Peter Smith Quadrant Online January 4, 2025
Need a change of pace. My last two QoL posts have been about the excesses flowing from Islam. As usual, the topic draws the odd rationalisation: to wit, all religions at some point have spawned the persecution of non-believers, and that hoary chestnut, namely that the Old Testament has violence within it too. Yes it does, but it gives no licence to rabbis or priests to preach violence against unbelievers, and — Surprise! Surprise! — nor do they. There just might be clue in that.
As Quadrant readers are generally on the right side of things, responses which imply any kind of equivalence between Islam and Christianity speak to the magnitude of the threat we face — the kind of threat that is not sufficiently recognised until it is too late. Symptomatic of that in the wider world is the inclusion of (sham) Islamophobia whenever (real) anti-Semitism is discussed. It is another species of false equivalence. Akin to claiming that walking alone down a dark alley in The Bronx is as safe as strolling a sunlit boulevard in Beverly Hills.
Jesus said: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits…” (Matthew 7:15-16, KJV)
Well, clearly, not everyone knows bad fruit when they see it and taste it. Clearly Jesus overestimated the perceptiveness of some men and women, particularly political and media types. Deadly Islamic terrorist attacks numbering 46,520 and counting since 9/11 is apparently not bad-fruitful enough for some. Bali bombings? What was that again?
Recall Christian woman Asia Bibi, who spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy. (I wrote about it here.) At the time, Salmaan Taseer, governor of the Punjab, was assassinated by one of his police bodyguards for opposing the blasphemy laws which resulted in Bibi facing execution. Nothing has changed. Currently, Christian mother of four Shagufta Kiran has been sentenced to death for supposedly insulting the Prophet. Nigerian Islamic militants killing Christians hardly makes the news. Women being denied education and most everything else in Afghanistan; women being beaten for not wearing headscarves in Iran; girls suffering genital mutilation in Somalia. In Australia too? Surely not! Then there are those so-termed “vehicle as weapon attacks.” The horror in New Orleans being the latest. Ubiquitous bollards required. That is the new (ab)normal. On it goes, ad nauseum. There just might be a clue in there somewhere if only we could spot it.
Enough! I want to mention the hoopla about Donald Trump’s promised-cum-threatened tariffs. John Howard reportedly described Trump’s tariff proposals as ridiculous and crazy, bad for world trade and the world economy. Hmm, the world economy? How then are the economies of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Costs Rica doing these days? Doubt that Trump gives a passing thought to the world economy. His concern is the American economy, as it should be. Equally, Anthony Albanese’s concern should be the Australian economy. He could take a leaf out of Trump’s policies and shred regulations, lower business taxes, sack Chris Bowen and drill baby drill. Tariffs would be a mere footnote in the grand scheme of things as Australia’s prosperity soars. But back to tariffs.
Free international trade is a plague on national life. This has become even more the case since the rise of China. A nation requires an ample variety of industries to enrich its culture and to protect its security. Lots of trade good — too much trade bad. Where is the dividing line? Hard to say. But when Australia lost its last car manufacturing plant it was clear that freeing up trade had gone too far. When vital medical equipment during the confected Wuhan scare could only be sourced from China, trade had gone too far. When the United States became the largest importer of steel, trade had gone too far. When you see Australia’s manufacturing industries being dismantled, trade has gone too far.
Of course, the picture is complicated when a country like Australia deliberatively disadvantages its own industries by imposing insane energy polices. To put this in perspective, while China builds coal-power stations and surreptitiously subsidises its manufacturing industries to circumvent WTO rules, we penalise ours with onerous regulations, high taxes and, the coup de grâce, ruinously high prices of electricity and gas. How exactly does one-sided free trade fit into that context? Well, it makes things a lot worse. What a shambles.
Let me make it clearer. There is more to life than maximising the world’s production of goods. Unless you are a ghastly globalist — a card-carrying member of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum — the vibrancy of national life matters. Our freedom in the West depends on two things. Adherence to Judeo-Christian ethics and strong nation states. Take way either and kiss freedom goodbye. Free trade eats away at the strength of the nation state.
The pivotally important Western nation state is the United States. Protecting its integrity is in our interests. For example, China building car plants in Mexico to compete with the manufacturing of cars in the United States is one more thing undermining the strength of America. Hairy-chested pursuit of free trade is all economic theory and no common sense. It does America no good and, by extension, does us no good.
As it is, Western nation states face enough threats, from multiculturalism (see above), from woke idiocy and the subversion of traditional and family values, from the climate-emergency hoax, and from Chinese supremacism. We can do without an outworn allegiance to long-dead economist David Ricardo, who developed the theory of comparative advantage which still inspires free traders. As Keynes wrote in one of his more perceptive moments: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
Nelle's journey 