“We are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.”
The above quotation comes from remarks made by Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager. Ackman is pictured, himself, just above the quote. Click the link to Ackman's name to get a brief little write-up by Forbes. The quote showed up in an article in The Wall Street Journal, which was titled, "Wall Street Executives Warn of Dangers Of Tariffs."
Ackman's warning postulates that "WE" are making a big mistake with respect to the recent imposition of high tariffs on just about every country in the world. Do you think we are? Well, who is that "WE" that Ackman is talking about?
I would like to submit that "WE," as in "we, the people," did make a mistake, back in November of last year, but let's be clear, the guy who has made the mistake that Ackman is upset about is the guy pictured below. That's the guy who says, "I, alone, can fix it."
One important reason that democratic self-government is preferable to dictatorship is that by requiring significant decisions to achieve general agreement, before they are implemented, we, collectively, are able to provide ourselves with a kind of built-in insurance policy that can help prevent the kind of stupid "mistakes" that Ackman is now bemoaning.
To reiterate, the "mistake" that "WE" made was the mistake of electing someone to the presidency who believed that he was being selected to act, unilaterally, in the name of us all. The "mistake" described in The Wall Street Journal article I have linked must be attributed to this person, and to this person alone:
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| Donald J. Trump |
If we want to discuss "WE," as in "we the American people," we should properly refer to actions approved by the United States Congress, and signed into law by the president, or enacted by the Congress over the president's veto. What the president does, unilaterally, cannot properly be attributed to all of us. Hopefully, the world will understand this, so we don't all, collectively, get blamed for the mistakes made by Mr. Trump!
Foundation of Freedom
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