We all know the timeless account of the Salem Witch Trials. At least I believed that to be the case, along with countless other historical affirmations of what fear and ignorance can achieve with the swipe of a pen. The late 17th century town of Salem, Massachusetts devolved into authoritarian madness, not because of witches, but because of fear.
Fear is easily weaponized by cunning political authorities, legitimized through pseudoscience, and enforced through public spectacle. The trials did not purge anything but peaceful human beings. However, they did obscure the truth and silence dissent.
Salem’s leaders punished their community in the name of saving it, intellectually cannibalizing the prosperity they promised to engineer. Today, we have a new nasty old witch, one that has been accused of infecting the minds of Americans for far too long, draining their American spirit and driving the sanctity of manufacturing out of their lives: the trade deficit.
This witch, so we’ve been instructed, should be feared, denounced, and condemned with ritualistic fervor by those who aim to defend their national interest. As it was in Salem, the cost of this hysteria is not merely rhetorical, it is our economic and moral principles burning at the stake. …
In light of the flames climbing the stake, the trade deficit debate is not an argument over economics, the mercantilists took that one for the team. Rather, it is an admonition to shake ourselves free from the hypnotic perpetrators of the real witchcraft: the state.
Are we willing to destroy the principles of the pursuit of happiness in pursuit of populist illusion? The trade deficit is not a problem. The problem is with those who exploit its mere informative appearance to grow their power, at the cost of our liberty, our choices, and our future.
We must reject the scapegoating of trade partners, the denigration of consumer choice, and the economic nationalism that masks a hunger for power, for both the representative and those he represents. By definition, economic freedom cannot be selectively applied. To do otherwise is to naively participate in a modern witch hunt, a spectacle of fear, a ritual of control, and a betrayal of the freedom we claim to cherish. A witch hunt that does not preserve a nation, but will burn it.
Indeed, we come to understand the culprit in the saga, once again; the state. The state is instilling fear into everyone about something they should have nothing to do with, the economy. People, one at a time, should be the ones to decide what they want and what makes them happy, not the fear mongering state. Through all individual decisions summed over the whole of the economy, the amount of trade deficit that is desirable is created. Again, the state makes us fearful to make us surrender our rights and decisions to them. When will we ever learn about surrendering ourselves to them?