Leadership Quote by Byron Dorgan

Backbone is doing a lot of rhetorical work here: it frames economic policy not as a spreadsheet debate but as a test of national character. Byron Dorgan, a plainspoken, populist-leaning Democrat from North Dakota, is tapping an old American anxiety that the country has been played for a sucker - by multinational corporations, by trading partners, by its own political class. The line turns “economic interest” into something almost bodily: if you don’t defend it, you’re not just imprudent, you’re spineless.

The specific intent is to move the argument out of technocratic fog and into moral clarity. “Stand up” implies the nation has been sitting down, passive, letting decisions happen to it. That’s a direct rebuke to bipartisan habits that, in Dorgan’s era, often treated trade liberalization, outsourcing, and corporate tax arbitrage as inevitable outcomes of globalization rather than choices. The implicit villain is a cozy consensus - policymakers too deferential to Wall Street, to corporate lobbyists, to the rhetoric of “free markets” even when the lived result is hollowed-out towns and stagnant wages.

Subtextually, the quote also narrows the meaning of patriotism. It’s not flag-waving; it’s leverage: enforce rules, negotiate harder, punish cheaters, prioritize domestic workers. Coming from a politician, it’s both a call to action and a permission slip for aggression - tariffs, tougher trade enforcement, industrial policy - packaged as self-respect. It works because it makes economic nationalism sound like basic dignity, and it dares opponents to argue for “flexibility” without sounding like they’re excusing surrender.