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Here’s a letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Tim Sabula’s rant against free trade is a hash not only of historical inaccuracies and economic fallacies but also of ethical and constitutional sophistry (“Restore America to economic greatness with new leaders and fair trade practices [2],” Sept. 28). Consider this paragraph: “When will politicians stop selling us out and take a stand for us and tell the corporations if they want to sell here they must manufacture here and employ American citizens and they will be protected? After all, they are supposed to take an oath to uphold, protect and preserve our Constitution from enemies domestic and foreign. We must demand that they do this now.”
If Mr. Sabula is serious he should be made no more distraught by a group of strangers who, having seized American airwaves and cyberspace, threaten to murder all Americans who do not pledge fealty to them than he is made by a different group of strangers who simply offer to sell to him a pair of Brazilian-made shoes or a Chinese-made toaster.
Because Mr. Sabula likely in fact regards the former activities as being categorically different from, and immeasurably worse than, the latter activities, his implicit conflating of the two should be seen for the demagoguery that it is.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
(HT to Jim Swift for alerting me to Sabula’s letter.)