In a quintessential cover story in the American Conservative, "Death of Manufacturing," Pat Buchanan exposes the fraud of Free Trade. This is a must read, especially for those Libertarians who cling to the abstract notion that intellectual possibilities are viable and practical in the real world. Notwithstanding their fantasies, self interest and national economic independence is the supreme basis for economic policy that benefits citizens. Those who strive to generate profit upon unholy alliances are at best befuddled accessories or, in the worst case, greedy traitors.

As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. The score card is the trade deficit. The burden is carried by those who are unemployed. And the final casualty is the autonomy of the nation's economy.

Is economic primacy important to you and your countrymen? A Free Trade Policy has regard only for the business venture. National concerns and the best long term interests of the average American has no stature in a game of systematic dismantling of self sufficiency.

The Buchanan thesis rests upon the worth of maintaining America as a free society. It’s easy to be deluded into thinking that freedom is enhanced with the vast array of consumer items offered for sale at your local discount outlet. Nevertheless, cheap prices from foreign producers only feeds the trade shortfall. How backward does one need to be to avoid the inevitable?  When production leaves for offshore havens based upon a playing field that is rigged to serve only the monopolists, how free can we remain as a people?

The conclusion from this essay is clear: “Free trade is a bright shining lie. Free trade is the Trojan Horse of world government. Free trade is the murderer of manufacturing and the primrose path to the loss of national sovereignty and the end of our independence.”

The NAFTA swindle is a transparent scam. Here is Pat’s summary, the only one you need to remember: "NAFTA has helped to convert California into Mexifornia and the Golden State into a Third-World country. Ten years after its passage, Mexico’s leading export continues to be Mexicans.”

In the end, the social cost from a conscious dissemblance of manufacturing within our own borders means the loss of high scale livable wage jobs. Let’s be honest and admit the truth. Americans no longer have the work ethic of previous generations nor does the average worker have the stomach to labor for subsistence level pay. However, that is only a consequence of the larger issue. The political decision to vacate domestic manufacturing from our own people is analogous to running a closed shop that benefits only venture monopolists, international bankers, global money launders, stateless managers and governmental hacks.

The flight out of California illustrates this civic price being paid, but this same syndrome also applies to other former bastions of industry. According to the Census Bureau Report, State by State Migration Flows: 1995-2000, California, New York and Illinois served as "a trio of gateway states that simultaneously lost migrants to other states while gaining migrants from abroad."

The surrender of manufacturing employment as a sacrifice to the Free Traders has forced this mass exodus of layed-off Americans - our own displaced persons. If you believe this is an intrinsic result, inevitable and unalterable, your confidence in political elites and their distortion of economic self-interest must mean you only buy Chinese. National suicide is not natural. But for the Free Trader mesmerized by visions of bountiful prosperity, produced under the illusion of backwater cheap labor, just what happens when the cash runs out because jobs left for overseas?

The big picture is confirmed by Pat Choate and cited by Mr Buchanan in his flagship magazine: “In the 1970s, [the United States]mounted a decades-long deficit of $75 billion. . . . In the 1980s, the deficit soared to $843 billion as Japan began to take away our industries. . . . In the 1990s, that trade deficit doubled to $1.7 trillion. . . . At this pace, we’re probably going to have a $6 trillion cumulative deficit in this decade - and that’s probably an understated number given the pace we are losing our manufacturing base.”

NAFTA is the conveyance upon which the outflow hits home in the most visible way. The virtual bankruptcy of California has a fundamental linkage to the damage done by NAFTA. The best test of loyalty to real Americans is demonstrated by one’s attitude about the Free Trade rip-off. Politicians need to follow the wisdom of the economic miracle that built our country. SELF Interest in national economic independence and self sufficiency. If you want solutions, stop the outflow, rebuild U.S. industry and create domestic jobs.

Sartre is the pen name of James Hall, a reformed political operative. His website is Breaking All the Rules.  This article published originally at Rense.com; republication granted with this tagline and hyperlink intact.