STRIKING THE COLORS!
Our flag is disappearing from the high seas!
Yet another of many curious national ironies is that while Congress acts to mandate patriotism and respect for the flag through a constitutional amendment, it seems to be working overtime toward the demise of American patriotism through an anti-nationalistic internationalist agenda.
Policy-making forces within our own government are gradually renting asunder the very nation the beloved stars and stripes symbolizes. This agenda is actively undermining this nation's political and economic greatness through the deceptive avenues popularly advertised as "free trade" and a new international order. GATT, the WTO, and NAFTA are literally national economic suicide pacts aimed at subverting our national economy in the name of globalism.
This "other hand" of government, (which does not represent the American people) is actively scuttling the American flag from the high seas. As Congress acts to give the flag special protection against phantom flag burners, it is striking the colors world-wide by allowing the American Merchant Marine to disappear from the high seas—our once great and living maritime heritage is being sacrificed to New World Order politics.
The case of the disappearing American merchant fleet is an excellent illustration of what is happening to our nation as a whole. The Merchant Marine is an microcosm of American industry and more. The demise of our Merchant Marine is an illustration of how a government desecrates it own flag through ill advised and destructive policy making.
For those who don't know, the Merchant Marine is comprised of the merchant ships and crews that carry our international trade. The overwhelming majority of all international commerce is in the form of waterborne freight (cargo)—from oil to cars and PC's, from iron ore and logs, to grains, live cattle, and bananas. It's all carried over the oceans of the world in merchant ships. These ships are manned by civilian sailors called merchant seamen.
From pre-Revolutionary times onward, we have been a seafaring people. As a maritime trading nation, shipbuilding and shipping were two of the nation's first and most important industries. The United States Navy was born of the Merchant Marine at the time of Independence, and one of the Navy's primary purposes has always been to make the world's trade routes safe for American merchant ships.
The Merchant Marine is first and foremost a peacetime, profit oriented, freight carrying industry. But during times of war it becomes the fourth arm of national defense, providing invaluable logistic support to our armed forces and allies abroad. merchant seamen suffer casualties of war alongside the armed forces during times of military conflict. No military effort abroad is possible without the support of the Merchant Marine.
From the very beginnings of the republic, the Merchant Marine and the seamen that manned its ships were recognized as a vitally important national asset. The Merchant Marine was central to the growth of our nation in its early years and its sustenance and economic health ever since. That importance was never seriously questioned until the advent of post WWII globalism.
Because of its importance, the Merchant Marine and maritime industry became one of our first "protected" national industries. In this aspect, the Merchant Marine differs markedly from other industries. Its protection has required direct government subsidies throughout our history. Other vital industries required protection only through tariffs rather than direct subsidy. The ever-present and growing differential between American living and wage standards and those of other maritime nations, became the basis for what are called operating differential subsidies. "The roots of steamship line subsidy... go back at least as far as the British East India Company and (is) based upon the recognition of the value of the merchant marine to the nation as a whole. ...American merchant marine policy... recognizes the need for legislation to protect the merchant seaman, the need of operation differential subsidies to protect the shipping companies... and the need for a good merchant fleet as a vital adjunct to the armed forces in time of war." (American Merchant Seaman's Manual)
These subsidies, along with other congressionally mandated protections, such as cargo preference laws, (reserving military cargoes and a fair percentage of the nation's commerce to American ships) and U.S. citizen manning requirements, allowed the American flag Merchant Marine, with its well paid crews, to survive and compete in world trade routes.
Because merchant seamen were recognized as a critically valuable class to the nation, the United States Public Health Service came into being as the Marine Hospital Service in 1798. Its original sole purpose was to care for sick and disabled merchant seamen. The USPHS continued to fulfill its original and expanded mission until the Reagan administration stripped it of its primary functions in the early 80's. This is why the Surgeon General, now merely a figurehead position, still wears a distinctly naval uniform.
Each and every American merchant ship is a national asset in the same sense as each and every naval vessel is a national asset. Each ship, merchant or naval, is a piece of the American economy—a patch of American "soil"—projected from our home shores out across the oceans of the world.
"The sight of our bluejackets (navy men) in their streets, or merchantmen (merchant ships and men) in their ports, and our goods trading over their counters while their goods go down to the sea to be shipped to the United States—all of these things bring a living reality, a heart-warming image of America to all the free nations of the world." (The Bluejackets' Manual, fifteenth edition) Naval and merchant ships both carry the flag to the far corners of the earth, and act as symbols of American military and economic strength, and project the hope for international peace and security.
Unlike naval vessels, merchant ships are operated for profit, and pay most of their costs by collecting freight on cargoes carried. Thus they are largely self-supporting from an economic standpoint. Each is a part of the United States, and in spite of commercial purpose, each proudly projected and displayed the American flag as it pursued its commercial interests on the trade routes of the world.
For two centuries few Americans, and fewer in Washington, ever questioned the importance of having the American flag thus broadly represented around the world.
As our present day Congress deliberates on a proposed constitutional amendment to bar desecration of the American flag, it is actively participating in national policies that desecrate the nation itself, removing our proud national symbol from the oceans and ports of the world. They are allowing more and more American cargoes to be carried in foreign ships, and allowing once loyal American shipping companies to remove the American flag from their ships. These de-Americanized ships will no longer be manned by loyal American seamen, and will no longer be unquestionably available for defense of the nation.
After a long and splendid history, the American flag merchant fleet is finally being allowed to sink from the world's oceans in the name of global free trade and new economic realities. The reason, of course, is competitiveness. American ships simply cannot compete in international trade with ships manned by dollar-a-day foreign seamen. Today's globalist mentality sees the operating differential subsidy and cargo preference laws as "unfairly protectionist" and luxuries we can no longer afford. In view of our out-of-control deficits and internationalism, current conventional wisdom says that Philipino and Bangladeshi seamen are more cost-effective than American seamen, and certainly likely to be more loyal to the emerging corporate New World Order than Americans.
The Merchant Marine has long struggled on the very "cutting edge" of the New World Order. Long before the public became aware of "free trade" and the New World Order, the runaway flag had been an issue of concern. The desire of shipping companies, in order to cut costs, escape U.S. regulation and taxation, and maximize profits, tended toward ripping down the American flag in favor of Panamanian, Liberian, or other flags of convenience, whereby dollar-a-day labor could replace the fair American wage of the American seaman.
The subsidy, cargo preference laws, and citizenship requirement laws, until recently, prevented several shipping companies from going "multi-national" and kept them loyal to the nation. Even with protective laws in place, they were often not enforced, or were ignored. This negligence, combined with other regulatory shackles and cost factors imposed by our government, fatally crippled American flag competitiveness in spite of subsidies, and drove most of our national flag carriers into bankruptcy over the past several decades. Now the remaining few are being allowed, and even encouraged, by free trade policies, to betray their national flag. In betraying their flag, they betray their employees—the seamen who faithfully manned their ships, and their families and children.
Today, "citizenship" requirements can be satisfied by setting up an "American" dummy corporation to own American flag ships. The "American citizen corporation," however, can be totally owned by a foreign corporation. So foreign companies can now operate American flag ships, gain the prestige of the American flag, and collect a subsidy from U.S. taxpayers intended for American companies. Of course, this satisfies some American seamen and their labor unions, but nonetheless undermines the very concept of an American flag merchant marine.
Given the nature of business practice, and the abandonment of the flag (and its literal prostitution to foreign corporate interests), by our own government, shipping companies can hardly be faulted for jumping ship. Business is a patently mercenary affair where the bottom line rules. It can be expected to support the public policy made in Washington that is selling out the American seaman, American shipper, and the American producer in general. This is happening today in every American industry.
International competitiveness requires that American labor be cut off and undermined wherever possible. Government free trade policy makes it attractive and increasingly easy for American corporations to betray the American flag and their American labor force and move production elsewhere.
Capital is by nature predatory. It is one of the few legitimate functions of government to put regulatory shackles on capital to limit its predatory tendencies. Unleashed by mis-guided government policy, capital depredations become patently destructive of national interests. Labor, under the deceptive policy of free trade, becomes merely another overhead expense to be slashed in every way possible. Success is seen only in bottom line and stock dividends, and not in any broad-based prosperity or security of the vast majority who make up the national work force. The American company becomes a multi-national corporation with no national loyalties, forever seeking out the cheapest labor markets for its production.
As American labor is shunted out of the loop, increasing bottom-line profits are perversely seen as evidence that the economy is "improving" and free trade working. But the "jobless economic recovery" is about as oxymoronic as anything can get. The stock market goes up, and Washington and Wall Street are satisfied. But this alleged prosperity is gained at tremendous social cost and is therefore, in the final analysis, strictly illusory.
This illusion of prosperity will ultimately pay dividends which will be counted, not in dollars but, in pain and suffering of the unemployed, with a devastating ripple-effect throughout society and the economy. The smart money class, who think they benefit, will not be spared, for their wealth and security are unequivocally wed to the fortunes of the American producers they think they can do without. As they undermine prosperity of the working masses, they undermine their own best customer—the true creator of real wealth and earner of real income. The smoke and mirror financial flim-flam, endemic to new-age economics, cannot sustain an economy. It is voodoo economics pure and simple.
Within the boundaries of a prosperous economy, vital domestic industries can only be protected by the nation's governmental regulatory apparatus and enforced at the national borders, through import and export duties and tariffs. Protectionism was an effective subsidy for domestic industry, which allowed the United States to become a great and prosperous industrialized nation—it was a subsidy that paid rather than cost the nation. It furnished the government its primary sources of revenues throughout most of our history. While it allowed the nation to become economically strong and independent, it produced spectacular dividends, provided broad-based prosperity, while generating government revenue. Only since we have repudiated protectionist national policies have our economic problems—deficits in both spending and trade— exploded into nation-threatening affairs.
Before the international free trade cancer set in, we had always been a robust trading nation with a large Merchant Marine. Thus healthy trade is demonstrably not contingent on "free trade." Free trade merely short-circuits, and short-changes, American labor.
Our merchant ships once plied the oceans in large numbers, proudly showing the flag and evidence of our national greatness, and our major maritime industries remained proud and strong with protectionism in place. American ships were built in American shipyards, at high cost, so American shipyard workers could enjoy high American wages and living standards, and the entire economy thrived because we had internal balance conductive to high wage and living standards.
American standards, in every field, were once recognized as the highest in the world. Only after the advent of the multi-national corporation, and its quest for "cheap" labor and resources, and cheap freight rates, did our national fortunes take a downward turn, and our economy and national standards nose-dive. The cure for the problem is always "more of the same" free trade policy.
The subsidized Merchant Marine, as costly as it may have appeared to be to the caliber of blind men now in charge of the nation, never really cost the national economy a single dime—it never contributed either to the balance of payments or trade deficits. It returned every subsidy dollar, plus profits, to the American economy. It paid tens of thousands of seamen, supported their families, sent their children to school, paid college tuitions, and it paid real profits, dividends, and abundant taxes. Every dime of profit of American shipping companies, and the maritime industry in general, went to pay American maritime workers and their families in exactly the same way. Corporate profits went to American stockholders, American banks, and American CEO's. It supported shipyards and a large number of related industries nation-wide.
Every American flag ship was a going concern—a national asset that did much more than pay its own way. It was an economic unit as well as a unit of national defense, with its crew of loyal American seamen always willing to put themselves in harm's way at the behest of the nation whenever and where ever the need arose. The operating subsidy costs of the American Merchant fleet were always more than balanced by returns to the American economy. Costs to the public treasury were always more than offset by returns and benefits to the economy. None of this is true of any foreign ship, seaman, corporation, or industry.
The cost of allowing the great bulk of our international commerce to be carried in "cheap" foreign ships, on the other hand, is literally incalculable. Not a single wage or freight dollar is returned to our economy. The balance sheet reflects all cost and no real net return.
The economy-wide result of free trade policy is reflected in our current balance of payments and trade deficits, and increasing unemployment lines. Almost all revenues in international commerce, (and the amount is considerable) accrue to foreign interests, totally bypassing the American economy. Even the runaway American shipping company, (given the official green light to maximize predatory practices) as it sheds its national loyalty and becomes a multi-national concern, can be depended upon to stash most of its profits in foreign banks beyond the reach of American taxation.
Foreign ships and crews escape American safety regulations and American taxation. Whole nations are devoted to providing runaway flag havens and services to expatriate companies, and most of those nations are supported by U.S. Aid.
Add to this the incalculable costs of tens of thousands of unemployed seamen and maritime workers thrust upon a faltering economy and weakening job market and the magnitude of the problem becomes more apparent. The seaman must either join the unemployment or welfare rolls, or join in the competition for minimum wage, service industry jobs, with the vast and growing number of other displaced industrial workers.
By far the most ironic aspect of this suicidal national policy is that while our illustrious mis-representatives in Washington consider supporting an American Merchant Marine both "protectionist" and "too expensive," most of the competition is subsidized not only by their respective nations, but our own government as well through various foreign aid programs! This, of course, adds crowning insult to already extensive injury.
As a nation, we are in the ridiculous position of refusing to support or subsidize our own vital industries, while freely continuing to subsidize the foreign competition. The American tax dollar is being used to help foreign industry while undermining American industry, American labor, and American economic independence. All of this is because our government has become a willing and enthusiastic agent of a destructively perverse internationalist agenda.
American seamen and maritime unions, in fighting for their jobs, aren't greedy as has often been characterized. They do not feel that a healthy Merchant Marine is their "personal right," but that a fair share of its own national ocean-borne commerce is "America's right".
It is in America's most vital national interests to have available the essential defense capability only a large and healthy Merchant Marine can provide. The "Ready Reserve Fleet" is by no stretch of the imagination a viable substitute for a working merchant fleet deployed in international trade and showing the flag throughout the world. The "Ready Reserve" ship is only as ready as are the men standing by to man it—and there are no trained men idly standing by. Trained and ready professional seamen either have to find employment on operating merchant ship or find another line of work. Increasingly, the latter is the case. Nor is the concept of "effective American operational control" of American owned foreign ships a guarantee of availability in times of national need. Like the foreign seamen that man their ships, the nominally American multi-national corporation has no American national loyalty.
Because shipping, unlike other industries, is unavoidably in direct competition with foreign counterparts, government operating differential subsidies, and cargo preference laws, continue to be essential to a healthy Merchant Marine. As stated above, these subsidies do not really cost the economy anything, but pay economic, social, and defense dividends.
We now support the world's greatest navy so it can patrol the high seas on behalf of the merchant fleets of every other nation on earth but our own. As a global military power, we are now grossly overextended because our forces lack essential Merchant Marine back-up. We are allowing our military insurance policy to expire, and are thus hostage to global "allies" to insure our wartime capabilities, not knowing which of them will be enemies in the next conflict, or whether any will stand behind us.
The Gulf War was not a satisfactory test of our sustained military sealift capability. Yet with what little we had to work with, our Merchant Marine performed miraculously. Yet it was woefully inadequate, and for the first time we had to depend heavily on foreign ships to supply a significant amount of sealift capacity. Many politicians saw this evidence of foreign ships "saving the day" as proof that we can always depend upon foreign ships and men to bail us out. Not even maybe! The Gulf War was a brief international anomaly unlilely to ever be repeated.
Mis-representatives in Washington have repudiated American political and economic independence in favor of a new, and very shaky, world order—a world order that bodes ill for both our liberty and our national security. In spite of the goals of the new internationalism and interdependence, it bodes ill for international peace and stability. It's time a new breed of representatives, (ones that represent the American people rather than Wall Street and the multi-national corporations) take over and repudiate the New World Order and get our national house back in order. Giving in to this suicidal internationalism makes economic sense only to multi-national corporations and world-class financiers with no national loyalties. It erodes our national strengths, (economic and military) and spells effective repudiation of national sovereignty and national greatness.
One vital step in the right direction would be passage of HR 1350, the "Maritime Security Act of 1995" currently before Congress. Merchant Marine revitalization should be in the forefront of national reindustrialization, for the problems of the Merchant Marine reflect the broader problems of the nation.
The nation grew with the Merchant Marine, and it is now sinking with it. Congress has the power to correct their cumulative errors of recent decades by adopting not just an "America first" policy, but an "Americans first" policy. Though this sounds self-serving, aren't our representatives elected precisely for that reason and that reason alone? Their job is to both represent and serve the American people and no others!
In so doing they would do more for the American flag than by enacting any number of constitutional amendments. They would do more for world peace and stability by supporting American interests than they are by betraying their own sacred duty in favor of larger world interests, on behalf of stateless, international predatory capital.
Yes, let's defend the American flag—not just from phantom flag-burners, but from the ongoing, very real, official desecration allowing it to disappear from the high seas!
Camden
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Published in U.S.A. by, William R.
Carr, Editor and publisher
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