January 09, 2008

Will Wilkinson/Cato openly promotes North American Union

A tactic used by those who seek to deny that powerful forces are pushing for a North American Union is first to deny that such a plan exists, and then to say something like, "but, if it did, would it be such a bad thing?"

One of those trying to retail the idea of a NAU is Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute, who, speaking on the radio show Marketplace, says:

There are some who believe a grave threat to American sovereignty looms over the horizon. A shadowy cabal, they say, is planning a massive "NAFTA superhighway," a new North American currency, and a common market in goods and labor. It will all culminate in an E.U.-like North American Union.

It turns out this is mostly fantasy. But the fantasy is more dream than nightmare. Because some aspects of a North American Union would leave Americans and our neighbors both richer and freer.

...The best solution to America's immigration problem is not a wall or a new crackdown on the hiring of undocumented workers. It's NAFTA's unfinished business: a common North American labor market. It's illogical and impractical to create a single North American economy that integrates markets for goods, capital, raw materials, services, and information but tries to keep labor markets divided...

Obviously, all the arguments against the NAU scheme apply, including the fact that subjecting U.S. citizens to decisions by Mexican and Canadian bureaucrats, undermining the U.S. Constitution, and giving the corrupt Mexican government even more political power inside the U.S. are the opposite of freedom.

Click his name above to read about a Reason Magazine article written by Wilkinson that closely tracked a satire I'd written a couple weeks earlier and sent to that magazine as a real proposal.

Posted to NAU at January 9, 2008 10:44 AM