There is a scene in the film version of Band of Brothers, the true story of Company E of the 101st Airborne during WWII, where Easy Co. is passing a column of German soldiers who have surrendered. The Germans are marching one way down the Autobahn while American troops are in trucks riding in the other direction.
On one of those truck is future writer David Webster who says in the scene, “Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General [expletive deleted] Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking?”
The reference was to the productive capacity of the United States. Indeed, many recognize that while it was the men and women in uniform who fought the war, it was the ability of American manufacturers to produce that actually won the war for the allies.
Even our enemies knew America’s strongest suit in the conflict. Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the man who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, alluded to just that when he said the attack did nothing but to “Awaken a sleeping giant and fill it with terrible resolve.”
But the hey day of Ford and General Motors, at least as it was known during WWII, is no more. Bad business decisions by corporate executives, an overly grandiose view of being international businesses and government intrusion into a free market have basically castrated these once giants of productive power.
And now there’s even greater leverage for governmental intrusion. Through bailouts and bankruptcy – the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history – the U.S. government has become a majority shareholder in GM.
A “reluctant shareholder,” as president Obama calls the government’s ownership stake, now owns 60 percent of the company.
“The federal government will refrain from exercising its rights as a shareholder in all but the most fundamental corporate decisions,” the president said earlier this week.
He added that the company, not the government would decide where to open new plants and what types of new cars would be built.
Yet, there are some who want the government to dictate what GM should do.
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore talked about an “upside” in an interview on Keith Olbermann’s June 1 show.
“We own a car company,” Mr. Moore said. “We are going to be able to control what this company is going to do. … We are using these factories to build the things that we need, bullet trains, light rail, alternative energy, cleaner buses, things that society needs in the 21st century.”
Moore spoke of the need to keep the 21,000 employees expected to be laid off and tell the company what to build as President Roosevelt did during the war.
What is key is that Mr. Moore and others of his philosophical bent simply want to control the decisions of others, and he wants the administration to tell GM what to do.
Mr. Moore has a great deal of faith in his form of statism, that being of the left wing variety, but he would never have wanted the previous administration to have the power now in Mr. Obama’s hand, power that Mr. Moore wants the president to use.
Maybe there will be a bullet train that no one wants to ride as long as they have better alternatives, such as their own cars, that Mr. Moore wants the government to control.
And while Mr. Obama says the government will be a “reluctant” shareholder, the fact that the government holds the power to tell GM what to do is the fist inside the velvet glove.
Government policy in the form of the New Deal failed to put an end to the great depression. It was WWII that ended it. But we no longer have a healthy Ford or GM to rely on to get us through another war.
Worse still, there would be less freedom and liberty worth fighting for. Governments know nothing about running businesses, but many governments dearly love to control those who do run them. That is an assault on liberty and it is a pity that the U.S. government is following that tainted path.
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