July 4, 2008 8:12 AM

Moose Call

Independence Re-visited

When you think about it, the world's oil crisis is a very good example of why long term economic agreements with non-Western nations is generally a bad idea. The free-trade-at-any-cost crowd would argue that capital, and lifestyle improvements, civilize a nation, that human rights will come, over time, as people buy enough cell phones and Ipods. Of course, when western companies help brutal regimes, like the Chinese Communists, censor the content of those Ipods, or we send troops to Saudi Arabia and allow their clerics to curtail the religious freedom of our own fighting men, it doesn't help, but even if we were not winking at their internal repression, the record is very clear that wealth alone does has not civilized either the Chinese Communists or the Saudis or the Iraqis.

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In China, a forced-abortion policy still exists. In Saudi Arabia, an American petroleum engineer would have to camouflage his Sunday School. In 1973, merely for providing military stores to Israel, Saudi Arabia shut down its oil wells--many of them built by American companies. In China, house-church pastors are arrested for not registering their flocks with the state. We've known for the last three years, that the Saudis have funded extremist, anti-Western literature in American mosques. (The literature is literally so offensive, I can't print some of its contents. What I can print is that much of the literature is absolutely unapologetic about the right of a Muslim to kill anyone who converts to another faith.)

Why, exactly, are we doing business with these people?

How long have the Saudi royal family enjoyed fantastic, almost un-measurable wealth? What has this wealth produced? Civilization? Liberty? Order? Contentment?

The lesson of history is that freedom produces wealth. Wealth does not produce freedom. There's a reason why western, free-thinking democracies had to show a backward band of desert absolutists how to drill for their own oil. There's a reason why China has to be shown how to run a factory. It's very simple. If you aren't free to think, to speak, to have a family, to keep the proceeds of your labor--no wealth will be produced. The lesson is so clear that repeating it, over and over again, is a little embarrassing.

Of course, the cynical response is to say that we need the oil. Who cares if we buy it from thugs? Who cares if we let the Chinese chain their workers to the production line? If American engineers get work out of the deal, if western firms are paid to build sky-scrapers in the sand, can't we leave them to police themselves? Are we really responsible for what they teach their children?

Even if you buy the "not my brother's keeper" argument, the answer is at the pump. $5.25 a gallon? $10.95 a gallon? Aren't we really just the wayward teenager on the street, who received the first round of drugs free? Aren't we addicted to the thugs now? Isn't there a price, ultimately, for doing business with criminals?

Reviving the notion of "Independence" on this Independence Day is vital. We once threw off a royal brat as King. It's time to throw off our dependence now, on foreign gangsters.

It's time to start drilling our own oil, and building our own fences.

More of the Farm Journal -- July 3, 2008