Martin Gottlieb of the Dayton Daily News hits the nail on the head about Sherrod Brown, his kooky liberalism, and "fair trade." :

But, in truth, a Rep. Charlie Brown would have done as well as Rep. Sherrod Brown, provided only that he had the Democratic label.

And Charlie could have run as a "mushy centrist." That, after all, was the strategy of landslide winner Ted Strickland (who actually is just a little reminiscent of Charlie Brown, isn't he?) in the governor's race.

…

The magazine is right about something else: The new Democrats in the Senate are a lot like Brown on one issue: trade.

The Democrats long for a juicy populist issue, meaning one that allows them to connect with the suspicions of struggling people that they are being victimized by larger, richer forces. Right-wingers drove the Democrats nuts at a certain stage of recent history when they claimed the populist mantle. They rode and promoted fears of big government, big media and an allegedly elite liberal establishment.

The liberals are tired of being elite. They're tired of explaining to working people why things that people don't like ”� school busing, high taxes, immigration, gay marriage, flexibility in criminal sentencing, restraints on police ”� are good.

Trade offers the opportunity to be nonelite, to side with the little guy. This is something Democrats became Democrats to do; the elitism thing snuck up on them.

…

What the fair traders really want is to change other countries in fairly profound ways. They're the neoconservatives without the Marines ”� bent on bringing high wages to the world, just as the neocons are bent on democracy. It's the same kind of presumptuousness, even if it comes from the other end of the American political spectrum.

Neoconservatism should be defined as Irving Kristol's philosophy of an expansive foreign policy with the goal of liberating all of the world's oppressed peoples- Neoconservatives are usually reformed liberals/Trotskyites, and have very little in common with Russell Kirk's conservatism.

But I try to avoid the term "neoconservative", because the left uses that term synonymously with "dirty jew." Because it is used as an anti-semitic slam, or used as an insult against those who want Israel to exist, I try to avoid the term "neoconservative."

But regardless, Martin Gottlieb is absolutely correct- and Sherrod Brown arguments for "fair trade" are neoconservatish. And as William F. Buckley once said, this sort of "idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive."

"Fair trade" is a silly, subjective notion, and it consists of government bureaucrats defining fairness without caring about the consequences of such statist policies.

Radley Balko, in Capitalism Magazine, explained that the best way for developing nations to improve wages is to allow the free market to work:

The best way to lessen the plight of sweatshop workers is more free trade, not less. If workers make 75 cents per day in factory A - the only plant in town - the best thing that could happen to them would be for a second factory to open up. If Factory B pays less than 75 cents, it won't attract any workers. If it offers exactly 75 cents, it might attract a few workers who couldn't get jobs at factory A. If it pays more than 75 cents, however, it might attract the best and brightest from factory A. Factory A then must decide whether to up its wages, or look for new labor - which means more jobs.

The alternative: force factory A to pay artificially high wages. That negates the advantage factory A had by investing in a developing country in the first place. Factory A packs up and returns to the U.S. Factory B never happens, because factory B's parent company sees no advantage (see: cheap labor) in investing in the developing country. Factory A's workers' wages go from 75 cents per day to nothing.

Instead of two factories paying twice as many workers higher wages, enabling them to inch their way out of poverty, a community is left with no factories, no jobs, and no hope.

"Fair trade" is simply a term used by union thugs and the left to to defend xenophobic economic policy ideas. But when such statism inflates the cost of food or products- Then Sherrod Brown and the "fair trade" crowd can no longer claim they have the poor's best interest in mind.