George Will attacks Kerry for advocating protectionism, which conflicts with free trade. Whereas Kerry is proposing a reevaluation of current free trade practices that are causing an influx of low cost goods to this country at the expense of millions of US workers, Will is pretending that the protectionist bent of the candidate is at the expense of workers abroad and their only means of survival. No one who is familiar with George Will’s viewpoint could possibly believe that he is the champion of the poor overseas when he literally despises anything that even touches on creeping unionism in this country. It does not bother him that workers overseas are blatantly exploited for the benefit of the power class who trades with the power class of this nation — à la Adam Smith.
To Kerry’s credit, he wants to honestly explore the degree of environmental violations and wage conditions in other countries placing the American worker and manufactures that stay here at an enormous disadvantage and thereby apply pressure for more humane conditions abroad. Further, there is no sense of home sweet home with US manufacturers so eager to disrupt communities for the sake of the buck while in the long run it weakens the nation, particularly when the government has no policy to urge new industries that could soften the blow of layoffs.
Will equates Kerry’s plausible suggestion to study current practices that appear to shake the strength of our economy, let alone the ability to retain a strong defense, with the “moral pretension” to justify anti-globalization and protectionism. George Will barely lets one of his columns go by where he does not bring up the left’s moral indignation over the lack of altruism in business on the part of the right and the status-quo. There’s a snowball’s chance in hell that he will ever write a column expressing moral indignation over the unseemly current gasoline prices inasmuch as it is but a cold, perfectly logical cycle of supply and demand.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: March 25, 2004.