The Levellers, Then and Now

The Levellers, Then and Now

During the English Civil War many radical groups supported Parliament, one of these groups were called The Levellers. They were Puritans, very religious, very Protestant, and they believed that as God had made man in his image and that as Jesus had wanted all men to follow him and worship God that all men were equal. But they took it a step further not only were all men equal in the eyes of God but that should be how it was on Earth as well. All men being equal, no rich or poor, no landowners and tenants, no rulers and ruled. Everything should be owned by the community. In short, they were very religious Communists. 

One of the reasons Oliver Cromwell overthrow the Long Parliamant and then dissolved the Short Parliament and was made Lord Protector was to stop groups like this from having any political influence. Because in the Long Parliament many of their ideas were quite popular. They lost political power and were banned along with alot of other groups and ideas during the reign of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. By the time of the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 their day was past and many drifted off into Quakerism and other dissident religious groups. 

But while the Levellers of the 1600's are long gone, I bet you've met your share of Levellers, both religious and Atheist. For such an obscure group you can still encounter their ideas, to be fair the ideas they held were ancient in the 1600's. The idea that as all men are equal in the eyes of God there shouldn't be any difference between men (and now women) here on Earth. The idea that private property is wrong, that it is a form of theft. The idea that there should not be any hierarchy between men. Non of these ideas are new and you still encounter them. But only rarely do those who profess these "new" ideas know that in reality these ideas are as old as the hills. 

There is something very appealing about Leveling, it's not complex, it's easy to remember and to explain, it seems fair and equitable. It appeals to the idea that we, you and I can make a better world by ourselves, we don't need God or churches, we don't need Government or Business, we don't even need money. We can form a community and everything is owned by that community, no bills, no taxes, no need for money as everything we need will be provided. Of course the Levellers of the 1600's believed in hard work, but lets be honest thats not one of the appeals of Levelling. 

In fact thats why most communes fail, because those who are hard workers get sick and tired of producing while others consume. Thats the truth in every community not just communes, but it is much more stark in a commune. When everyone is equal but it is plain too see that everyone is not equally contributing it causes resentment. 

Levelling is something we continue to encounter because of it's simple appeal. It is a part of Socialism and Communism, it is a part of Left-Liberalism and Right-Liberalism, it is even a part of Anarchism. When you ignore human nature or pretend it doesn't exist the pitfalls are hard to see. The reality that different people are good at different things, some of those things being much more useful to society than others. That if everything is owned by the community you are never directly working for yourself, your spouse or your children, there is no inheritance you can give directly to them and that means that the results of your hardwork can be given to others with you and yours receiving little or nothing. At first glance it seems fair and equitable but it is no such thing.

We have seen the results of Levelling within Socialism and Communism, that it is easier to make everyone poor than it is to make everyone rich. We see the results of Leveling within Western society, if everyone is the same class then those with the lowest of class will decide what is acceptable, piercing and tattoos, not suits and dresses. We see the results of Levelling within the idea of the Leveling Playing Field, that people of different income levels, different standards of living should compete against each other on the Leveling Playing Field. It means that wages must come down, that living standards must come down, that everything must Level.

Levelling is always presented as something brave and new, innovative, but it is an ancient idea, that we can create the perfect society here on Earth. It has never worked because it denies our true nature and therfore it can never work. No matter how it is presented.

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future

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Donald Rumsfeld's "Known and Unknown" A Book Review

Donald Rumsfeld's "Known and Unknown" A Book Review

Donald Rumsfeld was twice, once in the 1970's and again after the millennium, the US Secretary of Defense. He also served as a member of the United States Congress in the sixties and was the United States Ambassador to NATO in the early seventies. He was also President Fords Chief of Staff in the White House and a Special Envoy to the Middle East for President Reagan. His memoir is of great interest if your interested in the Government of the United States from the 1960's to 2006. Of interest to me was his involvement as Secretary of Defense during two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as his views on terrorism. It also highlighted the difference between Conservatives and Right-Liberals.

Liberalism and Conservatism
Mr. Rumsfeld first won office in 1962 running the United States Congress, all of his political career he has called himself a Conservative Republican. But he is quite clearly a Right-Liberal, here are the principles he put on his business card when he won the Republican party primary for his district:

"PRINCIPLES: firm foreign policy, strong defense and a freer trade policy, effective civil rights measures, reduction of the debt, incentives for increasing economic growth".

One of his opponents a Mr. Burks said that Mr. Rumsfeld wasn't hard-right Conservative. At first glance all of the principles seem Conservative, but what does "a freer trade policy" mean? What does "effective civil rights measures" mean? What does "incentives for increasing economic growth" mean? They are all Liberal principles.

Terrorism

One of the great tragedies of the Reagan administration was the suicide attack on the US Marines barracks in  Beirut, Lebanon. It killed 241 Americans and 1 Lebanese civilian. To put it into perspective it was the largest loss of life in a single day for the US Marines since the battles on Iwo Jima in 1945. On the same day 58 French soldiers and 5 Lebanese civilians, a mother and her 4 children were killed in another suicide attack. President Reagan and President Mitterrand both said that the attacks would not force them to leave Lebanon. But within a year France, Italy, Britain and the United States had withdrawn from Lebanon. The retaliation was ineffectual and the attacks joined a long list of terrorist attacks that received no or little response. It is a frustrating story to look at terrorist attacks on the West going back to the 1960's and seeing so little being done to fight back. Mr. Rumsfeld gives a very good account of his time as a Middle East Envoy and both the limits of America's power and the policy of wishful thinking that believes that pretending terrorism comes from nowhere that it will vanish back into nowhere. Each successful terrorist attack encourages more and the lack of a military response simply makes it easier. The reality is that most terrorism is state sponsored, a part of their foreign policy and when we do not response militarily we invite further attacks as we have shown it works. Mr. Rumsfeld is also very scathing of letting the law handle terrorism when it is a problem of foreign policy. He gives a very damning example of when the "Blind Sheik", responsible for the 1993 World Trade Centre Bombing was on trial, the Prosecutor was required to hand over details of how the FBI had obtained information and from who. The Defence then released that information, exposing informers and techniques alike to the terrorists.

Afghanistan

After the 2001 terrorist attacks the United States demanded that those responsible be handed over for trial. The Taliban Government of Afghanistan decided to play games and the United States and it's Allies invaded Afghanistan and installed a new Government. The war continues but for the first 5 years Mr. Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense and he made many of the decisions relating to the war. In theory invading a landlocked country on the other side of the world was the big problem. But the capabilities of the United States meant it was achieved. The Taliban was driven from office, a new Government created and the country stabilised. Fighting continued during all of this time but it was on a much smaller scale until 2006 when the mistakes that had been made came back to bite. Mr. Rumsfeld discusses two of the biggest problems that were made in Afghanistan. But interestingly he doesn't mention what I regard as the biggest mistake, having the King abdicate in exile and creating a republic. King Zahir was crowned in 1933, was overthrown in a military coup in 1973 and died in 2007. It was his overthrow that started the disaster that Afghanistan is today and the Afghan people know this, his return would have given a legitimacy and stability to the new Government that nothing else has. The second problem that he does discuss is the idea of trying to create a modern western state in Afghanistan, something most Afghans don't want but which many have insisted is the end goal of the war. This simply breeds support for the Taliban as foreign ideas are forced onto the country. Thirdly he talks about the lack of support from the rest of the US Government, the State Department was normally short of the number of personal promised and they tended to be younger and less experienced than required. They were keen and brave in many cases but the lack of experience really told.

Iraq

What many forgot, even at the time was that the United States had not one reason to invade Iraq but multiple reasons. Iraq had signed a number of agreements that it had either broken outright or was using to play games. It agreed to disarm any Nuclear, Biological, Chemical weapons or development programmes it may have. There is no evidence that that ever happened, Iraq made lots of excuses but it continued to try and get weapons and to have the ability to rebuild it's weapons capacity. It constantly attacked American and British planes in the no-fly zones, trying to shoot them down. It hampered the United Nations efforts to inspect for Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons, despite having agreed to do so. It corruptly used the Oil for Food program to rearm and to obtain funds, neither of which were the purpose of the fund. While all this was going on the dictatorship continued to kill and torture, even before the invasion it was infamous for it's use of rape as a political weapon. Not to mention that Iraq had invaded two of it's neighbours under Saddam Hussein. Mr. Rumsfeld mentions a number of other reasons and lists the failure of the United States Government to remind people of the many reasons it had to go to war against Iraq as one of the biggest failures of President Bush's administration, I agree. The other big problems he mentions in regards to Iraq were the troop levels and the lack of any firm idea about how long America was going to remain in Iraq. Some wanted only a few weeks, others wanted decades. This lack of clarity lead to much of the confusion between various actors, military and civilian, American and Iraqi, American and foreign and American and American as no one was quite sure how long they were expected to do something. It was a big factor in not setting goals and as no goals were set goals could not be met. The troop levels were particularly interesting, Mr. Rumsfeld said it was a constant question he asked, was there enough troops in Iraq. Most of the time the commanders were very consistent and said yes, that there were enough US troops in Iraq. Whats clear is that wasn't true and it's strange that the commanders should be so convinced that there were. One reason was that more US troops on the ground could mean more US casualties. It would also have meant more control over areas, but the real problem was that there was no clear goal on raising, training or deploying Iraqi military or police units. It also took a long time to understand the unique conditions of Iraq, it's people and political culture.

The United States Federal Government

A surprise for me was reading the institutional shortcomings of the United States Government. I was surprised that each President seems to decide how they want the White House staff organised. I would have thought there was more structure. I have also noticed before and this book confirms it that the lack of a proper cabinet Government in the united States is a bad idea. The United States seems to have taken half of the idea of a cabinet but it is really a very decentralised system. So instead of the different departments working together because the cabinet makes them it seems these issues continue much longer than they need to. Setting goals in Iraq should have been someones job, but no one except the President can do that, maybe the fault in this case does lie with President Bush. The faults of the National Security Advisor is also clear, whoever has the job seems to be in conflict with both the Secretary of State and of Defense, because they are not advising so much as deciding US policy.

As a book this was easy to read if your interested in the subject matter, if your not don't bother. The writing is good and there is much information on Donald Rumsfeld's life and political career. If your at all interested in his life and career I do recommend you read his memoir.


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Multiculturalism is Racist

Multiculturalism is Racist

Opposition to Multiculturalism is often called racist, it is alleged that to deny entry into a country based on race, culture, ethnicity or religion is racist. That only open borders or at least a policy of immigration based on ignoring the immigrants race, culture, ethnicity and religion is acceptable. That once an immigrant is in the country then they should be respected simply by virtue of their origin, simply because they are not a local. In fact the host culture must change to accommodate the immigrant. Modes of speaking, customs, activities and even foods are expected to change.

Multiculturalism is a Government policy, nothing more. Just as opposing a tax policy doesn't automatically mean you oppose all taxation, you might but you might not, it is not automatic. The same applies to every Government policy including Multiculturalism.

There are a host of assumptions that are ignored by those who push Multiculturalism.

A distinct people or no distinct people

The idea that each nation in the world consists of a distinct people is ignored or denied. That there is no distinct American people, no distinct Australian people, no distinct Iraqi people, but of course anyone who has met one of these people knows they are distinct. Of course there are similarities but there are also differences and it is our differences that define us not our similarities. These peoples and every other peoples have a shared culture, a shared history and heritage, unique to them. But multiculturalism says that there are no distinct people, everyone is the same and interchangeable.

No culture

Not only are people interchangeable but they have no culture or maybe I should say it's only skin deep. Moving from one culture to another is just like changing your shirt, it's not harmful and it has little to no practical effect upon you. But in reality each of us grows up within a culture and it helps to define how we relate to the world and how we relate to other people. What food we eat, even how we wash and clean ourselves. As strange as it seems different peoples in different parts of the world have different ideas about such things, you might even say distinct things that define them. And every people have their own culture, there is no such thing as a people with no culture. If going to the opera every week is something your people do, that is part of your culture. If burning down opera houses is something your people do, then that is part of your culture.

Compatibility and social cohesion

As nations and peoples have unique and distinct experiences and cultures that means that these different people will see life differently. Sometimes that only means a different perspective but other times it means that the differences are very strong, even violent. When a native born person commits a crime against you the Government probably had little ability to stop it, but when an immigrant commits a crime against you the only reason they are able is because the Government made it possible. In other words a native born criminal is sadly your problem but the immigrant criminal is a problem you shouldn't have to deal with, you should be free from his privations as he shouldn't have assess to you. Thanks to Multiculturalism he now does.

Some cultures are very similar, not the same but similar, but others are very different. Multiculturalism makes no distinction between these differences. In fact it denies that they really exist, people of different races, cultures, ethnicity and religion are only different because they do not have experience with each other, once they do they will be fine. Of course the friction and disruption that must occur for that to happen is also ignored, it's inconvenient. These things are denied and when acknowledged is blamed on the host culture, the host must change.

Hatred of the majority

At the heart of Multiculturalism is the hatred of the host people, who are the majority when Multiculturalism starts. It is the destruction of the host people that it seeks but at all times it denies that reality, instead it insists it just wants a fairer world, a world without racism or discrimination, maybe a world without borders. But is making the host people a minority in their own land fair? Is discriminating against the host people in favour of immigrants really eliminating racism or ending discrimination? The answer to both is no, it's an absurd argument which is why mass immigration has never been put to the vote of the people anywhere in the world. It is why the policy of Multiculturalism has never been put to the vote of the people anywhere in the world. Because they know we, the people would reject this policy of hatred directed at us. It is not the immigrants who hate us, some do some don't, but thats not true of those who support Multiculturalism. They hate us, they hate their own people, they wish for our destruction and they are currently winning, we are being destroyed. Multiculturalism is both treasonous and racist.





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Financing Liberalism

Financing Liberalism

Let us start at the basics of Liberalism and get more complicated from there. Liberalism believes that society should be based upon the autonomous individual, that each person is a free agent able to invent and reinvent themselves as they desire. Broadly speaking Liberalism is divided into two parts, Right or Economic Liberalism and Left or Social Liberalism and each part is very interested in money.

Economic Liberalism is interested, many times it seems obsessed with, making money, people exist to make money, companies exist to make money and Government exists to make it easier to make money. Some are interested in social issues but mostly they are interested in money, the world is measured using money. Because money is measurable, you can measure how much each person has or hasn't got, how much a nation has and divide it per capita to find out how much each person is worth from that nation. While it certainly has a point it takes it to extremes and forgets that behind the money are people.

Social Liberalism is interested in money, but not to make money, it doesn't really understand or even want to understand how that happens. What it is interested in is spending money. Because it agrees that money is measurable, you can measure how much money goes to each area of Government, you can measure how much each segment of society has or gets. Everything can be measured and money not only solves problems but it is a measurable method of showing, of proving, how much you care. The more money, the more you care.

Interestingly both branches of Liberalism believe that money is the answer, that money is a means of solving problems. Not genius, not hardwork, not effort, not innovation, not technology, money buys those things and it is money that solves problems. Any problem can be solved with money and any good book on modern history since the 1930's will show you the truth of that. Businesses that spend money on ideas that can never work but keep spending, Governments that decide large amounts of money will win wars or solve social problems simply by spending the assigned money. It is so appealing because it's the easy answer, sadly I cannot think of a single social problem that has been solved that way, nor a single war won just by spending money.

But money is of great practical importance to Liberalism because as the social supports of the family and the church are replaced by autonomous individuals the tasks that families and churches once performed still need to be done. Only now the Government is "forced" to provide them and that requires alot of money. From the 1940's to the 1970's most Liberal Governments used high taxation to achieve their aims. But that is a form of Socialism and Socialism destroys wealth. It stops investment, it stops confidence and it spends the money it does have on unproductive areas of the national life. No matter how important such spending may seem it can only last while the money lasts and as this policy destroys wealth it does not last.

But Liberal Governments then privatized the assets it had nationalized in the past. This allowed it to pay off bills and keep spending while blaming any shortfall upon the private businesses that had bought the assets. It has worked for a surprisingly long time. But the money obtained didn't really last for long because there is always something to spend it on. As they had been forced to lower taxes the Governments now borrowed money and they borrowed and they borrowed. The idea was that the economy would rise and that the money would be paid off over such a long time that inflation would take care of the cover price. So for example the Government borrows $50 but pays it off over 25 years, thats $2 a year, plus interest lets say 10%, thats $2.20 each year for 50 years, but over time inflation means that $50 today is worth $30 or $15 or $3 in 50 years time. So that $2.20 today in 50 years time is worth $1.32 or $0.66 or $0.13.  By worth I mean has the spending power of. But of course they didn't borrow $50 they borrowed billions and in some cases trillions of dollars.

If Government is to do so much it must spend large sums of money and that money can only come from two sources, either it comes from taxation or it is borrowed. In theory there are other ways but they are really only subsets of taxation or borrowing. It cannot seriously reduce spending because if it does society doesn't function as well. It is replacing services provided by the family and the churches so it needs the money they used to run it's self. It isn't very efficient because it needs to spend money to provide a service that is often provided for free by the family or the church. Child minding, pastoral care, welfare support, much of this was provided for free by volunteers, obviously money was still needed but it was a cheaper way of providing these services. Now that work must be paid for by people who have the required training, all of which cost money. The greatest irony is that in the past much of this volunteer work was done by wives who now are encouraged to work outside the home, in many cases getting paid to do the work they once did as a volunteer.

Liberal Governments have used trick after trick to provide financing for themselves, but I'm left wondering what the next one will be. Part of me is intrigued by their ability to keep finding new ways to finance themselves, but it does mean that the financial fall will be hard, very hard when it comes. Liberalism believes in growth and that growth provides a future with more wealth than today. There is no reason why Liberalism as an economic system cannot work for a long while, but forever? Now thats a pretty tall order!


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Free-Love and Traditional Conservatism

Free-Love and Traditional Conservatism

Free-Love is the idea that you should be free to love anyone you want, not just one person but any number, as many as you like. And by love they of course mean lust, for you never need love any of them. It is about pleasure and vitality, about being attractive and getting the most from life, about not being boring but about being sensual. Here is a philosophy of the physical with no regard for anything beyond.  

The idea that ideas have consequences is completely absent, you have no soul, no emotions you are just a physical object disconnected from anything but pleasure.

I must point out the difference between promiscuity and Free-Love, someone who is promiscuous is engaging in an activity, someone who engages in Free-Love is engaging in a philosophy. Whatever your thoughts about promiscuity it will never go away as long as Humans exist. The extremes of Human existence naturally included the promiscuous. So how is Free-Love different?

Free-Love hates the idea of attachments, it isn't interested in marriage or even in long term relationships. What Free-Love desires is a world in which the casual is the norm, there is no room for deep thinkers or for deep feelings. Everything is temporary for if any permanence is around it sits in judgement of Free-Love, simply by existing. It suggests there are other ways of doing things, ways that may even be better and that cannot stand. Free-Love is ironically, a jealous philosophy.  

At the heart of Free-Loves attraction is the idea that life should not be hard and that this life is the only chance anyone has to enjoy pleasure. So grab it before it's gone. But to have an easy life you must actively avoid the strenuous things in life. Life must be shallow and superficial because it is here were the fun things in life exist. Of course it's hard to imagine how food gets grown, or clothes made or houses built if we are all living the easy life. The truth is that Free-Love is a user, living easy off of other peoples efforts. One day machines will do all the work and everyone can live easy they say, if that becomes true the one thing you can be certain of is that Free-Love didn't build it and nor will it be able to maintain it.

A Traditional Conservative may be celibate or a swinger but he cannot support Free-Love. It is a philosophy that stands in stark contrast to any notion of Traditionalism. It does not leave any room for the deeper aspects of life, no God, no commitment, nothing to hold onto but lust. Lust to be sure has it's attractions but as we all come to know we are either it's master or we are it's slave.


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The Eleventh Month

The Eleventh Month

The Last month has been my best month ever thanks to Mrs. Wood at The Thinking Housewife who provided a link to my article Feminism, Why we are not Feminists. I also enjoyed links from Mr. Richardson at Oz Conservative for the same article and Mrs. Wijker at Adventures in Housekeeping who linked to my article on Foreign Aid and Traditional Conservatism. A big thank you to all!

The large number of visitors this month have been due to the link from The Thinking Housewife but as always the large numbers are followed by a downturn. I'm not 100% certain why that should be but it seem quite consistent. But over time the number of visitors keeps rising so I'm not complaining.

One item of interest is that on the left hand side of my blog I have Popular Posts and they are a list of the top 10 going from top to bottom of the most read articles on my site. But the current top popular post Feminism, Why we are not Feminists is not the most read, that would be the second post The Discrimination of Anti-Discrimination. So why the discrepancy? Blogger has a number of lists of top 10 articles that I can look at in statistics, one is called Now which is for the last two hours, followed by Day, Week, Month and All Time. The strange thing about All Time is it isn't, after a while posts tend to bleed away so that the All Time list is closer to current views of the blog than a real All Time feature. As of today the two most read articles have this number of views.

Feminism, Why we are not Feminists has 577 views

&

The Discrimination of Anti-Discrimination  has 624 views

The best day was the 14th January with 248 visitors my best day ever, my worst day was the 1st of February when I had only 11 visitors.

The statistics for the last month, the 11th of January to the 11th of February

January-February

Entry	Pageviews
United States	963
Australia	304
United Kingdom	74
Canada	59
Ukraine	41
Germany	38
China	37
Indonesia	35
Japan	25
Portugal	21

December - January

Entry	Pageviews
United States	522
Australia	191
China	59
Russia	47
United Kingdom	35
Canada	32
Germany	25
Japan	23
France	15
Ireland	10

The United States, nearly doubled over the month as did the United Kingdom and Canada. Australia went up by 50% which is all very welcome.

The Ukraine, Indonesia and Portugal all came into the top 10, Portugal for the first time.

Germany also saw a good rise with Japan remaining steady. 

China however halved and France and Ireland have dropped out of the top 10.

I've had a huge number of countries visit this month Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland,  Austria, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Czech Republic, Greece, Romania, Latvia, Belarus, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Pakistan, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Tunisia, Ghana, South Africa, New Zealand, Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Argentina.

Mark Moncrieff

Upon Hope Blog - A Traditional Conservative Future

The Myth of the Level Playing Field

The Myth of the Level Playing Field

In the past Liberalism and today, Right or Economic Liberalism, has stated that the ideal economy is one in which economic entities are free from distortions to the free market. That a company should not be helped or hindered by Government action or policies, but that instead it should be free to pursue whatever benefits that particular company. In the past this was often called Laissez Faire, but today it's more often referred to as the Level Playing Field.

The idea of the Level Playing Field is that in an open market companies shouldn't be protected or hidden way from competition, quite the opposite. Each and every company needs to compete on the level playing field, because only then can the benefits of competition be realised. Lower costs, higher productivity and continual improvement of products be achieved. As companies better able to meet the challenges before them succeed and those not able to are not protected but instead fail.

But a problem arises from the idea of the Level Playing Field and that is that it doesn't exist. The Level Playing Field is an ideal state of play, one where the differences between different markets have been sorted out. But of course in reality those differences have not been worked out and it's hard to think of a future were they will have been. The vastly different levels of standards of living mean that we are comparing oranges and apples, not apples and apples. A company that only needs to pay it's workers $10 a day has an enormous advantage over a company that needs to pay it's workers $10 an hour. It has been argued by some that that will force the $10 a day company to increase it's wages to be attractive to workers. But if workers are on separate continents I do not see how that can work, the worker on $10 a day is not exposed to the other worker and therefore he feels no pressure to seek a higher wage simply because another worker far away gets paid more. The reverse argument is that the $10 an hour worker will either be sacked or will be forced over time to reduce his wage to remain competitive. Sadly I think this is closer to the truth.

So does that mean that protectionism is the answer? Yes and no is my response and the reason I say that is because both Free Trade and Protectionism have advantages and disadvantages. Free Trade works when the living standards of workers are roughly comparable, I would say when two countries have per capita GDP income within $US5000 of each other a year, and no tariffs or subsidies then there is little realistic reason to oppose free trade in general. Of course there may be exceptions for certain industries or sectors but they would be just that, exceptions.

But countries with differences in per capita GNP of more than $US5000 should have tariffs to protect both companies and workers from unfair competition. Nations have many national interests and that can be further divided into different kinds of interests and one of them is economic. For a country without an economic interest is either dead or dying, a thriving economy is one that has been given as many advantageous as possible while at the same time having as many disadvantageous as possible reduced or done away with. To protect the economic interest of the entire country either tariffs or subsidies, I prefer tariffs over subsidies, need to be in place.

To further explain my example:

Country A has a per capita GDP of $US20,000

Country B has a per capita GDP of $15,000

&

Country C has a per capita GDP of $25,000

Country A would have free trade with both Country B and C.

Country B would only have free trade with Country A

Country C would only have free trade with Country A

Over time the economic fortunes of countries change so it is likely that over time free trade would be granted or withdrawn as those economic conditions changed. Of course the change would need to be managed as it would be both cruel and not in our national interest to be too hasty, but the change would need to be made and I think it would be best if that change was part of an open formula that everyone, friend and foe knew and could with reasonable knowledge understand.

It could be argued that this would hurt the very poorest countries and the very poorest people. First of all the aim of every Government should be first and foremost the interests of it's own nation and people and not the interest of other nations or peoples. Secondly one of the reasons these countries are poor is because of their lack of trade, so in most cases it will affect very few. Of course it may be prudent to make some exceptions, or it may not be prudent to make exceptions. But as always exceptions should be exceptions.


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