Revolt of the Celebrities

EDITORIAL

It was an interesting process that led to Kanye West gracing the cover of the August 2018 IPA Review, a publication not previously noted for its coverage of rap artists.

IPA Research Fellow Morgan Begg started us down the road when he penned a review of the latest book by the always interesting creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams, who was baked on social media for predicting that Donald J Trump would win the 2016 election (with the temperature increased further after he was proven right). This fallout caused Adams – and Morgan – to reflect on Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), the hysterical if not pathological reaction of some on the left to Trump’s Presidency.

A symptom and perhaps a requirement of TDS is that the subjects must hate on anyone who for any reason engages with the idea of President Trump, what he’s doing, or whether some of it might actually be worthwhile. Observing this led us to the example of world-famous rapper Kanye West, who burnt his bridges with TDS sufferers when he hit the streets wearing a Make America Great Again cap. The IPA’s Gideon Rozner then put me onto a rap that West subsequently produced, Ye, which contains idiomatic reflections on the whole experience, including bracing lines like ‘All blacks gotta be Democrats, man / We ain’t made it off the plantation’. Gideon’s introduction to that track appears as a postscript to Morgan’s review.

Meanwhile, back in Australia, Red Tape is costing us $176 Billion per year in lost output, and we can only dream of a government with the Trump administration’s record of achievements in dramatically cutting the bureaucracy’s rule book down to size. Gideon Rozner reports first person on a recent visit to the American heartland, in which he saw for himself the beneficial impacts of red tape reduction and tax cuts.

 WE CAN ONLY DREAM OF A GOVERNMENT WITH THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S RECORD OF ACHIEVEMENTS IN DRAMATICALLY CUTTING THE BUREAUCRACY’S RULE BOOK DOWN TO SIZE.

To better understand why nothing so dramatic has (yet) happened in Australia, we have on page 38 Dr David Kemp AC exploring the Australian experience of stifling bureaucracy and the dreadful impact it is having on the rule of law and the public’s trust in the political system as whole. This is accompanied by a wonderful case study of a regulator going wild, as esteemed businessman and former bank director John Dahlsen examines the role of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority in destroying competition within our banking system.

The flipside of Trump’s approach to economics is his evident mercantilism – evidenced by his obsession with quoting trade deficits with whatever country he happens to be visiting – which is analysed by Matthew Lesh, who re-states the classic case for free trade between nations.

Free trade is a core tenet of liberalism, an ethos that has a proud history in Australia – extending much further back than the birth of the Liberal Party – and this is explored by a new addition to the IPA research team, Dr Zachary Gormann.

A further tenet of liberalism is tolerance, and Morgan Begg has given us a summary of the case for protecting religious liberty that he recently put to the Federal Parliament.

Liberalism and tolerance are part of the heritage of Western Civilisation, and we are pleased to welcome back to the pages of the IPA Review former staff member, Stephanie Forrest, who explains the uniquely English contribution to the form of that most important of constitutional inheritances, the Parliament.

The experience of Kanye West reminds us that the freedom to think and speak as an individual is part of the heritage of Western Civilisation, and must be available as a right to all who live in free societies, regardless of race, creed or colour.

(this was the Editorial for the August 2018 review)

Image credit: Flickr