A good way to understand the United States is to listen to one of the great native sons, Mark Twain. With all this talk about President Biden’s national industrial strategy to “build back better,” Twain’s timely advice is this: “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

If any industrial plan is based upon a commonly believed falsehood, then it’s unlikely to do the job of benefiting the republic.