Defending Our Country

What an incredible 115 days Donald Trump has had. Trying to pin down a central theme with so many accomplishments on the national security, economic, and with DOGE is tough to do. Even as his administration confronts the virtue signaling-nihilistic, “dummy scrimmage Wanta be heroes” on the political left and in the mainstream media and as he and his administration confront transgenderism and DEI in our government and military, he made an off the cuff remark today that at least will be remembered forever, and at best will be used to define the moral pillar that informs his thinking and actions.

He said this at the end of his speech in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: “It is God’s job to sit in judgement; It is my job to defend the country”.

How is that for a mission statement from the guy that runs the most complex enterprise and has the toughest job in the world. Any questions about his priorities? Any questions about the limitations to his own power? The words were taken in the context of his speech where he criticized 40 years of American Paternalism and mingling into the affairs of other countries. I paraphrase his speech with these words when he described our past foreign economic and military policies. Many societies who are different than us are complex but are fully capable of pulling themselves up by the bootstraps using their own resources with new technologies that they share and have learned in American Universities and by joint venturing with American civil engineering companies, oil companies, medical schools, and businesses.

Osama Bin Laden’s Grandfather, Mohamed Bin Laden became the CEO of one of the largest civil engineering firms in the world. They routinely joint ventured on large projects with other large civil engineering firms from all over the world including Morrison Knudson from Boise and Turner Construction from Philadelphia. Americans have been doing business in Saudi Arabia for well over half a century. Joint ventures in trade and commerce have produced far more long-lasting alliances between different groups of people and countries than almost all the wars ever fought.

In his INTO THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, written at the time of our Revolutionary War, Adam Smith rightly argued against British Imperialism stating that the cost of maintaining a monopolistic advantage over a colony or another country always cost more to the country holding that advantage and the privilege than it did to the colony.

Apparently, Mr. Trump has read THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, and his detractors haven’t. AOC claims to have been an economics major in undergrad, but she has been unable or unwilling to grasp simple economic principles. She onetime opined that there “doesn’t have to be economic scarcity”. Are you kidding me, there is always scarcity within any economic system where resources are allocated, and where consumer and producers have choices. When consumers lose their choice and producers hold all the power, we call that a command economy and those never work. In the twentieth century communist command and control economies in Russia and China saw well over the stated 160 million people die of starvation. The power of the marketplace—the bigger the market with a large number of buyers and sellers, growing the economy from the inside out, is how capitalism allowed for a tenfold rise in the standard of living in all the western world between 1800-1900. From 1900 till today that number has gone up 100-fold when the world population has only gone up by a factor of 10. Supporting a country or an industry from the outside in—think government subsidies that create economic frictions that skew prices always to the high side, or current welfare distributions in our country that are not investments in an economy but are signaling buyers and sellers away from efficient pricings while increasing the overall costs to a society.

Subsistence economies must build themselves up from the inside out, being helped by innovations and investment capital that helps to educate people in a way that will allow their economies to specialize and have a division of labor from within that will create great wealth. In the 20^th and 21^st century this evolution of economic growth has occurred in many countries many times over. In our own country welfare programs that do not allow indigent or marginalized citizens to develop a trade or be educated, only creates generational poverty.

Mr. Trump is an educated man as are the Saudi Ministers he is meeting with this week. He has also run his own business and watched his own father run a business. Almost 80 years of education and experience leads to intuitive reflexes that understand how to grow economies and improve the lives of citizens in all countries.

Most importantly, he has shown the ability to recognize his own limitations. He is not God. He will not impose American Imperialistic Will on foreign countries that have very different cultures and traditions. Such policies by both Democratic and Republican administrations since World War II have led to a disastrous loss of respect of the American brand throughout all the world. He is not God who will ultimately sit in judgement of us all—including the rich, the strong, the weak and the marginalized. It is not his job to judge. His only job is to DEFEND OUR COUNTRY. Like Ronald Reagan, Mr. Trump is doing that with the power of business, acknowledging that mutual self-interest—not selfish interest, is what differentiates capitalism from imperialism, communism and socialism.

WINNING—WINNING and WINNING