For members of the animal kingdom ‘making a living’ is an imperative. If they don’t they ‘make a dying.’ An osprey has to catch fish, a sheep has to shave the grass and a human has to make a living wage or a profit, the latter being true because we flatter ourselves if we think we are not members of that kingdom and that, therefore, we are above such imperatives. We are thrown into this dynamic situation merely by being alive and have no say in the matter. From here it’s a short step to Adam Smith’s view of economics; the self-interest of individuals, driven by the imperative to survive, creates markets where prices are naturally lowered by competition to the good of all. So far, so Darwinian. And of course ‘self-interest’ has nothing to do with selfishness which is a different and moral issue which only arises much further downstream of all this. The former is something we have no say in. Take an interest in yourself and your family or die. It’s a bit like putting your own oxygen mask on first in an airplane so that you are in a condition where you can help others.
All of the above inevitably creates
societies where businessmen and women, some more ‘successful’ (in both
Darwinian and financial terms) than others. Human societies being what they are
– social, those businessmen will also be involved in political nexuses.
Business and politics cannot not interpenetrate as humans can be many
things at once. The result of this is that those of other economic persuasions
than the Adam Smith ones will always level the accusations of selfishness and
corruption against the conservative businessmen who might accept the Adam Smith
analysis. And, human nature being what it is and free will being what it is,
there will be a proportion of successful businessmen who can justifiably
be impugned for those sins. You could even extend this to say that whatever the
proportion of the whole number of businessmnen are involved, it might be the
case that a similar proportion of the transactions of most businessmen might be
impugnable on this basis because the businss world is tough and Darwinian. But
this occurrence of sin is no higher than that of other sins in other spheres
and is not due simply to the fact of such people being businessmen. There is
nothing inherently wicked about being a businessman. It is merely evidence of
general human fraility and susceptibility to temptation. There will be some
truly reprehensible characters in the business world but the majority of
businessmen will be generally good people out to make a living.
Donald Trump is a Republican
businessman who, true to that caste, is pretty unashamed of and even celebrates
that métier and that milieu. From my humble position I’d guess that in his
sharp-elbowed and unforgiving world he has done some shady deals but that they
would not entirely define his character. They are more a testimony the world
within which he has chosen to operate. For those on the left, however, the mere
fact of operating in that ‘capitalist’ (a word I choose not to use personally
as it seems a prescription coined by Karl Marx precisely to demonise the
operations of the world of normal trade) milieu as a player means that he can
only be completely selfish and corrupt.
When Trump pulled off his
extraordinary Gaza deal and gave hope to the whole region for some time in the
future with the wider plan of the Abraham Accords with the assistance of the
leaders of several Muslim countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Indonesia,
Jordan, Egypt and Turkey there were voices on the left who presumed to make a
window into his soul to such an extent that they could confidently pronounce
that it was all down to venality and vanity; he wants to make money out of the
deal and he wants to be lionised by the Nobel Peace committee for bringing it
home and that’s enough to sum up and dismiss him. No room at all was left for
there being space left in his soul for a real desire to stop a long-perpetueted
massacre.
I’d suggest that there certainly is
room for that but that there might be something else in addition. Once the
influence of religion died in the West its citizens were left with the problem
of how to navigate the moral world. Many have solved this by setting up new
ethical religions. They do this by choosing figures on the opposite political
side to themselves and then creating new demonologies around them. In these
demonologies the normal complement of flaws that all humans have are magnified
until they are turned into pure demons a priori of any argument or of
any action they might take. From these created moral triangualtion points on
which they entirely depend whole moral landscapes are created. This means that,
because the created demon is needed for purposes of navigation, no action of
Trump’s can ever be allowed to testify to anything other than the irredeemable
purity of his wickedness. If is allowed that any action of his is motivated by
anything else the whole moral shebang collapses. So we can be certain that
whenever they look into his soul after any action they will always ascribe to
it the basest of motives.
So what is the good motive I detect,
apart from the genuine desire to stop the killing? As I mentioned earlier
conservatism and conservative economics have long been demonised to the extent
that the creed has been all but delegitimised on moral rather than intellectual
grounds. Just look at Theresa May caving in and cravenly apologising for the
Conservatives being the ‘nasty party.’ This demonisation of the right of the
healthy political tension that has, until now rescued us from civil war, is
what might be seen as risking plunging us into it. If you disable one side of
the debate you remove the possibility of rescuing ‘jaw jaw’ and only ‘war war’
is left.
For some strange reason, in spite of his general isolationism, many on the left
level the accusation at Donald Trump that he is a warmonger, something else
that conservatives are supposed to be. What better way could there be to
publicly rehabilitate conservatism morally than by deservedly winning the Nobel
Peace Prize? It may not be simply a question of vanity or that favourite word
which the left always apply to him; narcissism. There may be more to his
character than meets a superficial survey. Humans are always more complex than
their caricatures. It may be that, by receiving personal applause he is inadvertently
achieving a great deal more; possibly the removal of conservatism from the
demonologies. Or it may be that he knows what he is doing and we underestimate
him….
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/maybe-trump-actually-knows-what-hes-doing/
