The Dread Specter of Economic Nationalism
As Greg Kaza recently noted here, the decline in American manufacturing is a serious problem, one that accelerated under Bush and is continuing unabated under Obama. You would never know that from reading Jonah Goldberg, who wrote this morning that inveighing against corporations moving headquarters or jobs overseas is a leftist phenomenon with historical roots in the programs of Wilson, FDR, Kennedy, and Johnson. Unmentioned by Goldberg is the opposition of each of those presidents to the historic GOP program of high tariffs to protect American manufacturing. Also unmentioned by Goldberg is the possibility that Americans might be concerned about the outsourcing of American jobs as a result of the facts so ably highlighted by Kaza, not as a result of brainwashing by "progressives." Any politician wishing to lead America out of our current morass must be able to address those facts, a task beyond both the Obamaites and their current opponents in the GOP.
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The collapse of manufacturing jobs in America is one of those issues- like immigration or foreign aid- that separates the American citizenry from the American political elite. This obverse situation is especially pronounced between the Republican and Conservative Movement elite and the Republican electorate, who are expected to dutifully vote for the Republican Party and like it. It is likely that despite the rise of the Tea Party and other anti-elites in the Republican Party, the Republican elite will co-opt the Republican peasantry on the trade issue and other issues important to American manufacturing. Sadly, absolute free trade is a more vital and non-negotiable part of the Republican Party gospel than is marriage, abortion or small government.
As for Jonah Goldberg, one can only guess that his mother secretly pays his salary at National Review. His great piece of work, "Liberal Fascism", displays a puerile mind at work just by its title. His scribblings are about as worthwhile to read as the graffiti Salvadoran gangs spray paint in many of what used to be our cities.
As a general rule, anyone who lives in a small town in America that has neither a college or hospital as employer of final resort who votes in a national election for a Republican is a damn fool. Let me amend that: anyone voting for either a Republican or a Democrat is a damn fool. Let me amend that one last time. If you live in a small town in America, so far as Washington DC is concerned, you are on your own. Your vote is a mote in the wind.
Thanks for reminding us what ignorant fools these people are just in case anyone might be tempted to take Mr. Goldberg seriously.
Poor Jonah. Possessed of a need to retroactively redefine things he does not like as "progressive," he overlooks American History 101. It was the Federalist/Whig/Republican worldview that led the way in opposing relocation of American industry abroad via protective tariffs. Hamilton, Clay, Webster, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and to a lesser extent, yes, Nixon and Reagan -- each was an "economic nationalist."
This is what happens, I am afraid, when loathing of all things on teh left operates as a default setting in the brain, overriding all other commands.
Ah, the life of working in a think tank, moving between faux-journalistic positions and editorial writing, taking the occasional government job, giving the occasional establishment mouthpiece in National Review, and writing rubbish books. And to think there are so many people who live like that. To get paid to do absolutely nothing.
When such think-tank-arians condemn "European socialists" and "welfare moochers", do they realize that they too are like some folks in Finland, who live an entire life subsidised by somebody else, from the day care center to the school to the university to the public sector job? Except the ones subsidising them are billionaire donors and political interests, rather than the taxpayer? At least the Scandinavians are nice, polite people, compared to the Brussels/London/Beltway crowd.
Uh, I read the article and had a good deal of trouble getting through it. I could barely understand what he was saying, though I am sure that is my fault.
It might be funny to write a piece accusing him of being an anarchist or military subversive. Since he has declared that prosperity depends upon freedom (it must be self-evident?) and then draws clumsy connections to the troops defending our safety, then I guess military prosperity (nay, our very safety) depends upon the freedom of troops taking matters into their own hands. Good idea.
Offshoring of industry is not, repeat NOT, purely an economic matter. No country can successfully defend itself if it has to rely on the industrial capacity, not to mention the expertise, of its overseas rivals.
However, I wonder why we (paleos) go ballistic over outsourcing but not over the far larger problem of people doing absolutely nothing while "working" for the government, academia, various legalistic and NGO type outfits and for sumptuous rewards. It seems we do not deem their malfeasance to be as aggravating for some reason.
I don't know how you guys even can read Goldberg. He's impossibly trite. He nabbed a column gig only because of his famous Mom. And she's famous only because of that Clinton pervert.