fear of free markets

It is ironic that the people who speak in praise of freedom are often the ones most afraid of it. Two news stories illustrate this. They come from the US, but similar stories come from all powerful countries every day. And they reflect the hypocrisy and fear of the ordinary man and woman in the street - we can't just blame the politicians.

In one story, immigrants are sent away, as they are every day. These people work hard for low wages - so they benefit the rest of the nation. But we fear free market in people, so we erect great barriers at our borders. We just hate competition.

In another story, Central America is forced to accept whatever the US wants to sell, while the US has subsidies and barriers that make a free market impossible. Plainly we hate competition.

It's not just hypocritical, it causes death and suffering on a massive scale for them, anger toward us (hence "terrorism"), and reduces our collective wealth (because fair competition benefits both sides). We love freedom? Yeah, right.