Obama Snubs Injured Soldiers for a Workout, Will Media Care?

[snafu]

A lot of issues brought up here. Yes, we should seek liberalized trade agreements with all nations regardless of their human rights records. Free trade and open markets are a force against tyranny.......

 

I find myself disagreeing with the hugopedia. Wow first time!

How is free trade a force against tyranny? Just look they way they freaked out when they thought some counties we're going to boycott the Olympics. They tried to clean up their act pretty damn fast. They want our money and I think we can put the screws on them by sanctions.

[ImWithStupid]

I find myself disagreeing with the hugopedia. Wow first time!

How is free trade a force against tyranny? Just look they way they freaked out when they thought some counties we're going to boycott the Olympics. They tried to clean up their act pretty damn fast. They want our money and I think we can put the screws on them by sanctions.

 

I agree with Snaf. Playing nice with a nation just to get what they can provide, ignoring the human rights violations is wrong. I don't agree with it with China and I don't agree with it with Saudi Arabia.

 

Ignoring what they do to their people is like a neighbor ignoring the domestic violence going on to keep peace in on the block. She's still getting abused.

[wez]

Hahahaha... Hugo's all business.. humanity be damned..

[hugo]

Let me take some excerpts from:

 

Classical Liberalism in the 21st Century: War and Peace

by Richard M. Ebeling, September 2001

 

 

The classical-liberal vision

Only starting in the middle of the 18th century did there emerge a different vision of a society of peace and freedom. It is found in the writings of the French Physiocrats and the Scottish moral philosophers, two of whose leading figures were David Hume and Adam Smith. Their ideas were refined and popularized by the classical economists of the first half of the 19th century.

 

The ideas of the classical economists became the economic foundation for the classical-liberal revolution that radically changed the course of human events. They argued that private property was not the source of conflict among men but rather the institutional prerequisite for social peace. They reasoned that men have a logical basis for peacefully associating and cooperating with each other to obtain the benefits from the greater productivity and gains from trade that develop through a system of division of labor. They explained that the benefits from a division of labor were ecumenical in their nature, that is, the benefits from specialization and trade between members of the same community or region were no less universally true for all people who might happen to live in different countries.

 

It led one French classical liberal, Frederic Passy, to state in 1861,

 

Some day all barriers will fall; some day mankind, constantly united by continuous transactions, will form just one workshop, one market, and one family.. And this is . the grandeur, the truth, the nobility, I might almost say the holiness of the free trade doctrine; by the prosaic but effective pressure of [material] interest it tends to make justice and harmony prevail in the world.

 

And it is understandable why Passy reached this conclusion. By the middle of the 19th century, it appeared that the classical-liberal doctrine of individual freedom, limited government, and free markets would transform the world into an ever greater network of human relationships based on voluntary association, open competition, and international peace as governments were restricted to protecting liberty under constitutional restraint.

 

Liberalized trade leads to peaceful relations among nations. Economic prosperity leads to an increase in civil liberties. We are taking the right road with China, the wrong road with Cuba. There is nothing wrong with occasionally using the bully pulpit to espouse American values (even if we often fall short ourselves) and critique our trade partners but we should always remember to pursue our national interests which is liberalized trade.

[snafu]

 

 

 

 

Liberalized trade leads to peaceful relations among nations. Economic prosperity leads to an increase in civil liberties..

 

I disagree.

Economic prosperity in a Democratic or Socialist society yes but not in a communist or dictatorship society. Prosperity should be achieved but not at the expense of human suffering.

Sanctions with Cuba didn't work because they had enough trade with Russia and China.

 

Some day all barriers will fall; some day mankind, constantly united by continuous transactions, will form just one workshop, one market, and one family.. And this is . the grandeur, the truth, the nobility, I might almost say the holiness of the free trade doctrine; by the prosaic but effective pressure of [material] interest it tends to make justice and harmony prevail in the world.

 

 

What grand fairy tale for the rich and elite in a communistic world. The two societies can not co-exist.

[hugo]

It only took 17 years for classically liberal economic policies to turn Chile from a dictatorship into a democracy. China is no longer a communist country, not much more socialistic than Europe. The Chinese people are much better off than they were when Nixon first established friendly relations and opened up trade economically and from a civil liberties point of view. Yep, to believe us human bastards will ever live totally in peace with each other is utopian; there will always be some conflict. The best way to reduce it is to follow liberal (in the classic use of the word) trade policies.