Free Trade For Colombia

Those who read my works know that I am not a freetraderite:  I do not see 'free trade' as the best of all possible ways for a Nation State to work with other Nation States and secure liberty at home and help it to spread, abroad.  I stated that clearly nearly two years ago with this as my view for Jacksonian based foreign policy:

There are three classes of Foreign Nations:

1. Those that the US shall have Free and Unfettered Trade with.
2. Those that shall undergo normal trade restrictions and have tarriffs applied.
3. Those Nations we do not like and will have nothing to do with.

The First Group will consist of all Foreign Nations that have had good, honest and open relationships with the United States and has not undermined the concept of expanding the Freedom of the Individual. This set will also include all Foreign Nations that have been under tyrranical rule and have recently been freed and have kept faith with the United States as a People and seek Our help to be Free. These Foreign Nations shall have free access to Our markets and give us the same access to Theirs, save for those individuals or companies that traffick or work with Foreign Nations that are within the Third Group. These Nations may be Freely invested in and will be considered to have no taxation restrictions save those posed for normal investment within the United States. Immigration shall be as Congress warrants, but shall involve no more background checks than are necessary to ensure that Enemies of the United States do not seek entry.

The Second Group shall consist of all Foreign Nations that are not unfriendly to the United States, but have shown little friendliness and familiarity with the United States. All trade of goods and services shall have a set tarriff of no less than 10%. Nations that have proven unhelpful but not overtly or covertly hostile to the interests of the United States shall fall into this category.

The Third Group is all Foreign Nations that have shown hostility or enmity to the United States or that have worked to undermine the relations of the United States with other Nations. All Foreign Nations trafficking with Transnational Terrorist organizations in any way shall fall into this category as they are seeking to undermine the Rule of Nations and orderly conduct between Nations. No trade or banking may take place between the United States and these Foreign Nations. Any individual or company from within the United States or its Free Trade partners that trafficks with these Foreign Nations shall not be able to invest or have banking relationships with the United States nor purchase goods and services from the United States. Such individuals and companies are considered to be pariahs and are unwelcome to visiting the United States.

That first group I sum up to be the 'Friends & Allies' of the United States.  These are the folks who show up with us over and over on the battlefield, at the diplomacy tables and help us while we... generally spite them for being such naive fools as to believe the US would actually RECOGNIZE and SUPPORT them.  Generally we have, as a Nation, Congress after Congress, Administration after Administration, given those seeking out support to help them in building liberty abroad the absolute and definitive Cold Shoulder.

Liberals are not alone in this, but are a main problem.  I could go through the litany of terror groups we are supposed to 'understand' and Nation States fighting terrorism that we are supposed to ignore, like Israel, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Greece, and now Iraq.

A quick question for Liberals:  do you support liberty and freedom as a human species-wide concept or not?

If you *do* then *why* don't you support Nations put together to secure peace and who seek our help in combating those who would destroy civil order?  For people to be accredited the high term of 'civilian' they must act to uphold the concept of civil rule so as to stem the rising tide of those humans who revert to the Law of Nature.  That is a fundamental and profound human liberty, being able to have a society in which people do not wantonly kill each other at whim based on purely personal feelings... or decide to take up the weapons of war against Sovereign Nations.  If all you can find is 'moral equivalence' then could you please tell me where supporting those seeking to undermine civil systems via destroying them and bringing strife ON THEIR OWN is exactly equal to a Nation State defending itself through regulated and accountable civil channels?

Please?

I'd like to know the author who raised barbarism to the level of civilization so I could give my neck the side-to-side workout at how daft that notion is.

Conservatives don't get off easy on this, either, since, as a class, they have decided to that 'economic efficiency' somehow spreads liberty.  It does not.  Often it doesn't even spread wealth, not to speak of liberty.  I went over this ill-founded concept when I looked at NAFTA, and pointed out that 'free trade' without acknowledging the economic, social and physical environs of those we trade *with* can have deleterious and often disastrous effects.  We have gone from having Mexico being a relatively poor Nation with subsistence farming and the rare 'insurgent' trying to push Communism to having Mexico being poor, no subsistence farming and fostering a turbo-charged criminal insurgency that now threatens the order of the United States in the desert Southwest.

You couldn't get from there to here without NAFTA destroying the economy and subsistence farming system in Mexico, dislocating millions of people, having them get then lose jobs in under a decade due to 'efficient business practices' going to the Far East, and having lots of narcotics money flowing around needing people to protect it... of which there were now plenty of non-farming capable unemployed in Mexico to take up those jobs from the employer of last resort, organized crime.

The boon to the US?

We now get to prepare for a COIN deployment on US SOIL!

Thanks.

For nothing and the blood flowing in the streets of Mexico and coming strong to America is on YOUR HANDS.

And when a 'conservative' trots out Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations, I point out that even Adam Smith bowed to the concept that the Law of Nations over-rules economic efficiency and prosperity based on trade.  That I went over in Trade, agriculture and Wealth of Nations.  Those who believe trade is everything are obviously not understanding the basis for trade as Adam Smith describes it and the fact that the Law of Nations makes trade POSSIBLE between Nations on a regularized basis via treaty.

 

I am NO freetraderite.  It is not the soothing balm of curing all economic ills and boosting liberty abroad.  Trade is the exterior aspect of the Nation State properly controlled by the Sovereign Power of that Nation and is a demonstration of how good or ill its people are towards other peoples and Nations.  Sorry, no knee-jerkism here, try Daily Kos.

One of the great understandings that President Jackson put down was that the US could trade with a Nation and still compete with it without going to war.  His outreach to the Ottoman Empire to provide it with Naval Vessels was to compete head-on with a Nation we were regularizing trade with: Great Britain.  He was willing to put the US naval shipbuilding capability head-to-head in competition with the best in the world.  And *still* work with the UK to open up trade between the US and the Crown Colonies!  Here is the view on that from him in 1829:

With Great Britain, alike distinguished in peace and war, we may look forward to years of peaceful, honorable, and elevated competition. Every thing in the condition and history of the two nations is calculated to inspire sentiments of mutual respect and to carry conviction to the minds of both that it is their policy to preserve the most cordial relations. Such are my own views, and it is not to be doubted that such are also the prevailing sentiments of our constituents. Although neither time nor opportunity has been afforded for a full development of the policy which the present cabinet of Great Britain designs to pursue toward this country, I indulge the hope that it will be of a just and pacific character; and if this anticipation be realized we may look with confidence to a speedy and acceptable adjustment of our affairs.

He even transmitted concerns from Congress overseas as he saw that as a duty to perform - being the Head of State and all that. Just the cursory examination of his papers that are easily available at the Avalon Project reveals a President who is not: uncouth, barbaric or, indeed, overtly hostile across the board. 

I will take a moment to try and clear up a thing or two about that Administration of  Andrew Jackson's.  He did do many things that others decried, but for those supporting the idea of 'majority rule' NOW you had best look to see where the majority was THEN.  If you don't like the Indian Removal Act, remember that it did go through Congress, was passed by the Democratic majority and enforced not only by Jackson but his successors, as well.  And do remember that he and the rest of the Nation had to deal with the idea of Indian Nations as actual Nations which had not been a clear point up to then.  Consider his concerns later in that annual presentation to Congress:

Your particular attention is requested to that part of the report of the Secretary of War which relates to the money held in trust for the Seneca tribe of Indians. It will be perceived that without legislative aid the Executive can not obviate the embarrassments occasioned by the diminution of the dividends on that fund, which originally amounted to $100,000, and has recently been invested in United States 3% stock.

The condition and ulterior destiny of the Indian tribes within the limits of some of our States have become objects of much interest and importance. It has long been the policy of Government to introduce among them the arts of civilization, in the hope of gradually reclaiming them from a wandering life. This policy has, however, been coupled with another wholly incompatible with its success. Professing a desire to civilize and settle them, we have at the same time lost no opportunity to purchase their lands and thrust them farther into the wilderness. By this means they have not only been kept in a wandering state, but been led to look upon us as unjust and indifferent to their fate. Thus, though lavish in its expenditures upon the subject, Government has constantly defeated its own policy, and the Indians in general, receding farther and farther to the west, have retained their savage habits. A portion, however, of the Southern tribes, having mingled much with the whites and made some progress in the arts of civilized life, have lately attempted to erect an independent government within the limits of Georgia and Alabama. These States, claiming to be the only sovereigns within their territories, extended their laws over the Indians, which induced the latter to call upon the United States for protection.

Under these circumstances the question presented was whether the General Government had a right to sustain those people in their pretensions. The Constitution declares that "no new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other State" without the consent of its legislature. If the General Government is not permitted to tolerate the erection of a confederate State within the territory of one of the members of this Union against her consent, much less could it allow a foreign and independent government to establish itself there.

This President saw debt obligations to Natives being ill-funded by Congress and called Congress on that.  He then goes on to cite the problem of the Congressional attitude in 'civilizing' natives which became a policy of land buy-out and forcing those people to leave their native lands.  Note the major concern in the Constitution as the natives had NO pre-existing State or Nation in many areas that when erecting a new government they were clashing directly with directives set up at the Founding.  Of course he told them to stop what they were doing inside the US: that was his job as described in the Constitution as he saw it.

And what was his response to the problem this caused?  Was it avowed racism to destroy the Indian tribes?  Read on:

Our conduct toward these people is deeply interesting to our national character. Their present condition, contrasted with what they once were, makes a most powerful appeal to our sympathies. Our ancestors found them the uncontrolled possessors of these vast regions. By persuasion and force they have been made to retire from river to river and from mountain to mountain, until some of the tribes have become extinct and others have left but remnants to preserve for a while their once terrible names. Surrounded by the whites with their arts of civilization, which by destroying the resources of the savage doom him to weakness and decay, the fate of the Mohegan, the Narragansett, and the Delaware is fast over-taking the Choctaw, the Cherokee, and the Creek. That this fate surely awaits them if they remain within the limits of the States does not admit of a doubt. Humanity and national honor demand that every effort should be made to avert so great a calamity. It is too late to inquire whether it was just in the United States to include them and their territory within the bounds of new States, whose limits they could control. That step can not be retraced. A State can not be dismembered by Congress or restricted in the exercise of her constitutional power. But the people of those States and of every State, actuated by feelings of justice and a regard for our national honor, submit to you the interesting question whether something can not be done, consistently with the rights of the States, to preserve this much- injured race.

Apparently the answer is a resounding NO.  He recognized the ills that were done, sees the injustice of it and, recognizing that his power as President is limited brings it to the part of the US government that can and MUST deal with it:  Congress.

I bring this up to clear some of the misunderstandings that are held about President Jackson.  Understand that if these could be Nations he would then treat with them as Head of State as he had done with other foreign powers.  He even ventured that new purchased lands west of the Mississippi be set aside for such purposes so that they could be 'secured in the governments of their own choice' by common consent and form new Nations.  And he was not adverse to recognizing those Nations as witness his signing treaties with them in 1830.

When leading his truly rag-tag militia into conflict, he accepted any that were free and citizens to take up arms and help him.  Freed slaves he accepted.  Indians who were citizens he accepted.  Help from a pirate he did not disdain as a leader of his men, but he had no orders to do otherwise.  They were to be honored and respected and he would work on Veterans affairs to ensure that Revolutionary War soldiers got their due pensions and voting rights.  Thus I have problems with those wanting to discount the man on simplistic, modern terms when, on his own and via the federal system he worked in, there were and are limits on the government.  And he *praises* those limits, too...

End of interlude.  Sorry it took so long.

 

Back to Colombia and the good relations had by our government with that of Colombia in 1830... after turning the medal given to President Jackson over to Congress as the Constitution does not allow those holding Public Office to accept personal rewards from foreign governments... say, when did we stop doing that?  Ah, simpler times when people could actually read the Constitution.  In any event, we have this as our opening view to regularizing trade with the then new government of Colombia:

I deem the present a suitable occasion to inform you that shortly after my communication to Congress at the opening of the session dispatches were received from Mr. Moore, the envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary of the United States to Colombia, stating that he had succeeded in obtaining the assent of the council of ministers to the allowance of the claims of our citizens upon that Government in the cases of the brig Josephine and her cargo and the schooner Ranger and part of her cargo. An official copy of the convention subsequently entered into between Mr. Moore and the secretary of foreign affairs, providing for the final settlement of those claims, has just been received at the Department of State. By an additional article of this convention the claim in the case of the brig Morris is suspended until further information is obtained by the Colombian Government from the Court at Carracas; and Mr. Moore anticipates its early and satisfactory adjustment. The convention only waited the ratification of the Liberator President, who was at the time absent from Bogota, to be binding upon the Colombian Government. Although these claims are not, comparatively, of a large amount, yet the prompt and equitable manner in which the application of Mr. Moore in behalf of our injured citizens was met by that Government entities its conduct to our approbation, and promises well for the future relations of the two countries.

Representing the problems great and small of the Citizens of the United States gives an opening to regularizing trade between those who have recently freed themselves under the banner of liberty and freedom.  By having reciprocity and acknowledging problems and working to resolve them, the tone for how to conduct foreign policy that helps others to secure their liberty abroad without the need for military intervention is set.  That is a friendly way to deal with the world and secure liberty and freedom:  actually helping those who DO work to secure it and HELP them. 

Not hope they might change their ways, as is the current case with China.

Relations between Colombia and the US have not always been good, since then, needless to say, but the founding principle of how we treat each other was established by President Jackson.  Indeed he would try to do that with all the governments who had their Sovereignty recognized by treaty by the UK and Spain.  While Monroe had a Doctrine of non-intervention by outsiders in the New World, Jackson had one of offering the hand of friendship to those who would build peaceful societies and have governments to help them secure liberty and freedom.

When our friends in Colombia were under siege by drug cartels AND narco-terrorists, we worked first only in one area, on the cartels, and that fed the drug trade directly to FARC, and terrorism took a ghastly turn for the worse.  FARC had, before that, served as a type of 'enforcer' in certain areas of the drug trade while, somehow, trying to say that making money via these illicit capitalist means was a good way to create socialism:  exploit the workers to do something other than exploit them.  The exploitation, however, not only did not end when the powerful cartel bosses fell, but got worse and deeper under FARC.  For a time it looked like the area that FARC was able to clear of government control might topple the entire country.  Their government turned to one of their oldest contacts they had: the United States.

Our response was lackluster at first, not wanting to go beyond the criminal portion of things.  But the corrosive effects of Private War to destabilize not just Colombia but many Nations in South America caused a change in policy under the Clinton Administration.  If President Clinton failed horrifically in addressing Islamic Terrorism, he did an adequate job in helping go after narco-terrorism in Colombia.  This was a combined military and civil plan between multiple governments to try and strangle FARC and destroy its billion dollar per year profit off the drug trade it now had majority control of in Colombia.  By 2000 they were helping multiple other terrorist organizations on a global basis and serving as the training ground for those who could pay the toll.  Hezbollah, IRA, Tamil Tigers, al Qaeda, PLO, HAMAS... a laundry list of groups large and small came to be associated with FARC.

If the US had to learn multi-ethnic COIN later in Iraq, the start of modern COIN doctrine can be placed in Colombia under President Clinton.  For that we do need to divorce our feelings about how President Clinton often did things to divert attention from personal affairs, and to recognize that he did a few things right outside of that realm.  Colombia would have collapsed without the help of the United States under President Clinton, when we could have easily supplied the training and necessary minimal war material to effect a good, long term COIN plan.  That plan started in 1996 and a mere 13 years later it has achieved astonishing successes.

When Colombia faced unrest, revolution and chaos they came to the people of the United States for help, and no matter how miserly it was, the necessary help was given and it has been one of the largest terrorist organization take-downs in history.  The hard work and credit go to Colombia and those Nations that directly helped in intervening the drug and arms trade to FARC.  In asking for that help, they now see that we are irresolute in standing by them to help build closer and stronger ties to support liberty and freedom in their land.

I do support Free Trade for Colombia.

They have earned it and deserve it and it will help draw us closer together for the common problems that plague this hemisphere and make us both stronger via that healthy competition and sharing of goods that neither can wholly do on its own.  That would be a boon to both our peoples.

I apply that same concept across the board.

Help those who seek liberty and freedom and do not fear competition with them: they are your friends and allies.

Keep those who speak but do not DO at arms length, and deny them easy boon and make them pay to support our liberty and freedom.

And to those who oppose us, they should never feel smug or confident in their ways of the world as they make themselves an enemy of the United States when embracing freedom and liberty  is so easy to do and so hard to secure.

Easing out the Conservative Elite

Looking at Ramesh Ponnuru at The Corner at NRO today got me thinking that most conservatives and Republicans don't know what they hell they are saying as he looks at Ross Douthat's piece on where conservatism should go, and I will put the short piece in full as follows, and bold those parts of interest:

In developing an agenda, Republicans and conservatives need to figure out what the top challenges facing the country are and how to meet them. But it would be pointless to devise an agenda that could not possibly win over a majority of the voters. And of course the same type of politics that might attract one group of voters will repel another. To generalize wildly: Upper-middle-class, college-educated voters tend to find the Republican party's economics attractive and its social positions less so; vice versa for lower-middle-class voters without college degrees. Which group should the builders of a center-right coalition try hardest to get? I largely agree with Ross Douthat's take on this question, but I would make an additional point.

I don't think many people are arguing that if Republicans just emphasized their social conservatism more, they would attract enough additional lower-middle-class voters to win a majority. The argument that Douthat, his co-author Reihan Salam, and I (among others!) are making is that it is possible to craft conservative economic policies that would serve the interests of this group. These policies need not drive away upper-middle-class voters. The Democrats' promises to help downscale voters have been compatible with an increased appeal to upper-middle-class voters, after all.

And if Republicans can appeal to lower-middle-class voters on domestic policy—health care, taxes, etc.—then they will have less need to make the type of cultural appeals to these voters (we disdain arugula, wave the flag a lot, etc.) that seem to drive some upper-middle-class voters batty. Such an economic agenda might thus help the party directly with the lower middle and indirectly with the upper middle. So I think the party's best bet is to keep, while doubtless modifying in some respects, its social conservatism while searching for free-market economic policies that would help lower-middle-class voters. I am doubtless biased by the fact that this approach would also be best for the country.

So the first paragraph is telling us that the Elite Conservatives are pushing a conservative economic agenda and that this isn't appealing to the working class. They are?

From the party that wanted 4 day work weeks in Congress during its time in the majority? And then signed on for a 3 day work week under Democrats? This is an ECONOMIC CONSERVATIVE AGENDA?

Hold your horses right there, what ever happened to a good old 'work ethic' and showing up 5 days a week, 8 hours a day and putting in over-time? What the hell ever happened to THAT? Because that *is* as econmically conservative as you can get and just where is the Republican Party in Congress? On FOUR DAY WEEKENDS!

Now look at the 'conservatives' pushing the 'social conservatism' agenda. See the lovely degrees by their names. They are over-educated and under-worked. Those social conservatives who do have degrees will have to put forward in common, every day terms *why* their ideas on social conservatism are good. And then try to explain a party that doesn't have a work ethic at its highest levels.

Lotsa luck on that, I tell you.

I am sorry that Mr. Ponnuru is missing the point: a good set of ethical values that you actually LIVE THROUGH and demonstrate day-in and day-out is far, far more appealing than just campaigning for this or that cause. He sees where the appeals need to go but then does not correctly formulate that the Party does not hold the basic and underpinning values to sustain them. How do we know that? Take a look at the party leadership, particularly in Congress. Any group as money grabbing and willing to roll over on issues like that group, and then not even bother to have a full work week is not 'Conservative' by any stretch of anyone's imagination: it is Elitist, putting itself above other groups to try and dictate down to others what their agenda should be.

So lets flip this around, a bit, and see what comes from this formulation of the Republican party and see if it better serves to define what is going on: the Conservative Economic and Social Elite is disconnected with everyday Americans and prescribes ideas that are not connected to daily lives, do not reinforce basic ethical concerns, and then uses 'hot button' issues and 'litmus tests' to remove those that disagree with the Elite from the party.

Hey, not too bad, as it pretty much describes how such a group of slackers can utilize a minimal set of agenda topics to slowly cut themselves off from a voting base. The Elite enforces no working class ethics, enforces all sorts of strange social ethics that have little to do with politics and then wants to run on that mess? Why should anyone vote for people who are unwilling to treat public service as a job, who are willing to fill the coffers of their supporters and brown-nosers with federal funds, always pushing at topics that have little chance of succeeding in the way they have been formulated on the social side and then decide to eviscerate their own party when members who have committed no crimes are drummed out because they had problems of fidelity with their home lives? Can't you folks realize that we have that in everyday life, out here in America, and people going through messy divorces don't QUIT THEIR JOBS, by and large, because they can still *work* while having to take care of that mess at home? So a member is found out to be gay and married straight. So what? Can the person do his job? Yeah, if its too much of a distraction in public service, then do leave, but if the member can still demonstrate that he or she holds basic concepts of governance to be their guiding light and that they have failures as an individual, then guess what? They are 'normal'.

I refuse to vote for Angels.

And even *they* had a falling out.

Ok, now I'm going to tackle a 'social conservative' topic that has been a loser as it has been formulated. It doesn't get votes. It hasn't gone anywhere for decades. Those 'leading the charge' are not flexible enough to try something else and the old arguments just aren't doing it. Here's the lovely thing about America - you can try a different approach to reach ultimate ends and still keep conflicts in society down! And as I've written on this before, I will extract from that piece as a demonstration on how to do this, which is not a backing for the idea but a demonstration that a different approach can yield valid outcomes:

In looking at Freedoms, Rights and the People I started looking at the actual framework of the issues involved and then a whole lot more in When do your rights start? Now in this I do *not* try to figure out when someone is or is not a human but *when* there is a passing point *into* Citizenship. Now why did I do that? Because it is imperfect, of course! Far, far less than ideal but... it does head towards the common ideal of Citizenship and upholding all rights and all responsibilities. Citizenship is a damned important thing in this Nation and the Supreme Court has created a two-tier system of 'Due Process' that actually violates the outlook of the Constitution for one form of justice for All of the People. Here is what it boils down to:

1) The SCOTUS has put a 'viability test' on when an abortion may be performed,
2) What does 'viability' measure? It measures the ability to be sustained outside of the mother or host.
3) What happens when an Individual is outside the mother or host and sustainable? They are 'born'.
4) Being born of Citizens of the United States within a State of the United States or within limits set externally by Congress for such things under its Immigration and Naturalization powers makes one a Citizen.

Short, sweet and to the point: viability is a measure of Citizenship.

Yes, very reductio ad absurdum and all of that, but it does point out the thing about working with imperfect law: one can use its imperfection to achieve things that locking horns forevermore will not do. And in this extremely imperfect ruling the SCOTUS has now set up a 'two tier' system upon fetuses based on positional sustainability outside the mother or host. If a fetus is born prematurely, it gets full Citizenship Rights and coverage. At that exact same gestation point for another fetus going through normal gestation that is NOT the case. Say, that just can't be right, can it? Imperfect law, imperfect ruling leading to a non-Due Process procedure for Equal Protection. Pure idiocy, when you come right down to it. If a 'viability' test is put in place then the requirement, since it is viability to become a Citizen is being measured, then ALL such fetuses at that same point in gestation should get Equal Coverage and Due Process under the Law.

Painful, isn't it?

Enacting State-based legislation on that would *then* require *proof* that a fetus was not in the viability stage and appropriate developmental buffer zone to afford protections to unequal development due to circumstances beyond control of mother or fetus. Under this regime one can, indeed, get an abortion, but only with *proof* that the fetus was not in the gestational viability period. What that then requires is *record keeping* of sexual activity! Yes, more Red Tape! Sworn affidavits, medical exam and post-abortion exam to determine status would then be *required* so that anyone that LIES about their history in this regard can be prosecuted for murder. On the other side society, at that point in time, must afford full minor citizenship rights to such children who are gestating normally and ensure that these new Citizens are properly tracked and accounted for until their full 'birth date' or emergence from the mother or host. This infringes upon no existing set of Rights and applies responsibility to sexual activity because of its paramount importance to Citizenship. And various doctors can be appointed by the State to perform dual exams upon an individual that did NOT keep such records, and then they would attest to gestational period and abortion made available for the non-viable fetus.

This provides full rights to the unborn at the point of viability. Anything *else* then gets one looking at 'when does life begin' which really isn't a question society is set up to deal with. What society *is* set up to deal with is when an individual becomes a Citizen, so using that is not only perfectly reasonable, but then sets new standards of conduct and accountability for sexually mature individuals. That knife cuts across *both sides* of the debate as it is neutral to the debate and looks to uphold society and *not* find some sort of perfect solution. Totalitarian governments are very good at perfect solutions and their eponymous 'Final Solution'. Really, if life 'begins at conception' then it is not the abortion clinics that are mass murder facilities but In Vitro Fertilization clinics that have large numbers of fertilized eggs from generally infertile couples that need to destroy such after a period of time as they become non-viable for *anything* after a couple of years in the deep freeze. Tens if not hundreds of thousands of fertilized eggs are destroyed via that route and yet I see very little protesting around those places for doing so. Somehow that 'perfect' viewpoint needs to be adjusted to the actual, real world of a common society held by the overwhelming majority of Citizens.

What can be done, however, is to find better ways to sustain premature infants, identify better ways to identify developmental stages of gestating fetuses, and afford a bit better help to expectant mothers or hosts so as to get children that are better cared for, generally healthy and, perhaps, have some early intervention for treatment of genetic illnesses and deformities. If all the money that had been funneled into this glacially locked 'debate' had been put to something *useful* for the commonly held public society, then we might have fewer premature births, a better understanding of genetic disease and pre-born deformities and actually hold life to be a bit more sacred than we do now as an entire society.

Yes, why don't you actually SUPPORT the SCOTUS on abortion, use its own damned test at the State level to determine Citizenship and then *dare* the Court to throw that out and explain *why* their original argument is invalid in one area and valid in the other? You know? Actually hit the opposition by undercutting it and then putting in the mechanism to finally allow all of those citizens interested in ending abortions a valid way of doing so that is civil and DOESN'T require protests. Like the Left does on so many things? And notice that the outcomes, of actually making ADULTS responsible for their SEXUAL ACTIVITY is a perfectly valid outcome as the State has a vested interest in citizenship. Plus note that there is more than a bit of hypocrisy on the 'pro-life' side of things: someone hasn't thought these positions out to reconcile fertilized eggs as having 'souls' and then doing nothing at IVF clinics. Perhaps we should leave this 'soul' business up to the Creator and figure out how to deal with it as best we can in the imperfect world that is the Creation? You know, civil discussion about what is and is not valid for all of society and taking in the widest possible set of social input so as to draft good laws.

Like we agreed to do in the Constitution, in the Preamble.

Whenever you get a 'litmus' test from social conservatives, it means they want their view of the world absolutely upheld across all of society. That has been losing voters and now elections.

On the economic side there needs to be some fundamental education going *both ways* in the Republican Party. Yeah, 'free trade' and all that. I have some deep problems with the nostrums for 'free trade' and the non-alignment of outcomes with those self-same nostrums. All that wonderful 'free trade' in NAFTA was supposed to *help* Mexico. Instead it uprooted its workforce, killed its agriculture sector, made it dependent upon the US and derivative jobs, saw jobs go away to the Far East and factories close, then food prices skyrocket and then had a major slow down turn its people that had been flowing northwards into criminal concerns. This will now leave President-elect Obama with a budding criminal insurgency in Mexico that is even now spreading over into Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and other States even further inside the US seeing MS-13 in such places as Nebraska. Good job on that 'free trade' stuff! Didn't know it meant expanding the criminal sector inside the US freely. And those self-same free traderites don't want to shut down the border and control it as that would *ruin* economic efficiency... which has lost jobs in the US and increased foreign criminal and terrorist organizations in the US.

Have to love how that plays out, no? I wish the Democratic Party would own up for their part in this idiocy as President CLINTON signed this junk into being via treaty.

Say, just why do those in favor of 'free trade' just support holding Mexico to its TREATY OBLIGATIONS towards the US?

Oh, it might hurt the economy... can't do that! Economy uber alles.

But that is not the Law of Nations: we agree that as a Nation we will have some inefficient areas, economically, so as to protect the whole of the Nation. And, yes, I've read Adam Smith and actually have a disagreement or two with his basic arguments. But even HE recognized the economic necessity of protecting a Nation REQUIRES that some inefficiency develop so as to better insure the survival of the overall Nation. The radical 'free trade' folks don't seem to recognize this, and yet it is a bread-and-butter blue collar worker issue, when important and vital jobs go overseas and the Nation loses internal productive capacity for some vital goods and, even worse, war material production.

Both Economic and Social Conservatism have gone way too far in their interpretation of some things over others, and both refuse to hold to the basic concepts that make our Nation and allow us to interact with other Nations in a manner that will not open our Nation up to being weakened, perhaps critically, during wartime. We have already had some overseas concerns not wanting to continue supplying us with vital war components due to Iraq. Things like the ruggedized equipment interfaces in aircraft... you know the stuff that allows you to actually know and program in what you want to target with 'smart bombs'? That doesn't even begin to address things like bullets and batteries...

Understanding the working class culture means that you have some 'bread and butter' issues, some jobs issues, and a number of other concerns at a social level that grow out of wanting to raise a family and keep food on the table and a roof over your heads. These folks also want to see the country protected, are willing to sacrifice some increased wealth to have security and want the rule of law enforced and *don't* want people from any government telling you *what* to do all the time. These are the people hit by 'regulations' in the way of lost jobs, lost productivity and having to face the ladder they were on pulled out from under them whenever good jobs go overseas. Yes, in 5 years they *might* make more, but they have to get through 5 years of lower income, lower living standards and still keep a family together. And deal with foreign criminal and terrorist organizations starting to bring lawlessness to the heartland.

Suddenly that promise of a better job doesn't carry the promise of a better tomorrow with it.

Whatever happened to the 'law and order' Republican Party?

I would vote and happily on those issues, so long as you keep the laws few and prosecutions high and even across all strata of life.

You know: equal protection under the law?

That is, apparently, too much to expect out of the Economic and Social Elite in the Republican Party.

Maybe it is time for the party to ease those losers and slackers out.

Trade cannot do what Charity does

Fascinating times lead to interesting conclusions, some warranted and some not warranted. Consider Ronald Bailey's article in Reason 29 MAY 2008 (H/t: Instapundit) about the need to increase free trade and the benefits that would come from it looking at a recent Copenhagen Conference on this issue by Kym Anderson:

Anderson looked at a number of econometric modeling scenarios and calculated the cost and benefits that would obtain from full trade liberalization under realistic assumptions derived from the current World Trade Organization's Doha Development Agenda negotiations. Anderson estimated that liberalization of global merchandise trade would mean an annual increase of $287 billion per year in global GDP, of which $86 billion would go to developing countries. This compares very nicely with the $104 billion in development assistance that the governments of industrialized countries gave to developing countries in 2006.

In other calculations, Anderson found that the long term effects of trade liberalization would be that global income in 2098 would be up to 10% greater than it otherwise would have been. The associated net present values from freer trade range from $50 trillion to $424 trillion. Consider that in 2007, total gross world product was $53 trillion. In other words, both the immediate and long-term benefits from free trade are enormous. Anderson reports benefit cost ratios ranging from 269:1 to 1121:1.

Unfortunately this only looks at government assistance to developing countries, which is by far not the whole story. Consider the following from the USINFO site on charity for the year 2006 written on 26 JUN 2007 by Jeffrey Thomas:

Americans increased their charitable donations significantly in 2006 to more than $295 billion -- a record, according to a study released June 25 by the Giving USA Foundation, which reports on charitable contributions.

The overwhelming majority of this money was donated by individuals, not corporations or foundations, according to the chairman of Giving USA, Richard Jolly. Donations from individuals, including bequests, accounted for 83.3 percent of total giving last year, or $245.8 billion, he told USINFO.

[..]

Americans long have preferred to donate their money through the private sector or to private charities. Of the $122.8 billion of foreign aid provided by Americans in 2005, the most current data available, $95.5 billion, or 79 percent, came from private foundations, corporations, voluntary organizations, universities, religious organizations and individuals, according to the latest annual Index of Global Philanthropy, which is published by a Washington research organization, the Center for Global Prosperity at the Hudson Institute.

The Giving USA report does not take into account the value of contributions Americans make in terms of time and labor. More than 61 million Americans volunteered for charitable and national service organizations in 2006, and about half of all Americans participate in volunteer activities each year, according to Brooks. Volunteerism is “a major cultural phenomenon in the U.S.,” Brooks says.

Consider that the annual charitable donations in foreign aid, $122.8 billion, is roughly 43% of the proposed estimate of what increases in global trade would accomplish. Even better is that this aid is targeted and accountable by individuals and private organizations who ensure that money spent on projects that they solicit funds for are, indeed, well spent. The amount of American after-tax income that is donated to achieve such levels? 2.2% via the USINFO article, with a substantial portion of that coming from households with sub-$100,000 per year income.

When I took a look at the FY 2007 budget for the US in relation to foreign assistance, the amount the US puts forward via its government is interesting: International Assistance Programs came to just under $17 billion, and there would be some portion of the State Dept budget also devoted to this, but would be a fraction of their $14.4 billion budget. There are other 'freebies' tucked into places like Dept. of Agriculture, Interior and so on, but that total should be well under $20 billion per year, across the federal government, and certainly under $30 billion. So US charitable giving outstrips US government foreign aid by at least 10 or 15 times, or a 10:1 to 15:1 ratio.

Over at Charity Navigator a 31 MAR 2008 article by Arthur C. Brooks looks at the donations of money and time:

Q. Are Americans more or less charitable than citizens of other countries?
A. No developed country approaches American giving. For example, in 1995 (the most recent year for which data are available), Americans gave, per capita, three and a half times as much to causes and charities as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and 14 times as much as the Italians. Similarly, in 1998, Americans were 15 percent more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 percent more likely than the Swiss, and 32 percent more likely than the Germans. These differences are not attributable to demographic characteristics such as education, income, age, sex, or marital status. On the contrary, if we look at two people who are identical in all these ways except that one is European and the other American, the probability is still far lower that the European will volunteer than the American.

Much of the foreign trade increases only come about because of such things as micro-lending systems and charities actually able to go into poorly developed areas and provide targeted aid beyond humanitarian assistance. There is a problem with depending on government solely as a way to develop trade via foreign assistance, and it is clearly pointed out by the Charity Navigator article:

Q. Monetary giving doesn’t tell us much about total charity, does it? People who don’t give money probably tend to give in other ways instead, right?
A. Wrong. First of all, there is a bright line between people who give and people who don’t give. People who do give time and money tend to give a lot of it. According to the Center on Philanthropy, the percentage of givers donating less than $50 to charity in 2000 was the same as the percentage giving more than $5,000. Similarly, the same percentage of people who only volunteered once volunteered on 36 or more occasions in 2000.

Second, people who give away their time and money to established charities are far more likely than non-givers to act generously in informal ways as well. For example, one nationwide survey from 2002 tells us that monetary donors are nearly three times as likely as non-donors to give money informally to friends and strangers. People who give to charity at least once per year are twice as likely to donate blood as people who don’t give money. They are also significantly more likely to give food or money to a homeless person, or to give up their seat to someone on a bus.

The problem with seeking government solutions to problems such as building economic structure in poor nations is that it must go through the highly bureaucratic structure that, itself, takes up anywhere from 35% to 55% of the funds just to ensure accountability of those funds and pay for government overhead. Private and institutional charities instead compete on the lowest amount of overhead so that the most relief is provided, and charities that spend more than 10% on overhead are seen has having a problem. Trade, going through commercial channels, can and does develop minimal means of manufacturing or labor markets, but the support of society to ensure that things like a 'work ethic' are developed and that the poor have an opportunity to gain jobs from such commercial activity is a charitable concept.

Trade liberalization in and of itself does not build institutions of liberty, freedom, self-worth or ensure that societies are reinforced by it. China is better since 1972 not for trade but for the removal of Mao, and yet the authoritarian and fascistic state that has grown up since his death has not improved the actual ability of individuals to express themselves freely, take part in an open government via democratic means or even have better health. China, today, is one of the world's largest polluters in carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide, has a 20% nation wide unemployment rate, has nearly 17% of its population below the poverty line, has 25 to 50% of all loans being Non-Performing Loans which puts the amount of GDP depending on that poorly structured debt at between 30 and 60%. Due to pollution *alone* the city of Beijing loses an estimated $1.5 billion/year due to health effects and poor sanitation. And it has LOTS of trade with the US and the rest of the world! Just one of its companies supported by the State, Huawei Technologies, has infringed on intellectual property rights to undercut competition and sell knock off equipment of reputable manufacturers. In the US. And then seeks to buy its way into the market via a leveraged buyout. It has also been cited for competition practices depending on blackmail and coercion. It, too, is part of that 'global trade' system, and yet its mafia style tactics and willingness to break international copyright laws is abundantly clear.

That is the problem with gross growth numbers for global outlooks: it ignores the problems that have come in with current 'trade liberalization' in the way of ensuring accountable enterprise activities on a global basis. This is a problem with the modern view on trade, deriving from the Wealth of Nations view, which I have looked at before. It is a nasty bit of learning that trade is to support National interests, and while more trade is better, when it undermines the National interest and degrades the ability of a Nation to manufacture or support itself in key areas, it becomes a negative factor. The division of labor on a global scale argument only goes so far as it does not address liberty on a global scale. We have three major places where trade was placed as the key to creating liberty, and yet in each of those places it has failed: President Wilson would not attack the Ottoman Empire which was allied with Germany and placed US trade and corporations as the reason and trade as the means to increase liberty in the region in 1917, President Nixon proposed the same for China starting in 1972, and Presidents Carter and Reagan proposed the same for Yugoslavia in the late 1970's and early 1980's. In each of these instances of large scale trade views to increase liberty and increase security for the citizens of those Nations, it was a failure.

On the overall scale of things, looking at the Reason article's $53 trillion level for the global economy, the US accounts for nearly $13 trillion of it (Source: indexmundi) for the year 2006, or nearly 25% of it. Now, if US charitable giving were emulated by the REST of the top 10 nations in the world, we might have a system of global interaction that would support societies by individuals and private concerns addressing the needs of poverty, hunger and basic education on how to keep oneself fed. In fact US charitable giving at $295 billion places it, GDP-wise in 2006 as the 34th largest nation in the world between Malaysia at $309 billion and Sweden at $285 billion out of a list of 210 nations. The foreign aid amount via charity falls lower, of course, at 122 billion between the 57th placed UAE at $130 billion and 58th New Zealand at $106 billion. Throw in $20 billion from IAP and other government sources and that pops it up to right after 54th Morocco $147 billion.

If China, Japan, India, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia and Brazil had private charitable works equal in percent of post-tax income to the US, that personal contribution would not only foster commitment to international growth but have accountable systems via private institutions to go with it. The argument that external government donor aid plays a larger factor is belied by this the results seen at indexmundi for external donor aid where the US comes in fourth ($6.9 billion) after the UK ($10.7 billion), France ($10.1 billion) and Japan ($8.9 billion).

That $6.9 billion comes out of the IAP, State Dept and other federal funds sources as donor aid and note that the fraction missing is quite high even just taking the IAP *alone* ($17 billion) the overhead is in the 40% range. If you are hot for international trade, then, the idea is to get governments out of the way for promotion and development of it. What National governments are given TO DO is to protect their Nations and ensure that trade does not undermine their societies or their Nation. Wealth and wealth production is not the same thing as liberty expressed through human freedoms: it is a measurement of buying power, not human liberty. China is going great guns on unstructured debt, lowered life spans, suppression of political and religious organizations, and utilizing its workforce for national power vested in the government, not its people. Also notice where China sits on the giving side of the equation from its government.

It is in this area where we confuse the ideal of Wealth of Nations with the hard-headed reality of the Law of Nations, where National gain and prestige is not necessarily equivalent to human liberty and freedom. The idea that mere cash 'empowers' an individual is belied by a place like China that is slowly grinding its people, no matter how wealthy, for its national ends for its government. One cannot decry Tibet and then support the idea that increased trade is helping the people of Tibet due to the goliath that controls it being able to do what it wants without respect to human liberty and freedom. And with the Chinese poverty line set far below that of the US, indeed looking more like the poverty line for a rural based economy, that 16% below that line points to a major problem in China beyond what trade can accomplish.

Trade liberalization when it is not hard and deeply coupled with the expansion of teaching human liberty and the price to secure it does not promote EITHER. A fine and dandy 'global labor pool' devolves towards the lowest, poorest common denominator for liberty and rights as those are the most available for the highest profit margin on output. And when pay gets too high in one region, the transnationals shift to others leaving those who had jobs without them. My article on NAFTA looks at this and the results for a place like Mexico with 'free trade' with the US. The local job pathways out of poverty and for self-sustainment by agriculture were broken by cheap, industrial crop production in the US (any high capital expenditure system becomes an industrial enterprise, as opposed to a manual labor one). Jobs along the northern border for low end manufacturing in textiles and other goods shifted jobs from the US south east and midwest to northern Mexico. Labor headed north for those jobs and to the US as higher paying work with no penalties worth mentioning was available there, which depressed local pay scales and increased pressure on social services. The manufacturing sector then saw the Far East as the next place to go (Philippines, Malaysia, China) and soon the factories in northern Mexico were idling down or shutting down. The US then went for its 'biofuels' binge and increased food costs in Mexico which now had no local agribusiness due to the hard competition it suffered from the US for nearly a decade. Those people had to seek jobs northwards, also. The last employer of opportunity became organized crime which is now supported transnationally and that is leading to a criminal based insurgency backed by foreign organizations on the other side of the US border.

Trade liberalization may have put more money into the pockets of Mexico in general, but it is now getting them killed at a higher rate than ever before due to the economic effects on the poorest there. This is really not the harbinger for a rosy world of the future with a non-accountable 'global labor pool' and 'global business climate' that has no adherence to Nation based societies and cultures. In treating labor as a commodity we ignore the human aspects of labor to be creative and have free reign via liberty for self-expression and support of society. It is possible to get both richer and no more free, because money does not buy liberty and freedom. The US should understand that because we have the saying that tells what *does that* and money cannot buy it:

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

- Thomas Jefferson

Not Free Trade but Accountable Trade

Today (04 OCT 2007) The Wall Street Journal hosts an article by John Harwood: Republicans Grow Sckeptical On Free Trade. It isn't shocking that a business news outfit like WSJ would cover this, but it is of great note that the placement of it on their paper side is A-1. The front page. This is of high interest as the WSJ is unabashedly not to keen on any prospect of controlling illegal immigration supporting, instead, that businesses and foreign individuals have the 'right' to commit to labor contracts outside of Treaties and international law. That said this is also a division between the more Left leaning 'news' segment of WSJ and the more 'right' side on the editorial pages. That dichotomy is a fascinating one to see as time goes on, and having it put into stark contrast on the front page is quite profound: the attitude of Americans towards how business operates is slowly shifting.

On to the article itself, which examines polling data and some of the main things showing up not in those that consider themselves Republicans. First off in the article is taxation, a continual Republican applause maker in the cutting end of things. And without question that remains exactly where the Republican voter is today, by 60% favoring tax cuts. As is pointed out, however, a significant minority think it is time for disproportionate taxation shifting upwards in the earnings column, also known as 'tax the rich'. Something that could result in this on the Republican side, is the floating of tax 'cuts' that are 'graduated' to give larger percentage cuts at lower earnings brackets, so the overall trend, while that of tax cutting, is to cut more out at the bottom earnings segment of the population than at the top.

To date I am unaware of any Republican move to take advantage of this view amongst their voters, but do note that it would have some acceptance across-the-board as it would be seen as having the wealthiest Americans paying more in a terms of porportion of taxation. This first point is not a shocker, really, although the 'across-the-board' cuts folks and the 'trickle down' folks are slowly finding their views falling out of favor by that significant minority shift. While the majority can still put through such pro-business or 'fair' across-the-board cuts, the slow alienation of that minority should be a large worry to the Republican party.

That pro-business view of the Republican party takes a hard hit on the greatest marketing slogan put forward of: 'free trade freeing people'. To examine that I will now put a quote in from the article on this topic:

Six in 10 Republicans in the poll agreed with a statement that free trade has been bad for the U.S. and said they would agree with a Republican candidate who favored tougher regulations to limit foreign imports. That represents a challenge for Republican candidates who generally echo Mr. Bush's calls for continued trade expansion, and reflects a substantial shift in sentiment from eight years ago.

"It's a lot harder to sell the free-trade message to Republicans," said Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, who conducts the Journal/NBC poll with Democratic counterpart Peter Hart. The poll comes ahead of the Oct. 9 Republican presidential debate in Michigan sponsored by the Journal and the CNBC and MSNBC television networks.

That same 60% that is for lower taxes shows up *again* on the 'free trade' issue. This single issue pushed at least since the Reagan Administration and pushed hard by academics, pundits, and various business media outlets, including the WSJ, have not 'made the sale' on free trade. Quite contrarily, after seeing it NOT work for decades in China and having Mexico abuse NAFTA and export its unemployed northwards to the US and Canada, the Republican base is no longer supporting the concept of 'free trade'. The stated view is that this is bad for US local production, but some part of it is also attached to the illegal immigration issue caused by the relaxed views of NAFTA and the slow dissolving of US National Sovereignty because of free trade. Ross Perot, in 1992, indicated that NAFTA would create a major downward trend in US production of goods, but it has, instead, seen US firms penalized on various environmental issues that are NOT as strict in Mexico and has so attacked the US on its ability to regulate immigration and product standards that the Republican base is sending a clear message: enough is enough.

This is one of the few areas that some of the Democratic presidential candidates are actually *ahead* of their Republican counterparts: free trade. After initial sign-on to it, by President Clinton, the Clinton camp and a few other Democrats are feeling the free trade winds slowing. All the verbiage put forth by various academics, economics pundits and political supporters are not dealing with the paucity of freedom in China, or in other parts of the world where the view of trade being the balm of all things has not yielded significant results. The shift of Nations to democratic outlook is spearheaded by the vast Nation of India, and that, alone, would skew global demographics. Even worse, is the failing of democracy to address social ills across Africa, South America, and SE Asia, along with the newly formed Central Asian States. Democracy, even when present, has not dealt with organized crime, the narcotics trade, terrorism or money laundering due to political graft and corruption present even in democratic nations.

Increasing trade has, indeed, brought more *goods* to more people in India and China, but only where liberty and freedom have backing by the people and their governments can such goods be secured against government. That is the case in India, but not the case in China where increasing goods are an attempt by the regime to bribe its own population so as to keep its economic bubble inflated. The goods put out from China and parts of SE Asia that undercut the US domestic market via cheap labor and sub-standard goods is now seen as a detriment to the economy of the US.

This has been a shift over the last eight years as WSJ points out:

In a December 1999 Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, 37% of Republicans said trade deals had helped the U.S. and 31% said they had hurt, while 26% said they made no difference.

While this year's choices are somewhat different (59% con/ 32% pro/ 9% UNK) against the 1999 figures (37% con/ 31% pro/ 26% no change/ 5%UNK) the strong shift when the 'no change' is removed to the con side of the equation gaining all but 1% of the shifting 'no change' and unknown groups is startling. Out of the 31% on that latter in 1991 9% go in the UNK territory (+4%) and the rest move almost without exception to the con side on free trade. After long decades of pushing by the business portions of the Republican party, to see that equation of overseas production leading to greater prosperity is not resonating in their party. The shift of America to a majority 'services' based economy, now beating out industrial production, is a primary concern here. The can-do, pro-workforce of Americans making things is not having a high match-up with the services based economy.

This push-back is examined by the WSJ and using anectdotal evidence, examines those that have joined the Republican party:

Post-9/11 security concerns have also displaced some of the traditional economic concerns of the Republican Party that Ronald Reagan reshaped a generation ago. Asked which issues will be most important in determining their vote, a 32% plurality cited national defense, while 25% cited domestic issues such as education and health care, and 23% cited moral issues. Ranking last, identified by just 17%, were economic issues such as taxes and trade.

John Pirtle, a 40-year-old Defense Department employee in Grand Rapids, Mich., said he drifted toward the Republican Party in large part because of his opposition to abortion, but doesn't agree with the free-trade views of leading candidates.

"We're seeing a lot of jobs farmed out," said Mr. Pirtle, whose father works for General Motors Corp. Rankled by reports of safety problems with Chinese imports, he added, "The stuff we are getting, looking at all the recalls, to be quite honest, it's junk."

The conservative, working family that likes the Republican party for its support of traditional values (the religious conservatives and family values conservatives) do not like the movement on industrial outlook and values. In my own family this has been seen as the case with a family member working for a small aerospace firm farming out work to the Philippines: the work coming in needs large amounts of QA, re-work, acceptance and some being sent back as rejected. This is not only time consuming and adds into overhead, but it removes the feeling that 'Made in America' has any meaning at all: the workers who used to do the work farmed out know they can get it done on-schedule, to high quality standards and minimal time for re-work.

Unfortunately the Republican party does not understand the message being sent to it:

Economic advisers to Republican presidential hopefuls acknowledge the safety scandals have made defending free trade more difficult. "Americans are right to be angered at companies that take shortcuts" in importing goods, said Larry Lindsey, once the top economic aide in the Bush White House and now an adviser to Mr. Thompson's presidential bid. "The next president has to promote free trade by playing hardball, and to be seen doing so."

In the Republican campaign so far, elevating populist trade concerns has been left to the long shots. "The most important thing a president needs to do is to make it clear that we're not going to continue to see jobs shipped overseas....and then watch as a CEO takes a $100 million bonus," Mr. Huckabee said at a debate earlier this year. "If Republicans don't stop it, we don't deserve to win in 2008."

This is not a question of 'playing hardball' but of removing the workforce of America from industrial work and letting low-cost, low-quality competitors remove jobs overseas. By utilizing low cost foreign labor and placement, American quality work and ability to create efficient means of production are de-legitimized. Further, beyond the safety issues from China and other parts of SE Asia, both in products delivered and working conditions abroad, the idea that free trade is a sacrosanct part of how the capitalist system works is false. Americans deeply understand that trade is accountable to the needs of society, and that often does not mean just the lowest price on goods. For commodities price is a factor, but for such things as individual self-worth and having finished products made by Americans for Americans, this is a major support of the social structure of the Nation.

America has, at its basis, a deep understanding of this topic from the very start of the Nation and the main cause of the Revolutionary War starting with trade policy in the colonies. A rallying cry of 'No Taxation Without Representation'. America well understands that trade can be taxed, as it was, by the King, but the proportion of taxes to pay off debt being decided by the King was reason to raise up in arms against him. The rights of subjects to have a say in such things had already passed to parliament, and by not giving subjects that right, a basic and foundational part of how society was to operate was broken. The question was not 'free trade', as a concept, but social control over trade and the burden of society to be supported by trade.

As a concept this has been restated a number of times in America, mostly by its Presidents, as is seen in the following:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society the farmers, mechanics, and laborers who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.

Nor is our Government to be maintained or our Union preserved by invasions of the rights and powers of the several States. In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.

Experience should teach us wisdom. Most of the difficulties our Government now encounters and most of the dangers which impend over our Union have sprung from an abandonment of the legitimate objects of Government by our national legislation, and the adoption of such principles as are embodied in this act. Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress. By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union. It is time to pause in our career to review our principles, and if possible revive that devoted patriotism and spirit of compromise which distinguished the sages of the Revolution and the fathers of our Union. If we can not at once, in justice to interests vested under improvident legislation, make our Government what it ought to be, we can at least take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our Government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many, and in favor of compromise and gradual reform in our code of laws and system of political economy....

That is an American President, talking not only of the value of work and self-worth,but the control exercised by the Nation on trade. Indeed, when rich industrialists and vested interests push 'free trade' as good for their own interests and the interests of the Nation are skewed to them and against the working man, the Nation becomes unbalanced to the profit of the few over the many. Government has no place in 'leveling the economic playing field', as the skills and abilities of each individual differ. Government has no place in over-rewarding the rich and successful, either, so as to create a priveleged class with their own separate laws.

The author of those words was President Andrew Jackson on 10 JUL 1832 on the Bank Veto, which he enacted so as to remove money interests in the National Bank concept out of the hands of foreigners. The more general point of the message, however, has resonated throughout America since then, and would come to be known under the concept of social and industrial justice. This viewpoint would continue on in America and be restated by a Republican:

A democracy can be such in fact only if there is some rough approximation in similarity in stature among the men composing it. One of us can deal in our private lives with the grocer or the butcher or the carpenter or the chicken raiser, or if we are the grocer or carpenter or butcher or farmer, we can deal with our customers, because we are all of about the same size. Therefore a simple and poor society can exist as a democracy on a basis of sheer individualism. But a rich and complex industrial society cannot so exist; for some individuals, and especially those artificial individuals called corporations, become so very big that the ordinary individual is utterly dwarfed beside them, and cannot deal with them on terms of equality. It therefore becomes necessary for these ordinary individuals to combine in their turn, first in order to act in their collective capacity through that biggest of all combinations called the Government, and second, to act, also in their own self-defense, through private combinations, such as farmers' associations and trade unions.

[..]

Of course, in labor controversies it was not always possible to champion the cause of the workers, because in many cases strikes were called which were utterly unwarranted and were fought by methods which cannot be too harshly condemned. No straightforward man can believe, and no fearless man will assert, that a trade union is always right. That man is an unworthy public servant who by speech or silence, by direct statement or cowardly evasion, invariably throws the weight of his influence on the side of the trade union, whether it is right or wrong. It has occasionally been my duty to give utterance to the feelings of all right thinking men by expressing the most emphatic disapproval of unwise or even immoral notions by representatives of labor. The man is no true democrat, and if an American, is unworthy of the traditions of his country who, in problems calling for the exercise of a moral judgment, fails to take his stand on conduct and not on class. There are good and bad wage-workers just as there are good and bad employers, and good and bad men of small means and of large means alike.

But a willingness to do equal and exact justice to all citizens, irrespective of race, creed, section or economic interest and position, does not imply a failure to recognize the enormous economic, political and moral possibilities of the trade union. Just as democratic government cannot be condemned because of errors and even crimes committed by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not be condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional trade-union leaders. The problem lies deeper. While we must repress all illegalities and discourage all immoralities, whether of labor organizations or of corporations, we must recognize the fact that to-day the organization of labor into trade unions and federations is necessary, is beneficent, and is one of the greatest possible agencies in the attainment of a true industrial, as well as a true political, democracy in the United States.

This is a fact which many well-intentioned people even to-day do not understand. They do not understand that the labor problem is a human and a moral as well as an economic problem; that a fall in wages, an increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of these countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, in shop, in mill and in the dark places under the earth. They fail to see that all these men have the right and the duty to combine to protect themselves and their families from want and degradation. They fail to see that the Nation and the Government, within the range of fair play and a just administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for a decent life, as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely fighting for larger profits and an autocratic control of big business. Each man should have all he earns, whether by brain or body; and the director, the great industrial leader, is one of the greatest of earners, and should have a proportional reward; but no man should live on the earnings of another, and there should not be too gross inequality between service and reward.

That author is from Theodore Roosevelt's autobiography, taken from CHAPTER XIII SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE. Here and again, the concept of individuals keeping as much as they earn and yet not bowing unjustly to larger organizations (which in our latter day would now include Big Labor as fitting into that category) to the detriment of the society and the social structure. There is a deep moral sense of America on this, and social and industrial justice in these terms is far from the Leftist terms of Marx, Lenin, Mao and others of that stripe. More properly this is societal justice to keep industry and large organizations fettered to the needs of the entire Nation so that all may be treated equally before the law.

It is in this realm that the Republican party and its presidential candidates are drifting from their 'base' that were invited in by the 'Big Tent' philosophy. Those American workers who see no accord with socialist doctrine or basis for legislation. This is the base that started to withhold contributions to the Republican party over the illegal immigration bills, and continues to rally to that cause to thwart those in the monied interests on Left and Right who wish to undermine the society of the Nation via that. The 'free trade' bloc aligns with the view of illegal immigration being just fine with them, so as to undermine the labor force of America via illegal labor.

This is social and industrial justice slowly coalescing not only in the Republican party, but in those parts of the Democratic party that remain pro-defense, but also pro-social justice on the terms of Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt. These individuals have not been convinced of the value of unfettered trade and, indeed, see that 'hardball' is necessary: not against illegal activities, although that is a part of it, but against the anti-working class conservative outlook that it fosters in America. That is industrial and manufacturing work, not 'services'.

So many have been turned off by this dichotomy of the Left and Right on this, both seeking to put a National imprint via the Federal Government to demean the industrial working class of America, that the working class no longer look to the two parties as capable of representing them. The Left stepped far away from those people starting with Franklin Roosevelt in the post-New Deal era, and the centralization of things to government that had never, ever been the purview of government before. Prior to that, however, the moralistic views of a religious segment of the population started to criminalize procedures that had been left up to doctors and patients previously, and to generalized trade agreements thereafter. Those first intrusions as part of the coalition of socialists and religious moralists, shifted the basis of government upwards to the benefit of the Federal Government and out of the hands of States and local organizations.

On a historic scale, starting in the mid-1960's, the trend has been clear and ominous of Americans slowly becoming unaffiliated with the two party system and seeing none of the 'alternative' or 'third party' organizations as supporting them. Those third parties have tended to be so ideologically pure that they cannot represent the diversity of America. This is troubling for a democracy when it has no alternative party organization that can represent even a minor plurality of opinions. When a two party system *itself* heads towards ideological purity on the part of both parties, the result is lowering of individuals voting as they no longer have connection to the limited views represented by the two parties.

At this point in time it would not be surprising to see a cross-coalition of social and industrial justice outlooks along with strong National Security interests start to form up over the next decade, and settle outside of the two party system. These are individuals feeling disenfranchised and put upon by the two party system, who are no longer willing to support the New Deal social compact and are unwilling to see invasion of the individual's private life by the Federal Government on much of anything. These individuals see that fairness in tax doctrine also has a progressive element to it, and also see that taxations should be limited, restrained and paid by individuals and corporations up front. Taxes on purchases are not a cause of rejoicing, but a cause for long term fears of encroaching Federal power. Better to have the States do that as they can be held accountable far more easily than the Federal Government can.

On a values basis this group is more pro-family and pro-work, with religious affiliation backed but not to extremist views. The moralistic wisdom of invading people's decisions on narcotics has, as a direct fall out, the attempts to place further strictures on individuals via the Federal Government in other areas, like abortion and the high cost of legal medications. By centering decisions on families and individuals, the view that government can 'insure' them on anything from retirement to health care is also diminished as it is now seen as a money 'sink' from which no one rightly expects a return equal to what can be gained by individuals investing and purchasing such things on their own.

Trade, the sore point in this, is not seen as a beneficence to all peoples, and 'free trade' and 'dumping' of cheap products an actual harm to the US worker. Tariffs are not only not 'out of the question' they are definitely 'in the realm of respect' for holding foreign Nations accountable to the activities of their companies. Illegal alien workers are also seen as a drag and detriment to this class of people, and they see no reason to have free trade with a Nation that abuses such and breaks its treaty agreements with the US.

That does not describe either the Democratic or Republican party of today, does it?

And yet it is exactly where those that felt left out from the Democratic party went to with the Republican party and now are disillusioned with it, along with many of their friends who have just stopped voting for either of these parties. Add in the 40% or so of Americans that don't vote (and still leaving plenty of space for the 5% perennially disaffected), put in 60% of the Republican party and perhaps as much as a 10% residual left in the Democratic party and you have a 'New Majority' in America.

It would not be without reason to see the Red/Blue divide in America gain the third color of the flag: White. Neutral white that wants to keep both the progressives and industrialists and monied interests on a short leash.

Small government, low but graduated taxation, pro-defense, pro-family, pro-individual and movement of any societal need of government down to the local venue.