A Bush Alarm: Urging U.S. to Shun Isolationism

NY Times ^

[NormB]

"We're seeing it in everything," said one of Mr. Bush's closest aides last week. "Iraq. The ferocity of an irrational argument over the ports. Guest workers. China and India."

[redgolum]

Are we, as US citizens, a sovereign people, or are we not?

Now, that is really setting a harsh tone. "Sovereign" is so buggy whip, we are now all "Internationalists". All must be made equal, with some more equal than most. /sarcasm

[Clintonfatigued]

We ought to be shunning globalism. Globalism has been the policy of the United States for yeares. The people have been promised that there would be new customer bases for American products and new jobs & opportunities for Americans unheard of.

The results of free trade and globalism do not reflect well on its proponents, and prospects for the future are not encouraging.

[Aliska]

Companys will reap profits while scores of once employeed people go on welfare.

Right you are, and as jobs and workers paying into the system lose their jobs and turn into takers, who is going to pick up the tab?

I think there is a lot of "magical" thinking going on that somehow it will just be all right.

First they took the blue collar workers' jobs away, but we didn't care because they were union and deserve it. Then they came for the mid-level white-collar workers, but most of us didn't care because they are concentrated mainly in a certain valley, and it didn't affect us. Then they came for the phone jobs. We started being annoyed by that, but who wants those jobs anyway? Now they are taking the engineer's jobs. Why should we care? Most of us are not engineers.

We know they aren't going to take the doctors, nurses, public service, private service sector service jobs, executives, certain other categories. Who is going to have the money to pay for that?

Maybe somehow it will level out. I don't see it. The middle class is systematically being destroyed unless they have government-protected jobs like in education, and soon we will have a minority filthy rich with most everybody else at the poverty level.

We should have started screaming a long time ago. It works if enough of us scream loudly enough. Our reps are afraid we won't re-elect them.

[Aliska]

Now you have about ten or so boats in China being raised but only one here

What do boats run on? Diesel fuel? Must take a lot of petroleum to run all those boats from so far away.

It took $12.50 to top off my tank of my small Honda the other day; it wasn't down to half yet. I'll suck it up, but it is going to start hurting and hurting bad. People who never before had problems are starting to feel the pinch heating their homes this winter.

[Euro-American Scum]

How long before our laws are completely conformed to global laws?

How long before US courts are completely subservient to international courts? Already in process.

How long before individual private property rights take a back seat to corporate development rights, and then are abolished altogether? Witness the eminent domain case in Connecticut.

How long before First Amendment political speech is deemed inappropriate, improper, and finally downright illegal? Campaign Finance Reform set that precedent nicely.

And finally, how long will it be before the Second Amendment is "suspended indefinitely" due to some domestic emergency (probably another terrorist attack)? How long before Americans are encouraged to "voluntarily" turn in their guns at the behest of being loyal to the administration -- whoever is in office at the time -- and under the threat of confiscation?

Because you can't subsume American courts to foreign influence, abolish freedom of speech and private property rights in earnest with 200 million guns floating around in private hands.

Just make sure your weapons are secure, your ammo is dry, and nothing is all in one place.

[NormB]

Well, I have to believe there is hope. Somehow. But there is alot to be concerned about in addition to the pure economical impact of globalisation.

If, God help us, we ever get into a real war the US will explode from within. Immigrants will not want to be drafted and the country will have an undeclared civil war.

Bird flu will probably be used as a shoehorn for further government control.

Looks pretty grim though.

[Aliska]

Looks pretty grim though.

Yeah, I try not to succumb too much to the gloom and doom thinking, but we have to be realistic.

You have to look for the small things to keep your spirits up.

I'm going to be at the most vulnerable age when the worst of it hits if I live that long, but I'll keep doing what little I can to try to reverse some of it.

The people who are making all these decisions for us have body guards and protection. We the little people will be in the thick of it.

Seriously, I wonder if either parties can see what's coming and care? They'll send their kids out of the country. I don't think they care. Politics and power has gone to their heads.

[Dialup Llama]

Globalism has been the policy of the United States for yeares. The people have been promised that there would be new customer bases for American products and new jobs & opportunities for Americans unheard of.

The proponents of globalism are right. Because of all these new customers in China and India, they say we will have job prospects unheard of. Well I haven't heard of any of these new jobs. Has anyone else?

[ex-snook]

Thanks for the ping along. Here is Patrick J. Buchanan March 10, 2006.

"A year after NAFTA passed, the U.S. trade surplus had vanished. From 1995 through 1998, we ran $20 billion trade deficits with Mexico. From 1999 through 2005, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico grew every year, from $27 billion in 1999 to last year's $54 billion."

"Where Hufbauer and Schott had predicted $100-plus billion in trade surpluses with Mexico from 1994 to today, NAFTA delivered some $400 billion in cumulative U.S. trade deficits. A $500 billion mistake by the crack Hufbauer-Schott team."

And that increasing trade deficit does not include all the drug purchases.

[jackbenimble]

You can't talk tough about national security while doing nothing to stem the tide of lawbreakers that reside here and those that cross the border daily and expect to be taken seriously.

Exactly! It is almost impossible to understand why we are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at a war where the enemy is apparently so weak and inconsequential and incapable of attacking us that we can tolerate thousands of anonymous people crossing our borders into the homeland every single night. It doesn't make sense

Either we are at war against a dangerous enemy and the homeland should be secured or we are just wasting vast sums of money to secure the President's nation building legacy.

[1rudeboy]

We have a trade surplus with the U.A.E., for what it's worth.

[SUSSA]

GEICO is short for Government Employees Insurance Company, not General Electric.

[ex-snook]

"We have a trade surplus with the U.A.E., for what it's worth."

You're right. I guess we don't like countries that we have a trade surplus with. Maybe if we had a free trade-deficit agreement with them, they would have the ports.

[1rudeboy]

Absolutely. Screw those American manufacturers how want to sell more product. Screw them all, and the jobs they provide.

[1rudeboy]

how = who (now that I think about it, "who" should be "that")

[William Terrell]

Isolationism.

Isolated, bad, no one wants to be isolated. Isolated, loner, out of which group we get school yard shootings, mad bombers and kooks. Isolated, lonely rejected.

All these harmonics of meaning are carried by that word.

Beware arguments for and against something based on the emotional baggage of a word applied to that which threatens you. The use of such tactics implies, if not outright indicates, an attempt to move a population towards that which is not in their interest.

Emotional contexts beget unthinking reactions, instantly, without the time for rational consideration.

So, examining the word "isolationism" without the kneejerk response to its root word baggage, and applied to the situation of American sovereignty and the unity and protection of the welfare of its people, "isolationism" means for the good of America and her people, keeping it and their wealth close and independent from foreign interests.

Which America did during its phase of becoming a world power, with all the safety and security that condition implies.

Now, we're not so secure. Foreign interests own a large part of us, interests that tend not to be ours. We enrich other nations at the expense of our own. We weaken ourselves, and, in the past, when there has been the perception we have weakened ourselves, we have been attacked.

Like now.

"Isolationism", producing what our people need here, trading with each other here, letting the wealth flow around within here and from producer to consumer here.

I have yet to hear a cogent reason why we must junk it all for foreign trade, becoming dependent on those who do not wish us well, at massive deficits and enriching those who do not wish us well.

[chris1]

A lot of these companies want to reap the reward of outsourcing to india ect, all while at the same time seeking protection by the US in the courts and a place to live.

If these companies love China and India so much, why don't they pack up 100% and go live there?

[chris1]

Do they place tarrifs on our products coming in???????

[Paul Ross]

Bump!

The Globalism Jihad of the One Worlders is not the only problem with the staff and advisers surrounding the Presidnet. Clearly it is a huge problem however, as Newsweek reported March 6th that all the staff members surrounding the president were spotted carrying around copies of Thomas Friedmans' Globalist screed, "The World is Flat."

None of the 'bots wants to fess up where their liberal ideas are coming from.

You should also see the 'bot reaction I got when I pointed out that the President is still refusing to issue an executive order to ban federal funding of abortions. Reagan issued it right away in his presidency. Clinton reversed it right away. GWB has had 5 years to fix this.

[1rudeboy]

India’s economy is one of the most closed in the world. Thus, India's tariffs remain among the highest in the world.

Over the last thirteen years, beginning with its economic reform program initiated in 1991, India has taken noteworthy steps to open its markets. A progressively more open and transparent trade regime stimulated a strong increase in U.S.-India trade and investment in the first half of the 1990s. U.S exports to India stagnated in 1996 as the reform process stalled. While U.S. exports showed signs of renewed upward momentum in 2003, any substantial expansion in U.S.-India trade will be unlikely without significant additional Indian liberalization.

Foreign Trade Barriers, Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (.pdf)