Between MAGA and E.F. Schumacher: A Post-Pandemic Political Economy

From May 2020 essay - just after my joining Catholic Church

This is from May 2020, published in an online magazine called British Intelligence.

Introduction: Carswell the Libertarian goes Green

I came across something extraordinary on Twitter yesterday, from Douglas Carswell – right wing former Tory and later renegade UK MP, libertarian and Brexiteer.

https://twitter.com/DouglasCarswell/status/1255569674961588229?s=20

Referring to this presentation by economic historian Stephen Davies, Carswell has morphed, momentarily, from a business-as-usual, wheeler-dealing, free- trader globalist of the Nigel Farage type, into a man of la longue durée. Naming checking the Tory environmentalist Zac Goldsmith, his epiphany, that the pandemic suggests ‘the need to curb intensive farming and the overuse of antibiotics’, signals a switch from the libertarian or ‘classic liberal’ faith in the market, to a small ‘c’ conservative recognition that there are different kinds of market, shades of both state regulation and cultural containment (from below), and distinct…