Mar 19, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Recently I wrote that under seemingly worthy goals of stopping the spread of socialism, then drugs, then terrorism we seemingly invited ourselves into every world conflict. Were globalists covertly using these causes instead to build an American Empire? As a college professor teaching current events for 40 plus years, I had to come to this conclusion.
Foreign policy seems to have moved from defense to offense. Now no empire of yesteryear controls or influences more territory than we. We call this globalism where the United States becomes not only the world’s only super power but also the world’s “real” government. Globalism requires a global military and a media silent on the matter. We now have both.
Today Wikipedia documents US troops deployed in “more than 150 countries” around the world with thousands of military personnel still in World War II countries 73 years later. Approximately a third of our troops serve outside the US in places most Americans have never heard such as Aruba, Bahrain, Kenya, and Qatar. And we have approximately 800 military bases encircling the globe all in the name of “our” national security.
Numerous books and hundreds of articles have identified the heart of the nearing 100-year globalist movement as having been centered on three private industrialist/high finance dominated organizations. The most important of these was the Council on Foreign Relations (1921), to infiltrate both major political parties in the US with globalist thinking, the Bilderbergers (1954), to influence and consolidate the interests of high finance and politics in Europe, and the Trilateral Commission (1973), to influence and consolidate the interests of high finance and politics in the three most powerful regions of the globe North America, Europe and Japan.
None of this could have happened without big media, once the government’s watchdog now its lapdog, becoming accomplices to the new world order movement. This too has been documented by hundreds of articles over the last many decades with the New York Times, the foremost print mouthpiece of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) followed closely by the Washington Post and the Los Angels Times. This is nothing new as CFR members have dominated all major medias for decades.
What is new for most is the 2010-11 release of 2,325,961 secret State Department cables by WikiLeaks confirming beyond question the above and more. In it “the world saw what the USA really thought about national leaders, friendly dictators & supposed allies. It also discovered the dark truths of national policies, human rights violations, covert operations & cover-ups” (The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire, by Julian Assange).
Top secret has become, by-in-large, anything that the government does not want known, which in this case, is its working for world dominion. So their immediate reaction was to vilify WikiLeaks asking everyone to delete anything on the Internet from it. “Internet access to WikiLeaks was blocked by national libraries; major international studies journals rejected all manuscripts citing WikiLeaks material; and the Pentagon stopped all emails containing the organization’s name.” The definition of national security was enlarged to include concealing government globalist activities. Anyone willing to expose them were villainized as is the case of WikiLeaks. Much of this had little to do with actual national security but to keep the public from knowing, thus preventing, our government’s future conspiring toward world governance.
To counter the globalists censorship of this material and protect “the public’s right to know,” WikiLeaks “set up a Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), containing the cables and other diplomatic records.” They also published a book The WikiLeaks Files to help sift through the over two million documents for easier assessment evaluation of the mountain of information. A chapter in this book by Sarah Harrison explains how to use it (Review of the WikiLeaks Files: the World according to US empire, By Alison Broinowski).
CFR members are in every federal position of importance, in every administration regardless of political party. With the exception of Presidents Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump both presidential party nominees for decades have been affiliated. The CFR is our government. It is no longer a theory. The extent of its influence was expressed by John J. McCloy, a longtime chairman of the Council and advisor to nine U.S. presidents who told the New York Times: “Whenever we needed a man we thumbed through the roll of the Council members and put through a call to New York.” CFR headquarter is located in New York City.
With respect to the establishment media’s participation, which, with the Julian Assange’s treasure trove of documentation, cannot be called anything less than a conspiracy. From this the Swiss Propaganda Research organization assembled the latest 2017 graphical depiction of CFR/Trilateral Commission/Bilderberg Group membership in the “uppity” plan to give world dominance to them. View at https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/.
It documents 190 top US journalists who are members of one or more of the globalist organizations identified. They exist in every major news outlet. They control your news, not only what you know but what you think about. They are the “Ruling Class Journalists”. If you are not already aware of their dominance it is because your favorite journalists have not told you and it is increasingly hard for this revelation to get into any news organ which explains why Assange resorted to the State Department dump.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Mar 12, 2018 | Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
As a college professor for over 40 years specializing in the Constitution and current events, I have been deeply troubled by our tendency to become easily involved in the problems of other nations and once militarily involved we seldom leave. For years I presented students a handout published by U.S. News and World Report, January 19, 1998, showing a military presence in 31 foreign countries, 53 years after World War II. These included; Germany (65,080), Japan (41,460), Italy (11,785) —even the United Kingdom (11,380).
Under seemingly worthy goals of stopping the spread of socialism, then drugs, then terrorism we seemingly invited ourselves into every conflict. Were globalists secretly using these causes instead to build an American Empire? We seemed to have moved from defense to offense. No empire of yesteryear controlled or influenced more territory than we do today.
Today Wikipedia documents US troops deployed in, not 31 countries, but “more than 150 countries” (The New York Times says 172—we have “troops in nearly every country”) around the world with thousand of military personnel still in the above named countries 73 years later. Approximately a third of our troops serve outside the US in places most Americans have never heard such as Aruba, Bahrain, Kenya, and Qatar. And we have approximately 800 military bases encircling the globe all in the name of “our” national security.
American solders are in active combat in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and “actively engaged” in Yemen, Niger, Somalia, Jordan, and Thailand. “Others are deployed as part of several peacekeeping missions, military attaches, or are part of embassy and consulate security. Nearly 40,000 are assigned to classified missions in locations that the US government refuses to disclose” (“America’s Forever Wars,” New York Times, 23 October 2017). I have no issue with embassy and consulate security.
We have four new bases in Bulgaria. New bases are also in Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo from where the US “controls ALL of the Balkans” and Manas Air Base in Kyrgystan “from where the US controls the airspace over Central Asia and most of the nations south of present-day Russia.” All once “member-states of the old Soviet Union.” And new bases have been popping up throughout Africa.
NASA has huge spy bases in Waihopai, New Zealand and Geraldton, Western Australia called the Global Electronic Surveillance System (sometimes dubbed America’s Secret Global Surveillance Network). Thus these US military bases “serve as surveillance and data centers,” on other countries.
Huge Naval bases throughout the world accommodate our gigantic US warships such as at Changi Navel Staten in Singapore. The US Navy also has floating military bases called aircraft carriers that can be positioned anywhere in the seven oceans. These are known for their incredible strike capabilities whether by planes dropping bombs in any direction hundreds of miles from them or by launching cruise missiles such as the Tomahawk. Then, there are super-carriers of which we have 12; no other nation has “supers.” The USS George Washington can carry more than 6,000 sailors (a floating fortress) 70 warplanes and “4 million pounds of bombs” (Cora Fabros, “Bases of Empire—The Global Spread of US Military and Intelligence Bases, Nov. 2008).
Bases differ in size. Some are city-size as is Ramstein Air Base in Germany, or Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, or Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean; others, called “lily pads,” are much smaller housing “drones, surveillance aircraft, or pre-positioned weaponry and supplies.” But all have some influence over the host nation (David Vine, “The United States Probably has more Foreign Military Bases than any Other People, Nation, or Empire in History,” September 14, 2015).
President George Bush best epitomized the globalist philosophy of military expansion when he wrote: “To contend with uncertainty and to meet the many security challenges we face, the United States will require bases and stations within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, as well as temporary access arrangements for the long-distance deployment of US forces” (George Bush, National Security Strategy, 2002) Unfortunately, this is the same doctrine historically advocated by other empire builders, even Stalin and Hitler. When is enough, enough?
But two presidents before him saw it differently; ironically each expressed such in farewell addresses just before leaving office. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the development of a “military-industrial complex,” a marriage feeding these entities, which is precisely what we have just described. Call it globalism. George Washington warned of the debt that could destroy us were we not to use “time of peace, to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned.” Unavoidable wars!!! We seek war!!
US bases within a country infer their loss of territorial sovereignty without formal political control, as was the old way of governing empires. It is a form of imperialism—even colonialism. The mere presence of military bases intimidates the host country and gives coercive power to the United States enabling it to gain concessions from its host, even interfere in domestic concerns. Some of us do not want our military to police the world, or our industrialists to govern it, or the crippling debt that accompanies it.
We would see things very differently if China or Russia had military bases in the United States or even Mexico. John F. Kennedy almost went to war with the USSR when it sought to place nuclear missiles in Cuba.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Aug 26, 2017 | Constitution, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Few presidential candidates in the last seven years have campaigned more for pulling out of Afghanistan then Donald Trump so his decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan, 16 years after it began, is a shock to many who are tired of the globalist no-win and perpetual warfare, and in part voted for him to end it. His words resonated with most, “Afghanistan is a total and complete disaster.” In another, “Are they going to be there for the next 200 years?” In another, the U.S. had “wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure.” And another, “What are we doing there? These people hate us … We’re a debtor nation. We can’t build our own schools, yet we build schools in Afghanistan.”
All of this remains true and irrefutable, even though Trump said that viewing this war from the Oval Office prompted his reversal. War Hawk Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, former political enemies, now love him as do many globalists. His having surrounded himself with generals, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster and James Mattis (more military influence in the White House than in decades) is said to have influenced this change. Certainly “the industrial military complex,” as warned by Eisenhower before leaving office in 1961, is well in place around him.
The Afghanistan War has cost us over a trillion dollars in treasure and 3,539 coalition soldiers and is now the longest war in U.S. History. Nothing in the Trump Presidential Speech of August 21, 2017, changes any of this. Adding some 4,000 new U.S. soldiers to the 8,400 presently there, together with another 6,000 from NATO countries, is not likely to change what 16 years and two prior presidents could not.
But all of this would change if prior presidents of both political parties, and now Trump, took their oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” seriously (Art. 2, Sec. 1, Cla. 8). Military powers are housed under the Legislative Branch of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clauses 9-17). These include all power to declare and finance war, raise armies, “make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces,” and even determine the land that the military can use for training purposes. Nothing was omitted.
Under the Constitution there can never be an unpopular war as the peoples’ representative (The House of Representatives) have total power over raising and funding the army. They must consent to the war by declaration (because they provide blood and brawn for it) and they alone authorize the treasure for it. “All bills for raising revenue shall originate” with them (Art. 1, Sec. 7, Cla. 1).
Moreover, Congress was to monitor the war at two-year intervals through its power of the purse just described. “But no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years” (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cla. 12). If Congress is not happy with the progress of the war it can require the generals to account for why total victory has not yet been obtained and reduce or enlarge funding, with time restraints, to keep officers focused—even the president—and on a short lease with respect to the war declared.
Why did the president get none of this power? Because he “had the most propensity for war,” James Madison argued in the Constitutional Convention. Kings traditionally had sole power over the lives of their subjects. Not so under the Constitution. One man would never have such power. A declaration of war gave clarity to its beginning with victory or defeat its only ending. It could never be a casual thing as it is now.
In Afghanistan war transcended from attacking, to regime change, to nation-building, to policing their country for them. In fact, today it remains uncertain as to which nation is most responsible for 9 11. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers flying into the World Trade Center and Pentagon buildings on that infamous day were Saudi nationals, as was Osama bin Laden. The country of Iraq had nothing to do with the attack, but received the first missiles in retaliation. Certainly Al-Qaeda dominated Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia, who funded Al-Qaeda, got off scot-free.
The only constitutional power left by our Founders to the president is as “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States… ,” notice this, “when called into actual Service of the United States,” which can only be done by Congress(Art. II, Sec. 2, Cla. 1). Otherwise the military functioned under Congress, not the president. The president’s power to make war (outside immediate self-defense as in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor) can only follow the legislature’s power to authorize war. Congress declared war on Japan the following day.
There was no declaration of war by Congress on Afghanistan (or any other country since World War II) calling into “actual service” the military. Nor is there a specific two-year funding limitation on war as constitutionally required. Moreover, Congress clearly has been nullified in making the “rules for the government and regulation of land and naval forces” in this no-end conflict.
Recent presidents have usurped all of the military powers of Congress unto themselves and Trump is doing the same. It is a dangerous slippery slope and clearly exceeds constitutional authority regardless of who inhabits the White House.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Aug 19, 2017 | Constitution, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Student unrest in many colleges last spring demonstrated what is becoming obvious; institutions of higher learning are becoming radicalized and project intolerance for anything but a liberal view. Too few permit conservative or libertarian speakers and far fewer a constitutional speaker.
I was not surprised, some years ago, to hear a mother share with me her son’s fear that he did not wish to attend college because he did not wish to be politically indoctrinated. Parents increasingly worry about the radicalization of their children as well. As the years go by I hear this more frequently. Often when asked my profession, a political science professor, I get that look, “Oh! You’re one of those.” So, the assumption is that professors, especially those in political science, are socialists or worse. But it is largely true.
College is supposed to be a big tent housing all types of thinking so that the student can gravitate to what he thinks best after all sides are presented. Although everyone gives lip service to this statement, there still exists a preferred philosophy. Most colleges insist that they adhere to the idea of intellectual diversity, but the literature suggest otherwise, that the vast majority of colleges and universities are weighted in favor of one ideology and professors to one political party. This is not hidden. Many political science textbooks acknowledge this.
There exists a consensus of what a “good education” consists. Students are immersed in race consciousness, feminism, multiculturalism, environmentalism, collectivism, globalism, political activism, class warfare, global warming, acceptance of sexual deviations as normal, and minimization of the importance of Christianity. The end product, the student, must come to accept the above script. It is also in virtually all textbooks. It’s not that any of these notions are bad, in and of themselves, but it is the nearly universal absence of the opposing view that is most troubling parents/students who do not want the indoctrination. All this reminds me of a 1960’s tune with lyrics. “Little boxes on the hillside. Little boxes made of ticky-tacky… And they all look just the same. And the people in the houses, all go to the university… And they all look just the same.”
It’s not fear of political science classes alone in most colleges and universities. Students can escape the indoctrination across the hall in a history or sociology class. Not so! Such bias permeates most academic areas. An English professor from a large Midwestern university, who did not wish to be identified because of possible retribution, spoke of English classes giving less emphasis on grammar, punctuation, or sentence structure and more on the political correctness. “Everything from Theater to Philosophy to History to English has, in effect, become sociology,” he wrote. “Teaching subject matter has become less important than teaching a very political perspective.” In the end, “They get taught the same thing over and over: a radical critique of the entire American social structure, an indictment of capitalism, anti-Christian propaganda, and collectivism over individuality.”
Of course, additional classes reinforce the “good education” and the result is that if students have not learned to think for themselves, or have some opposing information from home or church to think with, they graduate and carry the indoctrination into every segment of society as gospel. New teachers from kindergarten to the universities will pipe the same, or similar, message.
Age and experience may alter the indoctrination but the twig is already bent in a prescribed direction and the student, like the twig, will give first consideration to returning to the indoctrination when confronted with anything in opposition. Colleges have so much power over “right” thinking.
An extreme example of this years ago, was a French Language and Culture class at Penn State University that required students to view the Michael Moore film Sicko, which focused on the inadequacies of the U.S. healthcare system and promoted Obamacare. In a French language class!?!
The indoctrination begins immediately in some colleges, critics say, “with orientation where students begin by learning about the evils of ‘white privilege’ in a program called the ‘tunnel of oppression’ and sit through lectures informing them that they are part of a ‘rape culture’.” University of Delaware forced incoming freshmen to participate in a “treatment” program a part of which informed them that the word racism applies only to “all white people.” It also “blamed whites for having created the term racism” in the first place “to deny responsibility for systemic racism.” At Hamilton College in New York, fall 2010, male students were required “to attend a ‘She Fears You’ presentation to make them aware of the ‘rape culture’ of which they were allegedly a part and of the need to change their ‘rape supportive’ beliefs and attitudes” (New American, Aug. 5, 2013, pp. 23-27).
No wonder the young man did not wish to be subjected to what he saw as indoctrination. Because he knows that there exist other views there is hope for him, more especially if he selects professors who attempt to give alternative views of which there are still many, he will be fine. This is especially true at the community college level. It is students who have no idea that there exist alternative views that are most in danger. Parents too, realizing the danger to their children, can better prepare them against the indoctrination.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 31, 2017 | Constitution, Economy, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Those of us who have taught international issues for decades have something to offer those who have not. Internationalism, new world order, world order, and globalism are synonyms for world government. Other terms such as inter-nationalization, multilateral, politicization, integration, free trade, commonality, convergence, unification, harmonization, open borders, are often used in conjunction with these synonyms to make them more fashionable and acceptable.
When these terms become known for what they are they become unpopular because few want the United States to become reduced to a mere state in a world government. The Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights would be relegated to historical documents without any real basis in a government above our own, or even in our own, if not supported by the higher government.
Once understood as such, proponents simply change to a new synonym and continue their program to elevate all significant decision making from local to national to international with, of course, themselves at the helm. Individualism and nationalism must be destroyed. Free enterprise and limited government are not likely to exist. Those who wish to retain these treasured beliefs are the enemy.
Globalists operate on the theory that man is easily manipulated and can be managed to believe whatever he is fed, even to the point of calling slavery freedom and freedom slavery—even good is bad and bad good. Few really think for themselves and they can be removed in other ways beginning with peer pressure and progressing to more violent ways if need be. Man will even choose to give up his liberty for the mere promise of a better future. Communist forces were called liberation armies.
Lenin, Hitler, and Moa Tse Tung and each preferred force to accomplish their form of world government. Globalists today, notably David Rockefeller (just deceased) and Henry Kissinger, know that these ends can be accomplished more slowly without force through the control of media and education. The rule is to always provide the appearance of controversy and free thought but control what people think about by access to it. Observe that the establishment news sources say nothing about regionalism as it conquers nations without restraint or notice.
As words are used to deceive the masses in the transition to world government so are they also valuable weapons in the transition to regional government. They begin with economic commonality and progress to political unity as was done in Europe. From the European Coal and Steel Community 1951, to the European Economic Community (Common Market) 1958, to the European Community 1993, to the European Union shortly thereafter until the original purpose, regional government, was fait accompli complete with a European Parliament 1979 and common currency, the euro, in 1992.
The unification of Europe as a single government, with each of 27 nations (Great Britain has voted to exit) losing their sovereignty as a separate independent nation, once so highly prized by each, something unobtainable by sword or bombs whether by Napoléon, Hitler or Stalin, has been accomplished without a single shot being fired while the vast majority of citizens were lulled to sleep by mere words. Formerly millions lost their lives to defend their nation’s sovereignty. The globalist conquered Europe establishing regional government (the European Union) in less than 50 years and unless thwarted will conquer all nations in half that time again.
Other regional governments followed the EU. The USSR, after the fall of communism in 1989, transformed itself into the Commonwealth of Independent States Free Trade Area (CISFTA)—a regional government of nations still under the control of Russia. The world has since been divided into 22 other regional governments each following the European Union model and each at a different stage in the “politicization” of the countries in their regions and most still saddled by the necessity of using the deceptive “free trade” terminology. In time the plan is to reduce 206 countries to less than 20 regional governments turning these countries into mere states of regional countries—a much more manageable world for globalists.
Some of these perspective regional governments have progressed beyond the need to keep the “free trade” terminology, as for example, the African Economic Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), both uniting large sections of Africa. The Council of Arab Economic Unity (CAEU) uniting northern Islamic Africa and the Middle East is another. South America is to be united by the Southern Cone Common Market, frequently referred to as Mercosur. It has progressed to the point that it now has a Joint Parliamentary Committee, which is a final step toward political unification.
But the “word war” for regional governments first, then the eventual merging of these governments into world government under the United Nations, following the European model, continues. The North American Union essentially began with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiated by George H. W. Bush and signed into law in 1993 by Bill Clinton. Notice neither party opposed globalization.
President Donald Trump campaigned against NAFTA and poses the first threat to its continued existence. Globalists want it renegotiated in the hopes of enlarging its political functions and combining its geographical area to Central America as well. Trump unfortunately has agreed to renegotiate NAFTA placing it back on the table for possible expansion into the North American Union.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
Jul 24, 2017 | Constitution, Economy, Globalism, Liberty Articles
By Harold Pease, Ph. D
Much of why Donald Trump is president is because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which always has been disastrous for the trades. Democratically controlled unions and their politicians were for it when signed into law by President Bill Clinton and without union support it would not be law.
Big corporations and globalists (often Republicans) have been for it because through it they could manage the regulations and productions codes thus keeping their monopolistic empires in place—it limited trade. It has never been free trade. Free trade is the absence of production codes, government regulations, and trade boundaries, when the consumer alone picks the winners and losers by the high quality and low cost of their performance or products.
Many union workers knew their party had betrayed them at the time but almost all know it now. When Trump dubbed NAFTA as “the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country,” they had experienced it as such and thus his appeal to them. And when he said, “I’m going to tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers…. If they do not agree to a renegotiation, then I will submit notice under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal,” they cheered.
He also told them. “I see the carnage that NAFTA has caused, I see the carnage. It’s been horrible. I see upstate New York, I see North Carolina, but I see every state. You look at New England. New England got really whacked. New England got hit.” “NAFTA has been very, very bad,” Trump said in a speech in Kenosha, Wisconsin, speaking of dairy farmers being hurt by recent Canadian price changes that the farmers believed violated trade standards. “The fact is that NAFTA has been a disaster for the United States and a complete and total disaster.”
Union workers saw their jobs lost (six million the first 16 years of NAFTA) and factories moving to Mexico to take advantage of lower-waged workers. Whatever bad things their party and their media said about Trump, they knew he spoke the truth on this issue and that they would have a friend in the White House if he kept his promise. This is a major reason he won the old northwest and the election. And this is why he could lose the next election if he doesn’t return the jobs.
The problem with Trump’s call for renegotiation of NAFTA, rather than just pulling out, is that when the government negotiates regulations, productions codes, and trade areas it is not free trade and is never fair, even if well intentioned. Free trade has no restrictions on transactions, (not 1,000 pages as in NAFTA) and fair trade implies that both trade parties feel justice in the outcome. NAFTA is government-managed trade.
Trump cannot win this argument. Fair for him is if our existing corporations (who fund his next election) retain advantage over competing new entrepreneurs and foreign competitors are disadvantaged. If advantage is determined by natural law, one out performs, gives better service or products at lower cost but with higher quality, as when individuals make selections, it is both free trade and fair trade. Government can never do this because it can never account for all the variables involved and is impacted too much by the use of government to get advantage. Even Trump fell victim to this as a private citizen when he made political contributions to both political parties should he need advantaged in a business deal down the road.
In the renegotiation special interests seek to enhance governmental powers in their behalf. Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, expects the renegotiated NAFTA to include more environmental protections and climate change measures.
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, best represents the problem with government deciding winners and losers, “We will do everything we can to make this a good agreement and to hold the president at his word and make sure we get a renegotiation. If it comes out that it is not a good deal, no deal is better than a bad deal,” But what is a “good” deal? With no government intervention both seller and buyer get a “good” deal or a transaction is not processed.
Nancy Pelosi faults President Trump “for all of his rhetoric, President Trump looks to be sorely disappointing American workers on trade.” For Democrats it will never be fair because it is never enough. For Republicans it will never be free because it must be managed. Few from either major political party really believe in limited government or they would adhere to Article I, Section 8 of which most of NAFTA violates.
Congress expects to take up the NAFTA issue mid-August. The fairest and freest trade deal for all Americans is to allow natural law under the free market to rule. If negotiation does not respect these time-tested restraints, and the Constitution, Trump would be best served to work for Article 2205 and withdrawal as suggested by AFL-CIO president Trumka— “no deal is better than a bad deal.” And this, the sooner the better, or, he may pay a heavy price in 2020.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He has taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
