Ralph K. Ginorio-124-Keep Right 9/03/21: Decouple & Reindustrialize

“BEEP!” The sound of one of my school’s AED heart-restarting devices whose battery had run down. “BEEP!” Again, a few moments later. “BEEP!” All day, every day, echoing through my school’s Main Office and Multi-Purpose Room. “BEEP!” Until a replacement battery arrives; arrives from China.

As irritating as this noise is, it is trivial compared with the reality that the USA is no longer in any fashion the “Arsenal of Democracy”. Instead of being the great industrial nation that outproduced Hitler and Tojo into oblivion, today we are utterly dependent upon the People’s Republic of China and other foreign nations for our industrial requirements.

For reasons of cheap labor and loose regulations, America’s industries moved offshore generations ago. Highly-priced and pampered American workers in factories subject to strict safety and environmental regulations simply could not compete with Third World nations desperate to develop. In these newly industrializing areas, the highest production was pursued with the lowest overhead.

However, for reasons of cultural integrity, national security, and basic morality, we might want to reverse this trend. It may not have been wise to entrust the Chinese Communist Party to fulfil our most essential industrial needs. Voluntarily becoming dependent upon the only regime to mercilessly murder more of its own civilians than Hitler and Stalin combined could just place us at their mercy.

Today’ Chairman Xi’s China is committing genocide against the peoples of Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as oppressing Chinese Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, and Christians. It is destroying any vestige of freedom in the people of Hong Kong, and threatening the people of independent Taiwan with conquest. It stokes war-fever against the Japanese and harvests the organs of its political prisoners for profit. It makes territorial claims against all of its neighbors, and thirsts for the moment when the USA is replaced by China as global leader.

Do we really want to keep enriching a regime like that with our investment and our business?! We, as individuals and as Americans, should decouple our economy from China as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

We need to reindustrialize. No, I suspect we will never achieve “Autarky”, economic self-sufficiency. But we could revive American industry to protect our supply chains from being held hostage by hostile foreign leaders.

Reindustrializing is as necessary to the health of our society as it is for our security. Since becoming a service economy, increasing numbers of young people are channeled into Colleges which have nothing but propaganda to offer them. Not every young man or woman is suited to wear a suit. Rebuilding US factories could provide many Americans with skilled and unskilled jobs whose wages could support a family. Many who now idly languish could find dignity in good work.

To do this, we would need to loosen environmental regulation and workplace safety rules to conform to common sense ideas of productivity. American workers might have to work for lower wages in order to be competitive. Modern Industrial Arts would have to return to our schools. These would be small prices to pay for restoring security to our nation and real hope to a huge proportion of our workforce. We must decouple and reindustrialize!

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In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western Civilization to High School students for nearly a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in Special Education, Public Schools, and Charter Schools, Grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com