Op-Ed: Decouple and reindustrialize

“BEEP!” This is 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. This recurring “BEEP!” will continue until a replacement battery arrives from China.

As irritating as this noise is, it is trivial compared with the reality that the U.S. can no longer be called the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Instead of being the great industrial nation that out-produced and defeated Hitler and Tojo, we are utterly dependent upon the People’s Republic of China and other foreign nations for our industrial requirements. These requirements include medicines and chemicals, as well as machines.

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

For reasons of cultural integrity, national security and basic morality, we should reverse this trend. It was not wise to entrust the Chinese Communist Party to fulfil so many of our most essential industrial needs. Voluntarily becoming dependent upon the only regime to murder more people than Hitler and Stalin combined has placed us at their mercy, which does not exist.

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 Hong Kong, threatening the people of independent Taiwan with conquest and is stoking war-fever against the Japanese. The CCP spies on its own people with networked cameras and microphones everywhere, 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 China dramatically overthrows the U.S. as the Earth's leading nation.

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

We need to reindustrialize. 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 American is suited to wear a suit. Rebuilding U.S. factories could provide many Americans with 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 adopt environmental regulation and workplace safety rules that conform to common sense and foster profitable productivity. Americans might have to work for lower wages in order to be competitive. Modernized Industrial Arts would have to return to our schools to prepare students for skilled trades. These would be small prices to pay for restoring security to our nation and real hope to a huge proportion of our citizens. 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