…when you don’t hear from a friend for awhile.

Earlier today, I realized that I had not heard from a good friend and major contributor to the Kettle Moraine Publications family of websites – Justin O. Smith.

About a month ago his family experienced a death of his granddaughter’s fiance, and I have maintained  a great concern for how the family has been holding up.

Early today, I sent Justin a brief text which stated;

“Hey – are you OK?” – to which he responded;

“Yes Dear Friend… I am as well as can be under the circumstances, but I seem to stay disgusted these days for a litany of reasons.

I haven’t written anything new because – in my line of reasoning, so much in the current news cycle is simply symptomatic of a greater ill in this country.

I am going through a few things right now too, that have me stressed, and basically – it has been a few bad weeks for me, but don’t worry – I’ll get it together and get back in the saddle again.

It is just that I have written in ad nauseam for so long on any and everything imaginable concerning our government and society in general, that it is all sounding so redundant. I am trying not to waste time writing if it is not going to say anything that most people don’t already know by now.

Truthfully, in the grand scheme of things, I get the feeling that we have too many idiots in the populace and our government and the country is on the way to paying another heavy price, and I don’t see any number of articles, pieces of legislation or the vote, nor the next election saving America.

If Patriots want to save this country – they had better pick up a rifle and get to it!

Keep taking care of yourself and keep fighting the good fight  my friend.

Best wishes always,

Justin

One truly wonders how many more of us there are out here, who have the same questions and concerns as this amazing writer and Patriotic Friend. as well as I?

God Bless You and your family my friend.

Jeff

It Is Time to Put America First!!!

Americans have become coddled and weak for the most part, due to one government bailout after another, a succession of stimulus checks and bills and through the knowledge Auntie Samantha is there all too willing to swoop in and hand out freshly printed money in order to keep them from starving to death, although it costs them dearly in lost individual liberty. So many haven’t any clue today on where to begin when it comes to producing anything; highly-skilled and completely competent tradesmen and craftsmen are a rapidly diminishing sector of American society and that’s the damned shame of the matter and where we stand as a people today.

It all begins in the family and moves on to the schools and the moral integrity and quality of our educators, who seem far more interested in convincing every child in the country that they surely are queer than in teaching them anything substantial that actually leads to a real and lucrative career to help them prosper and succeed in their young and early lives, as they first enter the workforce.

There are just too many dynamics and variables to do proper justice to this topic, since it includes domestic as well as foreign policies, but suffice it to say, America has dealt with trade cheats and enemies who would just as soon see America fall for far too long. It’s far past time to do any and everything it takes to keep America free and prosperous and out from under the weight of illogical, sovereignty destroying demands from foreigners and our enemies from within, much like those who would see our country further bankrupt itself through surreal, idiotic “climate change” policies and the notion of paying “Carbon Impact Taxes” to offset our carbon emissions while the now advanced and modern China and India release tons of carbon into the air each year without paying a dime.

We listen to foreigners to our own detriment and ultimate demise, for they do not wish us well, nor do they have America’s best interests at heart. ~ J.O.S.

Economic Warfare Is Deadly Warfare

Economic warfare is some of the most deadly warfare one nation can conduct against another, and quite often it leads to bloody wars on a battlefield with the corpses of poor hapless people stacked high and buried in mass graves. America is currently in the middle of one such war with Russia and China, largely because we tried to bring China and Russia into the realm of the Free World under Nixon and George H.W. Bush respectively, a plan that backfired and only gave them time to use our good intentions and financial largesse to strengthen themselves and their own military machines to their benefit and our great detriment.

There’s no doubt that China’s President Xi intends to create a Chinese hegemon across the globe, and Russia’s President Putin has played his hand to be a partner in this hegemon, that will start if they first succeed in ending the U.S. economic might by removing the dollar from the International Monetary Fund as the global reserve currency.

Please recall that it was just such economic warfare that started WWII. The Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI had such onerous terms demanding Germany pay such large amounts in reparations that Adolph Hitler saw no other choice other than to go to war again to get Germany from under the economic onslaught that was destroying Germany.

Fast forward back to the present day…

This country will not and cannot prosper under any system that does not recognize the difference of conditions in China and Mexico, as well as many other Third World countries, and America. Open competition between extremely well-paid America labor and poorly paid Mexican Chinese and Uighur Muslim slave labor has almost completely eradicated any real and strong American industry, by way of overvaluing the cost of their own manufacturing base’s labor in tandem with other current economic dynamics, such as business destroying policies in the country from the Democratic Party Communists, i.e. inflation, and what appear to be higher American wages are considerably lower than in past years when viewed comparatively, calculating past wages to what those dollars would actually be worth in today’s currency value.

We must demand value for value when trading with any foreign nation. Former President Trump full well understood this, and he had taken China to task for its unfair trade practices and the theft of U.S. intellectual property.

Many so-called “experts” suggest that America would benefit and receive even cheaper goods if only we’d engage in real free trade. And that would be the case, if so many countries didn’t manipulate the value of their labor, currency and goods in China’s same way to essentially gain much more than their goods are worth. One can be a free trader domestically, but when it comes to trading with foreign countries in international markets, a nation must demand real value in return for the real value of their own products.

Cheap foreign goods too often simply drain America’s coffers, when one considers that these goods are often inferior and last far less longer than the well-made American products of the 1950s and 1960s, even some current “made in America” products. Cheap is just that. Cheap and worthless and it makes a society that takes this path pretty much an inferior society and pushes it towards poverty when its own manufacturing base is destroyed by such devious trade practices as utilized by modern day China.

However, this isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with finding a market full of inexpensive goods, so long as they are quality goods that are long-lasting, effective and efficient for the purposes they were designed.

Many may believe cheap is good, but historically, when goods were the cheapest, people have been the poorest. There’s a good deal more to a national economy or the finances of an individual’s home than the amount one sees on the price-tag of any item – Cheap?

Cheap merchandise creates a cheap throwaway society and a country that’s lost its way, and that’s not really the sort of society or government America’s founders envisioned. Most of us today want labor to be well paid for the jobs they perform, but not so exorbitantly that they price themselves out of competition; we want commodities and farm products and everything else we produce to pay a fair compensation to the producer. This is what creates good, prosperous economic times. Value for value.

The pursuit of global free trade by Democrat Communists and RINO Statists in past decades have brought about the collapse of American industries, especially now that the new business destroying variable of “climate change” regulations have been introduced into the mix. This also has had a serious and damaging effect on real wages [value] as America increasingly imported more of the goods we once produced for ourselves. The loss of revenue from bankrupted industries and Americans forced into unemployment or low-paying service jobs created massive budget deficits at the local, state and federal levels of government.

America has the mineral wealth and resources in its contiguous states and Alaska to be completely self-sufficient, self-contained and independent, without engaging in supposed “free market” trading that is anything but free and damages American prosperity. However, U.S. corporations cannot be satisfied with an economy that doesn’t want to bring the world’s billions of people into their market, and this is where the necessity of tariffs enter the picture, since America on the whole has an ever growing appetite for “cheap” foreign goods.

Pay fair compensation to America’s producers, whoever they are, from the dishwashers on up. Take care of those who deliver quality goods at a fair price and the rest will take care of itself, but the system must also be reformed to some large degree through the downsizing of management in corporations that reap incredible and astounding salaries far larger than anything they should receive for what they bring to the table.

In the earliest days of America, those hard-living, tough colonists, the American patriots, who built this country endeavored and initially succeeded in creating a country based on political and economic independence, holding freedom of religion, freedom of speech and the right to private property as some of the most sacrosanct things.

A people who cannot supply their nation’s own demand for iron, steel and oil – but purchase it from foreigners across the seas – are far from independent. They are weak as a nation and politically dependent on whatever good graces they may receive from their competitors.

Japan attacked America on December 7th 1941, in large part, due to sanctions America had placed on steel and oil.

Many American patriots have likened America’s current economic situation to an economic war being conducted against it from multiple fronts, both domestic and foreign. We know Biden and his Marxist cronies are employing the Cloward & Pivens ploy of overloading the system for their own political gain, and to present themselves as the country’s heroes when the final economic crash results; but, when countries like Mexico, China and Russia launch economic missiles at us from their faraway mines, oil fields, factories and mills, in many instances those attacks have broken U.S. industries as effectually as if the conquest had been effected by warlike weapons. And believe it or not, in large part, the actual current war in Ukraine represents the start of a worldwide economic war that pits America against China and Russia for economic supremacy across the globe

China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa and all the other new BRIC nations are currently striving with every vile machination, scheme and devious and dishonest trick known to man to have the U.S. dollar struck down as the global reserve currency, to be replaced by China’s yuan.

Americans can and must revive the honest, principled and righteous economic cycle that resulted in an across-the-board economic prosperity that was once the envy of the world. We can make what we buy. we don’t have to be dependent on other nations. We have the resources across America – and I think we still have the intellectual talent [perhaps?] – to fabricate “the comforts of life” ourselves, if only the majority of Americans will join together to pursue this path into the days and years to follow.

But does America on the whole have the will to do so? Or are Americans too used to living on the cheap and comfortable in the cheapness and the poverty they have created for their own lives and American society?

If Americans wish to have true economic prosperity, we need to start by raising the value of our own labor, and we must diffuse intelligence and promote integrity and honesty in trade practices throughout the world, along with properly and effectively educating and training our children and future generations, in order that every man and woman more readily may be able to acquire property and honor and respect the rights of property.

Americans must once again declare our independence, and just as we fought an economic war against Great Britain, starting with the Boston Tea party, today we must fight one with Communist China, with the goal of national independence and self-sufficiency, producing nearly everything we need right here in America, which would provide amazing results for all Americans in the long-run, after some short term economic pain. Divesting China from all U.S. markets is the best place to start, until such time its leaders see fit to stop their assault and aggressions against us in the Pacific Ocean arena and elsewhere, respect our intellectual property and patents and embrace the principles of freedom and liberty as found in the inalienable God-given rights of all men.

China and the world need us much more than we need them. Going our own way, expanding real freedom and liberty in our country by ripping socialism from the fabric of society and dealing only with other truly freedom-loving nations, if we can find any anymore, will be good for all America and for all who wish to deal with us honestly.

And if this drives China to seek a hot war against us, we’ll just cross that bridge when it gets here.

America cannot let itself be held hostage to the economic whims and goals of foreigners, whether we speak of China, Russia and the BRIC nations, the anti-American U.N. and Agenda 2030 or the anti-American World Economic Forum and the globalist, communist vision they seek to force on America and the world as well.

March 20, 2023

~ The Author ~
Justin O. Smith has lived in Tennessee off and on most of his adult life, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, with a B.S. and a double major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – minors in Military Science and English, for what its worth. His real education started from that point on. Smith is a frequent contributor to the family of Kettle Moraine Publications.