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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bald Eagle who wrote (244702)	4/4/2002 11:42:09 AM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 769670

>> So, Bush is a socialist? He imposed steel tariffs. << i was being facetious. oftentimes anyone who believes in the benefits of tariffs is called a socialist. that is a charge often leveled against pat buchanan. here is an article he wrote addressing that charge. Remedial Economic Nationalism 101 buchanan.org by Patrick J. Buchanan Letter to The Wall Street Journal May 18, 1998 Prof. Kent Jones writes that my tariff ideas represent "government intervention in the manner of an unrepentant socialist." But from 1789 to 1913 tariffs produced from 50% to 90% of all federal revenue. Were those tarifites-Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Clay, Webster, Jackson, Lincoln, McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt-all "unrepentant socialists"? "Tariffs are taxes," storms Prof. Jones, "Repeat after me", Mr. Buchanan: big tariffs are big taxes." Well, yes, tariffs are taxes, but they are indirect, non-intrusive and discretionary taxes; you don't have to pay them, professor, if you Buy American. As an unrepentant socialist named Abe Lincoln put it, "The Tariff is the cheaper System,-while by the direct-tax system the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts. By the tariff system the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods....By this system the man who contents himself to live upon the product of his own country pay nothing at all." Old Abe anticipated the IRS. Prof. Michael Oldfather writes that Milton Friedman may agree with me that Smoot-Hawley was in no way responsible for the Depression, but adds that "it is obvious that he did not consult Prof. Friedman on the benefits of high tariffs." To the contrary, I wrote Milton twice. While he said that I am doing the "devil's work," he conceded to Peter Brimelow of Forbes that I am in the conservative tradition. Said Milton, "historically, the American Right has always been protectionist." Thus, it is not I who am the conservative impersonator on these pages.