Patriotism and Business and Government

Cartoon by BALOO
Buy his Statue of Liberty merchandise HERE.

We're all supposed to be patriotic, right?  Well, some on the left don't think so, but most of us do.  As regular citizens, patriotism has to do with being willing to fight for the country, to uphold its ideals, and defend its sovereignty.  For the big money types, they have to do all the same things, but there's an added dimension to their responsibilities — they have a lot of power through their money, and they shouldn't use that power in such a way as to bring harm to the country.  Most of us don't have enough money power to have an effect that way.  One way the rich can hurt the country is to move their businesses out of the United States and thereby bring up our unemployment rate.  Another trick is to attract cheap illegal immigrant labor, which also causes unemployment and a huge tax burden on legal American taxpayers. (Yes, their own taxes are increased that way, but the increase is negligible compared to the extra profits they make that way.)  Now, I'm not against overseas investment in principle, but at times like these, it's unpatriotic.  Are the rich less patriotic than the rest of us?  Maybe they are, and maybe they're not.  The fact is that a business that refrains from doing these harmful things hurts itself vis-a-vis its competitors, who don't refrain.  So the responsibility, to a large extent, falls on the Government, which allows or even effectuates that this state of affairs obtains, that is, it makes patriotism expensive and optional.  The results are predictable.  Why should one guy not move his factory to China or wherever, and make more money, when his rivals are doing it?  Why should a construction company refuse to hire illegals and go out of business because all its competitors can underbid it?  And, not only does our Government refuse to do anything about illegals, it also has a system in place where businesses can be sued out of existence for even trying to avoid hiring illegals.

Pat Buchanan is very annoyed with our big capitalists for doing these things, and says that they're crushing labor.  He's right.  His column is HERE.