times. It is a good birdcage liner.

Khanna is seeking to use Silicon Valley money to run for President. He has been making the rounds of conservative podcasts to have a “conversation” which in liberal terms isn’t a conversation at all. It’s him telling you exactly what you should think and do, but in a nice voice. We all know what happens when you don’t think and do as he commands. You get state police at your Christian school arresting people and shutting it down. You get self-defined “moderates” who shout down, whip out their badge, and use state power to intimidate actual peaceful protests.

Klein is trying to spin that progressive policies equal abundance for people. He also tries to say he is “classically liberal” (he isn’t remotely classically liberal) and that the progressive agenda curbs power because it curbs corporate power. He also compares the progressive idea of abundance with the populist idea of abundance. Trump is a populist (not a conservative) and Klein is no fan of Trump.

I think the definitions for all these different things are so muddled today. What’s a conservative? What’s a liberal?

Let’s start at the beginning to unpack it and get to the bearing on where we should be as a society and try to evade the way everyone in NY and DC wants to categorize everyone.

First off, no society in human history that has embraced the progressive ideas of today has had a good society. People will point to China, but China is a totalitarian regime with lots of political prisoners, discrimination, and slavery. Another sign, no one is looking to emigrate to China. They don’t have a problem with any geographical border. Another sign, Taiwan is trying to keep them out.

The only way to enforce progressive ideas is at the tip of a spear, a gun, or a threat.

The events in Los Angeles today are evidence of the progressive ideology put into practice. My friend Dan Proft opined on X:

Los Angeles is what happens when the illiberal gain control of society's mediating institutions, use those institutions to indoctrinate and thereby produce more of their ilk, install politicians, with the help of the political press corps amplifying and deifying the most doctrinaire, incendiary hustlers among them, who steer taxpayer dollars to NGOs in the name of identity equity providing a permanent campaign infrastructure of 24/7 subversion until a critical mass of political power is achieved so that they can do formally what they had been doing informally: open the borders and jailhouse doors, defame, defang and defund law enforcement, induce chaos, foment division and establish the warlordocracy that is inevitable when you attempt to use the state to create heaven on earth.

My friend Eli Steele has also opined on X. He made a film, “Killing America,” and you should watch it.

Ironically, the solution to “corporate power” by the progressives is more government power. Funny thing, the more the government has and controls power, the more power the corporations have.

Only big corporations can make a profit when the government regulates heavily. Small business goes out of business.

Free markets are the best check on corporate power. Funny thing, when you have free markets people’s problems get solved faster and standards of living go up faster. When the US was less regulated, standards of living went up faster than they are today. The world is on the cusp of some amazing technological advances, which will raise standards of living again in spite of all the infernal regulatory structures that have been put in place. How huge is the opportunity cost we are paying as a society by ceding power to progressives in the bureaucracy?

Trump’s ideas do not solve these kinds of problems. But he is somewhat in the ballpark compared to other politicians. I think it is well worth your time to re-read, or read this Marc Andreessen manifesto.

Progressives like Klein and Khanna see the world very differently. It’s puppetry. They pervert free market ideas and use them for their own power. Put in place a tax, people will automatically change behavior. Pull a string, and the society puppet moves in that direction. Conveniently, salt-water Keynesian economists see the world through that lens too.

It leads to a belief system that big institutions full of elite credentialed experts should be funded and more importantly, listened to and their recommendations put into practice for a just and better society.

What their ideas lead to is Los Angeles today. What their ideas lead to is the BLM riots of 2020. What their ideas lead to is Covid lockdowns. What their ideas lead to is tyrannical government power over citizens, precisely why our ancestors fought the Revolutionary War all those years ago and put in place a “republic”. We aren’t keeping it because of the Progressives and their agenda, along with their vision for how we should organize society.

Since immigration is the flashpoint in this latest rioting dustup, I think it’s good to go to original sources to understand how America should think about immigration. Believe me, they will find another flashpoint after this one. Their only defense against Trump is to riot. Trump has a well over 50% approval rating in polling after the riots started, and it’s over 60% with Hispanics. People who came here legally have no tolerance for illegal immigration. They aren’t migrants. They are illegal aliens, period.

I follow Jason Calcanis on X and he’s spouting off some stuff on immigrants. I generally like him, though I often disagree. He’s wrong in his view of it. Jason likes drama, which makes him a great podcaster. Jason doesn’t have his pulse on America, though. I don’t think the tech community will agree with him and certainly mainstream America will not.

What we are seeing in LA is the fringe. They are paid by elites to carry out violence against normal people in order to instill chaos so the elites can swoop in and provide “order” which will be in the form of very restrictive progressive policies. They are already planning a huge, violent nationwide protest for June 14. Look for American flags to be burned, cities to burn, and Mexican and Palestinian flags to fly.

Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant. He had a lot of wisdom for a person of his age. He and other founders wrote The Federalist Papers, which are integral to understanding how the Constitution works. Of course, because this part of his belief system wasn’t in the Broadway play, no one knows about it. Here is what he had to say about immigration.

“The consequences that must result from a too unqualified admission of foreigners…

The safety of the republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.

The mass influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.

The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils, by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others. It has been often likely to compromit the interests of our own country in favor of another.

To admit mass foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our country, would be nothing less, than to admit the Trojan Horse into the Citadel of our Liberty and Sovereignty.”

As I have said previously, Gary Becker said to reform our immigration system, charge for it. It’s the free market way to solve a problem. That’s also in line with the sentiments of Marc Andreessen’s ideas about being a techno-optimist.