Reader Response to - "Americans Questioning Value of Free Trade"

Dear M. Snide,

Thanks for the article.

Here's my spin and it's really simple...

Remember the H.G. Wells classic The Time Machine? The American consumer is evolving more and more into the Eloi and the foreign producer is resembling the Morlocks "gobbling up" more and more American manufacturing companies with the dollars that WE send them!!! One of the more recent large casualties being the The Hoover Vacuum Company.

We are losing at the global chess game as the other so called trading partners cheat. We have forfeited our bishops and rooks, the electronics, textile, steel industries and are quickly doing the same to our auto and agricultural business. Half of our domestic marriages end in divorce, what makes us think that a strange foreign culture should respect our trade contracts? Ford and GM are the ONLY American auto pieces left and if the American consumer has its way, not for long. No company is perfect, but the same consumer who insists on being more loyal to a foreign owned or made product will find out that the buck won't stop with just autos, in fact it may be their industry next that will have to compete with government subsidized or slave labor workers. It's a recession if your neighbor loses his job and a depression when you lose your own.

The American consumer should be called "sheeple", just like the Eloi, who thought they had it good because everything was provided for them and did not care to provide it for themselves. They "perceived" a happy but dependent lifestyle without gauging the consequences. This kind of superior mindset against working with our hands to keep our own sovereignty will only lend itself to us having to change the name of our July 4th Holiday because foreign nations will be responsible for feeding, clothing and transporting us.

Are we a market or a nation? I only hope that I won't be around then to see America sell the last acre of the farm off to belong to the futuristic One World Order.

Barbara in Chagrin Falls, Ohio