Free trade - just do it! Forget the pompous Summit meetings of foreign dignitaries. Forget the sideshow drama between protestors and riot police. The Americas should drop trade restrictions entirely and allow individuals to freely trade with whomever they please, and work and live wherever they please.

The spectacle of the Quebec Summit was an expensive made-for-media brouhaha that made only a few baby steps toward western hemispheric free trade. World leaders and protestors scored high ratings on the publicity index but fell short of any meaningful decision other than agreeing to agree to some trade deal before 2005.

The Quebec Summit reinforced the age-old adage that every hero needs a villain. Luke Skywalker had Darth Vadar. And world leaders have the antics of activists to hold the media's attention on international trade summits.

Acting in isolation, neither dignitary nor protestor would generate a stitch of international media coverage. No one pays attention to Eco-Marxists screaming at a chain link fence unless world leaders are hatching plots on the other side to allegedly surrender national sovereignty to running dog capitalists. By the same token, international media are less interested in behind-the-doors meetings of dignitaries in stiff suits unless a restless mob is ready to tar and feather them.

This is the charade of the Summit. It's little more than a photo op for world leaders and a sounding board for Eco-Marxists. To avoid embarrassing outcomes, the wheeling and dealing on free trade agreements was settled long before leaders learned their sound bites and smiled for the cameras.

The malcontents hurling concrete and bottles at police were equally prepared for their part in the drama. Their teary-eyed script about the perils of free trade in developing countries fires up the heart but dulls the mind. "It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering," noted Oscar Wilde, "than it is to have sympathy with thought."

Let the South Americans choose for themselves whether free trade is in their best interest. North American protestors should bury the patronizing attitude that Latin Americans are too feeble to compete in a global economy and are better off preserving their romantic pastoral lifestyles.

Chances are Juan Valdez's kids don't care to dress in rags and pick coffee beans alongside Chico the mule on worker-owned plantations. Exposed to the endless possibilities of life on TV, they aspire to same opportunities enjoyed by North Americans. But a wall of trade and travel restrictions at the Mexican border locks in poverty and despair.

If you put free trade under a microscope, chances are you'll finds some warts. There are always winners and losers. But under free trade, the long-term political and economic benefits outweigh the short-term losses from economic restructuring.

Free trade guarantees access for poor countries to the larger markets to the north. Jobs are created. Wages increase over time and the cost of consumer goods will fall across both continents. It's no coincidence that democracy triumphs where wealth abounds.

The undertakers of free trade agreements have no objection to having their ideas published and exchanged across borders without restriction. They should do us all a favor and extend the same courtesy to those who wish to work and trade without hindrance as well.