Are There Any Jobs

Yes, there are jobs - but not many manufacturing jobs. Most industry has fled. Consumer products that were once manufactured in the United States and sold throughout the world, are now produced in foreign countries, imported and sold to Americans.

A “mixed economy” results from attempting to commingle capitalism and socialism, the results of which are currently reverberating loudly through the empty corridors of lifeless manufacturing plants that failed and closed, or fled the United States, as a direct result of years of government intervention, regulation, taxation and barriers to competition. American jobs best illustrate the point. Americans are learning that their politicians can’t have it both ways, endlessly taxation, regulation and imposing social responsibility on American businesses and expecting enduring jobs to be available for the next generation of Americans. There is one occupation that is growing, however, employment in the Entitlement Industry.

One of the most depressing things you will ever do is tour eastern states by motor vehicle, north to south, east of the Mississippi River, big cities, municipalities, small towns and rural communities. North Carolina and South Carolina in particular look and feel like the Twilight Zone -- a memory that will be hard to forget. Hundreds and hundreds of factories and businesses were closed long ago. They are now silent, boarded up, fenced off from vandals, covered with graffiti and abandoned. For a multitude of reasons, the manufacturing jobs that once were our pride and economic power - are gone. Residents wander the streets looking like survivors in a war zone, most of them Americans of African descent, pushing a shopping cart with no place to go.

According to those who frequent the local watering holes and barber shops, most manufacturing and many service jobs either fled the Carolina's or have been out-sourced. When I asked why, the consistent reply was (in my words trying to combine many conversations) oppressive regulation, mind-numbing taxation, and government-imposed employee social benefits. Add to that the intervention of administrative agencies such as OSHA and EPA, lack of a work ethic, dearth of useful skills in the available workforce, a failed government public education system, a society spring-loaded to litigate hot cups of coffee, trade policies (NAFTA and CAFTA), relentless union disruption of an orderly flow of wages and benefits, and federal immigration laws that are not enforced. When all of this was combined with a mind-numbing federal and state tax burden, the costs of production in the Carolina's became so great that it eliminated any chance of profitability.

Businesses which could no longer be competitive in the United States marketplace saw their departure from American shores (with the jobs) as a matter of economic survival. The American workers, now ex-employees, were left behind to sort through the economic ruins of American businesses trying to fathom what happened. Most of the ex-employees are currently employed by the taxpayer-subsidized "Entitlement Industry." Congress, and particularly eastern state legislatures steadfastly refuse economic and social policy reforms to this day.

If you have a problem with this reality, you may want to recognize that this agenda was championed by both political parties. State governments and city councils bear much of the responsibility for the devastation east of the Mississippi River - a man-made economic wasteland. It wasn't all the fault of Congress. The only recourse appears to be to look for conservative political candidates to begin the economic reconstruction that will take a decade or more to correct the failed liberal adventure into the quicksand of socialism. Unfortunately, there aren't many conservative candidates and certainly too few to cause meaningful change.

Why did it have to happen? What is it about capitalism in general and conservatism in particular that liberals reject? Is it the attributes of integrity, excellence, initiative, self-reliance, freedom, education, competition, profit, legal voting, law-abiding, self-government, morality, the Constitution, American flag, patriotism, military service or value systems derived from faith? If not, what then? You know the value system a conservative embraces. What value system guides a liberal's waking moments and aspirations?

In contrast, what do the proponents of socialism have to offer? Ask them to articulate it. It is an interesting and amusing exercise to ask a liberal to list the cultural and economic advantages of a socialist ideology that will lead to a better life for all individual Americans. You will have a difficult time finding them written anywhere or spoken coherently. They only exist in history books that document failed social policies of failed nations. In a few words, what is the principal unspoken ideological concept that forms the core belief of a liberal? Self interest. Maybe a few examples will help.

What we do know from demonstrated behavior, repeated over and over? A liberal asks what government can do for you. A conservative or libertarian asks, what can you do for yourself? Liberals want to give you things in return for your vote; conservatives want you to earn what you want in life or go without; libertarians want government out of their lives entirely.

A conservative contends charity is the right or responsibility of individuals and charitable institutions, rather than the 'forced charity' employed by liberals that confiscate and redistribute tax money by force.

Conservatives believe all people are not born genetically equal but with equal opportunity. If all men were truly born equal, why are some people receiving welfare? Conservatives believe that each American has a right to earn his niche by the sweat of his brow. Some will sweat more and carve larger niches, strive for education and realize the American dream. None of this, however, gives anyone the right to confiscate and redistribute the earned or inherited wealth of one American citizen to another - nor to an illegal alien.

What incentives realistically remain when growing numbers of Americans simply refuse to work and are offered a lifetime annuity in return for their votes. Many are so poorly educated that they've become functionally illiterate and for all practical purposes unemployable? The vast majority of the aforementioned are constituents of the Democratic Party. Liberals demand that those who work (conservatives) must support those who do not (liberals). A conservative who works like a liberal is generally considered a lazy bastard. Conservatives demand that each person accepts individual responsibility, while Libertarians deny that government has any proper place or authority in the affairs of a free society.

Liberals would intentionally misinform you and tell you that conservatism is equally an ideology, just as is liberalism. Again, facts prevail. Conservatism is not an ideology. Conservatism is the negation of any ideology - the absence of any ideology, motive, agenda, prejudice, or ulterior motive. Conservatism simply is: "Earn it yourself or do without." Conservative value systems have developed over time, thousands of years, from success after success, over many generations, in the form of traditions, customs and habits.

Socialist ideology, in contrast, is the result of the particular philosophy of a few influential economists, such as Karl Marx, seeking an economic utopia. Liberal socialism is about how a person wants the world to be, regardless of reality, with everyone serving the state and deriving their "equal" existence from the state. The liberal view is that reality is only an illusion that occurs due to the lack of tax revenue.

The most important comparison is the bottom line. Socialist ideology has produced failure after failure, over many centuries, many governments and countless generations of victims. Even our nation's first settlers in Massachusetts had to abandon collectivism in order to survive - but who reads history anymore? The modern Congress (both political parties) are gradually returning the United States to national collectivism - a fact which does not bode well either for our children or Christianity.

One thing is for sure. Liberals, as a result of their ideology, have a generalized and consuming hatred of all things conservative, no matter how beneficial for America. The reason appears to lie in one simple fact. Conservatives seek the welfare of every citizen as a result of their labors and industriousness. A conservative wants every American to have the opportunity to be anything and everything they want to be, without class boundaries, as well as to be held accountable for their own life and cumulative achievement. Even the term, “middle-class American,” is but one example of a liberal construct that simply does not exist in conservative thought. By contrast, liberals seek the welfare of every citizen as a distribution of government. Liberals would prefer that government was omnipotent and that every citizen, every business and every asset was the property of the state. What you receive in a world of liberal socialism is what you receive from the government, not what you earn - that belongs to the government.

Classic examples of liberal preference of form over substance abound. A current example of liberalism would have to include the conflict between how you say something as opposed to what you say - form over substance, which you recognize as "political correctness." Remember, any man who feels the need to be politically correct cannot by definition be honest. We would all be better off without a government-imposed ideology of form over substance.

If something is good for America, why is it bad for liberals? It expands individualism and self-reliance.

And conversely, If something is bad for America, why is it good for liberals? It expands government and collectivism, class structure and dependency.

Red State Patriot

Posted September 24, 2005 12:27 PM
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