Today's Free Trade is not about the Free Market

We are in a very real battle in this nation and it is a battle for our heart and soul. It is spread out on many, many fronts...education, foreign policy, work ethic (individually and societally), immigration, the economy, moral values...and the list goes on.

Let's focus on the economy and one significant part of it...a major, growing part of it. Free Trade and foreign outsourcing.

I was going to entitle this article..."I used to make something"...or..."We used to make something in this country". But, I thought better of it and realized that such a statment was really focusing on the tail end of the issue as opposed to the root.

So, instead, I am simply calling it, "Today's Free Trade is not about the Free Market."

And it is so, today's Free Trade is NOT about the free market. Instead, in a very similar manner to other key issues in this battle for the heart and soul of America, what is happening is that a very craftily wordsmithed message of "Free Trade" has been put forth that people have bought into, thinking "How could anyone be against free trade? Why, isn't that all-American?".

Like with abortion, "How could anyone be against a woman's right to choose? Isn't that all American?".

In both cases, the craftily worded title has nothing remotely to do with what is actually going on.

The free market is the system our founders based our commerce on, where the intrinsic, underlying moral values of the people involved in the free market governed the equitable, free exchange of goods and services for other goods and services or currency. Sort of like John Adams said regarding the Constitution...

Well, as far as I am conerned, Adam's words could be tailored to this topic like so, ie... The Free Market was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the economy of any other.

This is a basic truth. Like our government, our free market was not supposed to be very regulated or burdened with miriad rules. The people and the companies were to use their own moral foundation to govern themselves. But, when the moral foundation is removed, you do not have what was intended for the Constitution, and you do not have a true free market.

When we use our foreign policy and economic policy to set up shop and trade with countries, societies, organizations or to implement policies that exploit their people's mercilessly, who keep them down without a hope for true liberty or freedom, who trample the moral values our own system was based upon...and when we do it knowingly, without compuction for those very underlying values, then we do not create a free market...no, that free trade has nothing whatsoever to do with, and is in no way similar to the FREE MARKET, rather, it serves to corrupt it.

Such notions, such actions are in fact wordsmithing for popularizing and putting forth a policy to drain the United States manufacturing, technological, agricultural, energy and other critical industries in order to weaken us...plain and simple...and it is working.

Based on my own travels on behalf of US firms and then later consulting for them...that is what is really happening here in my own opinion, and until we refocus as a people on that underlying moral foundation and the absolute need for it...we will continue to lose ground.

By the way, those same principles that are working at the societal level, have equal application at the personal level too...in fact, in the end it is the sum of their working at the personal level that creates the issue at the societal level.

"I don't agree with that premise, that it represents purely a transfer of wealth."

Jeff,

It seems to me that you're trying to redefine the term "free market" in such a manner as to exclude the possibility of trade with China. And, I fully understand the reasons you are against such trade. After all, why should one confirm trade advantages on one's enemy?

That said, I don't think such a definition really satisfies the "fair traders" here at free republic. I rarely here them object to trade with China on the basis of the moral issues you raised. Their objections would still hold with any nation that costs US jobs due to differences in labor rates.

Take for example, Singapore, often rated higher on the scale of "freedom" than the US. Would they not also object to free trade with that country? After all, the labor rates there are significantly lower than in the US costing US jobs.

The "fair traders" here on Free Republic want protective tarriffs, not to protect the US market from corruption, but to protect their own jobs. Such tarriffs are inescapably a form of income transfer. If I can buy an imported item for $10 and a comparable US produced item for $19, they would impose a $10 tarriff on the imported item. This has the effect of increasing demand for the US item at the expense of the imported item. It also has the effect of taking money from one family since they can no longer buy the item at $10 and transfering that money to the family of those who produce that item in the US.

That is my principal objection to these types of tarriffs. They are a form of wealth transfer. My second objection is that the arguments used to advance these tarriffs are more at home in the democrat party than in a conservative forum.

GladesGuru wrote: "Unless there is someone here who thinks it is good that little kids work 16 hour days for a pittance in sweat-shops in SE Asia so that Walmart can sell cheap T-shirts?" Have you considered that in those 'turd world' "nations" (term used loosely) there is no other job available for those children? Or do you think being a child worker in the sex industry to be an improvement on the sweat shop?

**************************************

Actually I spend rather a lot of time fighting the child-sex industry as well.

There is no need for these countries to be doing what they do with their kids. And no reason at ALL for OUR corporations to be doing business there .

We and our children just do not NEED that many cheap toys and t-shirts.

Has it occurred to people that maybe Christmas wouldn't be the commercial mess that it is if children did not expect a mountain of cheaply produced thngs from SE Asia every year? I simply will not have a Mattel toy in the house.

As far as what these other countries do, it is nothing new, but that does not make it right. This is just war-lordism in the traditional sense: corruption and greed ensure that a few people have WAY too much at the top, some folks manage pretty well, and the vast majority of the population suffers due to indifference and mismanagement. All too often that vast majority is kids and the elderly. Life in these places is very cheap.

Tia

My definition is not soley directed at China...but at any nation like it that would trade with us.

If a nation is free and bases it's freedom on the same Republican principles of individual liberty and responsibility, unalienable rights that are endowed by the creator, etc...who open their markets to us in the same manner, then there doesn't need to be protective tarriffs. As I said, the closer they come to those that ideal, the better and the less the tariff.

IMHO, that is not a re-definition of the free market...it is the original definition of it as it was meant to be.

I am not advancing a tarriff to protect jobs, but to protect the free market from corruption If we trade with nations that also have a true free market, then I am perfectly content to let the market pressures regulate things. The free people in those other nations, who have equal access to our goods, and who have the liberty to make something of themselves, will raise themselves up and as their income, earnings and standard of living rise...the free competitiveness of the market will regulate things as they were meant to be regulated.

But that is not what we have...sadly, either here or elsewhere. Here, our own free market has been bastardized by more and more governmental control. Offshore, far too many of our trading partners are even far worse and most of them place significant tarriffs and controls on what we can export there. Either course, either their falling short of a true free market, or their restrictions on our own products, should result in our own measures.

These issues of allowing non-free market based economies to freely compete in our free market, and allowing almost full trade on our part with nations that severely restrict us in return represent a double barrell whammy that is destroying our free market and rendering it something completely different..a almost fascist based market IMHO.

I believe we can start with the foreign trade with countries who represent the anti-thesis of what we are supposed to represent...based upon the principles I have outlined. I believe that would have significant political traction amongst the people...but that many large corporations would fight it.

I also believe that with potential agressor nations like China, whose market represents the opposite of ours as far as individual liberty goes, that closing access based on that and on national security would also have traction...and would be clearly the right thing to do.

From there, we have to roll back what has happened in this nation with excessive regulation and governmental control.

A huge bill to fill, one that has taken many decades to come into being...but one we MUST start to address as well if we have any hope of retaining a true free market over the long term that extends the propserity and life style that we have benefited from on to our posterity.

Sorry for the length...just my two cents. Actually this long post is more like my four-bits, LOL!

You said:
"Hogwash, the monitors here are only "sensitive" to comments that are purely anti-semantic. Criticism of Israel is freely permitted as long as it remains within the rules of this forum."

Perhaps you can tell me why these 2 noahide.com flyers were NOT allowed to be posted.

The various emphases are mine.
*************

Campaign to abolish X-mas celebration by gentiles

Noahide Mivtzaiim materials now available. Anyone interested in obtaining holiday fliers (@ $.25 each) to distribute to their non-Jewish associates, please contact Shmuel or Aaron for more info:

[phone number withheld] www.noahide.com

Why Torah obligates all Jews in this campaign:

"...according to the known Jewish ruling that Christians are idol worshippers." (Likkutei Sichos 37:198)

A gentile...is liable for the death penalty...if he has invented a religious holiday for himself...The general principle is we do not allow them to make new religious rituals and to make 'mitzvahs' for themselves by their own devices. Rather they may either become a Ger Tzeddek and accept all the Mitvahs; or he (the Noahide) should stand fast in his Torah (the seven Noahide Laws) without adding or diminishing...and if he does make some new 'mitzvah,' we lash him, punish him, and inform him that he is obligated with the death penalty for this..."
(Rambam Mishne Torah - Hilchos Melachim 10:9)

"...it is however obvious that if it will be perceived by them (the nations), also the matter of the negation of shituf, until they even have some recognition of the Unity of Hashem - that 'there is nothing else besides Him'; this will add both in their carefulness and meticulousness in fulfilling the seven Noahide Laws [with all of their ramifications!] and also in their aiding of Jewish people in all of their matters pertaining to Yiddishkeit and all of their needs in general..."
(Likkutei Sichos 25: YudTes Kislev)

"Any person who has already worked successfully in this area should try to influence other Jews to do likewise. Resistance should not deter one when attempting to influence a further individual to accept upon himself the task of disseminating the Noahide Laws amongst the nations."
(Hisvaduyos 5750 2:18-19)
**********

2nd flyer

Campaign to abolish X-mas continues

SPECIAL SALE!!!

Fliers now available at reduced price:
$0.15 per flier

[phone number withheld]/www.noahide.com

More reasons the Torah obligates all Jews in this campaign:

"...There no longer exists even a remote doubt of any danger involved with spreading the Noahide Laws...". Consequently, the Jewish people must now become totally involved to the maximum of their capacity and effort to fulfill the Torah obligation to teach and transform all gentiles throughout the world. Anyone who seeks to exempt himself from this mitzvah, claiming he is already busy with other mitzvahs (ahavas Yisroel, etc.), is, in effect, throwing off the yoke of heaven. "This is the opposite of Torah, and is neither a benefit for him nor for those [Jews] whom he is helping -and utilizing -to exempt himself from kabbalas ol malchus shamayim [accepting the yoke of heaven]!"
(Lubavitcher Rebbe, Sefer Hisvaduyos, Purim, 1987)

"Moshe Rabbeinu was commanded from the mouth of the Al-mighty to force all the inhabitants of the earth to accept the commandments that were commanded upon the descendants of Noah."
(Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings 8:10)

Christianity, moreover, is absolute idolatry, not shittuf (partnership of deities), based on at least two of its beliefs (held almost universally by the estimated 1.9 billion Christians worldwide):
(1) That the other two members of the "trinity" are of equal power and stature to Hashem (G-d forbid!), and
(2) that the physical world is primarily under the dominion of the Satan, who is in an actual state of rebellion against G-d (G-d forbid!). Christianity, therefore, does not fit the definition of shittuf given by the Lubavitcher Rebbe
("Mayim Rabim," Sefer Hama'amarim vol. 1, pp. 51-62; 1957).

The Rambam, indeed, officially rules in three places that Christianity is idolatry AND THUS FORBIDDEN TO GENTILES (Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Ma'achalos Asuros 11:7 and Hilchos Avodas Kochavim 9:4; commentary on Mishnah, Avodah Zarah 1:3), and implies the same in a fourth place (Hilchos Melachim 11:4)
(NOTE: THESE TEXTS ARE CENSORED FROM THE STANDARD EDITIONS OF THESE WORKS).
The Rambam further rules that any religion which would believe in shittuf would also be prohibited to gentiles.
(Hilchos Melachim 9:2).

According to the Nodah Biyhudah,* the Rama agrees with the Rambam that any religion of shittuf would be forbidden to gentiles (nor did the Rama ever indicate that Christianity was shittuf (rather than idolatry).
* Nodah Biyhudah - Mahdura Tinyasa 148

"Behold, I say that they have tied a rope to a rope and a strand to a strand; where does this 'chacham' get this idea that the gentiles are not commanded concerning shittuf?! And nevertheless this thing is found in the mouths of many chachamim... and I have toiled and I have not found this thing either in the Babylonian or Jerusalem Talmud, and not in any of the gedolei harishonim; and if this was true, then the Rambam should have brought in Hilchos Melachim as a psak halacha that a gentile is not commanded on avoda zarah with shittuf, so why did he exempt this din? He also contests that, regarding avoda zarah, there is no difference between a Jew and a gentile, for behold, an explicit baraisa in Maseches Sanhedrin 56b states, 'Everything that a Jewish beis din executes upon, b'nei Noah are warned concerning them'; and likewise in Hilchos Melachim 9:2... and it seems to me that the fact that it has become commonplace for people to say that b'nei Noah are not warned concerning shittuf is according to an error they made in reading Tosafos in Maseches Bechoros 2b.... In light of [Tosafos] the Rama poskaned in Orech Chairn 156.... These words have been misconstrued by many chachamim who reasoned that the intention of the Rama is that b'nei Noah are not commanded concerning serving avodah zarah in shittuf. However, this is not in fact the case. The intention of the Tosephos and the Rama is that combining the Name of Heaven with something else in an oath does not constitute the actual worship of idolatry; rather he is combining the Name of Heaven with something else, but he is not calling in the name of Elokim and he is not saying 'you are my g-d.' Instead, he is merely mentioning him in his oath with the Name of Heaven in a manner of honor, regarding which we find a prohibition upon Israel, as it is written 'and in His Name shall you swear'; this is a warning to Israel not to swear except in His Name (blessed be He) and not to combine the Name of Heaven and something else, as the Rambam wrote in 11:2 of Hilchos Shevuos - and the gentiles are not warned regarding this shittuf.
However, regarding the service of avoda zarah with shittuf, there is no difference between a Jew and a gentile!... The general principle that we have received is that anything for which a Jewish court administers death upon, the gentiles are also forewarned upon, as we wrote above. Afterwards I saw in the Sefer Meil Tzeddaka in sec. 22, who also makes the same distinction; however, he did not bring the proof which I have written here...." ********************************* BTW, what do you mean by "anti-semantic?"

Well Jim Robinson has informed me , because poohbah didn't like what I said that if I post anything like that again I will be kicked off of unFree Republic.

There was nothing hateful towards Jewish people in what I said.

I mentioned Rothschild because he is who sent Paul Warburg to America to get control of our economy (again) , which he did through the federal reserve act in 1913.

Rothschild also sent Jacob Schiff to America to get control of the railroads , which he did. And they used control of the railroads to make Rockefeller the oil king of America. By the way Al Gore's daughter's married name is Schiff.

To me talking about specific people and events is not predjudice or racial.

But then people like poohbah come along and silence any discussion on the subject.

Is that protecting the Jewish people from harassment or is that aligning oneself with the Jewish people in order to hide behind anti-Semitism. I don't know.

My question is , if the Jewish people have nothing to hide then why can't their involvement in history be discussed?

Wouldn't the best cure for anti-semitism be clearing the air?

No matter what people want to think , I'm not foolish enough to believe a whole Race of people are evil. But why Gods' people are afraid of discussion bothers me.

If God chose me I would stand proud and loud..............

I don't think you should be kicked off of Free Republic for speaking freely, and I wish they would not pull posts, even if I might disagree. We are able to discuss this as a free people. It is a view that is out there, and needs to be discussed.

"some Jews learned from Hitler"

Do you really honestly believe it is mostly a Jewish conspiracy?

What do you mean by unGodly means to achieve their goals.?

Where in the Bible does it tell about?:

As far as I know the only people God ever told the Jews to destroy were the Canaanites. As the Bible says Gods' people grew weary of war and quit the fight. God told them to never let the Canaanites live among them , because they would destroy them.

when a select people have the power to have any discussion about them silenced , it makes me wonder who is who.

Who are you talking about? What select people?

As far as I know the only difference between me and Jews , is my belief in Jesus Christ.

Something I agree with you about. Doesn't the Bible say that God will unblind their eyes, and reveal to them that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Savior, their Messiah?

I don't have time to give you a Bible study, so I copied part of an article that I agreed with. I found it here:

http://wnd.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29006

God the Father was the first Zionist. As the original landowner, He gave to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants the land of Israel forever. Consider the following Bible facts:

1. All other nations were created by an act of men; Israel was created by an act of God (Genesis 12:1-3)!

2. God Himself entered into an elaborate blood covenant (which was eternal and unconditional) with Abraham. In this covenant, God gave the Jews a biblical mandate to possess the land forever (Genesis 15:8-21).

3. The boundaries of Israel were registered in the Word of God (Genesis 15:18-21 and Ezekiel 47:13 through 48:1-29).

4. God has personally sworn to protect and defend the nation of Israel (Psalm 121:4 and Ezekiel 38:18-23).

5. God designed the flag of Israel and promised to gather the Jews back to the land under those colors (Isaiah 11:12).

6. Jehovah God promised that Israel would be re-created in a day (Isaiah 66:8). That became a reality on May 15, 1948 when the United Nations announced the formal recognition of the state of Israel.

7. God has chosen the nation of Israel and the Jewish people as His own inheritance (Psalm 33:12).

Is it not logical to state that since God created Israel, and defends Israel, that those who fight with Israel, fight with God?!

Replacement theologians teach that there is not one word in the New Testament that remotely suggests that Christians should support Israel. Wrong! Jesus Christ is our example and He personally taught us by His conduct that gentiles who support Israel have His special blessing.

In Luke, chapter seven, Jesus entered Capernaum where a certain Roman centurion (a gentile) had a servant that was about to die. When the centurion heard that Jesus was coming, he sent Jewish elders to Him, pleading for Jesus to come and heal the critically ill servant. Notice the logic the Jewish elders used with Jesus. They said, "And when they came to Jesus, they begged him earnestly, saying that the one (the centurion) was worthy, for he loves our nation (Israel) and has built us a synagogue. Then Jesus went with them ..." (Luke 7:4-6).

Does it make a difference if Christians bless the nation of Israel? The question must be asked: "Why did God select the house of Cornelius to be the first gentile house to hear the Gospel and to receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit?" The clear answer is recorded in the book of Acts, chapter 10. The scriptural truth is this: Jesus went to the house of this gentile and healed the servant who was near death because this gentile had blessed the nation of Israel.

Cornelius also was a Roman centurion (a gentile), living in the coastal city of Caesarea who is described in the Scripture as "a devout man and one who feared God ... and who gave alms generously to the people." Which he controlled through the Roman Army. The Scripture repeats that the reason God selected the residence of Cornelius for this great spiritual blessing was because he blessed the Jewish people. Verse 31 records, "Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your alms are remembered in the sight of God" (Acts 10:31).

Is it really important that Christians bless the nation of Israel and the Jewish people? Jehovah God told Abraham that all anti-Semites are under His curse (Genesis 12:1-3). Jesus Christ announced that all anti-Semites will come under the judgment of God during the judgment of the nations (Matt 25:31-46).

Who are these hungry, naked, thirsty, sick, imprisoned strangers of Matthew, chapter 25? They are the Jewish people of history, not the church. Jesus clarifies this with:

"And the King will answer and say unto them. 'Assuredly, I say unto you, inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these my brethren [the Jews], you did it unto me.' Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life" (Matthew 25:40-41 and 46).

Is it important to be right on the Israel question? When you consider that being wrong brings you under the curse of God, it's important! Israel is not a "take it or leave it" subject. It is a life and death matter – eternal life! If you believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, and those who reject its truths have entered into idolatry and rebellion; if you believe Jehovah God is the God of covenant whose integrity would make it impossible for Him to break covenant; if you believe that Jesus Christ is our example and that we are to follow Him, there is no biblical alternative but to support the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.

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