Isn’t all of this just a more specialized discussion of the one and the many? We all agree that our neighbors, communities, and cities are important to us and define much of who we are. We also agree that we are somehow bound – through geography, religion, common heritage, whatever can be imagined really – to people in every corner, nook, and cranny on earth. If you ask me, I say we’ve got some sort of moral obligation to them all.

The job is more difficult for us now than it has been in the past. Frank is right: the modern era has utterly changed the face of commerce and consumption, and some of this has been positive. The sticky thing is that the farther our money walks, the less control we have over what exactly it is supporting.

I propose a solution: Distribut(iv)ism and Missionaries. If we buy local, and make most of what we need, we eliminate the discussion about tariffs (at least for now), begin to control the corporate rape of various peoples, and we might have to live without Cavanaugh but we’ll probably make do. And because our world is complicated, and our money will always walk despite our best efforts, we should send missionaries to, pay attention to, defend and otherwise bless the Longioriat whom we may not see.

But of course, since we don’t live in the world of Chesterton but in the world of Keynes, my musings are naive and not very practical. So alternatively I suggest that the US could stand to wall itself in economically and run itself into the ground for a few years. Free and borderless trade is all well and good, but I’m fairly sure that we’ve demonstrated to the world that America has forgotten how to make things, balance checkbooks, or save for the future. I almost feel like we need a quarantine while our economy resets.

Put another way: Protectionism could just as easily mean protecting people from the US, which doesn’t seem like all that bad of an idea.

[1] While I am strongly in favor of emphasizing the importance of community and small business, I am not willing to declare a pox upon all things global. The glories of global book publishing and selling, for example, is an example: without Amazon.com you might never been introduced to William Cavanaugh. Such things may not be perfect, but they’re not innately evil.

[2] Tariffs are always scary. Inviting the government to make economic rules is simply an invitation to a different form of globalism. And as the perennial existence of the Black Market shows, government prohibitions rarely have any effect other than lining the pockets of bureaucrats, politicians, and gangsters.