Buch's Thoughts on the Election

As usual, Buchanan finds a way to say something unique without making things up.

A rising spirit of nationalism is evident everywhere in this election, not simply in the economic realm. Americans are weary of sacrificing their soldier-sons for Iraqi democracy. They are weary of shelling out foreign aid to regimes that endlessly hector America at the United Nations. They are tired of sacrificing the interests of American workers on the altar of an abstraction called the Global Economy. They are fed up with allies long on advice and short on assistance.

Other leaders in other lands look out for what they think is best for their nations and people. Abstractions such as globalism and free trade take a back seat when national interests are involved.

China and Japan manipulate their currencies and tax polices to promote exports, cut imports and run trade surpluses at America's expense. Europeans protect their farms and farmers. Gulf Arabs and OPEC nations run an oil cartel to keep prices high and siphon off the wealth of the West. Russians have decided to look out for Mother Russia first and erect a natural gas cartel to rival OPEC. In Latin America, Bush's Free Trade Association of the Americas is dead.

We are entered upon a new era, a nationalist era, and it will not be long before the voices of that era begin to be heard.

Truth be told, I'm torn on the issue of free trade. The libertarian stance is obvious, and while the tendency to reject messing with the market is usually sound advice--if only because it refrains from handing over power to the federal government--in practice, free trade has yielded very dubious results.

And while global laissez-faire capitalism is decidely immoral, it seems less than wise to give the federal government more power as the enactment of higher tariffs will assuredly do. Still, as an almost engineer, certain tariffs would most likely benefit me personally by disuading companies from out-sourcing American jobs. Moreover, we will tariffs should reduce the trade deficit, and may help balance the budget, though the latter provision assumes, somewhat illogically, that Congress will develop something akin to restraint.

I've finished my article for next week's Lode--my apologies on not getting the new articles up, but the website is down, and the internet does not work at my house--wherein I failed to discuss the issue of free trade, but I see no reason to steal Buchanan's point, despite its accuracy. Yet this will surely be an issue to watch. A return to protectionism will almost surely help the democrats elect the Lizard Queen.