We Did It to Ourselves
"After 34 years with LTV Steel, I was forced to retire because of a disability. Two years later, LTV filed bankruptcy. I lost a third of my pension, and my family lost their health care. Every day of my life, I sit at the kitchen table across from the woman who devoted 36 years of her life to my family, and I can't afford to pay for her health care. What's wrong with America, and what will you do to change it?"
It was the most compelling moment of the Democratic debate at Soldier Field. The speaker was retired steelworker Steve Skvara. He stood on crutches, voice breaking, as he spoke.
There are millions of Steve Skvaras out there, and what they do not know, in their anger and frustration, is that their government did this to them. They are the victims of an ideology that gripped both parties and is destroying the middle-class country they grew up in.
Before World War II, the United State sheltered, nurtured and aided U.S. industry—until, by 1928, we produced 40 percent of the world's manufactures. The companies we created, U.S. Steel and Jones and Laughlin, GM, Chrysler and Ford, Boeing, McDonnell and Lockheed, IBM and GE, were marvels of the modern age.
We were the most self-sufficient nation in history, and American industrial workers the best-paid on earth. The companies they worked for had begun to guarantee lifetime job security, generous pensions for retirees and health insurance for all workers.
Came then the free-trade fanatics with their Faustian bargain. If we just throw open our borders to imports from Europe, Japan, Asia and China, we can buy all our goods cheaper, and we will all be richer. For free trade is a free lunch.
What was wrong with this theory?
Every ton of steel produced by LTV, every Chevy built by GM carried in its price tag the cost of the Social Security, Medicare, and federal and state taxes the company and its employees paid, plus the cost of the company's compliance with civil rights, health and safety, and environmental laws the U.S. government had enacted and, most important for Steve Skvara, the "legacy costs" of the pensions and health insurance the companies had agreed to provide.
Every time any company, foreign or domestic, bought a ton of U.S.-made steel, every time anyone bought a U.S.-built Ford or Chevy, maybe 50 percent of that sticker price went for Social Security, Medicare, defense, cops, teachers, parks—and into the pot from which Steve Skvara's pension and health insurance premiums were being drawn.
The Fortune 500 were the greatest welfare states in history. They were the geese that laid the golden eggs for America's middle class. And the free-traders killed them, because their ideology told them what's best for consumers here and now is best for America.
So foreigners dumped their steel, and we gobbled it up. And their steel mills survived, and ours went under. And they flooded our market with Volkswagens, Hondas and Toyotas, and one by one took down our auto companies, so that the U.S. auto industry, which had 98 percent of the U.S. market in the 1950s, have less than 50 percent today.
Mexico now exports more cars to the United States than we export to the world. Chrysler is on the ropes. Ford lost a record $12 billion last year. GM is losing market share. Toyota is No. 1 in the world because Tokyo set out to make itself No. 1. Anybody think the Japanese care two hoots about Adam Smith or David Ricardo?
As one after another of the big companies go down, they head into bankruptcy court and ask for relief from creditors. What are the largest of the liabilities they shed? "Legacy costs"—the cost of the pension and health insurance of Steve Skvara and his wife.
As we all buy up those TVs and radios and motorcycles and cars and clothes made in Japan and made in China, we kill factories all over America and push America's companies into chapter 11.
"But isn't that the free market?" comes the retort. Should we have to pay more for the goods we buy?
Answer: No and no. Europeans and Asians are skinning us alive. We impose corporate taxes that average 40 percent, state and federal. Europe imposes corporate taxes averaging 24 percent. Advantage Europe.
Europe imposes an average Value Added Tax of 19 percent on all they produce.
But they rebate that VAT tax on exports to the United States and stick a 19 percent VAT equivalent on all imports from America. Without calling it a tariff and a subsidy, it is a tariff and a subsidy.
For decades our trade wimps have put up with this.
What needs to be done is simple. Impose a 20 percent entry fee on all imported goods and services, and use the $500 billion to cut taxes on U.S. producers. Steve Skvara is a casualty of globaism, but maybe we can save the next generation from the same fate.
COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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Hmmm...wondering if a strong state and economic nationalism are the answers to all this. With this right-wing populist hardline you americans could win back the voters you need to smash the left and restore border-control, lower taxation and end affirmative action. But eventually this revolt of the middle- and white underclass is only a tool in the war on leftism. It's a shame the right-wing has to use social-democracy (turning someones pension into a political issue) as a political weapon.
Here, in the Netherlands (you know, that God-foresaken-prostitute-and-harddrugs-harboring-of-a-country) the right-wing, of what's left of it, has totally lost it. Proud 'right-wingers' here are firm believers in atheism. Because Islam represents 'evil' ( as seen form a secualr point of view)
My point is, although your right-wing has offshored jobs of the middle- and underclass to those chop-stick-manufacturers overseas, at least you have Christianity. Be thankfull for that.
p.s.
I've just started reading Flemings' The Morality of Everyday Life', and i'm lovin' it!
"My point is, although your right-wing has offshored jobs of the middle- and underclass to those chop-stick-manufacturers overseas, at least you have Christianity. Be thankfull for that."
That is the stupidest argument I've ever heard. What does Christianity have to do with this? Because we're a so called Christian nation we will have to put up with Third World living standards?
Besides, this isn't really a "Christian" nation so much as its a Mammon-worshipping nation. And thats the reason we're in the mess that Pat describes in this article.
Obviously you don't have to put up with Third World living standards. That's not what i am trying to say. I'm saying that AT LEAST you have a large part of the population that has sound morality ( in sharp contradiction tot the people of the Netherlands, who only adhere tot universal abstractions like Human Rights) Of course they can not feed of that. So i'm not disagreeing with Pat Buchanan on improving the conditions of that Christian population.
Let me refrase that: i THINK a large part of the population of the US has sound morality. I've only been to the States once. So my picture of America is confined to what i've seen in movies and on television, read in books and experienced from my trip to New York.
So i apologise if i painted a picture for myself of the States which is not correct.
The grass is always greener I suppose.
Mr. Buchanan,
The fair tax combined with a tariff (to protect against foreign sold goods, e.g. via the internet) would be wonderful, but won't the rest of the world raise sanctions against us for imposing a direct tax and thus violating the WTO?
In the long term tariffs are an excellent strategy, and others would lift their sanctions eventually, but won't the economic result of tariffs now be an economic slump followed by free traitor braying about how tariffs hurt economics? We're dependent on so much that is foreign produced...
Though for the long term it isn't as ideal, what about a border adjusted subtraction method VAT? With the VAT comes continued federal regulation, but at least we could begin rebuilding US industry and the strength to stand athwart the WTO.
Pat is right about the disease. He might be right about the causes: no tariffs and high corporate taxes. I would suggest the following other causes as well, which all come down to bad schools.
1. The schools up through the sixties provided good training for assembly-line workers. The schools now do not provide good training for high tech imaginative jobs. The Japanese thinker Sakaiya (_The Knowledge-Value Revolution_), supported by Daniel Bell and Robert Reich, says that economic history shifts between the consumption of material things (Graeco-Roman world, Europe since 1401) and the consumption of ideas (Ancient Egypt, Late Antiquity and the Medieval world, and the West since 1974. The American schools trained and still train for the consumption of things. Now we need workers well educated and imaginative. Which, by the way, means that the Two Culture debate is obsolete.
2. Pat moans the decline of the behemoth corporation and the middle-middle class of corporate and statist bureaucrats. But downsizing, like it or not, is now a requirement. The Japanese aesthetic -- light, thin, short, and small -- is necessary if firms are to be nimble enough to change with the market. Yet Gringo schools train for bureaucrats who know how to conform to routine, not make waves, and brown-nose the boss. Now we need workers who can work on a team, who have ideas, and who are willing to consider and endorse the ideas of others. We also need people who can craft an argument and practice cordiality to other idea-makers, not those who just emote.
Except for government bureaucrats, the middle-middle class is doomed. We need the upper middle class imaginative artisans -- the "the professionals"-- and a petty bourgeois "pink collar class" to do the paperwork and order the plane tickets.
3. In my metaphor of "The New Venetian Age" I have suggested the the market is a World Market. The downsizing might take place to the state as well, and we might end up with 1000s of statelets or poleis made up of groups of "knowledge-value" artisans of the mind who sail the cheap infrastructure: the Internet. I have suggested that in such an Age, blood and soil nationalists will soon be impoverished, for they will have nothing to sell, and no one to sell it to, not even to each other.
So schools need to be teaching, among other things, lots of foreign languages (especially of countries with high tech economies such as India, Germany, Japan, and maybe China), including classical languages -- the passport to historical understanding. Gringo schools never did this, and aren't doing this now.
Bravo to Rene. He's making sense. He just hasn't discovered yet that our American Browns are wearing the false whiskers of Conservatives and still claim to be theists. Our Browns haven't discovered yet that Maurras (not really a Brown, granted), Benito, and ol' Adi, and other extremist nationalists and racialists were and are atheists -- or in the case of Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist, neo-pagan. Our Browns will soon follow suit. For now, all our Browns can do is emote. Catholic at Chronicles and Rockford should note this too.
#5 "We’re dependent on so much that is foreign produced"
Frank's talking sense too. And his VAT idea sounds mighty fine. Gosh, if this keeps up, I may have to revise my judgement about the popularity of Brownism around here.
I agree. I agree. I agree.....
Oh oh....I disagree...
What needs to be done is simple. Impose a 20 percent entry fee on all imported goods and services, and use the $500 billion to cut taxes on U.S. producers. Steve Skvara is a casualty of globaism, but maybe we can save the next generation from the same fate.
I'm not sure what the success of protectionism has been in the past, but in a interdependent world we should think twice. Its applying the "war on terror" line in the sand logic to our trade policy. The alternative is trade negotiation. The alternative is carrot and stick. The alternative is cut us a break because we defend you abroad, particularly in the context of Nato.
Further, strident trade protectionism is likely to be met with a) more trade even more strident trade protectionism b) increase in prices which screw international workers, which ferment the exact wretched problems of globalization in the first place.
Pat alludes to 50% of the sticker price going into what are now routinely called "entitlements," a concept which would make the American founders turn in their graves. In the current terminal incarnation, entitlements result from a mating of certain late decisions of the Warren Court with the early "Great Society" days of LBJ's presidency. The country might have survived one of that tag-team, but still lies deeply buried under the hand of their invisible progeny, now long constitutionally enshrined.
But the fact is, the Steve Skvaras of this nation believe in such entitlements with religious fervor, and that is putting it mildly. Further, the president Pat served, Richard Nixon, nurtured entitlements; Nixon's "revemue sharing" restructuring merely passed many LBJ "community action" programs to states. Bush 2's "compassionate conservatism" does much the same, and merely involves relabeling Democrat programs Republican. Yet neither Pat nor any present white house contender dares grab the sacred cow by the neck. Indeed, Pat's own populist campaigns, for the white house and in print, move our hearts, but smack of the Democratic tactic of demonizing big companies and trade activists -- rather than asking the American voter such as Mr. Steve Skvara to rethink his political soul, much less his demands and needs, for the greater good of liberty.
The Gipper remains the only successful political figure in the last 30 years (other than young congressman Jack Kemp) to properly attempt to open up political dialogue on the deadly barnacles of entitlements. They now appear soon to dissolve the wreck of the ship of state into dust, faster than the "rusticles" on the ruin of the Titanic. That fabled wreck appears to be still there, to the eye, although now it is mainly such rusticles, which (coincidentally to the present discussion of the steel industry) are towers of parasitic creatures composed of the steel they consume. One day a silight bump will cause them all -- and the ship -- to appear to vanish instantly.
Only great courage combined with belief in liberty can challenge such apparent vast illusions, and none is today at large. But simply blaming big companies and demonizing "free trade fanatics," coupled with some new government fix (tariffs) doesn't cut the mustard. Who really believes the money would be used to reduce American taxes? Anything, theoretically, can become an entitlement to a nation which no longer cherishes liberty, and rejects the possibility of consequences when one's career or job fails. There is really slight fundamental difference between Pat's argument and that of our Lenin in waiting, Mr. Michael Moore.
"i THINK a large part of the population of the US has sound morality. I’ve only been to the States once. So my picture of America is confined to what i’ve seen in movies and on television, read in books and experienced from my trip to New York."
I only hope you're not inclined to take the church-going picture presented in the media too rosily. Rates of divorce, fornication, and abortion are as high or higher than in other Western countries, fertility rates are scarcely any higher, and a large portion of those who do attend religious services attend intellectually feeble Evangelical megachurches or theologically barren Congregational churches.
Nor should the American "right-wing" be romanticized by any stretch. Republicans put up a façade of Christian moralism while enthusiastically accepting money from and acting as shills for greedy, immoral companies who not only offshore manufacturing and hire illegal Third-World slave labor, but promote the further degradation of intellectual and moral standards via Fox News, MTV, and casinos.
One substantial problem with America is that our education system - primary and secondary - is devoted almost exclusively to ingraining consumption helping us to release into the world, not problem-solving, mature adults, but perpetual children.
A second substantial problem is that industrial workers are the only ones who are forced to compete with 30 cent a day Chinese workers. Politicians, lawyers, doctors, professors, most of whom live off the dole do not. What passes for health care in this country is what the AMA sells to State legislators.
And a third problem is that the FED subsidizes and bails out the bankers who are leading the American people into the slavery of debt.
In http://www.paulgraham.com/unions.html Paul Graham argues the opposite point: that the unions of the mid 20th century were a historical aberration, and we should face reality. We no longer live in that world, and the actions that solved their problems will only make our problems worse. But, follow the link and read the essay for yourself.
"That is the stupidest argument I’ve ever heard."
Thomas, that is a little harsh. Of course you're correct, we don't really have Christianity. If we had Christianity, would we have bombed Serbia and invaded Iraq? But if you acquaint yourself with the situation in Netherlands you'd see that Rene's comment was not "stupid" at all.
Why not mention the biggest entitlement of all, the elephant in the living room: the trillion dollar "defense" budget. Steve Skvaras is a really a victim of the revolving door of pigs feeding at the trough. Defense contractors, lobbyists, and elected officials with gartantuam campaign bills to pay. Cut the defense budget in half. Make the military fiscally responsible. Either refund the difference so America can compete again or provide health care for everyone. Either one will do.
"What needs to be done is simple. Impose a 20 percent entry fee on all imported goods and services, and use the $500 billion to cut taxes on U.S. producers. Steve Skvara is a casualty of globaism, but maybe we can save the next generation from the same fate." -P.B.
There are so many false premises and false assumptions due to disinformation about the u.s. economy and financial system (which even 'pundits' believe) people forget the basics and then believe their own act when they become ideological in this direction or the other (right/left) ... 'as if' it/ideology mattered.
We ARE not a laissez faire system we are a state-captialistic system, for the past 100 years. That means big business (which includes big media of course), and big government are enablers of one another to the point of being the same animal. State-captialism thus MEANS publically financed, publically insured/i.e. guaranteed - and for the very most part privately owned. Policy simply drives not who gets what...the same people always get it - policy merely drives WHY they get it. It's not just a 'cover story' in this case or at this level, rather it's the direction Policy has the country moving in.
For example: IF you'll build your new factory overseas or a few miles south of the border in Mexico we'll pay for your new factory, match what you put up to build it, or match what it costs you to move i.e. the U.S. taxpayers will pay for it from the fed taxpool, and we the U.S. taxpayers vis a vis our representatives will guarantee (insure) the Private loans bankers extend to you to move or to build the other half of the factory, we didn't outright give you the money for already. So the U.S. taxpayer has paid for one-half of the move or to build 1/2 of the new factory offshore and we the U.S. taxpayer have insured/guaranteed the Private loans extended by bankers for the company or offshoring producer to do the other half of it.
Plus we'll (i.e. big government/we the taxpayers) give you tax breaks etc., etc., etc. IF you'll offshore your company and so on. That's current POLICY. This is why EmIm Bank or the Export Import Bank of America was set up in the first place because just like Russia and China and the EU's nations etc. EVERY NATION under the sun today, unless they are still communistic are practicing the STATE-Capitalistic system. There's NO SUCH ANIMAL anymore as laissez faire or the separation of Private Enterprise & the Public taxpool ... It's ONLY just a HUGE Question of which direction is POLICY under this system driving a particular nation. Pundits - get it?
Pat's right in that it was PERCEIVED as a matter of POLICY that Globalism would 'work' and somehow-?-both the american middle class, as the tax base, permitting our own State-Capitalistic system in America. And the middle class also being the producers' customer (or consumer) base would somehow NOT be destroyed by these very offshoring policies that the American middle class was/is ironically or paradoxically underwriting with its own tax dollars.
So therefore the policy became AS USUAL underwrite with taxpayer money our producers or the fortune 500 companies etc. et al. IF and when they're sending american jobs off shore i.e. overseas or down south to Mexico... That this somehow is good for ALL, due to this ideological mindset of globalism. It's just not intelligent. Our negotiators on just about every front today be it financially or sadly militarily are like the proverbial suicide with the gun to his own head saying 'stand back or i'll shoot. And you wouldn't want THAT to happen, I'm a "super power." ' -?-
That anyone can actually believe in this current policy is BECAUSE they don't know how the new u.s. economy of the past 100 years actually works. It is NOT a laissez faire system anylonger...and simply by going 'global' doesn't and didn't make it so. It is a state-capitalistic system COMPETING with other state-captalistic systems and as such and to be such you need a strong middle class to be both the tax base or pool of revenues to allow the system to exist and to be the customers or consumers for what gets produced and sold. And they do so because they are decent national citizens & they SEE too they have the chance for modest upward mobility.
By 'believing' the REVERSE of this reality, our policy makers many of whom due to past ideological committments don't want to lose face or simply can't even fathom what they choose/chose to 'believe' has no basis today or for the past 100 years in reality. The policy makers decided that financing the offshoring of american producers and deindustrializing america is/was a GOOD use of our taxpayer money for everyone in our State-Capitalistic system, including good for the american middle class once they adjust to it. That's FALSE.
Pat says that - well it was also motivated by the fact that our social programs like social security hampered our producers ability to compete... Yes & no. That's still Pat a little bit ideologically inclined. Every nation we're competing with - Pat - guess what - has the same social programs... Or if there's something to consider in that regard I'd like to hear it. In this country, in the 'fair' good ol'USofA Pat - 80% of what is produced in enjoyed by 1% of our population. ... No?
But what Pat suggests above is a great first step in an APPROPRIATE hairpin or 180 degree turn in American POLICY ... and then simply give the same taxpayer cash investments and loan guarantees and insurance of recievables you name it to those fortune 500 companies & to all the producers who stay here in the U.S., who build here in the U.S., and who hire LEGAL U.S. workers.
Give the same amount of benefits and tax breaks to the same people the same essentially few producers who will get it anyway and always do (that's politics.) But now as Policy IF they'll stay at Home and rebuild America, as a matter of the new direction of our American POLICY.
And this would be the APPROPRIATE hairpin or 180 degree turn in policy as it pertains to our STATE-Capitalistic system that would make EVERYONE happy and/or at least solvent.
So what Pat suggests is great and step one... then followed and backed-up by the coming Home of America. Barak ... start pounding this drum more than hillary and you may pickUp some points in the polls?
___________
I generally agree with Mr. Buchanan; however, in this instance, I cannot. I suggest that is is not true free trade, not to be confused with government/corporatist "free trade" such as NAFTA, which has caused the problems with key U.S. industries, but it is rather the faux-free trade, the entitlements - including benefits packages such as corporate health care and retirement (both should have been taken care of by individuals), the sloppiness of U.S. industries in responding to world markets, and liquidity which the Federal Reserve has put into the economy over the years (devalued dollar) which entices U.S. firms, particularly their officers and boards, to be more interested in buy and selling other firms and assets than in producing quality products for consumers. For instance, Sears is no longer an retail outlet: its retail products are simply bait for credit schemes in which Sears now makes its "real" (note the irony) money.
I agree with Mr. Peters above not only in principle (true) but as a practical matter (actual), eXcept right now and always in terms of policy of a nation and nations it swings this way or that...
At that level sir, it ain't rocket science or brain surgery... but on a smaller level or in the context you are describing you are correct.
No one in history has ever been able to import up to that level of machination or for that matter export it there, the level of precision of observation you have noticed and illuminated albeit in a smaller context. So Pat's right for that reason.
Think about it?
As for the possibility of subversion of the interest of a nation if the u.s. can be said to Actually be one, and not one only in Principle (true)... that's another 'story.' That's moot for too many reasons to go into here.
Unfortunately, Mr. Buchanan has it wrong. Free trade is not our enemy, our own government is. By imposing wage and price controls during WWII, interfering with something it could not control, and had no business trying to control (if you can find it in the Constitution, please write and show the rest of us), business was forced to offer benefits in lieu of compensation in order to remain competitive in a marketplace mostly free. Once retirement and medical security planning was removed from the control of the individual and transferred to business and the state, so was the ability of each person to plan for a secure future that remained under his control.
"Every ton of steel produced by LTV, every Chevy built by GM carried in its price tag the cost of the Social Security, Medicare, and federal and state taxes the company and its employees paid, plus the cost of the company’s compliance with civil rights, health and safety, and environmental laws the U.S. government had enacted and, most important for Steve Skvara, the “legacy costs” of the pensions and health insurance the companies had agreed to provide."
Again, please show me where in the Constitution government is given the authority to do this? Governments and business have more important things to do than take care of us; they have to devote all their time to perpetuating themselves. Anyone who believes they ever have, or ever will do otherwise, please contact me. I have a beautiful bridge in Brooklyn I'm trying to sell. Before the government stepped in, there were plenty of private firms providing health insurance and retirement planning for individuals. Now, most insurance is provided through employers and billions of retirement dollars are in the hands of government and corporate pension plans - stable only as long as the business and government taxing and spending authority is.
Free trade isn't bringing Ford and GM down, failure to make products people want to buy is. When the price of gasoline began to decline a few years ago, American automakers decided to stake their futures on the mammoth, gas guzzling, SUV. Never interested in making an outstanding product, just a product their marketing department thought it could sell, they had little to compete with Honda and Toyota when gas prices rose again. They don't make a quality product. Drive a Toyota and a Chevy or Ford and tell me which one you'd buy. Don't forget to read the reliability reports, either - and the resale value guides. Quality, reliability, and resale value are not controlled by governments or tariffs. They are inherent in the design and construction of the product.
If you are thinking of throwing out the old, tired argument that we can't compete because of subsidies to foreign producers, just remember that when foreign producers tried to cut John D. Rockefeller out of the market by subsidizing oil production and underbidding Standard Oil's price, JDR just went overseas and purchased their production himself. Soon they had to cease subsidies in order to remain viable enterprises and governments. I hope your readers aren't suckers for the old automobile sales pitch that "we can sell for less than cost because we make it up in volume." A country may subsidize a start-up industry that is not yet able to compete globally in order to give them time to come fully on line. They cannot do so forever without going into the tank.
Lots of people believe Mr. Buchanan's argument. So to those of you who do, let me ask a simple question. Does Michigan put people out of work in Kansas (replace with the name of any state you like) because they produce cereal? No. Wealth is the result of trading what we are good at producing for what others are. International borders are no different in that respect than state borders. If we're hurting ourselves by buying foreign products, then we hurt ourselves every time we buy something that isn't made right there in the town we live in.
The real problem is that too many Americans have turned control of their lives over to government, and too many think their entitled to a superior standard of living just because they're Americans. They don't think they should have to manufacture anything except BS. That, coincidentally, is now not only our leading product, it is our leading export.
Mr. Buchanan's title is correct. His explanation is not.
Sorry about the incorrect use of "their" in the last full paragraph of #19. It should be "they're."
I don't agree with Pat.
I've been informed that we in America actually produce and export more now than we've ever done in the past. So we are actually living today in the heyday of American manufacturing. In my discussion with a worker at the local GM plant , he told me the plant produces"more metal" today(it's a stamping plant), with half the workers than it did in the 1960's. The enemy of the overpaid, "overbenefitted" worker is actually technology(and the government)more than the foreigner.
When Bush 2 put tariff's on imported steel a few years back to win votes in the Midwest, it helped Big Steel(The Rich), but hurt the smaller operators(The Poor) who imported cheaper steel to make their products.
Regardless of these facts, free trade is good because it's free. It occurs between individuals and companies, not countries. "America" doesn't have a deficit with "China", but millions of American's happen to have a deficit with millions of Chinese, in the same way that thousands of doctors and lawyers and political pundits have "deficits" with those who cut their hair and mow their lawn or pick up their trash.
The problem with trade is not that it's "too free", but not free enough. Governments should have little or no role in trade, except insofar as it might involve sensitive technologies pertaining to self defense.
I should be able to buy the best car or tv or sport coat at the best price no matter where it is made.
Pat should aim his guns at the IRS, OSHA, the EEOC and all the other government bureaucracies which drive up the cost of employing US workers and force corporations to move to more hospitable and profitable climates.
A dark age is in the wings... it's inevitable i'm sensing... people again NEED to have to walk out to the water pump... and on the other side, outhouse.
rejoice.
those who don't need to in their enclaves of remaining civilization... don't envy them - like all, their lessons are theirs.
Blesses.
Interesting discussion. But isn't the paleo-movement cracking down to hard on the concept of free-trade.
I mean, what if Washington had failed in centralizing its power? What if there would be no Fed? No cheap credit for industrials? Indeed, no state-capitalism as Jef Springer pointed out. Maybe the paleo-movement (if one would still be necessary) would have adopted a more libertarian/Austrian line when it comes to economics. Let me quote Hans-Hermann Hoppe:
"combine the economic policies of the left and the nationalism and cultural conservatism of the right, to create "a new identity synthesizing both the economic interests and cultural-national loyalties of the proletarianized middle class in a separate and unified political movement." For obvious reasons this doctrine is not so named, but there is a term for this type of conservatism: It is called social nationalism or national socialism.
assuming that cultural conservatism and socialist economics can be psychologically combined (that is, that people can hold both of these views simultaneously without cognitive dissonance), can they also be effectively and practically (economically and praxeologically) combined? Is it possible to maintain the current level of economic socialism (social security, etc.) and reach the goal of restoring cultural normalcy (natural families and normal rules of conduct)?
Buchanan and his theoreticians do not feel the need to raise this question, because they believe politics to be solely a matter of will and power. They do not believe in such things as economic laws. If people want something enough, and they are given the power to implement their will, everything can be achieved. The "dead Austrian economist" Ludwig von Mises, to whom Buchanan referred contemptuously during his presidential campaigns, characterized this belief as "historicism," the intellectual posture of the German Kathedersozialisten, the academic Socialists of the Chair, who justified any and all statist measures."
So to ask the question: Do we really need to strengthen economic socialism in the West to save our culture? Or would that be counterproductive? In the sense that we only would be strengtening the state and its culture-destructive apparatus.
What needs to be done is simple. Impose a 20 percent entry fee on all imported goods and services, and use the $500 billion to cut taxes on U.S. producers.
But this would not necessarily solve Mr. Skvara's problem, as it does not generate American business' loyalty to employees. Even in a protectionist scheme (that allows the current bankruptcy rules), LTV could've declared bankruptcy and dumped its financial obligations. Corporate interests tend to be selfish interests in any age.
More fundamental to the superficial problems Mr. Buchanan brings up are the underlying heart issues that Dr. Fleming and most Chronicles writers pound on. Most Americans have financial problems that stem from greed or the lure of easy money. When they get burned, financially, they have little or no back up, since they have weak family and church connections. In a tight-knit society, someone close to Mr. Skvara would've helped pick up the tab for his needs.
Americans now are not like the Chinese. We tend to buy now and pay later, which is why we have massive debt. We've been sucked into usurers' schemes: credit cards and mortgages and college debt. So now we owe as much as we earn, and we spend more than we save. That is not how a people get and remain wealthy, protectionism or not.
Meanwhile, the Chinese (despite low wages) save a great percentage of their income. We depend on them to make everything for us, and they over a trillion of our dollars and are investing in our equities. This is like part of the covenant curse in Deuteronomy 28:
"The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and crushed alway. . . . The stranger that [is] within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail."
The stranger is now on the other side of the world.
Frankly, we love the idols of Mammon and state power, contra Rene's assertion. Sincere repentance and a turning away from them is needed before any economic solution can work long-term.
Saturday morning. Just delighted at the discussion! This is what this website should be! And I've learned something. And it's clear that we Real Conservatives don't march in lock step.
Interesting to see what Rene has observed. For Real Conservatives economics has never been their strong suit, save for Burke, and they often have let the Austrian School libertarians (I wish they called themselves "the Mengerian school"), protectionist mercantilism, bullionism, and Christian democracy (Roepke), or St Francis and Ezra Pound, do their economic thinking for them. Not that I'm against the latter two gentlemen; it's just that economics wasn't their strong suit either.
Rene, a warm welcome! We need a Continental perspective to cure parochial views. I've always been more European than American. You are correct to mention National Socialism. Just be careful around here. Mention the "N" word, and the excrement will hit the wind turbine!
Dear Sid,
i would never call a fellow conservative a Nazi, even if he likes his economics with a socialist flavour. I was just qouting mr. Hoppe (who´s view is far to economist by the way)
Calling someone the 'N' word is an intellectually cowardice way of avoiding philosophical and historical debate. And i know this. I've been called a 'N' on many occassions. Leftists are a nasty breed of narcissistic cowards who practice politics to make up for their failed social status. But enough about them.
I've been following Chronicles for a couple of months now. Since about a year i came in contact with the intellectuals and ideas of the american Paleo-movement. I read Kirk, Burke, De Maistre, Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Hoppe, Gottfried, Fleming, etc... Learned about the horrors of the French revolution, the Firts World War, the economic disaster of central banking and a paper currency, etc... An now i'm ready to dive in even deeper. But in the Netherlands the above mentioned authors are being portraid as 'backward, dead white males' who's works could a only 'set back the clock of progress'.
So i set out my sails to wonder the ocean of american conservatism on the internet. And that's how i found this website. I have my own site, on which i publish articles and papers in Dutch.
I can already see the faces of the professors on the department of political science when i would bring up someone like Sam Francis or De Maistre. They would burn me at the liberal stake.
But i'm not giving up. Although, you might wanna make room for mee there in the States. Big chance i will migrate within ten years. The last 5 years, being a wright-winger in the Netherlands is a dangers job. If is your secular. We had two political murders, and the leader of the leading anti-immigration party cannot live without round-the-clock-bodyguard protection.
But thanx for the warm welcome! I will keep you guys updated on the situation in the Netherlands.
Rene, I've been called the "N" word too, by Cultural Marxists. And the "C" word, by the Browns. Some folk know that there are more than just two political positions; some don't. Some folks know that political positions are NOT on a line from left to right; some don't. Some folks can think independently; some can't. The independent thinking on this page today is laudatory.
Rene,
I appreciate your comments and welcome aboard. What is the link for your website? Not all Americans, and dare I say few participants on this board, are monolinguists. So please, let us see what you are writing.
Advocating "protectionism" or even some form of social welfare does not necessarily amount to "Communism" per se. The problem is the left has largely monopolized discussion of such issues for the last hundred and fifty years, using very real problems to justify the advancement of dubious premises.
@ Sid Cundiff: I've noticed the high level of intellectuallity on this website, both of the writers and the readers.
@ MGB: http://www.corrigo.blogspot.com
@ Nicholas G.P. MOSES: Maybe your right. Desperate times MAY call for desperate measures. The point libertarians (like Mises/Rothbard/Hoppe) are trying to make is by accepting these measures we are defying economic 'laws', thereby turning (not only the moral but more important) the 'human order' upside down, causing chaos and damage. Exactly what governments have done to western economies up till now, hence: the example of Steve Skvara, the victim of state-capitalism and globalist ideology. I wonder if there is a connection between mass corporations, mass-democracy and mass-culture.
If ecnomic theory is right the 20% entry fee Pat proposes, will only lead to loss of wealth for the US. And do you really want to fill the pockets of the US government with more cash?
Mark,
"I should be able to buy the best car or tv or sport coat at the best price no matter where it is made."
Maybe.
But in that case, you should also be free to define "best" as locally-made.
Welcome aboard Rene! It's nice to have someone from the Netherlands posting here. I'm partly of Dutch descent on both sides of my family, so you're not as foreign here as you might think you are.
Though I dont really know much about what's going on over there, what I do know about the current state of Dutch society is painful to think about. Even so, it's not over yet. The slime who are destroying the Netherlands and Europe cant hold power and social control over there forever.
Please let us have the link to your website. My knowledge of Dutch is rudimentary and very rusty (Afrikaans is easier for some reason), but I'd like to give it a try.
About the time I finished I writing the above post, I was distracted by something that needed immediate attention, so it was a good 45 minutes before I actually posted my comments, by which time Rene had posted the link to his site. So it appears I have made myself look stupid....again!
Rene: there is a connection between between democracy, culture, and corporations on a mass level. Obviously, if big corporations control the creation and production of culture, then a mass culture of some kind is inevitable, and it will be consumerist. So we have this mass pseudo-culture that we called pop-culture (I prefer to put quotation marks in the equation, and call it pop-'culture'), but the particular character that culture will take can be influenced by many things, not the least of which is cultural Marxism, which seems to go along well with the desires and goals of the big corporations.
On the other hand, the well-recognised fact that mass pop-culture seeks to destroy both authentic folk culture and authentic high culture has to do with more than just the cultural Marxists. Big corporations prefer to erode and stamp out geniune, local cultures in order to make people more consumer oriented in their thinking, and therefore, more open to buying their products. Cultural differences are not good for business if you're a multinational corporation. If we can get the Indians to give up their religion, then maybe McDonald's could sell them lots of hamburgers.
Get rid of the laws that allow big corporations to control the airwaves and other media, allow small companies access to them, and you might see a different form of popular culture evolve, or more likely, a host of different regional and local popular cultures, perhaps based more on traditional, regional folk or high cultures, and therefore with more genuine cultural content.
The gist of all this is that with electronic media everywhere, we are going to have a popular culture no matter what. The question is, shall it be nothing but a packaged corporate product, a mess of pottage with no real cultural content, or shall it be an authentic expression of the folk and high cultures of which it must be an outgrowth if it is to be a real culture at all? Localism in media would also destroy the abiity of cultural Marxists to use it to wage culture war, except perhaps in certain areas.
As for mass democracy, that's a tool used to give the masses the illusion that they actually have a say in their government when they really dont. It's what passes for social organisation when aristocracy and nobility have been destroyed or rendered irrelevent to make way for a society based on consumerism and the cult of equality.
Corporate types and Leftists both have the same enemies: Religion, folk and high culture, national, regional and local identities and loyalties, social hierarchies and social elites, landowning farmers who are economically self-sufficient.
As for the 20% entry fee Pat suggests, this would work in the long run if the government were financed by it and it alone, and the income and other federal taxes were eliminated entirely. That's how the government was funded during the early days of the republic and it worked quite well, except for certain injustices which Dr Clyde Wilson would be better able to explain than I am.
Pat Buchanan is largely correct about how American manufacturing and its workers came to this present pass but his solution even if correct, doesn’t get America off the big government treadmill. The workers like Steve Skvaras, betrayed and discarded wouldn’t be made whole by such changes in any event. I can’t imagine either of the two major parties in the US paying more than lip service to their plight anyway. Everyone loves a winner after all and broken down, impecunious ex-mill-hands offer nothing of value to the masters of the universe. Personally I’m sympathetic but that’s the score. Where does this leave workers and manufacturing?
Mark posts,
"I’ve been informed that we in America actually produce and export more now than we’ve ever done in the past. So we are actually living today in the heyday of American manufacturing. In my discussion with a worker at the local GM plant , he told me the plant produces”more metal” today(it’s a stamping plant), with half the workers than it did in the 1960’s. The enemy of the overpaid, “overbenefitted” worker is actually technology(and the government)more than the foreigner."
Mark is right about the enormous productivity of American manufacturing. Still, he fails to account for the enormous consumption of the American public and the falling share of manufacturing in the economy. The service sector which is overwhelmingly low wage for the non-professional is filling the void in terms of employment but not in terms of income. For the workers still employed in manufacturing technology is not the enemy, disinvestment is. Technology provides the comparative advantage that is so dear to the hearts of free traders. Disinvestment in the form of off-shoring and other such capital flows short circuits the process of creative destruction they prattle on about, leaving the workers holding the bag. Just another example of the elite selling the sizzle and keeping the steak for themselves I guess.
In my experience manufacturing companies that have even a minimal sense of loyalty to their workers and capable management teams are still profitable in spite of the government. Conversely firms that consider the work force a problem to be endured and an expense to minimized never thrive. Why? Because capable workers vote with their feet and the leavings wallow in unalloyed incompetence. Management then conveniently lays blame for all failures of design or execution to the insufficiencies of the workforce when by rights they are responsible. The details differ from case to case but the evasion of responsibility is a constant.
Are we still capable of designing and building quality product at home in a competitive manner? Yes. Should we depend on national policy to provide a climate that fosters industry as PB suggests? No. It’s a reasonable expectation but policies change and putting the basis for your prosperity into the hands of strangers is risky. The economy will keep spinning on regardless of globalism or Washington. The challenge for Paleo’s is to engage the economy not with ideological prescriptions but actual enterprises run on sound principles.
Consider the recent successes of traditionalists in the Catholic Church. They have gained strength by acting as if their beliefs are vital and worthy of concrete expression. We must do the same. Turning the ship of state around and restoring sanity to civilization may not be possible. However, building a lifeboat is a start and more satisfying than idly waiting for the deluge.
My apologies for the long post.
Maybe the leftists and international capitalists should invent 'consumer-schools' to finish the job. Together with the sexual communism which is being preached on MTV we have a population fit for slavery.
Why do i keep torturing myself with these horrible visions of a terrible future? Why don't i crawl behind a playstation and imagine myself a world in which everything is a game? Maybe i'm cursed by having an interest in saving the west. But then again, in this day and age, it takes a real man to step up and defend what's important to him and his fellow men.
According to Edmund Burke it's a disaster if good men do nothing. Therfore i'm glad i found Chronicles. Now i know good men still exist. And they're not just sitting on their asses. Looking foreward to all the debates.
God bless you all.
"Why do i keep torturing myself with these horrible visions of a terrible future? Why don’t i crawl behind a playstation and imagine myself a world in which everything is a game? Maybe i’m cursed by having an interest in saving the west. But then again, in this day and age, it takes a real man to step up and defend what’s important to him and his fellow men."
"According to Edmund Burke it’s a disaster if good men do nothing. Therfore i’m glad i found Chronicles. Now i know good men still exist. And they’re not just sitting on their asses. Looking foreward to all the debates."
You sound like me three years ago.
You will be most welcome in our country, but I encourage you to stay home if you can stomach it. There have got to be a few more good men in the Netherlands. Chronicles is excellent, but in its character it is heavily tilted toward North America and the Southern United States in particular. Something else is needed for other nations--something friendly and perhaps affiliated, but with its own vision for its own people.
Or perhaps we should beat the Marxists at their own game and form some sort of international conglomerate. I think right-wing parties in Europe have long attempted to do so in various forms. Someone with web design skills and international connections should form a multilingual web site with the goal of linking to all the great literature and preservationist organizations of all Western nations.
Well, the problem of cooperation between 'conservatives of all nations' is that all need to put the interest of their own nations first. This could easilly destroy the willingness to cooperate. But there are some options. I noticed this when i was struggling with the meaning of 'reflections on the revolution in France' from Burke. I asked myself this question: how can Burke defend the non-constitutional French monarchy while he was a staunch defender of the British crown (which indeed was constitutional)? The answer was very simple. beacuse both nations were vessels with a hierchial social order of which the fuel was Christianity. So eventually Europeans and their familymembers in the US have a common weltanschauung which stratches back to classical antiquity and the birth of Jesus Christ.
Any toughts?
René,
I am relatively new to the Chronicles as well. I have never tried to place myself within the political and ideological spectrum. I suppose that in and on the fora of the Chronicles I fall somewhere between a paleo-conservative (Buchanan) and an institutional libertarian (Hoppe - noting his reference in his book Democracy: The God That Failed.) I suppose that I could also label myself a Jeffersonian Confederate or a J.C. Calhoun Crusader. I count myself first as a follower of the Christ; second as a son with those familial obligations, husband which those familial obligations, father with those familial obligations, and kinsman, with those familial obligations which extend to friends and to the stranger under my protection; third, as a member of the Body of the Christ to my local and to the catholic church (my Catholic friends with a "C" debate whether that is true but I leave that up to the Ontological Absolute); fourth as a member of my community in which I have my being - people with whom I share abundance and famine, plenty and flood, health and pestilence. I have a keen sense of being a Southerner, an American and a participant in the commonwealth of culture which we call Western. I sometimes struggle with what that all is, but I do know that it is were I belong and where I have my being.
At my core is the premise that life, liberty and property are gifts of God and through the transforming authority and power of the Christ I am quickened and motivated to use them unto His Charity as opportunities are provided and that such is itself the heart of the Evangelium, the Gospel, the Good News - transformed and not conformed unto good works which bring Him glory, which edify the Church and which give a glimmer of hope in an ever darkening age.
Again, welcome, to the fora in and on which uncommon people seem to find - most of the time - a common nexus despite the obvious differences.
"I can’t imagine either of the two major parties in the US paying more than lip service to their plight anyway."
It's getting scary around here when T. French says something that I absolutely agree with.
Nicholas G.P. MOSES knows one of the two real enemies: Marxism. Good for him!
"Well, the problem of cooperation between ‘conservatives of all nations’ is that all need to put the interest of their own nations first."
Very true, very true. But there are common interests to all: Christianity, culture (especially architecture), and stopping the immigration invasion. My point is that the left dominates the cultural exchange scene, and this is very bad, not to mention ineffective, considering that leftism is basically the same no matter what country it's from.
Re: Mr. Cundiff, I cannot tell if I'm being patronized or mocked, so I'll not respond to that overreduction.
Neither, Mr. Moses. I was agreeing with you.
Let's cool it around here, folks. Chill. Too much mala fides, too much wrongful assumption of poisoned wells, too much putting words in others' mouths, too much name calling, too much ad hominem toward others rather than offering to correct others' faulty ideas with reasoning, too much ax grinding and getting feelings off one's chest, too many of us running for the job of executioner in Salem, MA. Mea Culpa; this applies to me too.
And maybe lighten up.
This is how the Cultural Marxists will win and we shall lose, be we "beautiful losers" or ugly: divide and conquer. I thought two weeks ago I should just say "adios, losers". Now I'll stay. The fight is too important.
We have two enemies, personified in Jim Crow laws AND Jim Snow laws (i.e. ones to keep European-Americas out). Anyone who opposes BOTH (and what leads to them) are not invincibly ignorant and thus are candidates for conversion to Paleoconservatism.
"Get rid of the laws that allow big corporations to control the airwaves and other media, allow small companies access to them, and you might see a different form of popular culture evolve, or more likely, a host of different regional and local popular cultures, perhaps based more on traditional, regional folk or high cultures, and therefore with more genuine cultural content." -Allen Wilson
Yes, and make it law (contrary to the ruling of the Supreme Court calling 'money' = speech) that all public elections must be publically funded.
I agree with T. French that brilliant, prosperous enterprises will yet spin onward in our economy regardless of big government and big business which sadly today as Mr. Allen has reminded includes their big media, via their monopoly of the air waves. Which Their big government GAVE them, and those quislings there in govt., were made rich for it, of course...par for the course. And yes as Mr. French suggests we should NOT be beholden through big government which is synonymous today with big business in our state-capitalistic system for the influence one way or another on those above mentioned, brilliant, prosperous enterprises outside of the constellation of the Fortune 500 companies... As they will inevitably and always spin onward in our economy, since that is essentially the nature of things.
But no one gets that all we are talking about here is POLICY. Right now in the state-capitalistic system the policy is to underwrite out of the taxpool off-shoring, since among policy makers that was perceived to be (via globalism) the Wave of the future. It wasn't. So regarless of whether or not the world loves a winner etc. it needs to be driven home that in our state-capitalistic system we now need as pat suggests (regardless of his stated reasons for it) a hairpin or 180 degree turn in policy to start underwriting out of our taxpool the rebuilding of america. Once policy does CHANGE in that direction, you just follow the money - and all of the building begins again at home. At those levels of the policy of insturments like ExIm Bank etc. what they fund via matching investments, insured receivables, loan guarantees to Private bankers making loans to private companies for this or that, all underwritten based on and from out of the u.s. tax pool, are done based on Policy. Thus in effect as taxpayers you are either paying for the de-industrialization of amerca and off-shoring based on policy or you are paying for the re-industrialization of america and bringing the production and jobs back home, based on policy. That's simply reality.
IF Mr. French is saying ideologically paleos should Not be in favor of this as Pat is... for the reasons he states, I still don't understand it.
The brilliant, innovative, independent prosperous enterprises which are here in the u.s. yet have little or no political clout anyway, and just like they don't get to dine out of the trough of the federal tax pool like the big guys do they still won't, regardless of a change in policy. The point is simply that now the big guys at least will be using our tax dollars to build in america based on a change in policy rather getting it to off-shore.
All pat is talking about forgetting the unfortunate charity case he mentions sadly, who the masters of the universe ignore, is a change in policy. Why not?
It's just that blunt at the top, it's a powerful but a dull tool, like a pendulum - policy either swings this way (off-shoring) or that way (rebuilding at home)... I agree with Pat - better a change in policy toward the latter. But in reality that only will happen to the extent the big boys want it to. It doesn't matter who's el'presidente.
Jeff Springer
If a hairpin turn could be made I wouldn’t object. As a matter of fact I would welcome such a happening. That being said a change in policy would still maintain the status quo with respect to big government. To be more concise: Being at the mercy of government policy is the root of the problem.
Anyway, looking for a solution from the parties and factions that put us in the soup to begin with is naïve. Why would big business even consider giving up one of their best threats against a recalcitrant workforce? Big government gets to keep deciding the winners and losers either way but I don’t think that the free traders are finished at the trough yet. The working man is not going to get a fair shake in the trade/industrial policy arena again or at least anytime soon.
Certainly national politics should not be surrendered to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber, after all an aroused citizenry derailed the amnesty. Nationally and especially locally though, by using small and medium scale enterprise as a tactical adjunct to politics much more can be done to recreate a fit society than politicking alone.
Take small towns for example, currently, many small towns fade, wither and ultimately die as the younger generation moves on for lack of opportunity. Or perhaps in their weakened state they are deluged by the introduction of a meat packing plant or other mass employer. Neither of these outcomes is conducive to the maintenance of an organic, conservative social order and no solution will be forthcoming from DC or the various statehouses. We can do something about this by looking to ourselves for economic solutions. As an additional upside it is a positive activity that could be mischaracterized as a form of meanness by only the most petty minded opponent.
To clarify about going concerns I have observed. They are prosperous not because they are brilliant but because have good fundamental values. They treat their workforces with respect and have high expectations. They treat the customer as king. They reinvest in themselves. They know the market and react to changes in an intelligent manner. The business has meaning beyond money. Simple? Sure. Easy? No.
I believe that we all can agree that the problem is bigness, whether it be in government or business. Both are too big, and that's why media and mass pop-'culture' are too big. Change in the laws regulating corporations, perhaps by turning the power to regulate these legal fictions back to the states, would perhaps go a long way here in the U.S. As for Europe, this might not work as well for small nations like the Netherlands, but in Germany, with it's federal system and constituent states, there is no reason why it couldn't be done. Perhaps the Netherlands could devolve air wave access down to a regional level. For that matter, American or German states could also do that. This doesn't mean that we couldn't still have national broadcasting networks, but they cant be allowed to dominate.
Corporations need to be curtailed in other ways, however. They shouldn't be allowed to grow so huge. Those who praise the big behemoths for America's past economic success, such as in the manufacture of autos, tend to forget that the big three put a lot of other smaller car manufacturers out of business in the process, and this had serious consequences for the auto industry in the long run. We would have been far better off if Nash, Packard, Studebaker, De Soto, Climber, Hudson, etc. had been able to stay around and keep the industry more competitive, instead of the big three taking all the market and then becoming lazy, thus giving more competitive Japanese companies an open door to flood our markets (the fact that Japanese companies now make cars here is beside the point).
If an economic system could be established whereby the small business once again became the backbone of the economy, many of our ills could be remedied. It's not as easy for a small business to outsource overseas, but on the other hand, with modern communication and shipping systems like the internet and UPS, even very small businesses can sell their wares worldwide if they wish. Perhaps there is more opportunity here for small operations than we realise. So maybe we need to look for ways to encourage small enterprise while circumventing the big corporations in providing for our economic needs. This would have to be done through major policy changes, but that would necessitate eliminating big government and it's burdensome taxes and regulations. Secession might be the only way to accomplish this, failing a serious political-economic meltdown that causes the collapes of big corporations and big government.
Mr Moses: Yes, we need some kind of an international website like you have suggested. American conservatives need more contact with their European kin, and vice-versa. I have looked for European conservative websites on and off for several years. It's not that easy to find them.
René: I think that we need to start our cooperation with the simple recognition that you already have pointed out: that each nationality has it's own needs. We must leave decisions that affect only a certain country to that country and concentrate on what we must work together on. In other words, if a conservative movement in the Netherlands is working for a local law to be passed, which an American conservative may disagree with, the American conservative meeds to keep his mouth shut and not be critical. It's none of his business, and he shouldn't stir up trouble and cause a rift. On the other hand, if international Leftists begin to attack the Dutch conservatives because of this new law they are working for, then the American conservative must come to the help of his Dutch fellows and let out not a peep that he disagrees with the law too. This is not sacrificing principle for political gain, it is adhering to the principle of local self determination. Let the Dutch decide for themselves what they need to do, and defend their right to do so. Concentrating on common concerns is what is important. We could call this an international conservative version of State's rights, limited, of course by proper Christian moral prudence.
TJICistan said: "Or, how ’bout this? We repeal the income tax."
Bravo! That's what i said. We don't need anymore extra money in the hands of government. In stead of taking protectionist measures and punishing overseas manufacturers for trading with individual Americans (and thereby contributing to wealth-loss) the people should be less burdend by taxation, which is (next to central banking) one of the sources of power for the culture-destroying managerial state ( to borrow a concept form Gottfried)
I think this article by Pat Buchanan is really showing the weak spot of the paleo-movement: economics. To pose a question: are there fundamental economic laws which exist regardless of time and space and of which no one can escape? And, in proposing measures which break those laws, is Pat willing to exept the wealth-loss which accompanies that break? Or is the sphere of economics blurry, and therfore (individual) human and collective action unpredictable, which keeps it out the field of hard (systematic) social theory and therefore a matter of 'will'. I'm still struggling with this. Should we indeed listen to Smith and Ricardo, or are there different options?
America's liberal economic system and the elites that control it, are just as much a product of the destructive, dehumanizing Enlightenment liberal tradition as is the liberal culture or the liberal politcal structure . Liberalism is based on false claims about human nature and reality whether the ideology is applied to economics, education, religion, politics or whatever.
Mr. Buchanan is trying to pull of a Reagan trick, proclaiming a once golden era in America's not to distant past that could be recaptured if we only twig this or that policy. I think Mr. Buchanan may know better than this , but when you've been involved with liberal American politics for your whole life I'm sure it is not easy to abondon the ship even when you know the captain and the rest of the crew have been pirates all along.
The U.S.'s economic structure today, where 1% of the weathy elite own as much as another 95%of the population, resembles a model closer to that of China's state/ captalism with a series of monoplolies or monopolized industries controlled by an alliance of political -state managers and a few wealthy families or individuals. The U.S.' s polictical system is also becoming more in line with the Leviathan like Chinese system. The representation of "we the people" is managed and controlled well beyond any pretense of being anything but an operation of the managerial elite. The People's Republic of China and the Republic of the U.S. are now more similar than dissimilar.
Liberal economics has , from the start, been based on individual self-interest, materialism and the idea of progress (destroy anything that is not rational, efficient and economically productive).
You can argue these economics from any angle, more state , less state, more global , more national, bigger banks, smaller banks, this kind of tax or that kind of tax, on and on. It makes no difference, in the end you are going to get just what the US has got, a National Leviathan evolving into a Global Leviathan.
During the last session of the Rockford Inst. '06 summer school on Agraianism, the question was asked where do we begin from a practical perspective. Father Boyd answered that by stating we begin by recognizing our realtiy is the reality of the Incarnation. The American Liberal system long ago rejected that true reality and the death and darkness that has decended on America (murder, drugs, gangs, divorce, pornography, environmental destruction, depression, etc. on a mass scale) is a result of this rejection.
If I were Mr. Buchanan , I would simply recommend to Steve Skvana that he gets a copy of the Chesterton Review go home, give up his anger, and chill out.
"If a hairpin turn could be made I wouldn’t object. As a matter of fact I would welcome such a happening. That being said a change in policy would still maintain the status quo with respect to big government. To be more concise: Being at the mercy of government policy is the root of the problem." -T. French
Ditto. So we are simpatico. I agree with you and Allen Wilson for all of the reasons you illuminate smallness is the answer. If I didn't I would think that communism was the only viable answer since in its own bigness inevitably, like in the bigness today of our marxist inspired state-capitalist systems around the world in which the rich have ripped-off all of the benefits of communism at the expense of workers and 'customers' (as opposed to consumers); under the purley communistic system the worker is protected, rather than constantly, literally assaulted. Big business wants big government because it wants the federal tax pool which it essentially owns to be as large as possible. Just like it wants to own all of the air waves so that the third leg of the tripod, big media, is securely in place. The one thing this way always lacks and always will lack is the greatness that comes from the smallness, be it due to fundamental core values being operative socially and so visibily in place or due to ingenuity, or both. All of the innovations for example in computer technology, the semi-conductor and so forth came out of small american towns, leafy green and socially conservative as such small closeknit american towns were once. This is what the big with all of its think-tanks and research grants etc. can't replicate. Because everyone in that big-scenario is in it for the bucks only. They can't fool mother Nature. The greatness is in the smallness.
Grey are all the theories, but green is the Tree of Life. -Goethe
The economy serves the nation.
A healthy GDP is one that does not undermine the environmental and social capital of a nation. Ideally citizens are not corrupted by overconsumption and by anti-Western "culture," and a maximal amount of GDP is put into productivity and research used for future productivity and research all with the goal of getting ahead of other nations.
Also, while it's true that some labour can be therapeutic, knowledge work requires some amount of comfort I think.
Finally, property ownership in America is too fluid. A man should be free to own a house or land without the ability of the government to force him to sell for monetary compensation. To many an owner of property, especially perhaps to those who created the property themselves, it is worth more than its fair market value.
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I generally favour a fairly free market, and I disapprove of usury (lending for consumption). I like very much what I've read of distributism. I'm simply posting some quit comments.