[BretLudwig]

Bush's Black List

How did we suffer from not having 12 to 20 million illegal aliens here?

by Patrick J. Buchanan
The American Conservative Magazine

"On reading George W. Bush's discourse to the New York Economic Club
last week, Cicero's insight came to mind: "To be ignorant of what occurred
before you were born is to remain always a child."

With the Iraq War entering its sixth year, the dollar sinking to peso
levels, the economy careening into recession, and 12 to 20 million illegal
aliens roosting here, Bush alerted us to what really worries him: "Im
troubled by isolationism and protectionism €¦ [and] another "ism," and
thats nativism. And thats what happened throughout our history. And
probably the most grim reminder of what can happen to America during
periods of isolationism and protectionism is what happened in the
late€”in the '30s, when we had this America First policy and
Smoot-Hawley. And look where it got us."

Let us try to sort out this dogs breakfast. First, America was never
isolationist. From its birth, the Republic was a great trading nation with
ties to the world. True, in 1935, 1936, and 1937, a Democratic Congress
passed and FDR signed neutrality acts to keep us out of the
Italo-Abyssinian and Spanish Civil wars. And FDR did say, "We are not
isolationist except insofar as we seek to isolate ourselves completely
from war." But how did staying out of Abyssinia and Spain hurt America?

As for Smoot-Hawley, it was a tariff enacted in June 1930, nine months
after the Crash of 1929, which occurred, as Milton Friedman won a Nobel
Prize for proving, when the stock-market bubble, caused by the Fed's
easy-money policy, burst. Smoot-Hawley had nothing to do with a Depression
that began in 1929 and lasted through FDR's first two terms. This is a
liberal myth, probably taught to Mr. Bush by New Deal Democrats at the
Milton Academy.

America First was an organization of 800,000 anti-interventionists formed
at Yale in 1940 by patriots like Gerald Ford, Potter Stewart, and Sargent
Shriver, backed by John F. Kennedy, to check FDRs drive to war. Herbert
Hoover supported it, and its greatest spokesman was the Lone Eagle, Charles
Lindbergh.

But America First did not make policy. FDR did. And it was FDR who, by
cutting off Japans oil in July 1941, rebuffing Prince Konoyes offer
to meet him in the Pacific or Alaska, and issuing a virtual ultimatum on
Nov. 26, 1941 to get out of China, propelled Japan to its fatal decision
to attack Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7.

Isolationist is an epithet used to smear those patriots who adhere to
George Washingtons admonition to stay out of foreign wars, Thomas
Jeffersons counsel to seek "peace, commerce and honest friendship with
all nations, entangling alliances with none," and John Quincy Adamss
declaration that America "goes not abroad, in search of monsters to
destroy." Does Bush regard these statesmen as blinkered isolationists?

Protectionism is the structuring of trade policy to protect the national
sovereignty, ensure economic self-reliance, and €œprosper America
first.€� It was the policy of the Republican Party from Abraham Lincoln
to Calvin Coolidge. America began that era in 1860 with one half of
Britains production and ended it producing more than all of Europe put
together. Is this a record to be ashamed of?

Compare protectionisms success to Bushs record. Since 2001, he has
presided over the seven largest trade deficits in history, the loss of 3.5
million manufacturing jobs and the collapse of the dollar, and added but
one-fifth of the private sector jobs Bill Clinton created. Gold has gone
from $260 an ounce to $1,000, oil from $28 a barrel to $100.

€œNativism€� is another smear term, dating to the early 1850s and the
Know-Nothing Party, which sought to halt immigration after millions of
Irish flooded in following the famine of 1845. It carries a connotation of
xenophobia, the fear and hatred of foreigners.

Thus does Bush tar critics who deplore his dereliction of duty in failing
to defend this nations borders against a Third World invasion that may
turn this Republic into a Tower of Babel.

From 1924 to 1965, there was indeed little immigration. Does that make
Coolidge, Hoover, FDR, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Kennedy
knuckle-dragging nativists? When JFK took office, we were as united and
strong a country as we have ever been. How did we suffer from not having
12 to 20 million illegal aliens here?

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4876
http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/06/pjb...9s-black-list/


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