So, you’re living in Kansas, where you graduated from the University of Kansas and a great, big tornado picks up your house one day, with you in it, and you fly all the way to Massachusetts, where you land on the Bad Witch of the North, who was probably some Republican or something.

You’re a hero of the commonwealth and you settle down in the Back Bay, where you prosper and marry and have children – all of whom are expected to stay in Massachusetts, because someone is going to have to pay those state employee pensions.

But there’s another storm on the horizon. The University of Kansas wants to charge in-state tuition to your kids, as part of a vast conspiracy to entice alumni children to come home and play with the cows and corn and stuff.

And then, of course, there’s Connecticut. Last year, the Connecticut Legislature decided that if Massachusetts or any other foreign country gives its companies an edge in bidding on state or local contracts, then Connecticut will give its companies a similar preference when those unfair competitors come sniffing around for work.

There are about 35 states with some kind of eye-for-an-eye thing designed to coddle its home-grown talent when bidding on state business. And, when things get slow, some economic development task force will rise up and demand that “something be done” to keep young talent safely within state borders, lest they all end up in Kansas.

Unflagging Protectionism

At a time when capital and labor know no boundaries; at a time when I can write my columns in my underwear from somewhere like Kansas, if I want; at a time when Grandma can vacation in a foreign land and still wield her ATM to retrieve cash as if she’s in a Boston Stop & Shop; it’s sort of endearing to see some old-fashioned border raids and stateside protectionism.

Massachusetts succumbed to one of the more popular and hilarious bits of homegrown protectionism, with a mandate this year commanding state agencies to only buy American flags made in the United States. Following a brief, yet exhaustive search of Boston-area discount stores, I predict that’s not going to be an easy mandate to obey. Those Chinese fellas really know how to sew the stars and stripes.   

There’s a handful of states that beat Massachusetts to the draw on the flag thing, but it’s important for the commonwealth to deliver the message that Paul Revere didn’t ride through the state screaming so that foreigners could get rich sewing American flags.

Did legislators have more important things to worry about than the birthplace of the American flags flying hither and yon? Who cares? It was irresistible. As the cartoonist Kin Hubbard once put it, “It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he adores the flag.”

It does seem churlish, though, to encourage, if not beg, China to buy our bonds and finance our economic mess, while discouraging the rural Chinese peasants from sewing our flags. In the real spirit of America, Massachusetts should flood the Chinese with Boston baked beans, disrupting their rice markets, rather than crack down on their American flag dynasty. That’s why the Kansas effort to snap up some vulnerable out-of-state students is American to the core. The competition is a good thing for the country.

Even as a matter of foreign policy, it can be argued that the kinds of things that help America assert its economic superiority in the world are Michael Jordan, rock-and-roll, and, of course, the ability to spread around the wealth through the purchase of American flags. A nation that fears a foreign seamstress is a nation not fit to lead the world.

The potential for harm is explosive. We ban Maine lobsters; Maine shuts the door on Boston cream pie.  If too many of the states decide to take their local-preference bidding regulations too seriously, it would make hash out of the federal “stimulus,” which assumes a free flow of cash cascading through the economy.

A little protectionism goes a long way. For example, protecting local columnists from national competition is a good thing. I’d march in parades to champion that cause, waving my inexpensive American flag. Oops.