There’s an especially important dynamic at play in the newest auto bailout plan (discussed in this week’s WashingtonWatch.com Digest) that’s worth highlighting: To shore up the financial situation of the “Big Three” automakers for some period, money would come from a fund intended to get them into building cleaner, more efficient vehicles.

Part of the rap on the “Big Three,” of course, is that they haven’t kept up with the times, consistently producing cars that don’t meet consumer demand. Taking money intended for updating these dinosaurs and using it to just keep them alive suggests that it won’t keep them alive for long.

The phrase “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees,” is widely attributed to Emiliano Zapata, a Mexican revolutionary who fought the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz in the early 1900s.

I learned the phrase in the early 1980s, of course, from Midnight Oil’s “Power and the Passion.” (Enjoy the graceful movement of lead singer Peter Garrett in the video.)

A bailout coming from money intended to update the Big Three’s products may keep those companies alive a little longer, but it will retard their ability to compete just that much more. They won’t die on their feet; they’ll live on their knees – and they’ll die later anyway.

I’ve been careful here to talk about the Big Three, because those are the automakers that are in trouble. There is auto manufacturing being done by many companies in the United States, and there are entirely new automakers waiting in the wings, hoping to introduce new and different vehicles that will be better than anything we can expect from the companies now begging Congress for money. Let’s get on with the future.