Was Protectionism so important?

Every Sunday afternoon my grandfather and I would have an argument. My father would be present some times, as would my grandmother, and they would interject a statement or two. Some times an aunt or uncle would be visiting my grandfathers' house and would put in their two cents, but the argument was always between my grandfather and me.

I grew up arguing with my grandfather. I could not tell you when it started or what the first argument was about. I no longer remember what most of the arguments were about, only that each of us was very upset with the other’s opinions. Most of the time we would argue about current events in politics. We would argue about whether this or that should happen, or what we thought about a particular event.

We were from entirely different generations. He grew up in the Great Depression, a time when food and supplies were in short supply. You made do with what you had; no more, no less. He blamed the entire situation on Wall Street and the related illegal trusts formed by rich capitalists, causing the big crash of ‘29. Like many of his generation he found comfort in the words and deeds of F.D.R. and became what we would call a democratic activist.

I was growing up in the 1970’s - a very different time. Democrats had held congress for forty years, and all of the original goals they had set out to accomplish had been instituted, and were not going anywhere. I also started to see the inconsistencies between what was being presented to me as facts, and what I thought the real facts were. Hippies, bikers, blacks, Japs, they were all bad people according to my grandfather. I could not agree with his ideals. So we argued and argued, every Sunday afternoon.

I grew to dread my weekly visits there with my father. Later when I was a teenager I stopped going at all. The rift between our opinions had become too large. To him I was a capitalist- wannabe, and to me he was a bigot.

Were the conflicts inevitable? No, I could have kept my mouth shut. I could have just smiled when my grandfather told me that I should not talk to black people. I could have agreed that a trade policy of protectionism would be better for steel workers and damn the users of steel. I could have minded him and never questioned his so-called wisdom. I could have become a little mirror image of him, holding his ideals before me like a banner or a shield. There was no resolution for us. My grandfather died alone, with no friends to visit him. Without his loving wife to care for him, she had died a year earlier; he no longer knew what to do to survive. His wife’s place was in the kitchen and conversely, it was no place for a man. Because of this and other principles he lived by he never learned how to take care of his most basic need, the ability to feed him-self. Only my father cared enough to help him though the last year of his life, cooking and cleaning up for him. The conflict has been resolved, he is dead. My grandfather and I don’t argue anymore.

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