Alabama as a Foreign Colony?

When most Americans think of colonies, they probably think of the 13 North American colonies of Great Britain that waged a revolution over "no taxation without representation" and went on to become the United States. It's a nice, little patriotic story.

But the idea of colonialism is much uglier than the way it turned out for the 18th century colonials in Boston and elsewhere on this continent. And it's about a whole lot more than just having a foreign country set up a government that its subjects don't think is fair.

Colonialism refers not just to government but to a stronger power taking over the resources of a weaker power and converting them to its own uses. Those resources are not just land, but can be the wealth, in all its forms including labor, of the people of the weaker party.

An important part of the trick to having a successful colony is for the stronger power to so dominate the weaker party that the colonials actually begin to prefer the stronger power and its values and culture to their own. The minds of the people of the weaker power have become colonized along with their land and resources.

Without too much of a stretch, one could say that is what is happening in states like Alabama. Foreign countries, in the form of auto manufacturers that are supported by foreign governments, have planted themselves in Alabama. They are extracting resources from Alabama in the form of labor for which they do not always pay a living wage (as low as $14 an hour which comes out to 137 percent of the poverty line for a family of four) and for which they are receiving massive subsidizies from the states ($3 billion at least according to some estimates). The profits from the labor return to the foreign country, rather than staying in Alabama.

And most importantly, they have persuaded residents of the state that this is a good system that they should prefer to an American one. The foreign companies have the states' U.S. senators, like Richard Shelby, actively working against American companies and on behalf of the foreign ones.

Shelby identifies more with his Japanese and German masters than with fellow Americans. That's the classic action of a colonized mind.