Editorial: Legislature targets Commie investments in land?

There are many good reasons for Americans to be leery of the Chinese Communist Party and its dictatorship over one of the world's largest nations.

But we're not afraid. After all, the Louisiana Legislature is on the case.

The commies are certainly quaking at the enthusiasm of lawmakers in little Louisiana, seeking to ban land purchases by dictatorships from not just mainland China but from around the world.

We've seen foolishness like these bills before. At one time, it was Japanese companies which Americans foolishly feared were stealthily seeking to buy our assets and somehow, in future — however long, no one could tell — turning their land deeds into a threat to the Land of the Free.

Or a lot less free, since private ownership of land is perfectly legal in this country.

The only one of the new bills that seems to make any sense at all is a restriction on foreign ownership of land near military bases and installations. However, the idea that land ownership — which is, after all, a public record — would allow a sneak attack on a National Guard base is far-fetched at best.

Lawmakers at the State Capitol should leave national security concerns to the experts.

This is another example of legislators as social media trolls, finding some hysterical agitation on the internet that they can exploit with legislation in an election year.

A ban on foreign ownership of land is not in the interests of Louisiana, which has a hard enough time persuading businesses to invest in enterprises here. Although, fortunately, some of Louisiana's best-paying jobs come from foreign investment. But those aren't on the legislative early warning screens, being from largely White countries in Europe.

Somehow, when it comes to Asians, we see some kind of latter-day Yellow Peril? What idiocy that is.

We doubt that this sort of thing will be found constitutional if ever taken to court. After all, free enterprise means exactly that, unless there is a clear and present danger to the public.

All these kinds of measures do is reinforce in the minds of business owners that Louisiana isn't a predictable place to invest for the long term.

About those bans on Japanese investments, too. How did that work out decades ago? Well, it was not stealth purchases, as things like the Waldorf in New York and Pebble Beach in California turned out to be huge money-losers.

And what happens in the case of a Chinese company buying — as one has recently — a major American producer of pork? In times of international stress, will the Chinese order their American underlings to kill the pigs?