By Bill Wilson
Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent speech in Ohio has precipitated snide insults and the expected attacks from the usual suspects. Looking for any flaw or the most remote string to pull possible, these clinging zealots of the debunked “free trade” chorus reacted by called the Vice President every name in the book, from “Democrat” (the ultimate slur) to advocating for Barack Obama. The truly harsh and insane stuff is coming, for sure.
But what is the impetus for this vitriol? Once you peel back the childish attacks and look at the substance of the assaults, it becomes clear. These are the remnants of the globalist class, those forces that refuse to accept the judgement of the American People and the clear verdict of history. The globalist mantra of “open borders”, unfettered trade arrangements — the shorthand of which is “free trade” and an implied set of policies that would leave the nation helpless and unarmed against a world governing cabal that wants nothing less than world government and total control of the people, resources and destiny of the United States.
Oh, I can hear them laugh as I write this. But any honest examination of the facts prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is their goal and intent. And while they may get President Donald Trump to hedge on his pledge not to engage in foreign wars, he has so far been steadfast in his other two primary pledges: secure borders and an end to the giveaway trade deals of the past. And that is why they are so determined to undercut and if possible destroy Vice President Vance.
Vance is obviously 100 percent committed to the three legs of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) Agenda — a secure border, fair trade and peace. And that, in their warped and venal view, must be stopped.
There are always things to disagree about and no end to the insults and sneering memes that can be hurled. But the hard fact is that, as Vance noted in Middletown, Ohio, the Trump administration is ending the pipeline of cheap, uneducated labor to undercut American workers and is going hard to end the one-sided trade deals that have hallowed out much of our country. By standing up in Ohio last Friday and calling out those forces opposed to honest trade and secure borders, Vance threw a punch that landed squarely on the jaw of the coastal elites.
The core issue Vance hit on and which will be the Lexington and Concord of the coming decades is the reindustrialization of America. When Ross Perot predicted the gutting of American industry from the ludicrous trade concessions embraced by the uniparty in Washington, D.C. that pushed NAFTA down our collective throats, he was if anything subdued. The impact was devastating to thousands of communities across the country, not to mention millions of families. If there is any hope of reversing the trend of decay and despair rampant in the country today it will be through the reindustrialization on America. And that is exactly what the Wall Street honchos, and the big bankers really don’t want. They will do everything they can to block aggressive moves against their scams and “derivatives” and offshore schemes.
One of the insults thrown at the Vice President was that he was nothing more than a New Deal Democrat in a Republican coat. But these same propagandists for the globalist class forget that much of the New Deal is today settled orthodoxy. We should never forget that when the hard left, a.k.a. crypto communists, first tried to infiltration the Democrat Party, it was Franklin Roosevelt that helped block them. The underlying ethics of the Roosevelt era was strongly pro-American, if often misguided.
Still, the central theme was small town America. I was reminded of this fact from a recent article in Compact Magazine. The writer, Robin Stephens, was pleading for the rescue of the Wilbur Cohen building in Washington, D.C. In the badly decaying office building on Independence Avenue are significant number of works of art commissioned by the New Deal’s Federal Arts Project. The program was an ultra-liberal effort that gave money to unemployed artists. It was essentially another welfare program, but it had two redeeming qualities. First, it was short, lasting only eight years and ending in 1943. And second, some truly enduring art was created. Most were little more than amateur attempts, and some was just raw hard-left propaganda. But there was some real art that should in fact endure.
In the Cohen building is a mural that rang a bell for me when reading about the Vance bru-ha-ha. Named the Wealth of the Nation by artist Seymour Fogel, the mural depicts serious economic activity and defines that as the true “wealth” of our nation. Not consumption masked as serious so-called “investment” but rather those things that build, create and add to the power of the nation. The mural depicts engineers, mechanics, scientists and manual laborers. Nowhere to be found in this statement are there ridiculous social “science” studies or all the other items we spend tax money on that do not add to the balance sheet of the country. Those that create — industry, agriculture, hard science — are the true source of our wealth and ultimate foundation of our strength.
Ignoring these vital areas of endeavor and, instead, wasting time and money on consumption — some valuable and some pure wasteful — is the root cause of many of our difficulties. It is the summation of Vice President Vance’s position. We as a nation cannot hope to repair the damage of the globalists’ experiment without creating the engines of wealth and strength. To achieve that requires an end to an invasion of cheap labor and trade policies that place a higher value on some fuzzy “one-world” delusion than on the interests of the American people.
So, as we come to the end of summer and take some time to reflect on the battles and challenges ahead, here’s to Vice President Vance for not flinching and continuing the fight for an American plan to rebuild the economy and an American culture — building true wealth for our nation.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
