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FREE
FREEDOM OF THOUGHT
FREE PRESS --- FREE SPEECH --- FREE TRADE

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FREE

see "FREEDOM" for related links


I am free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
--John Dryden (1631—1700)
English poet, critic, and dramatist.
_The Conquest of Granada_ [1669-1670] , pt. I, act I, sc. i

As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes
but little difference whether you are committed to a farm
or the county jail.
--Henry David Thoreau (1817—1862)
American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher.
_Walden_ [1854]

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and
that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not
take lightly the perils of war.
--Thucydides (c.460—c.400 B.C.)
Greek historian of Athens.

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manumit (verb) ['mζn-yu-mit]
To release from slavery or other unpleasant situation.



FREEDOM OF THOUGHT

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see "FREEDOM" for related links


Some people who are too scrupulous to steal you possessions
nevertheless see no wrong in tampering with your thoughts.
--Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931)
Lebanese poet.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that most
imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is
the principle of free thought — not free thought for
those who agree with us but freedom for the thought
we hate.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841—1935)
Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
legal historian, and philosopher.
"United States v. Schwimmer" [1929]



FREE PRESS

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see "JOURNALISM" for related links
see "FREEDOM" for related links


Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that . . .
may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks
on government and public officials.
--William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (1906—1997)
American jurist; associate justice of the U.S.
Supreme Court [1956-1990].
In "The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan" [1964].

A free press can of course be good or bad, but,
most certainly, without freedom it will never be
anything but bad . . . . Freedom is nothing else
but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement
is a certainty of the worse.
--Albert Camus (1913—1960)
French novelist, dramatist, and essayist who won
the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature.
_Resistance, Rebellion, and Death_ [1960]

If these remarks be just, nothing ought to excite greater indignation
and alarm than the attempts which have lately been made to destroy
the freedom of the press. We have lived to hear the strange doctrine,
that to expose the measures of rulers is treason; and we have lived to
see this doctrine carried into practice. We have seen a savage populace
excited and let loose on men whose crime consisted in bearing testimony
against the present war; and let loose riot merely to waste their property,
but to tear them from the refuge which the magistrate had afforded, and
to shed their blood. In this, and in other events, there have been symptoms
of a purpose to terrify into silence those who disapprove the calamitous
war under which we suffer; to deprive us of the only method which is left
of obtaining a wiser and better government. The cry has been that war is
declared, and all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more
unworthy of a free country can hardly be propagated. If this doctrine be
admitted, rulers have only to declare war, and they are screened at once
from scrutiny. At the very time when they have armies at command, when
their patronage is most extended, and their power most formidable, not
a word of warning, of censure, of alarm must be heard. The press, which
is to expose inferior abuses, must not utter one rebuke, one indignant
complaint, although our best interests and most valuable rights are put
to hazard by an unnecessary war! Admit this doctrine, let rulers once
know that, by placing the country in a state of war, they place themselves
beyond the only power they dread, — the power of free discussion, — and
we may expect war without end. Our peace and all our interests require
that a different sentiment should prevail. We should teach our present and
all future rulers that there is no measure for which they must render so
solemn an account to their constituents as for a declaration of war; that
no measure will be so freely, so fully discussed; and that no administration
can succeed in persuading this people to exhaust their treasure and blood
in supporting war, unless it be palpably necessary and just. In war, then,
as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this
as the bulwark of all your rights and privileges.
--William Ellery Channing (1780—1842)
American Unitarian clergyman and author.
"Duties of the Citizen in Times of Trial or Danger", c.1812
in _The Works of William E. Channing_ [1903].
(Remarks refer to the War of 1812.)

There are some things the general public does not need to know
and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government
can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press
can decide whether to print what it knows.
--Katharine Graham (1917—2001)
American publisher.
[4 April 1990]

Wherever books are burned, sooner or later
men also are burned.
--Heinrich Heine (1797—1856)
German poet.
"Almansor" [1823]

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...Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood-pulp, of modern printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by the state. In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the concentration of communication power in the hands of a few big concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government propaganda; but certainly it is not something of
which a Jeffersonian democrat could possibly approve.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

...Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate
and control it.

In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most part on repetition, suppression and rationalization — the repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art and science of manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators
of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrelevance
the rational propaganda essential to the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions.

--Aldous Huxley (1894—1963)
English novelist (grandson of T.H. Huxley.)
_Brave New World Revisited_ [1958],
ch. 4 "Propaganda in a Democratic Society"

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No government ought to be without censors; and where
the press is free, no [government] ever will.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to George Washington [9 September 1792].


Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press,
and that cannot be limited without being lost.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Dr. James Currie [28 January 1786].


Where the press is free and every
man able to read, all is safe.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Col. Charles Yancey [6 January 1816],
in Andrew Adgate Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh {ed.}
_The Writings of Thomas Jefferson_ [1905].

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Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.
--A. J. Liebling (1904—1963)
American syndicated newspaper columnist, author, and
staff writer for the New Yorker from 1935 until his death in 1963.
During World War II, he served as a correspondent for the
magazine in France, England, and North Africa.
"Do You Belong in Journalism?" in the _New Yorker_ [14 May 1960].

If the newspapers of a country are filled with good
news, the jails will be filled with good people.
--Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927—2003)
American scholar and politician.

The press of Italy is free, freer than the press of any
other country, so long as it supports the regime.
--Benito Mussolini (1883—1945)
Italian Fascist dictator.
In George Seldes _Sawdust Caesar_, ch. 27 [1935].

I shall never tolerate the newspapers to say or do anything
against my interests; they may publish a few little articles
with just a little poison in them, but one fine morning
somebody will shut their mouths.
--Napoleon I (1769—1821)
Emperor of France [1804—1815].
Letter to his minister of police Joseph Fouchι [22 April 1805],
in _The Mind of Napoleon: A Selection from His Written and Spoken Words_
ed. J. Christopher Herold [1955].

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Freedom of speech and press. . . does not protect
disturbances of the public peace or the attempt
to subvert the government. It does not protect
publications or teachings which tend to subvert
or imperil the government, or to impede or
hinder it in the performance of its governmental
duties.
--Edward Terry Sanford (1865—1930)
Associate justice of the United States
Supreme Court [1923—1930].
In a Supreme Court decision
"Gitlow v. the People of New York" [1925].

The rock-bottom foundation of a free press is
the integrity of the people who run it.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.
Speech to journalists, Portland, Oregon [8 September 1952].

Junk journalism is the evidence of a society
that has got at least one thing right, that
there should be nobody with the power to
dictate where responsible journalism begins.
--Tom Stoppard [Tomas Straussler] (1937— )
Czech-born British playwright.
"Night and Day" (1978)

In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty
of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the
inevitable evils that it creates.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.
_Democracy in America_ [1835—1840], part I, ch. 9

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imprimatur [im-prih-MAH-tur; -MAY-], noun:
1. Official license or approval to print or publish a book,
paper, etc.; especially, such a license issued by the Roman
Catholic episcopal authority.
2. Approval; sanction.
3. A mark of approval or distinction.




FREE SPEECH

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see "FREEDOM" for related links


Now a man talks frankly only with his wife,
at night, with the blanket over his head.
--Isaac Babel (1894—1940)
Russian short-story writer.
Remark, c.1937, in Solomon Volkov
_St Petersburg_ [1996].

Free speech is to a great people what winds are
to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away
the elements of disease, and bring new elements
of health. Where free speech is stopped miasma
is bred, and death comes fast.
--Henry Ward Beecher (1813—1887)
American Congregational minister;
[brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, son of Lyman Beecher].
_Royal Truths_ [1866]

An unconditional right to say what one pleases about
public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum
guarantee of the First Amendment.
--Hugo La Fayette Black (1886—1971)
America lawyer, politician, and associate
justice of the Supreme Court [1937—1971].
In "New York Times v. Sullivan" [1964].

Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable
condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.
--Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870—1938)
American jurist and associate justice
of the U.S. Supreme Court [1932—1938].

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without
its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are
free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back,
that is an outrage.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].

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Intemperate speech is a distinctive characteristic of man.
Hotheads blow off and release destructive energy in the
process. They shout and rave, exaggerating weaknesses,
magnifying error, viewing with alarm. So it has been from
the beginning; and so it will be throughout time. The framers
of the constitution knew human nature as well as we do.
They too had lived in dangerous days; they too knew the
suffocating influence of orthodoxy and standardized thought.
They weighed the compulsions for the restrained speech and
thought against the abuses of liberty. They chose liberty.
--William O. Douglas (1898—1980)
American Supreme Court Associate Justice [1939—1975].


Thus, if the First Amendment means anything in the field,
it must allow protests even against the moral code that
the standard of the day sets for the community. In other
words, literature should not be suppressed merely because
it offends the moral code of the censor.
--William O. Douglas (1898—1980)
American Supreme Court Associate Justice [1939—1975].
Opinion, _Roth v. U.S._, 354 U.S. 476 [1957].

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Who dares not speak his free thoughts is a slave.
--Euripides (485?—406 B.C.)
Greek dramatist.

The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive
speech, because nobody ever tries to ban the other
kind.
--Mike Godwin
American lawyer

Okay, let's recap. "Intimidation" of free speech is a
moral horror. Democracy means never being
criticized. And, the refusal to sponsor speech you
don't like amounts to having one's "right to work"
repealed. This is childish. Oh, I don't mean childish
as in silly, I mean literally this is childish. This
is the way children talk and think, especially in our
gitchy-goo self-esteem culture. Not understanding the
difference between their desires and rights, they
insist they are entitled to do whatever it is they are
doing. No matter what they do with their crayons,
children expect to be told "That's so good. Good
for you." Any criticism elicits a tantrum about the
unfairness of it all. Maybe it's because Hollywood
types live as King Babies and are never told they're
wrong about anything, or maybe their view of
democracy is one in which they are the customers
of expensive restaurants and the rest of the world
are simply waiters. Waiters are supposed to receive
criticism with intelligence and geniality but never,
ever, talk back.
--Jonah Goldberg (1969— )
American conservative commentator and author.
Conservative commentator, author,
"Dixie Chickens, Hackers & co"

First as to speech. That privilege rests upon the premise that there
is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be
lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated. It needs to rest
upon the further premise that there are no propositions that are
not open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end
it is worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.
Hence it has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed
that there are no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to
affect only the hearers' beliefs and not their conduct. The trouble
is that conduct is almost always based upon some belief, and
that to change the hearer's belief will generally to some extent
change his conduct, and may even evoke conduct that the law
forbids.
--Learned Hand (1872—1961)
American judge.
_The Spirit of Liberty_ [1944]

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The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect
a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
. . . The question in every case is whether the words used are
used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create
a clear and present danger that they will bring about the
substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841—1935)
Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
legal historian, and philosopher.
In a Supreme Court opinion
"Schenck v. United States" [1919].


When a nation is at war many things that might
be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to
its effort that their utterance will not be endured
so long as men fight and no court could regard
them as protected by any constitutional right.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841—1935)
Justice of the United States Supreme Court,
legal historian, and philosopher.
In a Supreme Court opinion
"Schenck v. United States" [1919].

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The right to be heard does not automatically
include the right to be taken seriously.
--Hubert H. Humphrey (1911—1978)
38th vice-president of the United States
[1965-1969] and liberal senator [1949—1965
& 1971—1978].
Speech before the National Student Association,
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin [23 August 1965].

The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the
press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a
good deal of rubbish.
--Robert H. Jackson (1892—1954)
U.S. Supreme Court Justice [1941—1954]
Chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
Dissenting in, "United States v. Ballard" [1944].

For God's sake, let us freely hear both sides!
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
Letter to Nicholas G. Dufief [19 April 1814].

Every man has a right to utter what he
thinks truth, and every other man has
a right to knock him down for it.
Martyrdom is the test.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
In James Boswell _Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791].

The author of the Satanic Verses book [Salman Rushdie],
which is against all Islam, the Prophet, and the Koran,
and all those involved in its publication who were aware
of its content, are sentenced to death. I ask all Moslems
to execute them wherever they find them.
--Ruhollah Khomeini (1900?—1989)
Iranian Shiite cleric who led the revolution
that overthrew Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi
in 1979 and who was Iran's ultimate political
and religious authority for the next 10 years {EB}.

People demand freedom of speech to make up for
the freedom of thought which they avoid.
--Sφren Kierkegaard (1813—1855)
Danish philosopher.

If there is a dividing line between liberty and license,
it is where freedom of speech is no longer respected
as a procedure of the truth and becomes the unrestricted
right to exploit the ignorance, and to excite the passions, of the people. Then
freedom is such a hullabaloo of sophistry, propaganda, special
pleading, lobbying, and salesmanship that it is difficult to
remember why freedom of speech is worth the pain and trouble
of defending it.
--Walter Lippmann (1889—1974)
American journalist.
_The Public Philosophy_ [1955]

I think the Negro people should feel secure enough by
now to face a reasonable ridicule without terror. I am
unalterably opposed to all efforts to put down free
speech, whatever the excuse.
--H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (1880—1956)
American journalist and literary critic.

To refuse a hearing to an opinion because they are sure
that it is false, is to assume that *their* certainty is the
same thing as *absolute* certainty. All silencing of
discussion is an assumption of infallibility.
--John Stuart Mill (1806—1873)
English philosopher and social reformer.
_On Liberty_ [1859], ch. 2

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
--John Milton (1608—1674)
English poet.
_Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ [1644]

The price of liberty is, in addition to eternal vigilance,
eternal patience with the vacuous blather occasionally
expressed from behind the shield of free speech.
--Michael Shermer,
in "Scientific American" [June 2001]

We have a natural right to make use of our pens
as of our tongues, at our peril, risk and hazard.
--Voltaire (Franηois Marie Arouet) (1694—1778)
French writer and philosopher.


TOPICAL

The same amendment of the Constitution that forbids the
establishment of a State Church affirms my legal right
to argue that my religious belief would serve well as an
article of our universal public morality. I may use the
prescribed processes of government--the legislative and
executive and judicial processes--to convince my fellow
citizens--Jews and Protestants and Buddhists and non-
believers--that what I propose is as beneficial for
them as I believe it is for me; that it is not just
parochial or narrowly sectarian but fulfills a human
desire for order, peace, justice, kindness, love, any
of the values most of us agree are desirable even apart
from their specific religious base or context. . . .

I can, if I wish, argue that the State should not fund
the use of contraceptive devices not because the Pope
demands it but because I think that the whole community--
for the good of the whole community--should not sever
sex from an openness to the creation of life.

And surely, I can, if so inclined, demand some kind of
law against abortion not because my Bishops say it is
wrong but because I think that the whole community,
regardless of its religious beliefs, should agree on
the importance of protecting life--including life in
the womb, which is at the very least potentially human
and should not be extinguished casually. No law prevents
us from advocating any of these things: I am free to
do so. So are the Bishops. And so is Reverend Falwell.

--Mario Cuomo (1932— )
American lawyer and politician.
Speech in 1984 at Notre Dame [when governor of New York].

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"The Sounds of Silencing"
By Peggy Noonan
October 14, 2006
_The Wall Street Journal_

[. . . ] At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that
patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were
asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the
founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking
over chairs and tables. "Having wreaked havoc," said the New York Sun,
they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, "No one is ever
illegal." The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward
a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, "I don't feel we need
to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech....
The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration."
[ . . . ]

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The thought police at California Polytechnic
State University have found a white student
guilty of "disruption" for trying to post a
flier in a public area where black students
were eating pizza. The flier advertised a
talk by a black conservative.

United Press International reported today:
On the evening of Nov. 12, undergraduate
Steve Hinkle, a member of the Cal Poly
College Republicans, walked into the
Multicultural Center on the San Luis Obispo
campus to post a flier advertising a speech
by Mason Weaver. In his book "It's OK to
Leave the Plantation," Weaver argues that
dependence on government puts many blacks
in circumstances similar to slavery.

[...]

One student told him to leave or she would call
the police. He left without posting the flier.
She called police.

[...]

The university scheduled a disciplinary hearing and
informed Hinkle that he could not bring an attorney.

[...]

Hinkle told UPI that at the Feb. 19 hearing, Vice
President for Student Affairs Cornel Morton called
attention to Hinkle's blond hair and blue eyes and
the fact that Hinkle was a white male member of
the Republican club. Morton said that to students
of color, this could represent "a collision of
experience." The chemistry of the situation has
racial implications, Morton said, and Hinkle was
naive not to acknowledge this.

At the hearing Hinkle said the idea that individuals
would react to the flier in a certain way because of
their color was the definition of racism. People
should not be stereotyped as to their beliefs on the
basis of their appearance, he said.

[...]

Hinkle is dismayed by the notion that college
students should be protected from ideas that
offend them.

"I get offended all the time on campus when teachers
bash conservatives. Since when do we have a right
not to be offended?" [said, Hinkle]

[...]

"At the least, the censors should have been notified
that the suppression of protected speech has no
place at a university."

[...]

--"Educrats Punish Promotion of Black Conservative" [2 July 2003]

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Public Opinion in China
June 15, 2004
Editorial in the WSJ

In most countries, a three-year suspended sentence simply for
posting a few articles on the Internet would seem harsh to the point
of draconian. But, in China, where numerous other cyber dissidents
have gone to prison for up to 10 years, civil servant Du Daobin's
relatively lenient sentence was a sign that public opinion is making
it more difficult for Beijing to continue locking up Web protesters.

We'd like to think that the strident international criticism, in
these columns and elsewhere, of Mr. Du's detention last November
played a part. But it's likely the more significant factor was an
online petition signed by more than 1,000 Chinese, including
prominent scholars and lawyers. This urged Beijing to stop using
harsh anti-subversion laws to penalize people who peacefully
criticize the government. It pointed out that Mr. Du hadn't broken
any Chinese laws with his Web postings, which supported the struggle
against repressive laws in Hong Kong and criticized the detention of
another cyber dissident, Liu Di.

That didn't stop a court from convicting him Friday of "subverting
state power," after a 15-minute trial that was the usual travesty of
justice, with Mr. Du and his lawyer prevented from saying a single
word. But it did allow him to go home after the trial, albeit with a
suspended sentence and on probation for the next four years, instead
of being locked up alongside his fellow cyber dissidents. [ . . . ]

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FREE TRADE

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see "CAPITALISM" for related links
see "POLITICS" for related links


Nothing can be more surely established than that a Government
which interferes with any trade injures that trade.
--Walter Bagehot (1826—1877)
British economist and essayist.
_Lombard Street_ [1873], ch. 4

[Social legislation] raised the cost of production;
and what can be more illogical than to raise the
cost of production in the country and then to
allow the products of other countries which are
not surrounded by any similar legislation, which
are free from any similar cost and expenditure
— freely to enter our country in competition with
our own goods . . . If these foreign goods come
in cheaper, one of two things must follow . . .
either you will take lower wages or you will lose
your work.
--Joseph Chamberlain (1836—1914)
British businessman, social reformer, and politician;
(father of Neville Chamberlain.)
In Alan Sykes _Tariff Reform in British Politics 1903-1913_ [1979].

We rail at trade, but the historian of the world will see that it was the
principle of liberty; that it settled America, and destroyed feudalism,
and made peace and keeps peace; that it will abolish slavery.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803—1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Journal_ [31 December 1844]

I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, "Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
--[Francis] Bret Harte (1836—1902)
American author.
"Plain Language from Truthful James"

A correspondent from Hamburg, speaking of the invasion of American
trade, says: "Incidentally, it may be remarked that the typewriting
machine with which this article is written, as well as the thousands
— nay, hundreds of thousands — of others that are in use throughout
the world, were made in America; that it stands on an American table,
in an office furnished with American desks, bookcases, and chairs,
which cannot be made in Europe of equal quality, so practical and
convenient, for a similar price."
--Jack London [John Griffith Chaney] (1876—1916)
American novelist and short-story writer.
_The War of Classes_ [1905]

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government
can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.
--Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800—1859)
English politician and historian.
_Essay on Mitford's History of Greece_ [1824]

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Formerly our commerce and industry were the
best in the world, since not only did we make the
goods of which Spain had need, but we also
produced merchandise for the whole of Europe
and the Indies. Today it is these foreigners who
bring their merchandise, especially their cloths,
to Spain, and in exchange take away a full
measure of hard cash.
--Petition of the merchant guild of Toledo [1618],
in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.}
_History in Quotations_ [2004] pp. 339-340.


TOPICAL

One reason the U.S. is having a hard time winning global sanctions on Iran over its nuclear work is evident at a company in Tehran called Iran Khodro Co., a big vehicle manufacturer.

The company is cutting deals in China, France, Germany and Russia — key players in the tussle over what to do about Iran's nuclear ambitions. In February the company, called IKCO, agreed to buy 10,000 trucks from a Chinese maker in a $350 million deal. This month, IKCO said it will start selling to Russia cars that it builds in Iran in cooperation with France's PSA Peugeot-Citroλn.

[ . . . ]

With other countries backing off the sanctions threat in favor of more diplomacy, the U.S., too, has had to soften its stance in recent days. President Bush yesterday threw his support behind yet another European-led effort to talk Iran into suspending its enrichment work as a precursor to wide-ranging negotiations. If Iran continues to stall, Mr. Bush told reporters, then the Security Council would proceed with "some kind of sanction program."

America severed political and most commercial ties with Iran 26 years ago, after it let a mob hold U.S. diplomats hostage for more than a year. Through July of this year, the U.S. imported a minuscule $99 million of goods from Iran, mostly rugs, nuts and juice, while shipping to Iran $55 million of goods, nearly all of it cigarettes, pharmaceuticals and wood pulp. The other Security Council members have seen their business with Iran increase. Their total trade with Iran is on track to top $22 billion this year, up from $18 billion in 2005.

While part of the growth reflects the higher cost of Iran's oil, the trade is broader: Iran buys German steel, French cars, Russian armaments and Chinese air conditioners. The European Union accounts for more than a third of Iran's total trade with the world. China's exports to Iran have tripled in four years.

[ . . . ]

German and French exports to Iran slipped slightly in the first half, but remain large. Germany is Iran's largest supplier of foreign goods, with exports last year of more than $5.4 billion. German engineering giant Siemens AG is providing huge generators for a power plant. Auto maker DaimlerChrysler AG is moving ahead on plans to build Mercedes-Benzes in Iran, in partnership with IKCO.

[ . . . ]

This month, Germany's chamber of commerce released an estimate that blanket sanctions on Iran could cost Germany 10,000 jobs. It was an effort at a "wake-up call" about what is at stake, said spokesman Felix Neugart, who added that chamber officials meet regularly with the government on the issue.

French exports to Iran totaled $2.33 billion last year. Auto makers Renault SA and Peugeot-Citroλn are heavily involved through local partners. Auto imports to Iran now are falling sharply because Western companies build more cars in Iran, to feed a fast-growing market.

--"Nations' Rich Trade With Iran Is Hurdle For Sanctions Plan"
by Neil King Jr. and Marc Champion
_The Wall Street Journal_ [20 September 2006]

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One of the ignored stories in the clamor and
demagoguery over job losses, not only in the
candy industry but in others as well, is the
devastating impact of congressionally created
"miracles" on our industries. American sugar
producers fight tooth and nail to keep foreign
sugar imports out of our country. They've
spent $722,000 in campaign contributions to
both Democratic and Republican congressmen
to enact sugar import tariffs and quotas.

As a result of their successful effort to get
Congress to do their bidding, our domestic
sugar prices are about three times higher than
the world market price. While that's a miracle
for the sugar industry and its employees,
unfortunately, the miracle story doesn't end
there. We all know that for every benefit there's
a cost.

According to the Sugar Users' Association, an
organization that represents companies which
use sugar as an input, such as candy
manufacturers, the protectionist miracle that
Congress has created for the sugar industry has
cost anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 jobs in
sugar-using industries due to higher sugar
costs. Higher sugar costs make U.S. candy
manufacturers less competitive in both
domestic and world markets. Life Savers
became more competitive simply by moving to
Canada - it saved itself a whopping $10
million dollars a year in sugar costs.

--Walter E. Williams (1936— )
American Professor of economics and journalist.
"Congressional miracles"

Dr. Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor
of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. [2004]

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