Conservative Heritage Times

Here is what the President should be saying about Egypt:

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

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Ralph Nader has been talking up a libertarian and progressive alliance against corporatism recently. He and Ron Paul were on Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano to discuss it. They touched on many things, but in keeping with our recent focus on the Korea – US FTA I have chosen to highlight what both men had to say about NAFTA and the WTO.

Paul said:

Paul added that he agreed with Nader on a host of issues, such as cutting the US military’s budget, ending undeclared US wars overseas, restoring civil liberties and civil rights by dumping from the Patriot Act, and withdrawing from the NAFTA and World Trade Organization agreements.

Nader called NAFTA and the WTO “sovereignty shredding and job destroying” (about min 5 of the video). I don’t normally associate liberals with concerns about sovereignty (although Nader is not your typical modern liberal) so that Nader would cite sovereignty concerns speaks to the power of that issue.

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Ian Fletcher of the US Business and Industry Council and author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work has a letter posted at News Blaze.

Someone asks why the AFL-CIO is opposing KORUS here.

Yahoo Answers asks if the Republican Party will oppose KORUS. Go there and let them know what you think.

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Trump says this is the first time he has “seriously” considered running, but third party advocates will remember that he flirted with seeking the Reform Party nomination in 2000.

Trump cites trade as his main reason for considering a run.

“The Apprentice” host cited what he called the “unfair” trade relationship between America and China and the administration’s inability to utilize the country’s top business talent in trade negotiations as his main reasons for mulling a run.

Trump says he “guess(es)” he would run as a Republican this time around.

Cross posted at IPR.

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“The Donald” thinks the Korea – US “Free Trade” Agreement is a bad deal for the US.

“Have you seen what’s happened recently with the trade pact with South Korea?” said Trump. “They ask us to sign something that only a moron would sign.”

Donald Trump has always been for fair trade. Remember that he seriously considered seeking the Reform Party nomination in 2000.

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Here is a handy link to a list of articles at Firedoglake opposing the KORUS FTA. It’s a good resource.

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My latest on the Korea – US Trade Deal is up at EtherZone. Here it is below.

On November 24, Americans were bombarded (pun intended) with the news that North Korea had fired upon the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong. This news follows on the heels of a March incident where a South Korean warship was allegedly sunk by a North Korean sub.

While events of this nature in a far off country should normally be of only humanitarian and economic interest to Americans, our country was put on edge by these unnerving developments because, for some reason, we still have nearly 30,000 US troops stationed in South Korea (many more if you include Japan, Okinawa and Guam) that would be put at immediate risk in the event of a war between North and South.

Then, less than two weeks later, we were greeted with the news that South Korea and the US had reached an agreement on a new trade deal.

Am I the only one who is a bit irked by the dichotomy of these two Korea related news items?

Some sixty years after America went to war on the Korean peninsula we are still there protecting the deadbeat South Koreans at great risk of life and treasure. And the otherwise nationalistic South Koreans seem disinclined to change this arrangement anytime soon. (Unlike our officials in Washington, the South Koreans apparently know a sweet deal when they see it.) They recently negotiated a delay (read fobbed off) a planned transfer of wartime operational command from Washington to Seoul that had been scheduled for April 2012.

I am not necessarily opposed to free trade in theory, but I am sick of Uncle Sam being a chump. South Korea wants freer access to the lucrative American marketplace. I don’t blame them. Who wouldn’t? But at the same time they want the beleaguered American taxpayer and our overextended military to continue underwriting their defense. Sounds like a good gig if you can get it – IF YOU’RE SOUTH KOREA, but if you’re America, it stinks.

South Korea needs to get off the military dole. It needs to direct more of its own money towards shoring up its own military for its own defense if such is truly necessary and quit coming with its hand out to Uncle Sugar.

Once South Korea is solely responsible for its own defense and no longer relies on a bankrupt America to protect it from its menacing neighbor to the north, then maybe we should be more in the mood to talk about granting them freer access to our marketplace, but pardon me if I remain a tad bit surly about the prospect while South Korea continues to freeload.

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I never commented on New START before it passed the Senate. I certainly did not think its passage represented an existential threat to our survival as many of its alarmist, fearmongering Russiaphobic opponents did, but I was vaguely opposed to it for the mostly visceral reason that I am just skeptical of treaties in general. Treaties seem to me to suppose the need for consensus and bilateral (or multilateral) approval and hence contrary to our ability to act unilaterally in our own interested. Again, I admit this is largely visceral, and I admit that it is not inconceivable that a treaty could be in our best interest.

For some reason Daniel Larison was VERY invested in the passage of New START. I’m not sure why he was so invested, but I think it might have had as much to do with reflexive opposition to the treaty’s interventionist, fearmongering opponents than it did that he felt the treaty would be in America’s best interests.

I think my visceral instincts have been validated by this post by Larison. (Larison’s post refers to this article by Robert Kagan.) Here are my comments below Larison’s post.

Daniel, the fact that the approval of START is hailed as a breakthrough for “internationalism” is a reason why some of us non-interventionists who are not fearmongering Russiaphobics (In fact, I have been accused of being Russiaphilic.) were not nearly as sympathetic to the treaty as you were. We clearly don’t need our current level of defense to defend us against Russia or anyone else. Why do we need a treaty to cut unnecessary arms? I realize that few of the opponents were making that case, but something about the internationalist establishment getting what they want (and the reinforcing of underlying internationalist assumptions) despite the loud objections of the base to me doesn’t bode well. (The treaty might have been broadly popular, but the base hated it as evidenced by the number of screaming e-mail alerts I received about it.)

If the opposition to KORUS contains both purist free traders who object to any amount of managed trade (Such as Ron Paul and the von Misians) and ideological opponents of free trade (like Buchanan), then I’m not sure why we shouldn’t/couldn’t have an anti-internationalist coalition in opposition to treaties that contains both anti-internationalist non-interventionists and unilateralist hawks.

I made these comments before I actually read the Kagan artcle. Reading the Kagan article confirms my instincts even more. Check this out.

… while bipartisanship is not always a virtue, in this case it has positive ramifications in the real world. Other nations need to know, at a moment when there are doubts, that the American political system can pull itself together and make a decision. Note how many of America’s allies weighed in before the vote in favor of passage. This was not just about the merits of the treaty. It was an implicit plea for the United States to show some domestic unity as a necessary foundation for world leadership. The idea that Washington could tie itself in partisan knots over such a small matter was disturbing to those who are finding themselves once again in need of a strong and capable United States.

… The internationalist coalition that passed this treaty will be critical in advancing U.S. interests over the coming years: in dealing with Iran; China; the continuing war in Afghanistan; the stabilization of Iraq; the ratification of free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama; and the maintenance of adequate defense and foreign affairs budgets. With the right presidential leadership, this muscular internationalism ought to, as it has in the past, provide the center of gravity for American foreign policy.

Read the Kagan article. (Make sure you have a barf bag handy.) If you were sympathetic to New START before, you might not be after reading this paean to “muscular internationalism.”

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GM pigs: Green ham with your eggs? :

The project here is called Enviropig. The animals inside the clean, warm barns look like normal pigs and behave like normal pigs, but they are living, breathing wonders of modern science.

Each one contains genes from mice and E.coli bacteria, which have been inserted into their DNA with absolute precision.
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The globalist goon network known as One People’s Project has updated its “Rogues’ Gallery” post on Jared Taylor, and made it clear it intends to bully him into silence again. In this post on its previous acts of intimidation against Mr. Taylor, OPP brags about assaulting him and preventing him from speaking:

Anti-racist activists were there too, and it was bedlam. Dozens of them bangs [sic] on noisemakers and chanted . “Leave! Leave! The message is clear!” anti-racist activists yelled at Mr. Taylor. “Get out! Get out! Exit the building!” they said. Taylor tried to mock them, noting the obscenities being thrown at him as “such charming language” and noted “You can shout all you want, but the police will be here and they will maintain the peace.”

The police didn’t get there fast enough, however. Things got physical, and while no one was seriously injured, Taylor was grabbed by antifa and ushered out of the room.

Those are storm trooper tactics, plain and simple. And they’re proud of it.

OPP is equally proud of the company it keeps:

Other organizations and individuals had also joined in the opposition, including the global union Workers Uniting, the Mormon Worker newspaper, Anti-Racist Action, the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC), and several bloggers on the internet.

“Anarchist Communists”? Apparently, “anti-racism” justifies even the most bloodthirsty ideology these days.

In his email announcing the 2010 conference had been cancelled, Jared Taylor noted that threats of violence had been made against innocent hotel employees:

Hostile callers phoned the hotel and threatened employees with death. One was specifically warned, “If you hold this conference I will go in there and shoot you.” Hotel management reported these threats to the police but felt it had no choice but to cancel.

The OPP posted this cute response to the death threats: “It is not known, however who is responsible for the threats alluded to in Jared Taylor’s statement.”

We know who’s responsible. The real “haters” here are the OPP, who de-humanize immigration restrictionists as “scum,” “neo-Nazis,” and “Fascists.” By injecting their venom into what should be a debate, the self-righteous bully boys of One People’s Project are justifying violence against those who disagree with them. They should be ashamed.

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Tonight, as you savor your Mint Juleps and join in with friends and family to welcome the New Year, don’t forget to sing the traditional New Year’s anthem, “Auld Lang Syne.” And be sure to sing “Dixie” as well, because the two songs complement each other.

Everyone knows that “Auld Lang Syne” is a song of remembrance of treasured days:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Loved ones we have lost still touch our hearts, and they will always remain a part of us because we will remember them. But present-day relationships make life worth living today, and the song includes this pledge to those who are close to us now:

And here’s a hand, my trusty friend,
And gie’s a hand o’ thine;
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne

“Dixie” also recognizes the bonding of past and present by celebrating the history that is a vital part of who we are:

Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land.

In Dixie Land, where I was born in,
early on one frosty mornin’,
Look away, look away, look away Dixie Land.

“Dixie” also includes this promise to go forward while remaining true to the past:

I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand
to live and die in Dixie.
Away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Away, away, away down South in Dixie.

These songs celebrate our connections with our loved ones of the past and present, connections that make us mindful of things beyond ourselves — connections that make us human. In an age when loyalty, patriotism, and love of one’s own are attacked as anachronisms, when our only concern is supposed to be maximizing the bottom line, and the only values that matter are those of the deracinated, isolated psychopath, it’s good to remind ourselves that stubborn human nature persists despite the pressure from our handlers. Let’s take a cup.

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My goal is to make CHT a repository of information and links regarding the Korea – US “Free Trade” Deal (KORUS a.k.a. KAFTA). I want CHT to be the go to website regarding KORUS/KAFTA. Here are a few.

“Obama Trade Deal Would Hurt Workers” by David Newby at the Wisconsin State Journal.

Friend of this website, Mike Tuggle, has this in the Salisbury Post.

Mike Tuggle’s article being commented on at FreeRepublic.

Friend of this website, Peter Gemma, has this blog item at Campaign for Liberty.

Here is a similar entry from Peter at DailyPaul.

Elizabeth Shuler at USA Today.

Ed Dornlas at the Las Vegas Sun.

Economy in Crisis: “NAFTA Redux?”

Editor’s Note: I have added a new “Korea Trade Deal” category.

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The Korea – US “Free Trade” Agreement is often referred to by this long hand. But the shortened forms that I have seen are KORUS FTA, combining Korea and US with FTA for “free trade” agreement. Or simply KORUS.

But it occurs to me that it could easily be referred to short hand as KAFTA (Korea America “Free Trade” Agreement) and be easily recognized for what it is because that would stay with  the convention of the previous trade deal, NAFTA.

Could it be that supporters of the deal don’t want it referred to as KAFTA because that would clearly evoke images of NAFTA which is viewed unfavorably by many? So instead we get the much more unwieldy KORUS FTA or KORUS which many if not most will have no idea what it is?

Well I say two can play at that game. If supporters of the deal believe they get to name the deal favorably, I don’t see why we have to oblige them by using it. I would like to suggest that opponents of the deal start referring to it as KAFTA. Let’s get this thing started, and we can then say you heard it here first. (If someone is already doing this then I appologize, but I haven’t seen it elsewhere yet.)

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If free trade purist Ron Paul and paleo-leaning Walter Jones are both against this monstrosity, then you know it is a mess.

Read this letter from the two congressmen. The sovereignty issues they point out are devastating.

Dear Colleague:

Free trade theorists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo must be rolling in their graves to see pacts like President Obama’s Korea Agreement called “free trade.” Like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the pact, written by unelected trade bureaucrats, spans 1,000 pages.

It includes endless pages of rules and regulations enforced by foreign tribunals. This act is a sneaky form of international preemption, undermining the critical checks and balances and freedoms established by the U.S. Constitution’s reservation of many rights to the people or state governments.

And, President Obama’s Korea Agreement sets up foreign tribunals to which the United States mst submit for judgment. Foreign investors are allowed to skirt the U.S. court system to directly ue the U.S. government for trade pact violations before UN and World Bank tribunals. Those provisions enable demands by such forms for compensation in U.S. taxpayer funds for violations of the special foreign investor privileges the pact provides. There are nearly 80 Korean firms with more than 200 establishments set up in this country now that would acquire these new rights to raid our Treasury using foreign tribunals.

We urge you to oppose President Obama’s Korea Agreement.

Sincerely,

Ron Paul

Walter Jones

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Go here and send a request to join. A description of the group is below.

This group is to serve as a clearinghouse for articles, blog posts, news items, etc. related to the US – Korea “Free Trade” deal (KORUS FTA). The intent is to unite opponents of the trade deal across the ideological spectrum and arm them with the information necessary to stop this bad deal for America. Whether you are a left-wing critic of capitalism and globalization, or a union member, or a paleoconservative, or an ex-Buchanan Brigader, or an ex-Perot supporter, or an economic nationalist, or an economic populist or a purist libertarian free trader we invite you to join this group and post articles and links. Together we can stop the KORUS FTA and save America’s sovereignty.

Hope to see you there.

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According to this blog post by Doug Bandow, the United Auto Workers (UAW) supports the pending “free trade” deal with Korea.

But according to Townhall the AFL-CIO opposes it.

As does the IBEW which issued this release in opposition today.

This just illustrates an inherent problem with all “free trade” deals of this sort. They are never truly free trade. They are always some iteration of managed trade, and interest groups often oppose or support them based on what’s in it or not in it for them.

That the Korean “Free Trade” treaty is managed and not free trade is illustrated perfectly by this quote from the Bandow post: 

(UAW President Bob) King said, “I’m very supportive of the agreement because it really protects UAW members. Pickup trucks and SUVS will have full 25% tariff until year seven, passenger vehicles have full protection until year five. It opens up the Korean market to 75,000 American cars a year and it has protections against import surges. The Korea Free Trade Agreement is one of the far best treaties for auto as far as I’ve seen.”

Free trade, even in theory, is a contentious subject on the right, especially the paleo right, but we should all agree, regardless of what we think about free trade in general, that this treaty ain’t it.

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A selection from Friedrich List’s The National System of Political Economy:

Quesnay (from whom the idea of universal free trade originated) was the first who extended his investigations to the whole human race, without taking into consideration the idea of the nation. He calls his work ‘Physiocratie, ou du Gouvernement le plus avantageux au Genre Humain,’ his demands being that we must imagine that the merchants of all nations formed one commercial republic. Quesnay undoubtedly speaks of cosmopolitical economy, i.e. of that science which teaches how the entire human race may attain prosperity; in opposition to political economy, or that science which limits its teaching to the inquiry how a given nation can obtain (under the existing conditions of the world) prosperity, civilisation, and power, by means of agriculture, industry, and commerce.

Adam Smith(1*) treats his doctrine in a similarly extended sense, by making it his task to indicate the cosmopolitical idea of the absolute freedom of the commerce of the whole world in spite of the gross mistakes made by the physiocrates against the very nature of things and against logic. Adam Smith concerned himself as little as Quesnay did with true political economy, i.e. that policy which each separate nation had to obey in order to make progress in its economical conditions. He entitles his work, ‘The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations’ (i.e. of all nations of the whole human race). He speaks of the various systems of Political economy in a separate part of his work solely for the purpose of demonstrating their non-efficiency, and of proving that ‘political’ or national economy must be replaced by ‘cosmopolitical or world-wide economy.’ Although here and there he speaks of wars, this only occurs incidentally. The idea of a perpetual state of peace forms the foundation of all his arguments.

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The difference is vital, argued Joe Sobran:

Patriotism is like family love. You love your family just for being your family, not for being “the greatest family on earth” (whatever that might mean) or for being “better” than other families. You don’t feel threatened when other people love their families the same way. On the contrary, you respect their love, and you take comfort in knowing they respect yours. You don’t feel your family is enhanced by feuding with other families.

While patriotism is a form of affection, nationalism, it has often been said, is grounded in resentment and rivalry; it’s often defined by its enemies and traitors, real or supposed. It is militant by nature, and its typical style is belligerent. Patriotism, by contrast, is peaceful until forced to fight.

The patriot differs from the nationalist in this respect too: he can laugh at his country, the way members of a family can laugh at each other’s foibles. Affection takes for granted the imperfection of those it loves; the patriotic Irishman thinks Ireland is hilarious, whereas the Irish nationalist sees nothing to laugh about.

The nationalist has to prove his country is always right. He reduces his country to an idea, a perfect abstraction, rather than a mere home. He may even find the patriot’s irreverent humor annoying.

What better example than the chickenhawks who defended W’s every act of aggression against Iraq in the name of “global democractic revolution”? That evil philosophy was based on the leftist mindset that one’s country is defined by the nobility of certain ideals, rather than shared history, language, and culture. Little wonder this country was convulsed with policies and institutions reminiscent of ideological tyrannies, such as the USA Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and, most ominously, government warnings against those who do not conform to approved orthodoxy, which made multiculturalism the state religion,as well as official domestic and foreign policy.

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Number of countries, 1900: 57

Number of countries, 2000: 192*

* Per official State Department list.

Looks like we have a trend! The megastates of the 19th and 20th centuries brought war, oppression, and genocide. The rise of smaller, more human-scaled, culturally based nation- and city-states is our greatest hope for the future.

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I saw this article yesterday pushing the idea that skilled workers are the only ones who have a future in this new economy. Skilled workers are defined, according to the article, as those in professional fields: “lawyers, research scientists and software engineers.” The only other source of growth in the labor market is at the very bottom in very low-skilled, low-pay jobs. As bad as this looks for the rest of us, I can’t help but wonder how this will affect demographic trends and voting patterns.

We know that our establishment doesn’t care about those in the formerly “middle,” especially working-class whites. The “Court Party” wants to maintain the status quo on international trade, pushing for more free trade agreements and other policies which contribute to the de-industrialization of America. This same establishment, including the unions, is also pro-open borders and pro-amnesty. And yet they keep voting for these clowns, enticed by these so-called “middle-class welfare” programs.

The bottom line is this: there doesn’t seem to be a “middle” anymore. The economic profile of America is resembling a third-world country in that there’s a dichotomy between high-paying and low-paying jobs. I’d like to think that the working-class white demographic would wake up to this betrayal, but that’s about as likely as West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania turning into right-to-work states. Unfortunately, working-class whites flock to politicians like Robert Byrd just like blacks flock to Jesse Jackson.

Something to ponder on Labor Day. Discuss.

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