It has been quite some time since I have contributed a piece to The Spectator Australia concerning our friends at the ABC. This is primarily because I do not subject myself to the torment of the anti-intellectual dross that passes as commentary on a daily basis, save for the odd sojourn over to ABC Classic FM, where one is still berated by a sermon on the sanctimony of Australian Aboriginals as the sovereign owners of the land that we are reminded was apparently ‘never ceded’ and ‘always was always will be’. Of course the light of reason never passes the ideological curtains of this prayer like mantra, that if it were indeed the case that Australia was illegitimate, the whole edifice of the government enacted Broadcasting Corporation, the Crown legislation under which it operates, the Crown legislation that underpins their employment in such, the Crown legislation that allows for their free speech to pollute the airwaves, and the very existence of the ABC itself would be rendered invalidated.

Now one might assume that the noble and honourable thing for someone who held such views would be to forthwith, hand over their endowment in private Torrens land title in Australia to the first person they encounter identifying as Aboriginal and to post haste catch the first flight back to wherever is the perceived origin of their unwelcome, interloper cultural and hereditary background. Often this would be a nation far less favourable than Australia in which to live so it follows without fail, the hollow virtue-signalling rhetoric is never supported by the integrity of action.

However, on this occasion, I unwittingly intersected with Auntie by happenstance. Just last evening I borrowed a friend’s car to make a short journey to obtain some much-needed supplies for the evening meal and my said friend still tolerates (just) the odd commute with Auntie in the background if and when she is not listening, as she most often is, to something else. So it occurred, that as I commenced my return journey with supplies in hand I was accosted by the Dolci tones of an ABC pre-recorded interview with self-described ‘New Right’ conservative and public policy critic, Oren Cass.

Oren Cass: the face of America’s New Right – ABC listen

Cass is a former economics advisor to Mitt Romney and chief economist of the Conservative think-tank American Compass which he founded. As a long-time advisor to Romney, it could hardly be claimed that he was born wearing a MAGA cap but it would seem he currently has the ear of the Trump Administration on macro-economic policy reform and therefore a person of credible interest in the ongoing debate in America and around the globe on Trump’s re-imagining of the American economy.

The interview is enlightening for two principal reasons. Firstly, for the insight into the current rationale behind the current US Administration to macro-economic policies, although this was under the duress of the ABC constantly seeking to deflect and derail the flow of conversation emanating from Cass. Secondly, for the naked ideological pursuit of the ABC hosts in their interaction with Cass which was never approached as a bona fide attempt to illicit and understand Cass’s point of view but rather to school Cass on the inherent evils of the current American polity and its social contagion.

While Cass was at pains to point out, with significant historical merit, that the inequalities embedded across the American landscape were proof positive that decades of Neo-liberalism and globalisation had failed his country, the best the hosts could offer was an unanchored reference back to the term –‘redistribution’ which they repeatedly fling at Cass like university campus Neo-Marxists at a Socialist Alliance rally. Of course, it is never clarified exactly what and how the perceived wealth of others is redistributed – presumably it is based purely on a communist model, since it is not in any way substantiated. Perhaps they are referring to the buckets of gold held by US treasury with its Federal government debt of $36 trillion USD (around $15 trillion of which is intragovernmental holdings) or 124 per cent of GDP. Perhaps they are referring to the most recent Current Account deficit which sits at over $300 billion USD in the red or the monthly balance of trade that tipped the scales at $140 billion USD in the red. Because there is nothing quite like sharing around the inordinate debt the US economy finds itself in via a caring and equal redistribution. The only way the US will find its way out of this debt and trade quagmire is through radical reform and it will be the heavy lifters of industry and wealth generation who ultimately pay back most of that debt, if at all possible, and not the welfare state and its recipients.

Entirely off-topic, the hosts appear to hang the current Conservative viewpoint as articulated by Cass with the (both real and perceived) inequities of the US healthcare system, which as we all know has been baked into the system there over generations. It would take a gargantuan Federal investment to install a ‘Medicare’ healthcare system such as in Australia (which it must be said, like its NHS counterpart in the UK, is very much fraying at the edges and being held together by Elastoplast) into the US context. If someone wanted to truly ensure the collapse of the US economy, perhaps their redistribution might take the form of Australia’s NDIS, which may almost single-handedly ensure Australia’s growing public debt reaches astronomical levels until the end of days when the sky falls in due to ‘climate collapse’ or some such similar unscientific nonsense favoured by the Left. And whatever the competing arguments and merits for a greater health care safety net in the US, the starting point for being able to introduce it and fund it in an ongoing manner, is a strong domestic economy, with enough currently outstanding debt retired so that the government has the financial leverage to invest. This ‘care’ economy is part of Cass’s vision, who articulates his desire for an economy that works for self-fulfilment, family and community in a way that is measured by social cohesion and a sense of belonging along with increased standards of living and not just crass consumerism.

Cass, for his part seeks to explain that while overall individual wealth has, on average, grown in America it is unhinged from any real growth in economic activity other than hollowed-out consumerism fuelled by cheap imported goods at the expense of meaningful nation-building economic activity that recognises that ‘making stuff is important’ for national unity, cohesion, structural wealth, economic and strategic security. To this end, Cass defends tariffs as a tool to recalibrate the American economy to achieve the goal of a greater distribution of a greater overall domestic wealth generation. It is unlikely that he or anyone else would imagine they remain in place in an elevated fashion for time immemorial, but just long enough to incentivise and instigate real structural reform in the US economy.

Those who think that in doing so the US is alienating its allies need to take a medium to long term view. The best US ally as a hedge against the expansionist ambitions of China and Russia et al. is a strong US ally. But they need to work on themselves first so that they can be that strong ally. This may mean some short-term pain for US partners, but a calm and steady appraisal of an economically gutted US, as it currently stands, whose economy is reliant on the shifting sands of imported consumerism recognises that this reform is critical.

‘But, but.. redistribution’ cry the ABC hosts.

P.S. I would also encourage those Conservatives who baulk at the first inkling that Trump’s reforms may cause a little, shall we say, growing pains of readjustment, to start to familiarise themselves with Cass’s case for reform. Too many Conservative commentators who have spent years supposedly rallying against the sublimation of the nation state and its sovereignty under the weight of Globalism, have lost all courage of their convictions at the first hint of any disruption. The stock market was well down for less than a week in early April at the outset of ‘Liberation Day’ and it was interesting to see the prominent Sky News Australia commentators, for instance, who quickly lost their nerve. This was barely a blip compared to the economic disruption wrought by the Globalists via the engineered response to Covid, which we are still living through the consequences of today not least through the inflation it unleashed amid myriad other socio-economic upheaval.