Free Trade: The Golden Calf of the Republican Party From: linda@buchanan.org Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 10:29 PM To: brigade@zeus.wwol.com Cc: Cyours76@hotmail.com Subject: [BRIGADE] Free Trade: The Golden Calf of the Republican Party Dear Brigade, Another excellent column from Steve Farrell at the Ether Zone. For the Cause, Linda ------------ From: joe sterns [mailto:jsterns@hotmail.com] Sent: Monday, April 03, 2000 4:25 PM To: linda@buchanan.org Subject: Re: [BRIGADE] HOT: China - Target List Linda, I found a great article rebutting free trade that I think should definitely be sent to the Brigade. The best part about it is WHERE I found it: at the Enter Stage Right web site....an internet bastion of so called conservative Republicans. Below is the site address where the article appears. http://www.enterstageright.com/0300freetrade.htm Here is the article: Free Trade: The Golden Calf of the Republican Party By Steve Farrell web posted March 20, 2000 If ever we sought proof positive that Dickens was right about the "tight-fisted . . . squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous" character of Capitalism, we had only open our eyes and see the many Scrooge-like Capitalists among the host of moderates, liberals, and libertarians of the Republican Party. Here we find a group, who put aside every serious human rights violation in favor of one right only; the "right" to purchase every good at the lowest possible price. No matter, apparently, that the good is tainted with the blood of martyrs, nor that it is tainted with the sweat of slaves, nor that it is tainted with the fingerprints of little children forced to work in appalling conditions. No matter, either, that the goods were made with technology stolen from the true entrepreneurs who first took the risk and then paid the price for their development, manufacturing and marketing. No matter that the profits for such goods never go to the common man, but to Communist Party bosses who laugh at our stupidity, to military establishments bent on intimidating and conquering their neighbors, and which, in fact, amount to treasonous donations to butchers fixed on the diabolical design of undermining and destroying the United States of America. No, only money matters to such as these! Men and women who are the very beau ideal of the Capitalism Dickens suffered under as a young child, a Capitalism stripped of its Christianity. Just dare to voice out loud, to such as these, your conviction that free governments and free markets that turn their back on religious and moral principle in favor of a money-matters-only approach know nothing of liberty, but only of a collision course with anarchy and tyranny, and you can be sure to be tersely bombarded with a hostile and hearty "Bah!" followed by "Humbug!" To these lovers of a boundless laissez-faire, freedom of choice is the highest form of liberty; moral restraint is freedoms worst enemy and "free" trade is the guarantor of world freedom. Thus, Most Favored Nation (MFN) Trade status for blood drenched Red China, makes sense to them. They are gluttons without eyes, slave traders without ears, and intellectuals without a conscience. They, also, are historians who know nothing of their heritage. Forgotten, is that their liberty was won by Boston Citizens who dumped British Tea into the harbor; by American lawyers who impoverished themselves by refusing to practice in protest to the British Stamp Act, and by American women who turned away superior and cheaper British clothing in favor of homespun. Why? Because Independence mattered more than financial comfort, and Interdependence was eyed suspiciously, as it should be, as a threat to liberty. Slight infringements upon axioms were not to be ignored. It was not that the British taxed them, (the Colonists had their own taxes), but that the tax was imposed without representation. The tax was small and affordable, yet, the principle of consent was great and sacred. So what of Red China? The violation of principle by Red China, is far greater than the worst British brutes could ever have dreamed of. Here is a nation which bathed its soil with the blood of 40 million of its own people for the saintly cause of economics! Here is a nation which has invaded its neighbors in Korea, and Vietnam, and secretly fought us in both nations. Today, here is a nation that slays babies, or leaves those who live abandoned, abused and molested in state run orphanages; here is a nation that imprisons writers, Internet users, teachers, citizens, and religionists for thinking too freely; and here is a nation that does this because it values the stability of its economic order more than religious principle. Indeed, even China's free market reforms are imprisoned by Communism's unique vocabulary. So beware. China defines decentralization, as did Nazi Germany. As regions, communities, or factories (some U.S. owned) which operate by only one rule of law, the Communist cause be served and the rest be damned. If that means imprisonment without a trial, torture for a word, confiscation of property for "community" use, rape for bodily gratification, or merely just the threat of these, then so be it. An "independent" free-market-money-making business means the factory owner, who also works for the state, may freely choose to surround his factory with barbed wire fences, may freely choose to employ machine gun toting guards, may freely choose to enforce subhuman working, sleeping, and eating conditions, may freely choose to insist employees work 12 to 14 hour days with little or no pay, may freely choose to limit employees to 8 minutes daily for human excretion and may freely choose to abolish letter writing to relatives and may freely choose to hire a workforce, 20 percent of whom are little children. They may, also, because they are free to do as they please, choose to imprison for up to 14 years, send to re-education camps, or simply make "disappear," any who protest or try to escape from the bosses exercise of freedom of choice. Free markets and decentralization in China are at best patterned after the fascist model Lenin devised and Hitler practiced. And so we must ask the Scrooge-like worshippers of the Golden Calf of Free Trade in the Republican Party: Does morality matter? Isn't China an example of what happens when over-arching and eternal religious principles are sacrificed to the Golden Calf of money-matters-most? Shouldn't we avoid, a Scrooge-like, turning of our eyes from the children (and adults) of China, and those who she may yet one day invade - who have suffered, who do now suffer, or who may yet suffer under the Godless tyranny of want and ignorance? Shall we refuse to hear the confessions of Chinese rulers who see foreign aid and Band-Aid free market concessions as but a rigged game of hangman, where naive and greedy participants will one day have their necks duly snapped like twigs, even as they pile their coins up higher and higher before the golden alter of Humanism? We cannot. We must look back to our roots, where men like George Washington supported economic measures against the threat of tyranny, because first, "war was a last resort," and second, he hoped that "starving their trade and manufactures" would bring "their attention to our rights and privileges." The Colonists got the King's attention, and we are the beneficiaries of the sacrifices of our forefathers. If we hope to maintain the gift they gave us, and see true liberty someday bless China, it is time to stand up once again for religion and morality, stop turning a blind eye to tyranny, and stop pretending we are the Capitalists Dickens said we were. *************** Steve Farrell is a widely published research writer. CalNews, Liberty Caucus, Ether Zone, Enter Stage Right, Spin Tech Magazine, OpinioNet, ConEye and NewsMax.com carry his column. Projects include his upcoming book Democrats In Drag: Another Look at the Republican Party. Please e-mail your comments and/or media requests to Steve at Cyours76@hotmail.com.

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