That's the plan in two sentences.
Posted on 08/01/2003 2:05:33 PM PDT by Jeff Head
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...
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798It is that underlying moral foundation coupled woth our liberty that made the Free Market in America the envy of the world, just like those same issues made our governmental form the envy of the world.
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.
Jeff Head
Engineering Consultant and,
Author of The Dragon's Fury Series
How current conditions could lead to World War
August 1, 2003
Emmett, Idaho
Thank you. Five kids and two grandkids later (a third is being born later today and we are about ready to head to the hospital), we look back and wonder at how the time has passed.
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Best wishes to your family, and good luck to your daughter ( or daughter in-law as the sace may be!
FReegards,
Tia
Tia,
Whoa, sorry I asked (just kidding). You're apparently the 'Sane Sheep' of the flock. Congratulations on your good fortune.
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No apology needed. They are crazy, abusive and violent and I severed ties to keep the contagion away from my daughter.
I will argue with you just this much: "Good fortune" had nothing to do with it! LOL! A healthy desire and determination to gnaw off a leg and get away DID!
Evolution in action, but then my father WAS a biology teacher......(grin)
Freegards,
Tia
As I stated at the beginning of the thread...there are numerous "fronts" and the economy is just one of them.
They are all directed at weakening us.
But, as you say, there are still millions of God fearing and otherwise morally based individuals who hold fast to their rights, their independence, their soveriegnty...their firearms.
Ultimately, they will have to come for the guns...because there are millions who,. despite all else, will not give them up.
Our enemies recognize that faith and guns are the real forces they have to vanquish in the end...and all of this other is aimed at ultimately making the play for that. They have made great inroads already it is true...and we will probably lose more ground.
But in the end, as Patrick Henry said..."There is a God in Heaven, and He watches over the affairs of man"
That will be their ultimate undoing and our ultimate salvation, if we will hold fast and not give up. It was the same with the framers.
I went out for a Mexican Combo last night (luv doze chili rellanos) and was reading the daily horoscope while waiting. My horoscope was short and to the point, advising me to 'choose my words carefully, be slow to speak and take a rest' Not fair, I tell ya. My first vanity in five years and even the newspaper tells me to shut up and disappear. I can guess what my next fortune cookie is going to say. :-)
('scuse the off-topic)
I just wanted to send YOU a big warm hug so YOU know I love YOU.
I'm so honored to know someone who comes from a stock that has done no wrong through the whole history of man.
That is except for turning their backs on God repeatedly through the whole history of mankind.
Is the Bible CONSPIRACY too!
Even if certain people on this site would like you to believe that.
? The net effect of a tarrif should be to establish a bar for entry into the free market. If your governmental system and the rights afforded your citizens make it possible for you as a nation to actually entertain the free market...then the closer you come to those conditions, the less the tariff.
In this way, the free market is protected from corruption and disentergration.
It is not about erecting barriers to free trade. Between free nations, ideally there should be very little regulationm, outside of oversight to ensure that laws are not being broken. What a tarrif should do is ensure that the free market remains free and not corrupted with markets mascquerading as free when in actuality they are the furthest thing from it.
Just my own feelings on the matter.
(I'm beginning to sound like I'm having an 'evolution' vs 'creation' debate with myself...lol).
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Oh don't do THAT1 this thread is ugly enough as it is! LOL!
but I take your comment in the spirit meant. Thanks!
Tia
I'm not as simple as poohbah would like Freepers and Jim Robinson to believe.
But I have been censored.
The problem with what you see today is that it won't be here in fifty years and neither will we.
To me , that's why we must make noise now so that future generations know why we said what we said.
If we allow the censors to silence us , how will our children be able to sort things out.
I have never been afraid of being wrong. There is nothing I would like more than being proved wrong.
But to be silenced in a supposedly free country , makes me fear more for our children's future.
I don't believe it is our children's fight.
How can they deal with centuries of oppression when they are taught that it doesn't exist?
Our parents trusted their government , I don't.
What is happening to our country IS NOT a natural PROGRESSION.
It is a planned DEGRESSION.
American's need to ask themselves WHO these things benefit. It sure as hell isn't American's and it has nothing to do with Free Trade.
It has to do with WORLD MONOPOLIES.
Who's benefitting?????
Not African's
Not American's.
Not Black's,
Not Canadian's.
Not Caucasian's.
Not whatever they call people from Denmark.
Not Ethiopian's or Egyptian's.
Not the French.
Not the German's.
Not the Hispanic's.
Not the Indian's.
Sorry I can't mention the J word , but I'm sure they are not benefitting from controlling America's government , economy or media. It must be circumstantial.
I'm trying to get through the rest of the alphabet , but it appears that no one benefits from the World's current situation , so it must be choice.
That has to be IT.
We and the rest of the world CHOOSE to be controlled by the select few elites , that don't really exist.
If this is my last response , Peace be with all of You.
But NEVER quit asking yourself "Who benefits". They don't like those questions , but they need to be asked.
That's the plan in two sentences.
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