University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 9, No. 7, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 27, 1985 Page: 3 of 12
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A
3
November 27, 1985
University News
Commentary
Monitoring group threatens professors
American College Syndicate (c) 1985
Protectionism will cause breakdown of economy
I
See page 12
See page 12
The reasoning of
protectionism is
dead wrong. It
would bring about
economic disaster.
by Professor Richard M. Ebeling
A specter is haunting the economies of
the Western world. It is the specter of pro-
tectionism. In one country after another
the cry is heard that international trade,
rather than bringing mutual prosperity,
imposes economic hardship on some na-
tions so others may gain. Trading prac-
tices among nations are declared to be
“unfair”; jobs are supposedly being lost
through “cheap” imports flooding
domestic markets; balance-of-trade
deficits threaten the financial stability of
not only third-world countries but the
United States as well.
home.
The reasoning seems straight forward
and common-sensical. It suffers from only
one handicap: it is dead wrong. And not
only is it wrong, but if implemented it
would soon bring economic disaster and
falling standards of living for each and
eveiy nation that chose to follow the pro-
tectionist path.
If the protectionist argument was cor-
rect that buying Japanese goods was
harmful to American industry and jobs as
a whole, then the same logic would im-
ply that buying New Mexico goods was
harmful to Texas industry and jobs; that
buying Fort Worth goods was harmful to
Dallas industry and jobs. The only reason
the Japanese-U.S. argument seems plausi-
ble but the Fort Worth-Dallas argument
seems suspect is because we still suffer
from the atavistic notion that the accident
of a political boundary across the face of
a map must imply antagonism and com-
bat between human beings living in dif-
ferent nation-states.
International trade is nothing more than
an extension of the social division of labor
beyond and over national borders. And
the same advantages that arise from a divi-
sion of labor and trade between members
enough. Those of us who have the
experience to know better can smile at
such impetuousness; but this attitude is
the quintessential feature of modernity,
and it can be traced back to the writings
of Machiavelli and his followers. Why is
this relevant to education in a free
society? Self-knowledge is a critical
component of a liberal education, and it
is the essence of a truly free will. As
individuals and as a society, unless we
examine what we believe and why we
believe it, we cannot be truly free.
Moreover, to the extent that God does
allow man to have some control over
fortune, it is our responsibility to
become aware of the limits of our
freedom to control fortune. Now, we
modems tend to believe Machiavelli
when he says that any impetuous man is
able to control fortune, or that nothing is
really impossible if only we try hard
enough; but a careful re-examination of
advantage (or relative superiority) in rela-
tion to their neighbors. And through such
specialization and divisions of tasks and
activities the wealth and properity of the
society as a whole is enhanced in com-
parison to a situation in which each in-
dividual was forced to obtain all that he
desired through his own effort, in isola-
tion from his fellowmen. And the
emergence of a division of labor tends to
trivia as the time, that was unpardonable.
But it is routine in a place of egalitarian
etiquette. All men are equal, right? If you
can call him doc, why not doctrinaire?
following the economic crash of 1929.
The trade barriers were meant to “save”
or not virtue can control fortune. The
traditional understanding of
of world markets in goods and services
that a very serious economic downturn
rapidly was transformed into a “great
depression.”
But what of the particular charges
ners and the resulting detrimental effects
from which it is said America is suffer-
ing? In the remaining space available we
will look at three of these charges:
1. Unfair Trading Practices: A number
of nations have been accused of unfairly
subsidizing the export of goods to
America at abnormally low prices, less
than actual costs of production.
The world is presently going through
a dramatic technological and economic
revolution, with many underdeveloped
nations finally entering the industrialized
era. Their lower prices often merely
reflect their lower costs of production as
they shift into positions in the international
division of labor reflecting where their
Their efforts are not likely, or I suspect
even intended, to stimulate dialogue. With
newsletters and publicity to pressure
targeted teachers (and 10,000 Marxists
teachers need targeting, says Irvine) into
submission or retirement, such winning
through intimidation will more likely sti-
fle exchange of ideas and impose a
debilitating caution among professors try-
ing to avoid the hit list.
A few professors, no doubt, are guilty
as charged; but far fewer than the group
assumes. More of the blame can be at-
tributed to the portion of the professoriate
who, if not trying to indoctrinate, are at
least lacking intellectual vigor and clari-
ty, having given up the effort to challenge
their own assumptions as well as their
students’ with the debates that exist in any
field of thought. But this does not war-
rant the thought-police tactics of
sophomores, or the McCarthyism of their
organizers.
by John Posey and Dan Tolleson
My original impression of Niccolo
Machiavelli, arrived at through informal
discussions with other students at UD,
was that he taught that one should
acquire power for personal gain at all
costs. With this in mind. I thought that
my instructors should devote just
enough time on him to say,
“Machiavelli says ‘be unethical, be a
tyrant’. Don’t follow what he says,”
and proceed with the next topic.
However, a close analysis of The
Prince, done in Western Civilization I
and Political Regimes II. revealed two
important things to me. First, some
people in this world (whether they
realize it or not), take such advice (i.e.
one should acquire power at all costs)
seriously. More importantly, the
interpretation that Machiavelli simply
advises men to be evil does not seem to
be complete, as the following essay by
of the same nation apply among members
of different nations. It enables a
specialization of skills and abilities with
each member of the economic communi-
ty tending to specialize in that line of pro-
duction in which they have a comparative
There is a secondary element. This is
also a symptom of the state of our univer-
sities, where teachers are first-name
aquaintances in rumpled corduroys, social
equals that, in the minds of sophomores,
easily become intellectual equals. Student
reverence for teachers is nearly gone, part-
ly because fewer earn revering. Accuracy
in Academia is a brash intimidation of
authority that many professors long ago
abdicated.
I remember a story of a German in-
tellectual who had immigrated to America
to escape Hitler. He came from a
tradition-bound European college where
students still carried their teacher’s books
and opened doors for them. He was
abruptly awakened to American ways
when a student barged in his office to ask,
“Hey doc, got the time?” The old
master’s heart sank. To burst in without
knocking was offense enough, but address
a teacher “doc” and bother him for such
There ought to be a bit of constitutional
monarchy in every classroom, but too
many professors are unable to rule. Now
the peasants are unruly, fancying
themselves as Big Brother. Accuracy in
Academia is judgment by students who
believe they know what to censor and
what to preach. Let’s hope they permit the
reading of Hamlet, who warned us,
“There is more in heaven and earth, O
Horatio, than is dreamt of in your
philosophy.”
possible only for a few great men who
do not need to read Machiavelli’s books
in order to know how to act. He will
show how Machiavelli’s ideas trickled
down to women and children, until all
mankind was plunged into a
Machiavelli-induced state of nature . . .
“The underlying issue in Chapter 25
These movements arise mostly of their
own cold fire and passion. Accuracy in
Academia is overwhelmingly a vehicle of
college Republican clubs, burning with
bases. So they line up students to monitor the fever of conservatism as ’60 kids did
with liberalism. They are out to stop
liberal bias, but also to replace it with a
create social bonds of interdependency
and mutual gain as each offers in trade
their particular product or service for the jobs and industry. All they succeeded in
specializations of all the others who par- doing were precipitating such a collapse
ticipate in the nexus of exchange.
Just as Texas would be worse off
economically if it could no longer trade
with the rest of the United States, because
Texans would now have to produce for
themselves at a greater cost all the things presently leveled against our trading part-
they had previously been able to buy more
cheaply and more plentifully through trade
from the other forty-nine states, the same
would apply to the United States as a
whole through self-imposed trade barriers
between itself and the rest of the world.
And since other nations would be selling
less to the United States they would, in
turn, earn less income from which to pur-
chase those products that American in-
dustries wished to export to the rest of the
world.
Each nation would fall further and fur-
ther back into autarky, or self-sufficiency,
with falling of standards of living as the
international division of labor fell apart.
That the consequences of such policies
can only be disastrous has already been
demonstrated once in this century, with
the erection of massive trade barriers
what Machiavelli actually says in
Chapter 25 of the Prince will show that
his apparent teaching is not consistent
with common sense, and furthermore
that Machiavelli subtly contradicts this
unrealistic teaching. The following
excerpt from my M.A. comprehensive
exams, taken and passed in the Fall of
1983 at the University of Houston — of the Prince is the question of whether
University Park, is an example of the
kind of careful analysis which is a traditional understanding
necessary first step in the education of Machiavelli’s message goes something
like this: ‘We have been held back by
the moderation of the ancients. We must
be impetuous. Philosophy should be
practical. Virtue can control fortune.’
Indeed, this is the essence of
Machiavelli’s ‘new’ teaching. And it
seems to correspond quite well with the
image at the end of Chapter 25: Female
Fortuna struggles but allows herself to
college teachers, to make sure the reading
list is balanced, the lectures not one-sided,
all points of view heard. Who could argue conservative emphasis.
Dan Tolleson will show. I realized that
Machiavelli was, in a sense, playing a
practical joke on his readers; and
unfortunately, the whole world has
bought it. When will people ever see
through it?
According to the ancient/modem
paradigm in political philosophy, the
modem era is supposed to have been
founded by Niccolo Machiavelli. In
contrast to the ancients who generally
seem to argue that philosophy is not
practical and that we should be moderate
because fortune (i.e., whatever happens
to you) can rarely be controlled by man,
Machiavelli seems to argue that
philosophy should be practical and that
we should be impetuous because in this
way fortune can be controlled by man.
Machiavelli’s apparent teaching is
reflected in the idealistic attitude,
common among the young, that nothing
is impossible if only one tries hard
our society if it is ever to become a truly
free society:
“Someday, not too far in the future,
when the dust from all the turmoil of the
past five hundred years has settled, a
! historian will write the history of the
world since Machiavelli. He will show
how Machiavelli led most men to
believe that any impetuous man is able
to control fortune, and how Machiavelli
popularized a way of life which is
And everywhere the solution proposed
is the same: a demand for the imposition
or stiffening of trade restrictions, the rais-
ing of barriers in the path of trade among
nations. Industries and jobs in the home
market are to be protected through restric-
tions and limits on the ability of those who
produce in one nation from selling in
another. Import taxes (tariffs) will in-
crease the price of foreign goods and im-
prove the profit margins of domestic pro-
ducers. Limits on foreign supply permit-
ted into the country (quotas) will increase
the market share of domestic companies
and enhance employment opportunities at
Prudence and education in a free society
by Darryl Brown with that? Then, what’s wrong with a lit-
WASHINGTON — Across the nation, tie pressure on uncooperative professors?
a sparse but ill-boding network of students The argument sounds familiar. It brings
is forming, eyeing the establishment, try- back memories of another coalition look-
ing to stop the brainwashing, the bias, the ing only for fairness — Fairness in Media,
bending of truths and young minds in They were out to buy a television net-
America’s classrooms. They fight for — work, so Jesse Helms could replace Dan
and call themselves — Accuracy in Rather and root out liberal bias. Twin
Academia. At least, their version of it. sister Accuracy in Media was started by
Start here: how did Socrates arrive at Reed Irvine, who founded Accuracy in
all those truths? With the Greek version Academia, and both are out to rid us —
of the McLaughlin Group: a few guys sit- save us — from mind-altering, knee-jerk
ting around arguing politics. They thought liberalism adhered to by those unsavory
a little more closely and carefully in the fringes of society: journalists and college
old days, unconstrained by commercial professors.
breaks. The results were the Dialogues.
That is all Accuracy in Academia
claims to want: a fair and open dialogue,
balanced and thorough to cover all the
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University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 9, No. 7, Ed. 1 Wednesday, November 27, 1985, newspaper, November 27, 1985; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1218311/m1/3/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting University of Dallas.