Buchanan’s economic nationalism is synonymous with mercantilism and is not only the economics of empire, but the economics of THE empire. As Charles Beard notes in his history of America, the Boston Tea party was only partially a reaction against taxes. In fact, even with the tax, the tea was priced below market rate. But that was exactly the problem. The Americans were virtually forced to buy their tea from the British merchants because “national-unity” bulding trade barriers made the cost of importing tea from foreigners prohibitive. Thus, the tea became a symbol of government control of the economic system. Yet, all the King wanted was national unity, did he not? Shouldn’t British subjects buy tea from other British subjects? Doesn’t that build unity? How dare those Americans suggest they should be able to buy goods from whomever they want. Such insolence! Such contempt for national unity.

I am firmly convinced that most modern “conservatives” would be firmly on the side of the British were it 1776. ~Ryan McMracken

This would be the same Mr. McMacken whose first instinct when he hears Mr. Buchanan use the phrase “blood and soil” in the context of talking about national identity is to start hearing refrains of the Horst Wesellied.  That is to say, he is someone who is likely to make enormous leaps in associating things based on superficial similarities. 

Thus, if you support protective tariffs today (which a fair number of Founders supported in their own time) you are as bad and presumably un-American as those who supported the Stamp and Tea Acts–nevermind, of course, that a great many Loyalists also opposed many of the novel tariffs imposed from 1765 on.  They, the Loyalists, simply didn’t think it was right to resist this with violence.  In other words, they didn’t think it was worth killing people over a tariff dispute.  Critics of Lincoln at the LRC Blog might appreciate the wisdom of such a view better than most. 

Mr. McMacken also seems to be rather confused about what most “modern conservatives” believe about trade and economics–unless I have missed something, Mr. Buchanan’s economic views are not exactly taking the “movement” by storm and in fact they represent one of the important points of divergence between some paleoconservatives and a lot of “movement” types.  If Mr. Buchanan’s economic nationalism supposedly puts him in the company of 18th century Tories, it assuredly does not put him in the company of most “movement” conservatives.  In short, this post by Mr. McMacken doesn’t make a lot of sense. 

In any case, Mr. McMacken talks about being on “the British side” in 1776 as if this were some terrible insult, yet in my book to associate a modern conservative with the Loyalists would be the highest form of praise for the authenticity of his conservatism, regardless of anything else it might say about him.  George Grant often observed that “American conservatism” was no such thing, since it was just a sort of liberalism in a nice suit, and argued, as many others have, that the expulsion and suppression of the Loyalists eliminated a major source of genuine conservatism in the United States.  To liken a conservative today to the Loyalists is to compliment him in the most glowing terms, provided that one is not indulging in the traditional ideological denunciation of Tories as enemies of liberty. 

Of course, opposition to Parliament-imposed tariffs then had everything to do with questions of self-government and the tradition that taxation required consent, which the patriots believed they had not given because the taxes were passed in Parliament and not their local legislatures, and nothing to do with the usual objections to economic nationalist measures.  In fact, most anti-“free trade” arguments today are tied closely to questions of retaining sovereignty and ensuring that commercial policy is set by our representatives in Congress rather than by international organisations and commissions.  The populist and economic nationalist position here is much more like that of the patriots than that of the Loyalists, since the latter many of the tariff measures but ultimately accepted Parliament’s right to pass such laws.  In the end, the patriots fought not to prevent all such taxation (think of the Whiskey Rebellion) but to retain control over how and by whom that taxation was levied.  Globalists and free traders would typically like to cede that control to international, unaccountable bureaucracies; economic nationalists–one might call them economic patriots–refuse to cede any control that should properly remain with the Congress, which remains at least theoretically accountable to the citizens of this country.  Who’s on “the side of the British” now?  

Obviously, given many things I have written over the last two years, I personally take a dim view of Hamiltonianism and regard the Country tradition, which stood in stark opposition to Hamiltonian/Federalist, Whig and Republican economic policies, as the true source of the genuine Anglo-American conservative and agrarian traditions.  I accept as very compelling John Taylor’s argument that protective tariffs, as opposed to revenue tariffs, are unconstitutional, and I have never seen a compelling counter-argument that they are not.  But virtually no one I know of since John Taylor has advanced such a view, and that is certainly not the basis for libertarian objections to tariffs.  In any case, I think the American System and “internal improvements” were among the first usurpations by the center at the expense of the states and the people; they began the unhappy story of concentrated wealth and concentrated power working together to the detriment of the people; they inaugurated the slow march to the destruction of the Republic.  All that being said, in an industrial world a nation needs to have domestic industry if it wants to be able to provide for itself and remain relatively independent of foreign manufactures and credit.