Whine, the beloved country!(Forward Observer)

George (Jack Nicholson): You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it. Billy (Dennis Hopper): Man, everybody got chicken. That's what happened, man.

--Easy Rider

Actually, it's still a helluva good country, but Billy has a point. Lots of people got chicken. Or more precisely, lots of people started whining.

There is a new culture of complaint in America, and it has surfaced with a vengeance in the recent clamor over outsourcing. Outsourcing--the purchase of services abroad by U.S. companies--is simply another form of trade. And trade, as economists since Adam Smith have pointed, is beneficial to both sides of the transaction.

Yes, trade can plunge previously insulated workers into competition with foreigners. That can cause pain and lost jobs. What's troubling is the reaction here to that competition. Understand that outsourcing is a pebble in the ocean of macroeconomic effects, compared to the boost to the economy from tax cuts and low interest rates and the drag from the terrorist attacks. But the recent reaction to outsourcing makes it seem like a tidal wave.

The reaction: whining, whining, complaining. Indians and Chinese are stealing our jobs. They work for cheap. "We can compete with anybody ... if we have a fair and balanced playing field," said Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD) in an interview with CNN's Lou Dobbs. "It's not fair today and we know that."

Not fair! Was life "fair" to the forebears of today's complainers when they came to America without a job or grasp of the English language, without education, without welfare? Was life fair to the Americans who made their way to, say, the plains of South Dakota, fighting vicious weather and difficult farming conditions?