Conservative Heritage Times

American Committee for Peace in Chechnya was founded in 2004–it’s gone now– by the usual suspects, Right and Left–Frank Gaffney, Bill Kristol, Michael Ledeen–we have done this drill so often it gets boring, that same old cast of those who contrived a case for Republicans to support invading Iraq, as Saddam done 9/11 dontchaknow?

At the time, the Guardian’s John Laughland noted that the war on terror stopped in Chechnya for this crowd of the usual suspects.  The purpose, as always, was to use a force to destabilize Russia, just as they had used radical Islamists in Afghanistan against the then Soviet Russia many years prior.

It goes hand in hand with CIA or Pentagon intervention abroad, that the United States receives a boat load of refugees from said country, be it Hmong, Somalian, Iraqi, or…Chechnya.

There are certainly more angles to pursue, especially, on-going, bipartisan support (e.g. Obama/Clinton/Kerry, McCain, Graham, Rubio) from the usual suspects, to work with jihadists in Syria (including those from Chechnya as reported March 6).

Lone-wolf street theater, or some actor in the Black Arts will be the subject of speculation for the while, but  in the coming days of analysis, let it sink in that the members of the ACPC will sleep uninterrupted tonight.

For additional reading: Sibel Edmonds on the Neocons & Chechnya.

 

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By Ian Fletcher

Everyone knows we live in a brave new world of globalization.

And like a lot of thing that everyone knows, it isn’t so.

Not only was the globalization of the late 19th century, with formal colonial empires spanning the world, just as profound as today, it generated a similar class of professional sophist to justify it all.

Think Thomas Friedman and his ilk are original? Think again. I just discovered a most amusing clip from the BBC TV production of Anthony Trollope’s 1875 novel The Way We Live Now, a startlingly modern satire of corrupt yuppies in Victorian London.

See here: youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gksJ1-8ewBs

Free trade didn’t work out too well for Britain, which had risen to power as a protectionist nation and began to decline after embracing free trade, as I’ve written here.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

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Unemployment is still terrible, but there’s still plenty of work in historical revisionism. Here’s the latest on the ongoing reinterpretation of the War Between the States, or the Civil War, I mean, The War to Free the Slaves. Courtesy of the Huffington Post:

Issued 150 years ago this week, President Abraham Lincoln’s initial proclamation that he would free the South’s slaves is enjoying a public showcase to match its increased profile among scholars.

Lincoln released his lesser-known preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept. 22, 1862 – 100 days before the final version. The first of the two documents has gained importance among historians as a turning point in the Civil War because of a change in thinking over the past 50 years.

Not that long ago, historians would explain the conflict in terms of clashing economic interests, States’ Rights, and different views of the Constitution. They acknowledged that slavery was an issue, but was not Lincoln’s or the North’s primary motivation. Historians would point to Lincoln’s own statement that if he could keep the South in the Union with slavery, he would do so. Historians would also refer to Congress’ July 22, 1861 “Joint Resolution on the War,” that proclaimed:

Resolved: . . . That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.

Then there was the Corwin Amendment, which Lincoln supported, that would deprive Congress of the power to “abolish or interfere” with slavery. That effort to keep the South in the Union failed, however.

Apparently, the people who lived and fought and wrote history during and the decades after the WBTS didn’t know what they were doing.

So why do court historians scholars now say that slavery was central to the war? Here’s what the Huffington Post article says about that:

Slavery and its abolition were once treated by historians as minor parts of the story behind the Civil War, but that began to change after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, said historian Edward Ayers, president of the University of Richmond. Since then, the steps that led to emancipation have been recognized for their importance – with the Sept. 22 proclamation being a prime example.

“All our thinking about this has undergone remarkable recasting over the last 50 years,” Ayers said. “People begin now with slavery as the fundamental fact and emancipation and less with union as being the sole focus of attention.”

So, it was the Civil Rights Revolution that caused this “remarkable recasting” of the cause of the WBTS. And as regular readers of this blog are aware, DC promoted that cultural and political revolution to advance its aggressive foreign policy: By repackaging DC as the great liberator of blacks in the 19th century and the present day, DC was able to counter the USSR’s “African Socialism” initiative during the Cold War.

And of course, all who serve the Empire today, from Pentagon employees to court historians, continue to peddle the myth: Bush took oil-rich Iraq in the name of “liberating” that lucky country.

Bottom line: The Civil War was the first war in history NOT about power or money, but doing good deeds for others. Guess that’s what makes America “exceptional.”

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Who advocates the destruction of traditional society and the nation?

You’d be surprised.

We hardly bat an eye when we read that Neo-Communists, including followers of mass murderer and totalitarian Leon Trotsky, openly gather at the Left Forum at Pace University to promote the Marxist goal of one-world government.

It’s who their friends are that might surprise you.

It’s a well-known fact that leftist billionaire George Soros advocates and financially supports the Open Borders agenda as a means of creating a one-world government. He’s not the only wealthy supporter of the end of the traditional nation-state.  It’s not hard to figure out why — with a glut of labor on the market, wages come tumbling down, boosting profits.That’s not just a problem for blue-collar workers, but increasingly for white-collare workers as well, who are seeing their incomes drop, or even losing their jobs, because of the infllux of low-wage H1B immigrants.

It’s a scam, of course, and scammers don’t like to draw attention to their scam.  So if the victims yelp in protest, they must be silenced. These days, there are many shills eager to shame those who do not welcome the importation of cheap labor.

For example, here’s Business Insider Magazine featuring an article entitled “Meet The Leaders Of America’s Twisted White Power Movement.” This strange attack piece starts with a reference to Wade Michael Page, who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, then lists the names of various neo-Nazis and Klansmen who just happen to be in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s files. Included in that list is Peter Brimelow of the pro-immigration-enforcement VDare.

But what’s the real connection between those who advocate and practice violence, and those who, like Brimelow, work peacefully within the system to protect jobs and keep alien criminals from entering this country? Nothing — it’s a blatant smear job.

And check out this whopper from the Business Insider story:

Keep in mind, we are not accusing any of these people of crimes or implying that they might commit crimes. We are simply reporting their inclusion in SPLC’s intelligence files, and why they merited that inclusion.

“Oh, I’m not saying anything bad about these folks — the SPLC made me do it!” How typical of the spinelessness in what’s left of the home of the brave.

Why is Business Insider parroting the SPLC’s fundraising letters? It’s not because big business gives a hoot about “social justice” or equality. What it shares with Marxists is an attraction to big, centralized government, just as ticks are attracted to fattened cows. Check out this quote from I’ll Take My Stand:

Big business has more often taken refuge behind the national government than
behind the state…to the eternal whine of big business for paternalistic and
exploitative legislation such as the tariff, the ship and railroad subsidies.
Historically, the vested interests of industrialism have not had any great use
for state rights. They are the founders of the doctrine of centralization…It
may be suggested as a principle that for the positive exploitation big business
has desired large and sweeping powers for the national government.’ (pages
86,87)

An energetic and principled opposition to bigness in all forms is one of the defining characteristics of the Southern tradition. Anyone who’s really concerned about the middle class and the exploitation by the wealthy will find that tradition is still surprisingly relevant.

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Pat Buchanan exposes “Free Trade” agreements for what they are – one-sided deals for politically connected big business that enrich the few and impoverish the majority. It happened with NAFTA, says Pat, and now it’s happening with the Korean Free Trade agreement – just as the critics warned it would.

What should we demand from our trade policies? Pat puts it directly and simply: “Instead of a trade policy crafted for the benefit of multinationalist corporations, we need a new trade policy that puts America and Americans first.”

Of course, the internationalists of the left whoop with glee at the prospect of Americans being reduced to a Third-World standard of living. For them, equality is what it’s all about. No wonder Karl Marx supported Free Trade:

But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade.
Karl Marx, “On the Question of Free Trade” – January 9, 1848

But putting “America First,” as Pat counsels above, is portrayed by the ruling elite and its mouthpieces as “racist.” The Southern Poverty Law Center explicitly links opposition to “Free Trade” with “extremism”: “NAFTA and other international economic pacts are deeply resented by radical rightists, among others, who see them as evidence of the growing power of a global elite, or ‘New World Order’.”

The globalist enforcers smear our desire to protect our jobs as “xenophobic.” After all, enlightened people know it’s wrong to care more about Americans than foreigners.

Meanwhile, the ultra rich shovel in the dough – and their mouthpieces get their cut.

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Sorry, I normally try to avoid sensationalism, but this one is just too good to pass up.

During a heated conversation in the lobby of the Westfields Marriott hotel yesterday, Bilderberg members expressed their desire to see Ron Paul die in a plane crash, according to veteran journalist Jim Tucker’s inside source.

You know Ron Paul is on the right track because the Powers That Be are so bothered by him. You can tell a man by his friends and his enemies. Ron Paul has the right enemies. I seriously doubt many Bilderbergers are wishing Romney dead.

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Here is an article from our friend Peter Gemma on the link between immigration and free trade. (Editor’s note: This article was previously misleadingly labeled a book review. It has been corrected to more accurately reflect the content of the article.)

In his book, The Open-Borders Network: How a Web of Ethnic Activists, Journalists, Corporations, Politicians, Lawyers, and Clergy Undermine U.S. Border Security and National Sovereignty, author Kevin Lamb —managing editor of this journal — makes this important observation: “The propaganda in favor of uncontrolled immigration from today’s business leaders echoes the arguments California business magnates made in support of bringing in hundreds of thousands of Chinese coolies to work on the railroads and in agriculture in the 1880s. Yet there is an important difference. Until recently, advocates for American business took care to claim that their demands served the interests of the nation and its people. Today, a growing and significant segment of America’s most important business interests is not only striving for, but openly espouses, the opening of America’s borders and the eclipse of its national sovereignty.”¹

The special interests Lamb writes about are what President Dwight Eisenhower dubbed “the military-industrial complex”: a powerful conglomerate consisting of Wall Street moguls, multi-national corporate elites, and naïve politicians, who on this issue, will march under a “free trade” banner in anybody’s parade.

Corporate elites and political globalists are mounting an assault on American immigration restriction laws, job growth policies — and U.S. sovereignty. Their weaponry includes so-called “free trade” treaties, and the establishment of regulatory agencies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to facilitate them. The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an example of a formidable battalion in the open borders army. Its membership includes over 800 chief executives, some 200 government leaders, numerous high-ranking officials from regional and international organizations, and some 300 scientists, artists, and representatives of the media. Major firms from all sectors of business and industry are represented. WEF is part of the establishment who, as Lamb says, advocate tearing down America’s borders, stealing jobs from the working class, and neutralizing U.S. national sovereignty.

See more…

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Without differences, there are no unique perspectives. Without unique perspectives, there is no innovation.

So says an ad for Lockheed Martin, which features a photo of a Black woman and an Asian woman beaming over a model F-22 fighter jet. It’s not clear if their evident pride is from the weapon these multicultural Vulcanettes have apparently forged, or from their invention of “innovation” itself. The ad concludes:

One company. One team. Where diversity contributes to mission success.

“Diversity” figures prominently in American business and government. A recent release from General Patrick J. O’Reilly of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, entitled “We’re Diverse and Mission Ready,” cites “diversity” as an agency priority: “Our inclusive workforce consists of a balanced cross-section of individuals working in various disciplines. Together, they enable us to advance all facets of our engineering and acquisition responsibilities.”

That settles it: We’re in the grip of Trofim Lysenko’s legacy. Continue Reading »

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Ian Fletcher

At least one Republican presidential candidate (Roemer) is actually good on trade issues. At least one (Romney) may be at least o-kay if he really means what he says.  At least one (Cain) is an odd mix of very good and very bad. And at least one (Perry) seems to be just naïve and corrupt on the subject.

But I have yet to report on a candidate who is proactively, deliberately, ideologically wrong on trade as a matter of high principle.

Until now.  His name is Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich is, of course, already familiar to Americans from his unhappy stint as House Speaker in the mid 1990s, a stint which ended up disappointing both Democrats and his own Republicans.  Republicans, of course, abandoned him as leader in 1999 after he led his party to the worst-ever  Congressional loss by a party not in control of the White House.

And there was all that nastiness in 1997 about  allegedly using tax-deductible charitable donations to fund a non-charitable college course he taught—and of then lying about it to the House Ethics Committee. Was he innocent? Well, the House voted 395-28 to fine him an unprecedented $300,000 as part of a deal to avoid a full hearing, if that helps the reader any.

Gingrich seemed, as recently as a year or so ago, to have been relegated to well-paid has-been land—decorated, of course, with the polite fiction of his being an elder statesman of the party.

During this earlier career, Gingrich racked up a record of supporting every major wrong move on trade issues the United States has made in recent decades. To wit:

·         In 1993, he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Which wasn’t even enough, according to him.  He wanted to eventually add Chile to the deal with the aim of eventually expanding it to cover the entire New World.)

·         In 1994, he  voted for creation of the World Trade Organization and American membership.

·        In 1998, he supported Most Favored Nation (now  known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations) status with China.

Gingrich has been openly contemptuous of American sovereignty when it comes to trade.  He said, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in June 1994,

I am just saying that we need to be honest about the fact that we are transferring from the United States at a practical level significant authority to a new organization. This is a transformational moment. I would feel better if the people who favor this would just be honest about the scale of change.

This is very close to Maastricht [a key European Union treaty], and twenty years from now we will look back on this as a very important defining moment. This is not just another trade agreement. This is adopting something which twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the U.S. Congress rejected. I am not even saying we should reject it; I, in fact, lean toward it.

Gingrich’s naiveté with regards to America’s most formidable economic adversary, the People’s Republic of China, is astonishing. The following PBS interview excerpt is almost painful to read, pure Thomas Friedman fantasy:

INTERVIEWER: Was it a good thing to allow China to become an open trading partner?

NEWT GINGRICH: Absolutely…Trade increases the likelihood that you and they will engage in win-win activities. The difference between politics and trade is that in politics I may take something from you to give to somebody else, even though you don’t want to lose it, so I raise your taxes. I charge you a fee. I confiscate your farm. In a free market you only do the things that make you happy in order for me to get the things that make me happy, and if we’re not both happy the trade doesn’t occur. So free markets dramatically lower the friction of human relationships and increase the relative pleasure and the relative success of human relationships. The more the Chinese and Americans [sit] down together to create more wealth, the happier they’ll be with each other, the less likely we’ll have conflict.

No concept of state capitalism at all. No concept that under state capitalism, capitalism strengthens, rather than disciplines, the state.  No concept of mercantilism, or the idea that trade can be practiced by foreign nations as rivalry, with a deliberate agenda to weaken the U.S.

Gingrich doesn’t seem to have wised up since, either.  If one consults his current campaign website’s section on jobs and the economy, there is no mention of trade issues. I guess they’re just not that important, despite a $500 billion-a-year trade deficit. The closest he comes to trade issues is to suggest some policies to “strengthen the dollar.”  While I’m sure the use of the word “strengthen” may make some conservative hearts beat faster, a strong dollar is actually something that has been inflicted on us by Chinese currency manipulation, it is a bad thing, and we need to go in the other direction if we ever expect to balance our trade.

How did Gingrich end up with these appalling ideas?  I can’t plumb his personality, but one of his worst liabilities, on a personal and political level, is his astonishing pseudo-intellectualism.  Intellectually pretentious politicians are a dime a dozen in, say, France, but they are quite rare here, so he stands out for this. As a PhD and former history professor, he seems to instinctively believe that his thoughts go on a higher level than other politicians.

This is a recipe for disaster.

First, intellectuals rarely make good politicians. It’s just a different skill set. A historian can spend a lifetime pondering a question and then give a carefully hedged and nuanced answer. A politician must vote Yea or Nay today. A physicist can discover a theory than only a dozen other people in the world understand, win the Nobel for it, and deserve it.  A politician in a democracy must think and act in ways that millions can understand.

This doesn’t mean politicians shouldn’t be smart, but it does mean that they generally shouldn’t be intellectuals.

It’s no accident that we haven’t had a decent intellectual president since Teddy Roosevelt, who could have gotten tenure teaching history at any university he wanted and whose naval history of the War of 1812 is still a standard work on the topic. The Founders’ generation had a lot of highly intellectual political figures. But that’s unsurprising, as this was a time when the ideology this country is based on was new, so it took genuine brains to understand and fight for it.

What’s even worse is that Newt Gingrich isn’t even an actual intellectual so much as a pseudo-intellectual.  He’s not somebody who has mastered an actual intellectual discipline and takes seriously the idea of intellectual discipline—that is, thinking not however one might wish, but in accord with certain canons derived from objective reality.  He’s more somebody who just loves ideas. Especially big ideas. I am told his staffers used to joke about having a whole filing cabinet labeled “Newt’s ideas” and a file folder labeled “Newt’s good ideas.” There’s a gaseousness, a love of big for the sake of big, a preference for the intellectually flashy over the boring truth, that runs through what he writes and says.  And it’s thus no surprise he’s so hot for globalism, this being one of the biggest, flashiest, most gaseous ideas since the death of Marxism.

America has already had one go at being the lab for Prof. Gingrich’s speculations; we don’t need another.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

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I thought Mormons shunned alcohol and drugs. This statement from the Romney campaign makes me wonder what Mitt is smoking or drinking:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney says he will offer a more assertive foreign policy than President Barack Obama, promising increased military spending, a strong deterrent against Iran and an investment in missile defense systems.

Uh, Mitt, have you noticed that WE’RE BROKE? And that the Bush/Obama wars are a major cause of our financial troubles? You haven’t noticed? Well, here’s Pat Buchanan serving up a healthy dose of reality:

We are going to have to reduce the benefits and raise the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. Cut and cap Great Society programs. Downsize the military, close bases and transfer to allies responsibility for their own defense. Or we are going to have to raise taxes—and not just on millionaires and billionaires, but Middle America.

And if our leaders cannot impose these sacrifices, the markets will, as we see in Europe, where the day of reckoning is at hand. Ours is next.

As Pat says, it’s time we started looking out for ourselves and letting the rest of the world look out for itself. Ending the Empire is something all conservatives should support. The most serious problems that conservatives face, from open borders, to deficit spending, to affirmative action, all stem from the central government’s pursuit of global empire, as explained here.

Liberty can only exist in a small, culturally based body politic, as countless examples from history and the daily news prove. Mitt Romney doesn’t get it; he thinks we should sacrifice even more to expand DC’s empire when our survival requires us to abandon the monster.

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The spreading “Occupy Wall Street” protests, which we noted yesterday, are not only filled with the usual leftist silliness of drum beating and group yoga (yeah, that’ll fill your enemies with fear!), but once again illustrates the left’s wrong-headed aims.

Here’s how confused these people are: The “Occupy Kansas City” protesters wanted to bring in members of the far right who agreed that big business was responsible for middle-class suffering. They see themselves representing 99% of the population standing up to the 1% that controls the wealth. That sparked this outburst from a former leftist ally:

I have just read posts on the two OCCUPY KC Facebook sites that indicate that outright racists, even nazis would be welcome to join in by some since they agree with parts of the agenda. One site went so far as to say we need to find the one thing we all, including them, agree on, then we can gather together. If nazis and white supremacists are part of the 99 percent, then count me out until we weed down that percentage a bit.

What these folks don’t get is that the mega-corporations they so despise are the chief promoters and profiteers of the scheme to obliterate borders and nations in order to globalize both labor and capital. Both the cool cats and the fat cats want one world government, but while the first group thinks it’ll bring peace, love, and brotherhood, the second lusts for profit and power. In other words, the leftist agitators are free volunteers at the service of big business and big government.

Over at TakiMag, the ever-helpful Jim Goad spells it out for them:

The whole “Occupy Wall Street” thing was launched in July when consumer-culture-hating Canadian magazine Adbusters ran an ad asking whether America was “Ripe for a Tahrir Movement.” Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn seems to hate all things American and love all things global. He openly endorsed “Not just a carbon tax, but a global across-the-board pricing system.” Adbusters also hosted a “One Flag” competition to design a flag symbolizing “global citizenship.”

Over the past decade, Adbusters Media Foundation is said to have received over $300,000 from the giant progressive golden calf known as the Tides Foundation, which in turn has received millions in donations from culture-busting globalist currency-meddler George Soros’s Open Society Institute. Adbusters is also said to have received an additional $176,500 “from organizations associated with…George Soros’s Democracy Alliance.” The US Day of Rage site, another agitant in the Occupy Wall Street movement, has also allegedly received Tides Foundation cash injections.

The multicult left likes to imagine no countries — and no religion, too. They imagine all the people living life in peace. They see themselves as dreamers.

But what they don’t realize is that they’re not the only ones.

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Don’t look now, but the basic relationship between the individual and the government is quickly being redefined — and not for the better:

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

In a 3-2 decision, Justice Steven David writing for the court said if a police officer wants to enter a home for any reason or no reason at all, a homeowner cannot do anything to block the officer’s entry.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

David said a person arrested following an unlawful entry by police still can be released on bail and has plenty of opportunities to protest the illegal entry through the court system.

Yeah, those old Western European traditions are passé in an empire, where all cultures (except one) are equal. The tradition under English common law that recognized the right of a man to defend his castle just won’t do in a multicult regime. Back then, if the King’s men act illegally, a citizen had the right to resist — it was a type of nullification over illegal acts, another right the ruling elites wish to eradicate.

Instead, we’re supposed to submit to a central government that claims all power, all sovereignty. Re-read that last paragraph in the above quote. It states that the Empire’s subjects are not to worry about the abuse of government power, because they can rely on — yes, the government — to make sure everything’s all right. Feel better?

I prefer this view of the matter:

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It may be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storms may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot enter.”

But as the Anglo-Celtic majority does away with itself, expect the legal and political traditions that it nourished to fade away with it.

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“Antifa” protesters bristle as they watch Jared Taylor hold a news conference in Charlotte, NC. An undercover cop, dressed in a leather jacket and baseball cap, stands ready.

Here’s my TakiMag article on an under-reported phenomenon, the antifa movement. It grew out of the punk rock scene, but is more reminiscent of Mussolini’s Black Shirts – hence the title.

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This series is a work-in-progress. Your feedback would be appreciated.

That group of conservatives often identified as paleoconservatives are usually characterized by three issues on which they differ from “regular” (i.e. movement) conservatives. They are non-interventionist on foreign policy, they were immigration restrictionists before immigration restriction was cool, and they are skeptical of free trade. (There is more to paleoconservatism than these three issues, but this should suffice for the sake of this discussion.)

One curious exception to this categorization has often been Southern conservatives. (When I say Southern conservatives I don’t just mean conservatives who happen to be from the South although obviously there is some overlap. I mean those conservatives who consciously come at their conservatism from a uniquely Southern perspective.) Southern conservatives have generally been regarded as a subset of paleoconservatives, but many Southern conservatives have been more reluctant than their other paleo peers to embrace “protectionism” and “protective” tariffs (as opposed to a revenue tariff). (I use quotation marks around protectionism, not because I don’t think it is a real thing, but because I don’t think both sides necessarily agree about what the word means.)

There is a clear historical reason for this. Southern conservatives have naturally become well versed in defending the Southern cause in the War Between the States, and one of those causes was opposition to a high protective tariff, which was rightly seen as intended to benefit one section of the country, Northern merchants, at the expense of another, Southern agrarians. So Southern conservatives have been slower to embrace protectionist tariffs that they view as intended to benefit some (industry primarily) arguably at the expense of others.

Of course there are exceptions to this. The average man on the street conservative in the South may be just as likely or more to be skeptical of free trade, than his man on the street conservative Northern counterpart. I am speaking here primarily of an identifiable subset of Southern conservative thinkers who would otherwise be easily characterized as paleocons. This reluctance to whole heartedly endorse protectionist trade measures among historically attuned Southern conservatives is evident in the blogosphere and paleo commentariate.

And this is not just because Southern conservatives have to a greater degree adopted laissez-faire free market ideology. On the contrary, Southern conservatives (and paleocons in general) are more likely to recognize the importance of an economics (and politics) of the human scale and to be skeptical of economic reductionism and “economic man” thinking. I believe what is more at work here, besides historical sensibilities, is a skepticism toward nationalism in all its manifestations (and protectionism is often couched as economic nationalism) and a healthy skepticism that the Feds could create a rational and fair (unbeholden to powerful lobbies) economic nationalist agenda even if it were deemed desirable and constitutional. (While no conservative would doubt the constitutionality of tariffs per se, the “industrial policy” that often accompanies an economic nationalist agenda could be viewed as constitutionally suspect depending on what exactly is being proposed.)

I will leave this debate to the various partisans. My point with this essay is to point out that Southern conservatives who might otherwise be reluctant to embrace “protectionism,” should recognize the danger of the proposed KORUS FTA to another issue that is near and dear to their hearts, states’ rights. A vote on KORUS is imminent. Obama could drop it in the hopper any time he thinks would best facilitate its passage. It is time to put pointy headed discussions like the one above aside for a later day, and work to stop the KORUS broadside to US sovereignty and states’ rights.

According to Americans for Free and Fair Trade, KORUS “using language almost lifted from NAFTA … obligates the federal government to force U.S. states to conform state laws to every single provision in the 1000-page agreement – whether directly related to trade or not.” Furthermore, “Korean and other multi-national corporations could take any dispute with federal or state laws, regulations, or rules to the World Court or United Nations. Federal or state courts would have no authority over the companies.” (emphasis mine)

A person might not like all the rules and regulations individual states may impose on businesses in their state. In fact, conservative minded folks probably don’t. But those rules and regulations are a matter that is properly addressed by the people of the state and their representatives and state and federal courts if necessary. To allow foreign corporations to challenge state laws before foreign tribunals is an intolerable outrage. No self respecting Southern conservative or any other patriotic conservative should stand for this.

It is time for the various partisans in the academic free trade vs. fair trade debate to put their differences aside while we stop this KORUS outrage before it is too late. Once we have done that, then we can reengage this always entertaining debate, a debate to which Southern conservatives bring a unique and historically informed perspective.

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I am working on a series of articles on the KORUS agreement, but I thought I would post this to give CHT’s readers a taste of what is to come. Your feedback would be welcome.

Conservatives relentlessly complain, appropriately so, that the Fed Gov does too much. With the recent reemergence of Constitutionalism, this is even more the case. This Constitutionalism is characterized by the belief that the Feds can only do that which they are specifically authorized to do, primarily in Article 1 Section 8, and nothing more. This can be called the enumerated powers doctrine.

This renewed focus on enumerated powers and constitutional limits is welcomed, but it should not be forgotten that it can also be a problem when Congress fails to do those things it is specifically authorized to do. Congress is specifically authorized to regulate foreign commerce and set tariffs. But actually making laws is hard and dirty work, and trade laws are particularly fraught with political difficulties. That is why we end up with these “free trade” agreements which are negotiated by unelected trade representative that then must be “fast tracked” so as to limit debate. This represents a failure of will on the part of Congress. While this unsavory end around the normal legislative process may not be unconstitutional per se, what Congress can’t do constitutionally is fob off to supranational entities powers that are specifically vested in Congress.

Here we have an inherent problem with KORUS as with NAFTA before it. The agreement cedes authority over our domestic trade matters to the United Nations and the World Bank. Foreign corporations can challenge federal and even state laws by dragging the US before foreign tribunals. This is an intolerable outrage and no patriotic American should stand for it.

Sovereignty is an issue that unites left and right, but my main audience here is conservatives. No conservative, whether a free-trader or a fair trader, should be willing to stand by while Congress effectively punts its responsibilities to globalist bureaucrats. Let your Representative know how you feel. Tell them to vote no on the sovereignty trashing managed trade KORUS boondoggle.

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Movement conservatism has long been committed to free trade. While the base of the GOP is skeptical of  “free trade” deals, movement cons are a slightly different more ideological breed. This disconnect between the more populist base and the more ideological movement was seriously exposed during Pat Buchanan’s ’92 and ’96 runs for the GOP Presidential nomination.

There is a growing movement on the right in opposition to the KORUS FTA, however. I wonder if this anti-KORUS sentiment  is anywhere in evidence at CPAC? I’ll sniff around for evidence that it is and let you know. If any of our readers are attending CPAC and would like to report in, that would be much appreciated also.

Update: I do know that “The Donald,” who is against KORUS, spoke today.

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I was encouraged by the Chrysler Super Bowl ad. It was an obvious emotional appeal to patriotism and to bring a once proud American city that has been devastated by de-industrialization (among other things) back. I could have done without using a controversial figure like Eminem in it, but I understand that the Detroit connection was there.

Just for discussion’s sake. I thought the Bridgestone beaver ad was the best. I also like the dog running for the glass door Doritos ad and the Darth Vader Volkswagen ad. I watched the Super Bowl with some friends and the beaver ad was easily our consensus favorite.

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Here is my latest at EtherZone.

In this rambling neoconish offering (Does he write any other kind?), Robert Kagan ties together two seemingly unrelated things, the US’s relationship with Colombia and Egypt, in his ham-handed attempt to make his neoconish point that America’s actions should be guided by both our interests and our “ideals.” (Apparently Mr. Kagan had two axes to grind and only one column to do it.)

While there is much wrong with Kagan’s column and much that could be responded to, one throwaway line struck me in particular. Among other things, Kagan is hectoring, as neocons are want to do, the Obama Administration for failing to advocate sufficiently on behalf of passage of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). According to Kagan’s logic, passing the long languishing FTA would be a sort of reward to Colombia for its progress in the area of human rights and democratization.

This is the line that got my attention:

But the administration shows no inclination to push the agreement forward, even with the new free-trade-oriented Republican House sure to pass it. (emphasis mine)

Not so fast there Mr. Kagan. Me thinks Mr. Kagan needs to get out more and quit talking only to his little circle of fellow neocons and other Establishmentarians. While FTAs are broadly supported by the Establishment and a certain element of free-trade ideologues that make up a part of the conservative coalition, the base of the GOP is generally hostile to them.

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What the US should do about Egypt:

Chirp…                                               …chirp, chirp…                                                                           …chirp, chirp, chirp…                                                          ,,,chirp…

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