Real Americans Don’t Buy American
When you hear those lazy, tax-dollar-stealing car company reps on the radio saying you should “buy from us, or otherwise be sure to Buy American”, don’t forget that “Buy American” is unamerican.
Not only do they rob the taxpayers, but these lazy bureaucrats want us to buy inferior cars, out of fake patriotism
The American Dream is for everyone to earn their way, NOT for people to be given an easy way out with affirmative action.
And Buying American™ in order to protect overpriced, inefficient union monopoly jobs is the very worst form of Affirmative Action.
We Americans have, for good reason, a long-standing belief in “meritocracy”, people getting what they earn, earning what they get.
Most of us have ancestors who came here because they could earn what they deserved, regardless of class, nationality, or whatever…at least compared to anywhere else.
And they passed on the kind of attitude necessary for such a tremendous move. Most of us still have a healthy dose of it, today.
And we’re in the one place in the world where we still have some opportunity to exercise it. Not as much as America used to, especially not as much as we’d like…but still more than anywhere else.
So we love this place, America, because we really do believe it’s the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
We love it enough that it’s hard to avoid getting suckered into tolerating, or even supporting, something completely unamerican, if it’s clothed in enough patriotic trappings.
The examples of that today are many…more than since the middle of the Cold War. But, aside from the many others which get plenty of bandwidth on the net already, there’s one which I almost never hear anyone speaking out against.
So I’m doing that, now.
Do you know who deserves to have the money for that new car you want to buy?
Whoever makes the best car in your price range. Frankly, that’s the only answer that fits with the Spirit of America.
Same with your shirt, your birdhouse, your silicon implants…whatever.
Yet some people, mostly bloated, bureaucratic corporations who make products which can’t compete on fair terms because they’re overpriced and underquality, have the nerve to tell us that it’s patriotic to “Buy American”. And because the word “American” is one we love, we’re tempted to fall for it.
But we need to stop.
If Mitsubishi and Hyundai make better cars than Ford and Chrysler, then they’re going to get more money. Then Ford and Chrysler are going to struggle. The solution? It’s for them to get off their lazy butts…and we, as Americans, are just the kind of straight-talkers to SAY that about them…and make better effing vehicles.
But if they can convince us to unconditionally “Buy American”, along with forcing us to give them billions in bailouts, then they don’t have to. They can keep making mediocre-or-worse cars. Which is what they’ve done since at least the mid seventies.
I remember an ad where Lee Iacoca leaned forward earnestly at what was implicitly his desk as a Ford executive, and said, in essence, “OK, we admit it, we have been half-assing the cars. But you taught us a lesson, so now we’re making really good cars. All you have to do is come back and try us out, we’ve decided that Quality is Job One, now.”
That was twenty-something years ago, if I recall correctly.
Just recently I saw another ad. Another car exec looking repentantly into the camera and ernestly saying something like “OK, we get it, we’ve been half-assing the cars. But you taught us a lesson, so now we’re making really good cars. We think quality is job one, now. No…really. This time we mean it.”
No, they’ll mean it when the people — who really do buy inferior cars because of emotional appeal — stop letting the FEELING of being patriotic come before the actual actions of American ideals.
I’m going to stick to being a REAL American, and you should, too.
Support whomever deserves it, because anything else is not only wrong, and unamerican, but self-destructive in the long run.
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This site has its origins before the word “Blog” existed. Back then its owner, Kaz, was simply thought of as having a website that published socio-political articles with regularity…But the only real difference was that the RSS/XML protocals were not yet used this way.
The website was known as Site of the Sentient, a reference to the famous Words of the Sentient, that Kaz had been editing for years previously.
When some random portal site hijacked the domain siteofthesentient.com, it was a dark time for the human knowledge quest. Fortunately, But Now You Know is striving to take up the slack, and even has some revamped versions of the original articles, for example Conscription, is it Slavery, and How to Get Out of Jury Duty, and be a hero instead of a bad citizen.
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But Now You Know 
Why cant any of the big three American car company figure out how to install a gas cover lever?
To be open from inside the car.The thousands of dollars you spend on a new car and nobody from GM, FORD and CHRYSLER can install a five dollars latch.All the IMPORTS from the low models to the also beautiful models have a lever of some sort that can open a gas cover.So let me ask you again why buy American made cars?????
That seems like a strange complaint. I hate that my Pontiac Vibe has a stupid lever near the driver’s seat that I have to pull to open the gas cover. Why on earth would I want this “feature”? Are some people really so feeble that they can’t flip open the cover by hand when they’re standing next to it? Surely this is proof that the political class are becoming Eloi…
hey guess what? “eff” you! You are absolutely incorrect in everything you said. America will always be a land of the free and home of the brave. Go buy your tin-foil toyota and mitsu and whatever other crap you feel the need to waste your money on and drive it where the sun dont shine. America was built on hard work, how many people are going to work hard if your not willing to pay them to do it? Yeah, think about it, then what will this nation become? Probably a bunch of people who have no idea what they’re talking about the feel the need to write a worthless blog. Sorry, but i couldnt DISAGREE more.
Your complaints are antithetical to the whole idea of “the land of the free and the home of the brave”.
You apparently are not brave enough to face the challenge of competition from other countries, of leaving us free to choose who the real winner in that competition is.
The kind of protectionism you are implicitly defending is exactly what has weakened our country in its ability to compete globally, in the first place.
The problem with your post is that all the other countries are already beeing “unamerican”.
“If Mitsubishi and Hyundai make better cars than Ford and Chrysler”
Mitsubishi and Hyundai MAKE better cars than Ford and Chrysler because people of JAPAN and SOUTH KOREA buy from their country.
Take France for example… They all have French cars, and that since 50 years ago.
For 50 years they have made crap, but now they start to be competitive, just because the french didn’t buy imports.
Germany was the same. When Mercedes, WV and Porsche started out, they didn’t make very good cars in a day.
But people of Germany gave them the chance to do so by buying from their country.
The problem with the liberal mindset “buy the best”, is that we won’t be the best at anything.
Our companies won’t have the money for research and that.
Well american cars are not even american anyway we have outsourced all our work out for cheaper labor unless of corse its a big part… due to shipping cost…. so foreign cars would be just as american as long as they are assembled here…
I AGREE!! Who needs America anyway??? Wait a minute…WE DO! If you’re willing to eventually live a third world existence, then go ahead and buy cars made at cut rate prices or long hours of UNPAID overtime.
If you disagree with buying American cars made by Americans making American wages and living the American lifestyle, go ahead and buy foreign crap. One day, you’ll be outsourced, too!
Did you not read the actual article?
If you disagree with it, then rebut the actual points made.
If you cannot, then you seem to care less about America than your own selfish desires.
Buy American is, as I said, unamerican. It undermines America, our economy, and our way of life.
We should buy what is best. That includes getting the most bang for our buck, even when it’s from somewhere else.
Any job in the US that exists solely because people are paying more for less, instead of importing, is a fake, makework job. Its worker is a joke, a burden on our society.
[…] stimulate car buying, to help the economy, especially did not help the American car companies (who did not deserve it, anyway), and did not even get those new buyers to save gas […]
Absolutely, for example the many laws allowing unions to force workers to join, once established in a company, and most importantly the laws that allow those unions to establish monopolies.
I would add that the United States government should repeal the many federal laws that discourage or prohibit domestic companies from competing effectively with foreign competition. There are certainly plenty of them.
Bill Starr
Columbus, Indiana
Fri, 8 May 2009, 9:08 am EDT
[…] Original post by kazvorpal […]
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