Vice President JD Vance recently drew criticism for questioning the benefits of the dollar’s reserve currency status. In a 2023 interview, he argued that it encourages Americans to consume too much, describing it as a “resource curse.”

If you’ve followed Vance during his time in Congress, these comments are not particularly surprising. He has been one of the biggest proponents of rebalancing America’s relationship with the global economy through targeted industrial policy, much to the chagrin of the GOP establishment.

Sufficient industrial capacity gives a nation options in a crisis; dependence on foreign powers — especially China, our main adversary — is a path to decline and ruin.

Naturally, the response from Vance’s free-trade critics was immediate and severe. They argued that cheap imports increase consumers’ purchasing power, while an economy organized around offering high-value services is not necessarily a sign of economic weakness. In their eyes, what Vance proposed amounts to a command-and-control economy, snuffing out economic opportunity and raising prices at a time when families can least afford it.

Contrary to his critics, Vance had the right general diagnosis, even if his prescription risks creating problems of its own.

The dollar’s reserve-currency status means that every country on earth wants to hold dollars, mainly to facilitate international commerce and to buy Treasury bonds as a safe place to store its money. That demand keeps the dollar’s value higher than it would be otherwise. A stronger dollar, in turn, means cheaper imported goods for Americans, but it makes U.S.-made goods less competitive, both at home and abroad. This is one of the major reasons America stopped making so many things.

it’s also why Donald Trump’s long-standing emphasis on targeted tariffs and reindustrialization remains crucial today. An economy too dependent on foreign products can threaten national security and a country’s long-term health.

As demonstrated by the vehemence of Vance’s critics, the Trump administration’s economic refocus has elicited strong pushback. Libertarian dogma has dominated the Republican Party since the Reagan era, elevating consumer choice and being “free to choose” as the highest economic goods. The dominant theory before Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy was that greater economic freedom broadly spreads prosperity and raises living standards.

But that view captures only part of what an economy is supposed to accomplish. Economic freedom ultimately depends on the prudent use of national power. A nation that lacks the capacity to build ships, aircraft, energy infrastructure, and advanced technology — a nation that can easily have its supply chains interrupted, as we saw during COVID — cannot maintain freedom for itself or adequately protect its allies.

Sufficient industrial capacity gives a nation options in a crisis; dependence on foreign powers — especially China, our main adversary — is a path to decline and ruin.

History shows this to be the case.

For almost 200 years, Great Britain protected its shipping and textile industries before becoming one of the world’s leading advocates of free trade. It dropped its own tariffs in 1846 only after it became the most powerful industrial and naval power on earth. By then, British manufacturers were in a far stronger position to compete in an increasingly global market.

The United States followed the same path. In his “Report on Manufactures,” Alexander Hamilton pushed the nation to industrialize rapidly rather than remain dependent on European powers for goods. Had the country followed Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a more agrarian-based economy, America would likely have become a vassal state of a far stronger country for the foreseeable future.

For nearly two centuries after the founding, tariffs were a key component of America’s industrial growth, alongside plentiful natural resources, geographic advantages, hemispheric hegemony, and a rapidly expanding population. Only after two world wars left American factories standing while much of the rest of the world lay in ruins did Washington establish the framework for a global free-market economy, backed by a military and an industrial base nobody else could match.

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Free trade became a key Cold War strategy. Lower trade barriers let the U.S. pull more nations into its orbit than the Soviet Union ever managed. But Washington paid a price, accepting a hit to its own industrial base to win the fight against communism.

A persistently strong dollar tends to make foreign goods cheaper for Americans to buy while making American exports more expensive for everyone else. Following that playbook for four decades, even after the Soviet Union’s defeat, led to exactly the economic problem that Trump and Vance now have to contend with: the decline of domestic manufacturing and the hollowing out of the American heartland. The result is a service-based economy heavily dependent on consumption, with a much-diminished industrial capacity and a working class that has borne the brunt of American economic statecraft.

The consequences are clear in shipbuilding, as the United States produces fewer than a dozen commercial ships a year while China turns out more than a thousand. China controls around 60% of the world’s shipbuilding market, with a total capacity more than 200 times ours.

China isn’t the second-most powerful country in the world because it practices free trade. It has rapidly developed industries that strengthen its national power while taking advantage of the United States’ determination that more open trade would encourage political liberalization in Beijing. China is a blatant currency manipulator, artificially lowering the price of its exports while maintaining state control over its economy. For these reasons, the Trump administration was right in principle to begin imposing tariffs on China to counter its blatant abuses while reinvigorating U.S. domestic manufacturing.

The United States must maintain demand for our $40 trillion in debt, and there is no reason to risk that demand drying up, forcing us to pay higher interest rates or, in the worst-case scenario, default.

But America should take the core of JD Vance’s prescription seriously. Invest deliberately in building real, finished goods again. Use targeted tariffs to encourage that rebuilding. And yes, let the dollar’s value come down some as a result.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published at the American Mind.

​Alexander hamilton, American heartland, China, Dollars reserve currency, Economic weakness, Free trade, Global economy, Great britain, Industrial policy, National security, Soviet union, Vice president jd vance, Economic opportunity, Cold war, Trump, Opinion & analysis 

As thousands of women continue their support of Lindsay Clancy, and after Luigi Mangione’s guilty plea failed to stop female supporters from romanticizing him as a hero, Conservateur editor Bethany Miller has one question: “What is the state of American women today?”

This was the central question that underpinned her recent article “Lindsay Clancy, Luigi Mangione, and the State of American Women.”

On a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Miller joined the Blaze Media co-founder to unpack her theory about what’s causing a growing number of women to support confessed killers.

Miller explains that women’s disturbing advocacy surrounding people who have admitted to killing innocents is multifaceted and long-simmering.

“From the Millennial movement of the #MeToo and the therapeutic culture and ‘my truth is the only truth’ — this has been brewing for some time,” she tells Glenn.

These movements, Miller says, are the result of the divinely fashioned female psyche — with its bend toward empathy and relationality — being “weaponized” by “secular politics.”

“The left is capitalizing on [female instincts], manipulating women’s lenses of empathy and of relation and using that to get them to respond empathetically in a weaponized empathy to what’s happening with Lindsay Clancy,” she says.

“So instead of going, ‘Hey, what’s black and white here? This woman killed her children, therefore justice must be served,’ they’re saying, ‘Hey, actually, she struggled with postpartum depression, and she was anxious, and so let’s blame the man,’ or, ‘I can see myself in her; therefore me condemning her is condemning myself.”’

Glenn was particularly struck by Miller’s argument in her article that women have been conditioned to allow their instinctual empathy to lead them to dark outcomes. In the piece, she wrote, “I see her becomes I understand her. I understand her becomes I cannot judge her.”

“The blurring of that line, I mean, that’s what has … women holding newborns and posting “Same, Lindsay” or pushing a stroller outside of her trial, chanting that she’s innocent,” he sighs.

People must be able to tell the difference between understanding someone’s pain and agreeing with how they handle it, Glenn urges.

“Mental illness is real, and I can understand [Clancy] because my mother went through really bad mental illness … but that doesn’t mean I agree with her,” he says.

“Luigi Mangione — that is terrifying to me that they’re practically throwing themselves at this [alleged] murderer because they’re like, ‘Yeah, well, he’s been abused by the system, and I’ve been abused by the system.’”

Another factor playing into this issue, says Miller, is women’s obsession with true crime and fantasy.

“This is the type of entertainment and narratives that they inherit and consume on a daily basis and that we’ve seen … weaponize the way that they’re thinking about these things,” she says.

Add to that social media and the dawning of the AI age, where what’s real is quickly becoming impossible to know, and it’s no wonder, says Miller, so many young people especially are struggling to differentiate between genuine reality and “digital reality.”

“Beyond just the gender wars, discernment is something we’re losing as the American public,” she warns.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​Lindsay clancy, Luigi mangione, Mental illness, Glenn beck, Social media, Artificial intelligence, True crime, Blazetv show, Women 

In 1976, Frank Sinatra walked on stage with a couple of folded pieces of paper and handed them to Jerry Lewis.

They were both checks. Lewis thank Sinatra with a comical kiss on the cheek, causing the singer to joke: “You do that one more time, we’re gonna buy the furniture.”

But there was another surprise.

‘You’ll never walk alone.’

The annual Labor Day Telethon hosted by Lewis started in 1966 and lasted all the way until 2010. From age 40 until his mid-80s, Lewis performed, joked, and raised millions for the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

It was a charitable tradition that often attracted unexpected celebrities.

That 1976 iteration was not special just because it featured Sinatra, but because Sinatra had a special guest. After 20 years and a very public professional breakup, Dean Martin walked onto center stage and embraced Lewis.

This was billed as the first public appearance by “Martin and Lewis” since their 10-year run from 1946 to 1956, and they picked up right where they left off. They sang, tripped over each other, and made Jewish-Italian jokes that couldn’t air today. This was just one of many star-studded moments on the program.

Year after year, Lewis racked donation numbers on the big board that remain impressive, even when adjusted for inflation.

A board in 1980 touted over $31 million in donations that came from entertained Americans who had called in, having their heartstrings pulled by a message from one of Jerry’s Kids — the children with muscular dystrophy featured on the broadcast.

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In 1987, $39 million more poured in as special guest Sammy Davis Jr. made one of his many appearances.

Other appearances included the likes of John Lennon (1972), the Jackson 5 (1974), Aretha Franklin (1980), and Elton John (2004). Yes, the audience didn’t know how good they had it. Or perhaps they did.

As the years flew by, the telethon lost some steam, but still broke records in 2008 with a monstrous $65 million in donations.

This was not enough to keep Lewis on the airwaves, though.

Behind the scenes, Lewis and the MDA butted heads butted heads over the show’s content and length

When the Muscular Dystrophy Association announced plans to slash the marathon broadcast from 21.5 hours to a pre-recorded six-hour Sunday special, Lewis initially agreed to host the shortened 2011 event one last time. However, a fierce clash over control soon followed. Lewis insisted his final sign-off be entirely live, while the MDA demanded a pre-taped segment.

Combined with Lewis’ public criticism of modern reality TV shows, this battle over the broadcast’s format pushed the relationship past its breaking point. Just weeks before the broadcast, the MDA abruptly ousted the 85-year-old entertainment icon, forcing him to step down as national chairman and making his 2010 appearance — in which he cried as he sang the signature classic “You’ll Never Walk Alone” — his unexpected final telethon.

After the 2014 telethon, the MDA announced it was pulling the plug on the nearly 60-year-old tradition.

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The end came after decades of Lewis parrying criticisms that he was too mean in his approach and used too much “pity” to garner donations.

In 2007, he caught heat for making a joke using the words “illiterate fag.”

Even one of Jerry’s Kids eventually wrote that he felt demeaned by the whole focus of the show in the 1960s, when he and his sister were featured.

Through it all, the fundraiser managed to raise an estimated $2 billion.

Lewis died August 20, 2017, at age 91 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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​Jerry lewis, Frank sinatra, Dean martin, Jerry lewis telethon, Labor day, Entertainment 

God, Who rested on the seventh day “from all His work which He had done,” commanded that man should do likewise.

As part of their de-Christianization campaign, the French revolutionaries over 230 years ago rebuffed this divine commandment. Instead, they determined that anyone who managed to survive their historic bloodletting would have to rest on the final day of a 10-day cycle marked on a new calendar no longer commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ.

‘An almost identical anti-clerical measure was applied nearly a century and a half later by Stalin.’

Fortunately for those who labor today, this calendar, like the bloodthirsty republic that invented it, is no more.

The National Convention, the assembly that governed France from 1792 to 1795, decreed in late 1793 that “the vulgar era” of marking time was “abolished for civil usage” and that the era of the French Republic began on September 22, 1792, “at 9:18:30 in the morning.”

The leftist regime that guillotined an estimated 17,000 people during the Reign of Terror determined that moving forward, every year would be divided into 12 equal months each comprising 30 days. These 12 months would then be followed by five days that didn’t belong to any month.

Each month was divided in three equal parts, which the leftists referred to as decades because they had 10 days: Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, Nonidi, and Décadi.

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Gilbert Romme, the Montagnard politician who oversaw the short-lived calendar’s development, noted in 1793:

The vulgar era was born among an ignorant and credulous people amidst the troubles that were precursor to the fall of the Roman Empire. For eighteen centuries it served to fix within duration the progress of fanaticism, the degradation of nations; the scandalous triumph of pride, vice, and stupidity; and the persecutions and disgust that virtue, talent, and philosophy suffered under cruel despots who allowed this to be done in their name.

While the supposedly enlightened leftists’ new week had extra days, it didn’t have additional days of mandated rest. Romme noted that only the 10th day was the “day of Repose.”

In addition to having more workdays between days of rest, the new week disrupted church attendance — by design.

Sociologist Eviatar Zerubavel noted that:

aside from the immediate symbolic significance of doing away with one of the most sacred elements within the Christian tradition, the introduction of the ten-day rhythm of social life played a major role in disrupting church-attending practices, since it presented both practical and cognitive difficulties in keeping up with the traditional, sacred seven-day cycle. It is interesting to note that an almost identical anti-clerical measure was applied nearly a century and a half later by Stalin.

The new calendar also stripped common folk of all the holy days, including Christmas, that filled up their rejected Christian calendar. They were instead allotted the five days that didn’t fit into any particular month to celebrate select values of the revolutionaries, including revolution and industry.

Unsurprisingly, the French people resented the new calendar, reported Radio France Internationale.

While coming between working people and their weekends was far down the list of the things the French revolutionaries got wrong, the Anno Domini of that particular failure is nevertheless worth marking.

Although it made an 18-day reappearance in May 1871, the French Republican calendar was abolished in 1806 by the republican turned dictator Napoleon Bonaparte.

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​Labor day, French revolution, Jacobins, Calendar, Republican calendar, Politics