The child forces a lock
If you have children (or maybe you remember your own childhood), then you will have seen a child try to force something, like a key in a lock or the buckle on a belt, or a door when something is caught in the frame below the hinge. When the thing does not go, you and I stop, back off and reassess, but the child applies more force until the thing bends, warps or breaks. Crack! Oops.
It seems to me that our nation’s leading free traders increasingly approach U.S. trade policy in such a manner. The thing the free trader forces however, is not a key, a buckle or a door, but an economy and a nation. One wonders what it would take to teach today’s free trade theorists the simple wisdom to stop, back off and reassess. What exactly is so important to them about the theory, anyway, that for its sake they insist on pounding every last millimeter of the square national peg into the round international hole?
Now I wish to change the topic slightly, from trade as such to politics, to the matter of the kinds of people of whom political parties are built. The Republican party, led most forthrightly by the current president, has dreamt of recruiting Hispanics, blacks, muslims, and so on into the party. Excepting respecting muslims (a great people with a deep culture fundamentally inimical to ours), it would be pleasant if the dream came true and surely it was worth a solid try, but despite strenuous efforts the dream has not come true yet, nor is there much sign that it might. A sizable minority of Hispanics and a small minority of blacks (like Thomas Sowell) vote Republican because they love America and want to associate with the party of American virtue. Most of the rest vote Democratic for the sake of ethnic solidarity, which is exactly the opposite of what the Republicans are trying to sell them. We Republicans should stop the futile selling. They are not buying, and worse, they see us as pandering—which in fact we are. The few Sowells of the nation will stand with us and we welcome them most cordially. The rest, we should focus on defeating at the polls.
To defeat them, we need more votes, and heretofore I believe that we Republicans have overlooked the most obvious source of such votes. That source is Democratic industrial unionized labor. Too many Republicans harbor a strange distaste for Joe Lunchbox and the men of steel. Such Republicans should get to know a few Joe Lunchboxes in real life—not the union-building agitators, but America’s top-flight, dedicated, highly skilled industrial workers; the guys who make the mighty wheels of American industry turn—because those people and their families are the salt of the earth: fiercely patriotic, deeply traditional, culturally American to the bone. You and I need to realize that it is no longer the 1930s. Not since the nineteenth century has the Democratic party snarled with such barely disguised hostility to the men of steel and their families as it does today. The increasingly unnatural division between Republicans and industrial labor is going to cause our country tremendous harm, by keeping Democrats in power, until we Republicans can swallow our pride and invite the realignment. The Democratic party is the party of the ethnic minorities and there really is not much we Republicans can do about this (we have tried, oh how we have tried); but it is the Republican party, not the Democratic, which is the twenty-first century Party of the People.
But are we Republicans not the party of enterprise? And is not unionized labor the great foe of enterprise? Readers, friends, fellow Republicans, please hear me: times have changed. Times have changed radically. Recognizing that change is what this blog is all about. The industrial labor unions are indeed imperfect. Because of the very kind of thing a labor union is, a union is not a meritocratic organization as such; it does indeed foster a certain levelling spirit among its own members. The leadership of the biggest unions is often corrupt. I grant these facts. However, unionism is seldom hostile to small business, which is the Republican brand of enterprise; and to internationalized big business, today’s Democratic party is at least as friendly as the Republican. Who the Democrats are operationally unfriendly to are the men of steel and their families. In the 1970s and 1980s, we Republicans made an honorable place for white southern Democrats at our table. There is no good reason, other than blind adherence to outdated politics, why in the 2000s and 2010s we should not make an equally honorable place for unionized industrial labor. We are the friends not the foes of the people.
But to earn the loyalty of such natural future Republicans, we present Republicans must abandon our fanatical attachment as a party to the discreditable, anti-American ideology of free trade. And why should we hesitate to abandon it, even so? Free trade is manifestly bad for America.
Let it be understood: Opposition to free trade does not mean opposition to trade. Far from it. We Americans want to trade many things with many peoples, just as we always have done. Opposition to free trade means a balanced recognition that the lowest possible prices at Wal-Mart are not the only national good to be sought. It means a balanced assessment that the benefits of trade are not free but come at a price. Historically from Washington through FDR, Americans achieved this balance by means of a tariff, under which Americans grew to be the wealthiest, happiest, most secure, most independent advanced people on earth. The economic nationalist seeks a return to that old wisdom.
HJH
P.S. Given the current political environment, I would hardly expect readers of such a blog as this unanimously to concur with my characterization of President Bush as “forthright.” I am willing to stand by the characterization nevertheless. I would tend to observe that some understandably frustrated Americans had confused inflexibility, unwisdom, poor judgment, unrealism, pride, unimagination, a certain mild cronyism, a general intolerance of dissent, and (it must be said) just some plain back luck on the president’s part with untruthfulness. This president is a tragic character straight out of a good old country song. Republicans should never have nominated him for the presidency, but I am not sure that the man even knows how to tell a deliberate lie. One of the very best things about President Bush—a president I disapproved of back when his approval ratings still stood north of 60 percent—is that, when he tells you something, you can accept it without concern to be the truth as he perceives it.
I admit that there is no debating this point. Either you agree or you don’t. Although it is possible to prove someone a liar, it is pretty hard to prove someone a reliable teller of the truth. Be that as it may, I wish to decline to join the bandwagon (all the rage these days, it seems) of misjudging this president to be a liar.
The matter is beside the point, of course. There hardly remains a faction of the Republican party not impatient to run the clock out on President Bush and nominate a Republican of other stripe, excepting the small but growing Republican faction that would tend to prefer to impeach the president (for his own good and everyone else’s) and thus speed his removal along. George W. Bush is irrelevant to this. The impending political realignment of industrial labor has nothing to do with Mr. Bush and everything to do with the political improbability that the Democratic party can indefinitely, simultaneously pander to government employees, ethnic minorities, bitter feminists, liberal intellectuals, tongue-studded perverts, social misfits and patriotic industrial labor. Politically, something has got to give. Today’s Democratic party coalition is unnatural. —HJH
July 16th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Howard,
A good plea, but why should “unionized” industrial workers trust Republicans after their many decades of union-busting, sponsering ‘Right to Work’ laws etc? Besides, union membership, and hard industry jobs anyway have declined in large part thanks to GOP policies. At the top, there used to be such a specie as a Labor-friendly elected Republican, but I can’t think of any major GOP player who is today. Right now it is some elected Dems who are assaulting the Free Trade dogma the most. The GOP has to continue pandering to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and I think that any protectionist would agree that this is not ‘good for America’.And the GOP has freaks in their rank and file that to some are just as unwholesome as the ones the Democrats have(the reason I registered independent).
Liked your child&lock analogy btw. Gets me that the GOP, who tries to monopolize this ‘Family Values’ business, are all so for Americans to protect their hearth and home(everybody agrees on that), but at the same time enable the un-protection of the economy of the Big Family - the USA. Not ‘America’s Party’ in my book. Maybe they love Free Trade so much because it is based on ‘faith’ and it has a religious ring to it??
Mitch/Redoubt10
July 16th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Mitch:
The right-to-work laws are indeed a sticking point. I do not have the answer to them, because like almost 100 percent of Republicans I do tend to feel that right-to-work laws are basically correct in principle—yet these laws are anathema to the industrial and trade unions. I do understand and respect why this is so. Someone more creative than I needs to conceive a compromise acceptable to both sides, fair to all Americans. This will not soon be done.
On the other hand, I am not closed to persuasion that right-to-work is simply wrong. I used to be a free trader; maybe I am a future used-to-be right-to-worker! You still know more about the topic than I.
Your other points I already pretty much agree with. No argument there. My plea at this point is more to the GOP to drop the general anti-union attitude than to labor to join the GOP, but I hope of course that labor is listening. Unionized industrial labor will not leave the Democratic party, anyway, as long as they are happy there—but you and I both know that labor has been seething at their ongoing, low-level betrayal by the Democrats for thirty years. At least the Republicans have been above-board foes.
As long as the Republicans were winning elections without labor, Republicans could afford the luxury of treating labor as a traditional enemy. No longer. The outdated tradition of enmity between the GOP and labor makes about as much sense today as does the outdated tradition of enmity between the U.S. and the U.K. Both traditions have long outlived their usefulness. Times have changed. You remind me again that the Republicans are the Christian party (Democrats dispute this, but that’s not my problem; if Democrats want to be Christian, too, fine for them; there’s plenty of room ’round the Christmas tree). Well, good Christian warriors seek reconciliation with old foes whenever conditions permit. My message to Republicans: start seeking reconciliation with this old foe.
Howard
July 17th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Howard,
Yeah, Labor isn’t too keen on the Dems either because of the Clintonite/Blue Dog/ WSJ wing that until recently has been setting the trade paces. The DLC is still full of folks like this.Organized Labor at one time were inclined to Free Trade back in the days like the 60s and 50s when we still had balanced trade, even surpluses in some years, and trade liberalization seemed to be working. This all unraveled in the early 70s.
Personally, I can witness many things that is wrong with organized labor, i.e., they can use some internal reforming themselves that encourages more initiative, work ethic in the rank and file instead of their hang-ups with collective bargaining and the like, sometimes over minor stupid crap. But one can’t be too picky these days who they choose for allies against Free Trade globalism.In comparison to the shenanigans of multinational corporations and the politicians they have in their pockets, corruption and stong armed lobbying at the Union level is miniscule. So, go Union.
Many would love it if the GOP returned to their protectionist roots, myself included. The goal I think is to make both of the Big Two parties protectionists so it would give the voter more choice over the details, the ‘hows’ of protectionism. The Dems are seemingly making the first moves in this direction. If the Dems get ‘there’, perhaps the GOP will follow suit - just as the Dems aped the GOP in the 90s with Free Trade treaties and Clinton out free-traded them. That’s why I could never understand why so many conservative Republicans hated him so much;I hate Clinton and Gore because they were such a sell-outs on economics and trade, for irony(and Gore, who has appointed himself the Ecological Czar, was Clinton’s attack dog on NAFTA. This is really hypocritical given that high volumes of un-regulated international trade increases the volumne of pollution - something that Gore hand-rings over. Sheesh!);-)