Well, there you have it...I’m not alone as a 1)conservative, who 2) is deeply troubled by a lopsided economy and the loss of our manufacturing base (and concomitant death of the American dream), and is 3) a WalMart hater. Folks, some of your most stalwart allies are beginning to see the writing on the wall...won’t you (before it’s too late)?

Don’t get me wrong...I’m not the run-of-the-mill union-loving WalMart-hater. Personally, I call it ’SiphonMart’. Every time you purchase at WalMart, capital leaves the country (and it doesn’t come back). Yea, MartMongers make money, and the Chinese make money, and our consumers make money...but that’s all short-term. In the long-term, every time a working man makes a purchase of foreign goods at WalMart he is denying himself a higher-paying job. Bottom line.

I must say, for years I avoided our local Wal-Mart, not on principle but because I simply found shopping there to be unpleasant--narrow aisles and fixtures reaching almost to the ceiling, thus making the whole place seem like a labyrinth. But a Super Wal-Mart has recently opened in Ashland, and it’s much nicer. Perhaps they’ve been feeling the pressure from (slightly) more upscale competitors like Target.

I am heavily into hating Target. Not only did they kick out the Salvation Army bell ringers, but they are a major funder of Planned Parenthood. I liked their clothes, among other things, and spent my meagre clothing budget at Target for years. Never again. I have set foot in one only once in the last year and a half. Defund infanticide!

Campaigning against the campaign against Wal-Mart is a non-starter, at least in my neck of the evangelical woods. This was all over my church this morning. Does this mean that Democrats will turn around and embrace Wal-Mart?

I’m sort of surprised that of the three issues I raised Wal-Mart would be the most controversial. I agree that the Super Wal-Mart is fun, the old kind was bleak. I didn’t know about WM and the gay chamber etc. or even about Target and Planned Parenthood. Where’s a pro-life evangelical to shop now? Those exurbs are kind of short on mom-and-pop stores. Let me repeat that I’m pro-choice on Wal-Mart and respect any reason at all for not shopping there. I also think that low prices, convenience, and the willingness of all chains to sacrifice devotion to causes to maximize profit will cause both Wal-Mart and Target to continue to flourish. wm, You are wise on so many things, but those Target (we in Georgia say TAR-JAY) clothes never were a bargain.

The other stuff is harder to have an instant reaction to.

The Knippenberg family position on Wal-Mart is that we don’t shop there, and haven’t for a long time (more to do with lower quality merchandise, bad customer service, and, lastly, all that "made in China" stuff, which comes with its own political baggage). My wife much prefers Target and, when the opportunity arises, the Swedish socialists at IKEA. When I go anywhere other than a bookstore or a wine shop, it’s because I’m told to.

My preacher is convinced, by the way, that the new Wal-Mart stance will ultimately lead to a boycott and will hammer the chain across the South. I’m not convinced: for every evangelical, for example, who doesn’t (or didn’t) do Disney, there are plenty who do.

Wow, what a bunch of Pat Buchanans.

Dain: America still manufactures more than anyone else and more than ever before. Just because we’re not making stuff that you can drop on your foot and say oowwww, doesn’t mean we’re not producing. The economy of the future is technology, and knowledge. Like always our free markets have us leading the field in this. We do the R&D and have some guy in China do all the hard labor. It’s great for us. Also your claim that China is syphoning our capital is silly. China does the work, and we own the stock in the companies that are turning greater profit from cheap labor. The fact is that America is becoming a bourgeousie nation. As stock ownership increases, we can manage the world while they do the "work" for us. Your Wal-Mart hate is little better than the union-leftist stuff.

Wal-Mart saves Americans money by being more efficient. In the future efficiency will continue to improve our lives no matter what company is master-minding it.

As for this sad new social stance, it’s pretty much a sign of the times. Our culture is going to pot and businesses are adapting. No organization based on making money can afford to divide people over these issues. Wal-Mart sees as well as you or me that the future is moving this way and they are making a business decision to support it. Don’t blame them; blame America for the road we have chosen. It’s all cultural zeitgeist pushing them to the decision. No company or man can stand against it; to stop the gayificatioon of America will require a religious revival of sorts.

So I’ll continue shopping at wherever I get the best value, as we all do. I just judge my value on dollars and cents instead of quality etc... The fact is that Wal-Mart has made retailing, manufacturing, shipping and many other aspects of business more efficient. This helps everyone (even those who shop at other stores who are copying these tactics) except those who simply refuse to take advantage of new technology/knowledge and get up to speed. Those people, like dead wood on the economic tree, will continue to go out of business or be unemployed.

The service and quality at our massive, new, very Super Wal-Mart are pretty good, and there’s no Target in Rome, Georgia. My wife certainly wishes there were. I lean, but only lean, in Clint’s direction on the China question; it might be Buchananism to think too much about where the goods come from, given that the fact that they’re before you in rural America depends a lot on American ingenuity. But a really effective boycott of either Wal-Mart or goods from China would be interesting, admirable, and in my view very unexpected. (One reason to boycott Chinese goods right now is that they’re clearly harvesting lots of live organs from dissidents. But overall Wal-Mart is much less creepy than Disney, even given that the reason for the Evangelical boycott of Disney is relatively silly.) The sentence "The gayification of America is inevitable" has at least two big exaggerations in it. In any case, Wal-Mart and Target could easily get by with having no opinion on the alleged gayification process.

I’ll bite on Iraq. Of course Steyn is right that "our present policy, considered as a powerful example of our aggressive resolve to deter our enemies, is "a flop."" Why is it a flop? Because America became utterly divided about it. The flabbergastingly uncharismatic and rather obviously shifty and wimpy Kerry ALMOST WON in 2004. A shift of a few percentage points, and the awesome weight of presidential power, as far as foreign policy goes, would have changed direction. The Islamofascists know this well.

And why is America uttterly divided about it? Because key players in the formal Democratic establishment and informal liberal media establishment wished it so.

That is, there will be a lot of talk on the 9-11 anniversary about how divided we’ve become, and many will blame the president. But do not forget: the Democrats could have opposed Bush on economic and cultural issues, while basically backing his foreign policy, as their Congressional votes authorizing the use of force seemed to. The price the Dems would have had to pay was the loss of the Naderite/Chomskyite left. A big price, since Nader cost them the election in 2000. But for the sake of America’s security and basic unity in foreign policy, one they should have been willing to make. MODERATE criticism of the war’s MEANS, (i.e., Rumsfeld, more troops, should have waited two more months, etc.), and of the hope for democratization, as opposed to tolerating the CONSPIRATORIAL denunciation of its ENDS that came from the Michael Moores of America, would have put the Dems in a position to capture many centrist votes, that might have made up for the loss of the Naderites. But now they belong lock, stock, and barrel to the Deaniacs, the Kos Kids, and NYT media types. But again, strategy aside, it was profoundly IMMORAL to stand by and let Bush and co. be accused of every wild crime under the sun, to abet the infection of the national dialogue with poisonous conspiracy talk. Not a single conspiracy theory remains standing, but the reflexive Bush-hatred and ridiculous "constitution-in-peril" talk they stirred up remain alive and well. The HATRED,without the reasons for it, remains real. And with the NYT regularly spilling national WOT security secrets with de facto Dem backing, this disunity has extended way beyond Iraq. And it was profoundly UNPATRIOTIC, because it gave our enemies the spectacle of a nation willing to divide itself over the likes of the Plame affair.

Now we can debate lots of details here, but this remains undeniable: the Dems CHOSE this path and they could have chosen another. Had they staunchly criticized M. Moore’s slanders, had they resisted Dean’s siren scream, had they been more judicious in handing out blame for Abu Graib and in debating coercive interrogation, had they refused to make a fuss over every media-promoted "scandal," our enemies, particularly Iran, might be a bit more worried about pissing off the American public. And Americans, while still profoundly divided over cultural issues, and still willing to duke it out over economic ones, might at least be able to have a sane conversation with one another about our foreign policy options.

I know many will respond to with disbelief that I don’t acknowledge that Iraq is turning into a disaster. Well, the democratization looks like it may fail, and as if that perhaps shouldn’t have been our only stated goal for stage two. BUT WE WON STAGE ONE. We deposed a horrible tyrant who will soon be brought to justice...WAAAHHH!!!! We removed one of the three primary threats of nuclear proliferation...WAAAHHH!!! We now must bargain with Iran to stop its nuke program, but they cannot come to us and say "well, you left our enemy Saddam in power, and he (convincingly)says he has nukes"....WAAAHHH! We prevented Saddam’s secret control of "Oil for Food" from further corrupting the UN...WAAAHHH! Oh, what a disaster this war has been! Yes, some of the neo-cons have serious egg on their face for their rah-rah democracy in Iraq the most modernized Arabic state talk. Yes, we MAY have to pull out with some ugly consequences left behind. But we will be able to say, "we tried." Oh, I’m sorry, "WE" won’t be able to say that..."WE" will instead be divided into the faction of 1) chastened optimism and 2) the faction of ONLY A NEAR-PERFECT EXERCISE OF AMERICAN POWER IN THE WORLD IS ONE I WILL ENDORSE.

Peter: This was my sentence: No company or man can stand against it; to stop the gayificatioon of America will require a religious revival of sorts.
I did not say "the gayification of America is inevitable."

However, we are very much rolling slowly and steadly toward full acceptance of gay marriage, lifestyle, and culture. No one man or company can stand in its way. As a religious revival sowed the seed for abolition, to reverse course from gayification would require some monumental change to scale. While for the time being they could "get by" without an opinion, business does not operate to get by. To win you need to be progressive and thinking ahead. Wal-Mart and Target are thinking ahead for their business survival and success. So it really is a business decision, not some social statement.

Another thought just struck me. If the GOP was/is seriously thinking about trying to use Wal-Mart as a political tool, Wal-Mart would be scared. No big company can survive, especially in retail, if its consumer base becomes one party. To be seen as a Republican company would automatically rule out half of the population shopping there. Perhaps Wal-Mart’s recent track to the left on some issues is to make sure they are not seen as too close to either political agenda/party. No matter why, it seems to me to be a business move--nothing more.

Thank you, Mr. Libertarian (Clint). Yes, we produce a lot, but our industrial labor force is shrinking...down 3 million jobs in just the last few years. There is no need for that...we still use labor-intensive products (e.g., textiles, electronics), and buying them from overseas undermines our own class structure. Clint, have you looked at income inequality statistics lately? I thought not.

And we CAN blame WalMart. Back in the late 1980s their stock took a downturn, and they made a deal with the devil (i.e., China). Lots of cheap stuff, lots of pressure on domestic suppliers to "meet the price point" by moving overseas...whores, they are whores. Period.

Glad to continue this discussion anytime, anywhere, because you "free traders" are crazy. All you have is economic theory...no nation has engaged in "free trade" without taking a massive hit (except for little entrepot economies like Singapore).

We are a big nation, we have lots of people who NEED decently-paid entry-level employment. We can’t all live in gated McMansion communities like Clint.

Man...that really FELT GOOD. What would ranting be without the all-caps key?

Clint, I wasn’t try to quote you exactly, but I can see why you thought so. Sorry. Of course I like Carl’s feel-good rant, especially the last paragraph. It would feel really good if the president would say something like that. But Carl hasn’t quite offered advice about our strategic options now--except arguably as campaign advice. Our options will in fact narrow if the election is viewed as a referendum on the war and the Democrats win decisively.

Peter: Ok, see what you’re saying. But do you really disagree that America is on the path toward accepting gay culture?

Dain: Excuse me for being American and believing that I can move ahead. My Grandparents lived in rural semi-poverty, my parents have finally moved to the middle class, and yes someday I plan on moving beyond that. Yeah, I live in an 1800 square foot "McMansion" with some rusty farm gates around to keep the cows in. I suppose that you hate McDonalds too--they do buy that foreign beef, and as a cattle farmer I ought to know. Big deal, we got over it and sell our quality meat to the Japanese. The market settles it out.

You’re just spewing the liberal view of "income inequality." Yes the rich are getting richer faster than the poor, but everyone is getting richer. If you can’t look that up, let me know and I’ll get you some figures.

Like I argued earlier "Industrial" labor force figures are pointless. America produces knowledge, a far more valuable and cleaner product than the industrial labor of the past. What kid would want to work in a textile factory when he could develop a computer program to run the textile machine more efficiently?

If you insist on blaming Wal-Mart, please continue. Don’t shop there, and I’ll reap the benefits even more as people who turn away from the most efficient producers throw there money down the drain. You’re just espousing a union argument. Jobs leave Ohio everyday for the south. Why? Because in Ohio its a union job with a $12-$18 an hour salary. They can move that work to Alabama and get it done for $8-$10 an hour. I suppose you would like to use the government to prevent that too. Or maybe since we need to make sure that everyone has decent-entry level jobs, we should just tax all (rich) Americans at a rate necessary to subsidize everyone’s salary up to a livable wage. Or we could just increase minimum wage and pass a law that no company can buy or move overseas. I think that these generally great ideas were espoused by John F. Kerry in 2004.

Look Dain, I understand your angst. There are some older workers without the technology skills and education to adapt to the new economy. That is a serious problem that may require some government money, as much as I hate welfare/job training. However, as a college student I have no fears looking into the future. I know that I don’t want to produce old industrial products for crappy wages in hot factories. We did that while China made rice. Now that China has advanced to industry, we are ahead and moving into technology and knowledge. The only thing that can stop us is if people like Kerry get the government involved.

Ok, sophisticated America has pretty much become "accepting" of gay culture, and certain aspects of gay culture have become mainstreamed. The nonjudgmental straight guy does to a very limited extent accept the judgment of the queer eye. But that’s not the gayification of America. The combination of heart-of-gold moral superiority with sexual promiscuity that often characterizes gay characters in our mainstream media is pretty creepy, but it’s as much evidence of how mainstream commodification distorts gays as of how gays distort mainstream commodification. The abolition of the distinction between gays and straights, a man from Mars might say, turns them both into equally unerotic individuals.
Gay marriage, as Jonathan Rauch writes, must be all about caregiving, or at heart unerotic. And so in the name of justice defined as individual rights all marrige must become unerotic. I’m pretty sure Wal-Mart is not taking the lead in the de-eroticization of America,
but I guess I agree that it’s not going to take a stand with the social conservatives for traditional "family values." A time full of nothing but casual, safe sex, of course, is a particularly unerotic one. But thank God our religiously observant believers are still erotic enough to have lots of babies.

Well, Clint, I’d look at that income distribution again (adjusted for inflation). The lower 50% isn’t getting much richer -- it’s the top 20% that’s really making out well. Seriously, you need to look into this...it’s pretty clear you don’t have a good handle on what’s going on.

As for your economic "evolutionism" (i.e., the notion that we pass from agriculture, to industry, to services), that’s just theory. The world’s never gone through those stages until now, and there’s no guarantee that other countries will be content to let us stay on top of the heap with our quaternary service economy. Indeed, given our educational situation and the fact that the most productive services are the ones ripe for offshoring, I’d say that your "faith" in neo-liberal ecobabble is very touching, but there’s no compelling reason to believe that we can employ 200 million people in front of computer monitors. And...even if we could, why would China, or India, of Korea...etc. be content to let us?

Oh Dain this is really quite bothering. Maybe you should check out a little article from Heritage that discusses your perceived injustices. In general the fact is if people are willing to work they will make it. Census and income tables stretch on forever and we can both find/twist numbers to support our claims. For example a table in this shows that 64% of householders in the lowest fifth don’t work! Well no wonder they are poor when they are relying on the welfare state. And you don’t and can’t deny that every group is moving ahead! Poor people today live like the middle class/rich of years ago.

There was a preacher at our church once from a mission in India. He said you Americans have "poor" but I see people with cars, food, and clothes. He then told about his country and their poor--I’m sure you know the story.

I never said anything about evolution or "service" jobs. Of course economies change; America used to be all farmers, now less than 2% are, so I guess we already "evolved." As for "service," this is just your misunderstanding of production. You label production jobs that you don’t recognize or that are different as "service" jobs.

I don’t pretend to know what you mean by "neo-liberal ecobabble," but i think it’s safe to assume it’s meaningnless. If you were a true economic conservative you would stop complaining about Wal-Mart and free trade and focus your energy on the EPA, OSHA and the tax structure that makes business in America more difficult than in parts of Asia. Instead you seem tied to the protectionist, big-government policies of the liberal, union-led, Democratic party.--Two Americas--One President--John Edwards 2008!

Peter--I hope you’re right

What is undeniable is that success today is more closely tied to education than ever before. In the past there were alternatives for the uneducated--cheap land in the West, for instance, or, later on, jobs for unskilled or semi-skilled laborers in factories. Now the economy is moving away from those sorts of jobs, and the question is what to do about it. Resorting to protectionism in a pathetic effort to freeze the status quo will result in far more harm than good. On the other hand, working toward real educational reform will help find a place for those who, in previous generations, would have worked in old-fashioned smokestack industries. At the same time, we must recognize and address certain pathologies that have set in among these same people--chief among them an outright antipathy to education. This attitude stems from a belief that "book-learning" is unnecessary; why go to college, or even trade school, when there are good jobs at the mill?

Clint, Moser, you’re both suffering from the myth of the individual. How many people have a college degree in this country? I’ll tell you...27% of adults. That’s it...and with college tuition going through the roof most people who do manage to graduate do so with an enormous debt load. But if they’ll just shut up and become cheerleaders for "the American way," then they’ll make it. Right...IF their spouses also work, and IF they don’t have any kids, and IF they are willing to forgo health insurance, and IF...basically, they’ll make it if they give up their dignity and most of the protections afford the true middle class. Then they might creep into the bottom of the 3rd quintile...oh joy!

Clint, I’m not talking about poverty...I’m talking about the working class. Nonetheless, how many people in this country are too disabled to work...what will you do with them? What will you do with people who just aren’t bright enough to get a college education? Yea, I know the Libertarian answer...screw ’em. Heritaqe is great at spin, but the fact is it’s much harder today to become a middle class person if you have health or educational deficits. And your Third World comparison is BS...let’s compare our poor with poor in other "rich" countries, shall we? Democracies don’t become unstable because of absolute inequalities, they become unstable because of relative inequalities. Man, get a clue.

Moser, I don’t like discussing things with you anymore because you stoop to cheap shots (like the KKK, remember?). I will say this, though. Tariffs are being used around the world today...find me a SINGLE NATION that doesn’t employ them. And they are not a "pathetic attempt" to freeze in the status quo. They are an attempt to equalize the price floor so that domestic industries can compete on quality instead of simple price differentials (which American workers generally lose).

Dain you are completely side-stepping the fact that your economic proposals are equally as progressive as those of the big-government democrats. I wouldn’t continue this conversation except that you are a type of convservative, but you just think that the government can solve our economic issues. Don’t you think that this gives into the philosophy of progressive, active government. If the government should impose, minimum wages, tariffs, etc...why not go further and nationalize certain production industries so that they can live forever as subsidized and inefficient business.

Moser is right that education, or I would say knowledge, is going to be the wave of the future. For those in the older generations left behind, I already admitted that some type of government safety net should be employed.

My experience tells me that anyone willing to work can make it. My dad lost his job at a factory in the 80’s and took a large paycut to keep working. He ended up supporting a family of 4 while making about 30K. Things have improved in the past six years, but we were alway fine. Anyone willing to manage their money and work hard can do it.

I believe in individual rights, individual property ownership, and individual responsibility, so I guess I’ll accept the "myth of the individual" too. It’s a lot better than the myth that the government can do a better job taking care of us all from cradle to grave.

Funny, Clint, but the GOP was protectionist throughout most of its history. Up until the 1950s the U.S. employed a strong protectionist regime (from our inception as a nation until the 1950s). It served us well, and the "right wing" used to think of tariffs as SOP. It’s only been in the last half-century that we have embraced "free trade," that failed experiment that the Brits had to abandon at the turn of the century. Ever seen what’s left of Manchester? How about Detroit?

You see, "free trade" isn’t "conservative," and it never has been. It’s a radical philosophy of old-style liberalism. You can tell this by who pushes it hardest -- libertarians and neo-cons --- one-world dreamers who have an abiding faith in markets. Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t look to any human institution to save us...we look to institutions to channel our strengths and control our weaknesses. We look to balance, meaning that even "markets" need the discipline of government, religion, the family, and so on.

And Clint, what about this line from our Constitution (Article I, Sec. 8):P>

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;

Seems to me that our Founders understood that tariffs and the regulation of trade was a legitimate government function. In short, Clint, you’ve got a bad case of Libertaritis. Tradition and commonsense support my position, not yours.

Well what did the Founder’s mean with the Commerce Clause? Hamilton tells us:

A man must be far gone in Utopian speculations who can seriously doubt that if these States should either be wholly disunited, or only united in partial confederacies, the subdivisions into which they might be thrown would have frequent and violent contests with each other. To presume a want of motives for such contests as an argument against their existence would be to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious. To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties situated in the same neighborhood would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.

The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of preeminence and dominion—the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of some public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquility to personal advantage or personal gratification. Fed. No. 6

Commerce is the cause of much war. The Founders didn’t want the states in economic war, and they did not want a single state provoking war with China by slapping them with a tariff or an embargo. Hamilton says you don’t know much if you don’t understand the power of commerce and wealth to cause war and destroy society. As war is a national power, the government could not have states regulating commerce either at home or abroad.

If free trade is a new idea, why did the Founders promote free trade within the states when the south had true slave labor? If tariffs work, why wouldn’t they benefit the states of America. After all the labor, resources and taxes are different in each, so to level things out and protect each person’s wealth. What happened when Jefferson slapped a tariff on Britain?

Dain there really is no advantage (or reason) for conservatives with you trying to make the crazy argument that our Founders would support the economic platform of today’s DEMOCRATIC PARTY.

You know, I thought about throwing some links at you, but you just have too much to learn. PLEASE read some history, Clint. Hamilton was the FATHER of our tariff system...good God. Moreover, the North wanted tariffs to protect their nascent industries, but the South wanted free trade (because they were exporting cotton and IMPORTING all those goods from Britain and elsewhere).

The rest of your post about the States, commerce, and war is simply overheated rhetoric. I have better things to do that correct you. Again, read some history.

Clint, don’t waste your time on Professor Dain. You can prove him wrong 50 times, but it still won’t matter. He will just insult you and take cheap shots at Dr. Moser. He will demand that "libertarians" do more homework. Sooner or later he will accuse you of being somebody named Scanlon.

Dear Mr. Troll...do you deny that Hamilton was the principle architect of our early tariff system? Do you deny that the South was pro "free trade" while the North embraced protectionism.

In short, say something or shut up. If you can’t contradict me, then you just as ignorant as Clint.

And Moser deserves criticism. He shoots from the hip far too often for a professor...he’s supposed to be the educator, after all.

See what I mean, Clint?

Yea, Clint...see what a troll is? Someone who contributes nothing except ad hominem criticism...named Scanlon? Perhaps...wouldn’t surprise me, but that would just be the name de jour.

Guess I’m done with this thread...there isn’t anyone worth responding to. Just the trollish and the ignorant (AND, if you don’t agree, then PROVE I’M WRONG). Oh, that’s right, you can’t. TTFN.