British National Party Preaches Protectionism to Hosannahs.
The news that the sad, unemployed people of the old fishing village Grimsby in the north of England are grumbling at the foreigners in town, who work cheaply at the Elf Total refinery, pointed my best labor correspondent and then eventually me to the BNP website to learn what the British brownshirts are about. The financial crisis is the BNP's fertility. Celebrating protectionist labor policies is the way the BNP is promoting itself while bashing the heroically hypocritical Labor and the Tory crybabies. The BNP wants all the foreigners turned out, wants all the jobs in the hands of "real" Brits, wants political punch in Parliament. The BNP rising was an idle ambition during the boom, but now it is likely inevitable. Why? Because the facts are with the party that cries, "Britain for Britains!" ("Some 9 percent of the workforce is now from outside the EU -- up from 5.3 percent in 1997. According to the Migrationwatch study, the number of UK nationals working in other EU countries is approximately 286,000 as against some 1,172,000 workers born in the EU currently working in the UK.") The fresh strength of the party is that every voter believes what it says. Two years ago, Gordon Brown boasted he would protect British job. Now the only job he has the savvy to fight to protect is his own. Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, David Cameron are all on the wrong side of the argument on protectionism:
Gordon Brown called it" the greatest threat to the world today", whilst his Chancellor Alistair Darling told the Commons "it is very, very important we don't have protectionism". Tory leader David Cameron, and Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Vince Cable, nod their heads sagely in agreement while Lord Mandelson wags his finger at British workers shivering in the snow as they protest at their jobs being taken by imported cheap labour, telling them "we must not retreat into economic protectionism".
But the British National Party says that is exactly what we should be doing. Protectionism simply means protecting British firms and jobs from cheap foreign imports and cheap foreign labour. It means imposing tariffs on the imports that put British workers on the dole, and banning multinationals like Total Oil from bringing in foreign workers to undercut British workers in their own country.
Mr. Obama's Trip to Ottawa Will Strengthen the BNP.
The "Buy America" mandate in the stimulus bill just signed into law by the President has profoundly reinforced the BNP message. French President Sarkozy demanding French supremacy in trade, in employment, in finances, also supports BNP. All the bad news in the EU banks supports BNP, since there are no good answers, and the BNP provides the satisfyingly simple rage: "Foreigners get out!" Is an "America First" mania coming our way? Already here, and we have just started the spiral downward. Will America turn on the Chinese labor, the Latino labor, the India labor? Yes. Already.
It has been said that “when America sneezes, the whole world catches cold”. It must be remembered that this whole business started with the progressives in America: the utopian notion of chickens in every pot; the American dream (of a home) for everyone; universal health care - and the resulting toxic financial assets sold around the world. Elections have consequences. America sneezed. Americans have bought into this fiction and ruined their economy. The consequences, unfortunately, are felt world-wide.
JB keeps bringing up Smoot Hawley and the 30’s; the 20’s; Weimar; the Great Wars (as if anyone is still interested). All this no longer matters. We, who study history, can easily recognize the parallels. We can know what invariably lies ahead. We also know that we can’t change destiny. For those who do not read and believe that two plus two equals five, the lessons of recorded history are of no relevance. They will press ahead as if they were immune from the consequence of making ‘mistakes’. Who would have thought that killing people just for wearing (or having worn) glasses would lead to a good place? Who would have thought that genocide is a good idea? Who would have thought that the emptying of cities and driving everyone out into the fields (or vice versa) would make for a better and more just society? Yet, all these things happened. …and all led to disaster. By the same token, we ourselves are fully entitled to repeating these same mistakes and suffering the ensuing disasters.
We have elected a man without first having vetted him. He has refused to show us his (valid) birth certificate and the records of the educational institutions he attended. We thought these were only minor points. We liked the way he looked and spoke; swaggered. We voted for Obama without knowing the first thing about him. We did it believing that no one could be worse than Bush; that anyone would only be better. Never before on these shores has an entire electorate elevated the deliberately “dumb and dumber” to such high office.
The press continues to tell us “Obama won.” Won what?
Uhh... Peter... hello? Please stay with us now.
Obama won the Presidency with about one half of the entire electorate.
Lately, I have been reserved and not taken you to task on many recent writings of yours. Believe me, it is difficult for me not to try and debate some of your suppositions.
But, I remain reticent because I believe I have learned that your style is broadly more automatic than thoroughly thoughtful.
Regards!!
I am filled with optimism now! I see that Rick Santelli on CNBC calls for a Chicago Tea Party on the floor of the CBOE and it has been echoing on the internet and talk radio. The traders call for stopping payment on mortgages. I'll go a step further and say withhold Federal tax payments as well. We must starve the Leviathan in order to bring her back under the control of We the People. The Spirit of America lives and has broken through the surface.
In the words of Sam Adams “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds”
I have been driving my wife and neighbors crazy these past few weeks by demanding that they confront the truth and discard their cognitive dissonance. Even a couple of my very liberal friends have awoken from their slumber in the past few days. I am hopeful.
Spence - Don't be reticent. Go for it! Let's see what you've got. But try not to make it too wordy. I suffer from ADD.
Nope- Can't go there...
I am not, any more, going to jeopardize being sanctioned or shut out for the sake of argument, in disagreement of worldviews, that have drawn the ire and complaint of other contributors (even you).
Besides, Mr B *allows* us to offer comment on *his* visions of our predicaments and follies.
We brought isolationism to the fore many months ago in this forum. We heralded a call to beware and watch for it.
The US wasn't the first to utter the words of nationalism. As a matter of fact, we may have been the last. But, now that it is here and subject to vorsply- what is unnatural about calling for a nation to look out for its own before other considerations?
Special interests? We have stumbled upon and haphazardly found the Vader.
I have friends visiting in from the NorthWest- Report:
Schools will be forced to cut back to 4 days/ week
All school teachers, that were newly hired for this school year, will not be returning next year.
0 hour classes are to be eliminated.
Rural area schools will close and students transported to more viable districts for classes.
Report is current; report is distressing because... ???
I have been following the trajectory of the BNP with fascination for quite some time, and am more than a little surprised that Mr. Batchelor only now acknowledges it. More broadly, that surprise extends to the very conditions that made the BNP’s rise not only possible but inevitable: the abysmal failure of mainstream conservatives over there to address the conjoined twin disasters of Third World immigration and "free trade" with anything other than blather about "buying the best brains" and "comparative advantage."
What lessons do Republicans draw from all this? That they should tell us that we are so stupid and lazy that we ought to be displaced by hardworking immigrants. And while they’re at it, that jobless American workers ought to be grateful to be saved from the evils of protectionism by having their jobs shipped to slave states unencumbered by even the most rudimentary worker-protection laws and environmental rules. Anybody who disagrees with these notions must of course be smeared as a nativist, as was the case with Pat Buchanan.
A surefire winning electoral strategy! And to think that some people call Republicans the Stupid Party!
do you really beleive that the bnp is going to be the next government of this country?
the people will not vite for this party, why should they?