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Entry: They Are The Hollow Men Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/they_are_the_hollow_men#22461 Post contents: Sir, Perhaps it is a bit blunt to say so, but both positions - Srpuiell's and your's - are inconsistent with the facts. In the 1920ies and '30ies, US mass-manufacturing was the envy of the world - culminating in mass produced 4-engine bombers (compare the production process to that to similar british products). One might however be forgiven to think that for more than sixty years now american elites are reaping what their great-great-grandfathers have sown. That might be a tad long. Take cars (fitting to Mr. Spruiell's observations): in the 30ies, american car's were second to none in engineering and styling, if not finish. In the fifties, they were still seen as a viable alternative in rich european countries (Switzerland, the Low Countries, Sweden). From the sixties onwards (well before the arab embargo) they were seen as last decade's technology in garish styling (tailfins found their way to Mercedes, Peugeot and the likes - and then everyone woke up, and those, like Opel who were not allowed to wake up by their american owners slowly sank) When was the last year american cars were exported overseas in reasonable numbers? If you close the borders to foreign competition while being unable to compete on any but captive foreign markets - any - then you are going the way of the sadly defunct soviet union. It is not free trade, that is ruining US manufacturing - it is the phenomenon, that since the enormous (US made) advances in manufacturing technology of the first three decades of the last century nothing decisive has happened any more, while the rest of the world has caught up. Free trade is perhaps to blame for the harshness of some of the symptoms - even there, one might dispute, as other industrialised countries have similar transitions to face and seem to manage with less pain. Free trade is not your problem. Greedy elites are. A public infrastructure worthy of a bombed out country is. A seemingly dysfunctional system of higher education is (take hope, that you are seemingly successful in exporting). Sent at: 2008 07 04