When Fred P. Hochberg, the [Export-Import] bank’s chairman and president, defends it, an old joke comes to mind: A pastor officiating at a man’s funeral asks if anyone in the congregation would like to say something about the deceased. After a long, awkward silence, a voice shouts: “His brother was even worse.” South Korea, Hochberg says, provides “four to five times more export support than we do.” Thus does sound policy get defined down: Others are even worse, supposedly forcing us to emulate them.
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Nice try, George. War is evil, but when we are attacked, that we fight back doesn't mean that we are evil, too.
In this case a paraprosdokian aptly applies: We dispense with so-called free-trade in order to defend free-market principles.
