I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis. At the recent Summit of The Americas in Quebec City, the thousands of protesters didn't care about saving the jobs of american steel workers or french farmers. They weren't advancing world peace or free health care. Their agenda was fundamental: End capitalism, establish global socialism.
Their approach is marxist, justifying violence and control over markets, government and privately owned business for a greater good: Equality. They prefer a lower standard of living equally shared to growing prosperity unequally distributed.
But their ignorance is unbounded. Seventy-five years experience in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba and North Korea has proved the world commune to be nonsense. Equally foolish is the notion that trade exploits poor countries. Third world nations need higher wages, foreign investment, and export markets more than we do, and free and open trade provides them.
The Quebec protesters were, in Thomas Friedman's phrase, the coalition to keep poor people poor.
Those are my ideas, and at the NCPA we know ideas can change the world. I'm Pete du Pont. Next time, dutch death.