Free Trade
Pat Buchanan offered this regarding Free Traders:
They
recoil at tariffs like Lucifer from holy water, but have no idea how to
stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, technology, factories and dollars,
except exhortation and prayer. For as 19th-century liberals, they
believe free trade is “God’s Diplomacy.” Whoever rejects it sins in the
heart. True believers all, they will ride this raft right over the
falls and take us with them. This unyielding belief in the salvific
power of free trade is, like socialism, one of modernity’s secular
religions.
This is a particularly apt
description. Free trade advocates speak of free trade as if it were an
unquestionable bit of morality. Trade policies aren’t a tool for the
American economy (no matter what the Constitution says about Congress
setting duties), they are an inviolable moral law. Disagreements are
grounds for excommunication.
When Bush had tiny tariffs applied to steel
free trade cyber-scribblers pounded him day after day on the internet.
Does anyone believe that these people saw any of the consequences of
Free Trade or the Tariff that had them yelping in ideological pain.
Larry Kudlow, Stephen Moore and the enthusiasts for Free
Enterprise wish to introduce the market into every aspect of life. No
concern can claim a higher rank in the hierarchy of values: certainly
not patriotism, or goodwill to your countrymen.
But Republicans ought to ask themselves: Are we afraid of losing the
endorsement of the Club for Growth and the Free Enterprise Institute or
would we rather win the votes of people in Ohio and Pennsylvania every
time? Americans ought to ask themselves: Do we want a nation that has
malls filled with extra cheap DVD players or can we show a little worry
over whether Americans can make the computer chips that control our
Tomahawk missiles? Free Traders however only see prfit maximization and utili
Could not the Republicans apply their strategy with social conservatives, to free-traders? That is: say nice things during the election and then ignore them until next time. Honestly, are the Kudlows and Moores of the world going to leap into the arms of the Democrats? They have nowhere else to go.
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Politics
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