Is there a Trojan Horse in the Tea Party Movement?

I’ve enjoyed reading the books of Thomas Sowell for many years. I became aware of him in the late ‘70s when he burst onto the intellectual scene with amazing analyses of economic trends. His defense of free markets is laudable and he has made many unique and perceptive points. Most recently he has written books that have been critical of intellectuals. I just finished his new book that brought home to me the problem for conservatives and, especially, why they have found themselves on the losing end of the political debate.

The book, entitled “Intellectuals and Society” is an excellent examination of progressive intellectuals’ inability to bridge the gap between their elitist ideas and reality. The first few chapters of the book give an excellent overview of the problems that progressive intellectuals create. According to Professor Sowell, intellectuals are wrong about social solutions because they come at problems from a limited elitist perspective that represents only a small percentage of the total knowledge available in society at large.

I find Doctor Sowell’s criticism to be excellent when it comes to analyzing the precarious position of intellectuals who are steeped in specialized knowledge but who have little understanding of the real world. Yet his argument fell apart for me when he compared today’s progressives with today’s conservatives.

“This vision of society, in which there are many “problems” to be “solved” by applying the ideas of morally anointed intellectual elites is by no means the only vision, however much that vision may be prevalent among today’s intellectuals. A conflicting vision has co-existed for centuries—a vision in which the inherent flaws of human beings are the fundamental problem and social contrivances are simply imperfect means of trying to cope with that problem—these imperfections themselves being products of the inherent shortcomings of human beings.”[1]

Professor Sowell takes for himself the position of the conflicting vision. His is “...the tragic vision of the human condition that is very different from the vision of the anointed.”[2] And, indeed, he joins a long tradition of philosophers and intellectuals who have shared that vision of human beings that are inherently flawed. Unfortunately, this vision includes that of the progressives.

You have to ask yourself what is the point of taking the position that man is inherently flawed? Why would conservatives want to start with this premise? And more importantly, why do they think that this position provides a better argument for limited government and capitalism?

As a former Catholic, I am familiar with this view. Man is a sinner who would wreak havoc if left to his own “selfish” devices. His only moral constraint is that given to him by God and the church. According to this view, man must follow the Ten Commandments handed down to him by God through Moses. If men do not follow God’s Commandments, God will punish them on this earth and after death. Men will only do right because of fear of God’s wrath.

Sowell asserts that the vision of contemporary intellectuals (progressives) today is based on an ages old view that sees problems as an outgrowth of social institutions. “In this vision, oppression, poverty, injustice and war are all products of existing institutions—problems whose solutions require changing those institutions, which in turn require changing the ideas behind those institutions.”[3] Is Professor Sowell saying that progressives are wrong because they are right about our social institutions? Are we to assume that progressives’ criticisms of institutions such as capitalism and the church are valid? Is he perhaps giving them too much credit?

In fact, progressives today threaten to destroy the most advanced, the most just and the most affluent civilization in the history of the world because the solutions offered by progressives for the problems of capitalism and the church involve collective coercive remedies that enslave individuals. These solutions are offered because progressives also see man as flawed and incapable of being moral.

Whether you receive your view of man’s nature from Hobbes or Hume, you cannot derive the principles of a free society and the anti-principles of a slave society from the same source, from the view that man is imperfect. The logic of ideas in practice is inexorable; you cannot get around it. If the conservatives and the progressives both have the same basic view of man, the result will be the same.

Yet, the question regarding man’s nature is the foundation upon which all human action must be based. The answer to that question indicates not only how intellectuals think men will act but how governments will treat them. Does man have rights? Is he to be a slave to the needs of others? These questions are important. The only difference between conservatives and progressives is not that progressives see certain institutions as needing change and that conservatives do not; the vital question is "from where does man derive his mandate for moral action?" Political debates and revolutionary change are not about merely changing institutions; they are about understanding man's nature and dealing with him accordingly.

When Barack Obama says he believes in service to the community, working for and dying for others, the conservatives can only say, ‘so do we’. They may counter the progressives with arguments for faith, hope and charity, but the progressives also talk about faith, hope and charity. The dilemma for the conservatives is that they are on the same side as the progressives.  They both advocate altruism as their fundamental principle. They have failed to recognize that man’s true nature is not that he is imperfect but that he is a creature of reason, a creature perfectly suited for survival and success. The result: the conservatives have nothing to offer against the views of the progressives.

To continue with Doctor Sowell, “In the tragic vision, barbarism is always waiting in the wings and civilization is simply “a thin crust over a volcano.” (This quote is from Havelock Ellis. The full statement is “All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.”) The metaphor, “a thin crust over a volcano” used to describe the position of civilization versus barbarism is illustrious of the problem that conservatives create for themselves. If civilization is truly a thin crust over a volcano, then what is the point of trying to create a better society? Eventually, the volcano will erupt (into revolution) and destroy that thin layer. If this is our choice, then why should we continue living on that thin crust? Better red than dead. This argument is a prescription for nihilism.

Unfortunately, this is the false alternative that conservatives create for themselves. A “thin crust” versus an inevitable explosion is hardly a choice. When they create such false alternatives based on non-essentials, they end up rationalizing false views and eventually they take the same side as the other haters of man, the progressives. To place one’s enemies, the enemies of freedom, in the position of “a volcano”, means you know they will win.

Is civilization truly “a thin crust over a volcano”? Or are the principles of a proper society based upon something more fundamental in man's nature that must be recognized and accommodated by government; facts and principles that endure and never explode. Shouldn’t we instead strive for a vision of man that will acknowledge his value and thereby help in the creation of a bulwark against the explosion of violence and barbarism? I submit that this bulwark is what the Founders of our nation attempted to create and their vision of man was not at all “tragic”.

“In the tragic vision, social contrivances seek to restrict behavior that leads to unhappiness, even though these restrictions themselves cause a certain amount of unhappiness. It is a vision of trade-offs, rather than solutions, and a vision of wisdom distilled from the experiences of the many rather than the brilliance of a few.”[4]

This means that civilization is nothing more than “social contrivances” designed to restrict immoral living in order to make a trade-off, to create a balance between immorality (selfishness) and self-sacrifice (the good). What is being traded here is your decision to be productive in return for the government getting a piece of your production. Your punishment for committing the crime of surviving is that you have to pay people who cannot survive. Remember, this is the conservative view. And, to prove it, notice that the desire of President Obama to “re-distribute” wealth is considered by the conservatives to be “the brilliance of a few”.

And to prove that they have no understanding of their own position, Doctor Sowell says, “The conflict between these two visions goes back for centuries. Those with the tragic vision and those with the vision of the anointed do not simply happen to differ on a range of policy issues. They necessarily differ, because they are talking about very different worlds which exist inside their minds. Moreover, they are talking about different creatures who inhabit that world, even though both call these creatures human beings, for the nature of those human beings is also fundamentally different as seen in the two visions.”[5]

Professor Sowell does not seem to recognize that both philosophical skeptics and conservative philosophers such as Hobbes and Burke saw man in essentially the same way. They both saw man as incapable of understanding reality, in other words, as imperfect. How can the same basic view of man lead to two different solutions in politics? They can't; progressivism and conservatism are two contrary ideas based on the same premise that will inevitably lead to the same result: enslavement. And this is the danger of accepting the stated goal of conservatives (limited government) without identifying their contradictory premise (that man is flawed) and its inevitable consequence.

The reason the conservatives use non-essentials (tragic vision versus anointed vision) in separating conservatives from progressives is that they must evade the hidden motive of the conservative vision. I doubt that Professor Sowell and other conservatives know that their argument on the issue of man’s nature is weak and I doubt that they have an ulterior motive. I think they truly want freedom, but even they cannot escape the logical consequences of their arguments. The truth is that their view of man is a false attack on him and it implies government action against him that would control his individual moral choices. The real goal of religious conservatives, since our founding as a nation, has been to make room for faith in a world that is constantly being transformed by the power of reason. Politically that goal can only be accomplished by authoritarian theocracy.

Since religious conservatives want to restrict what they consider to be immoral acts, their advocacy of capitalism necessarily leaves much to be desired. The conflict takes place when you attempt to graft the control of immoral acts (determined by God in the Bible) on a system that is based on the individual's right to decide for himself what is moral action. What the conservative considers to be immoral and selfish may actually be moral and life-serving when viewed from the perspective of the individual and his life. Where does that leave capitalism and man's rights? Economic conservatives therefore must avoid discussions of morality and stick religiously to economic statistics and the cause-and-effect consequences of central planning. It also takes some of them to pragmatism, realpolitik, neo-conservatism and, you guessed it, the inevitability of progressivism (the old "thin crust of the volcano").

In fact, the conservatives have managed to proclaim the superiority of their own stated enemies. “The two visions differ fundamentally, not only in how they see the world but also in how those who believe in these visions see themselves. If you happen to believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values and other features of the tragic vision, then you are just someone who believes in free markets, judicial restraint and traditional values. There is no personal exaltation resulting from those beliefs. But to be for “social justice” and “saving the environment,” or to be “anti-war” is more than just a set of beliefs about empirical facts. This vision puts you on a higher moral plane as someone concerned and compassionate, someone who is for peace in the world, a defender of the downtrodden, and someone who wants to preserve the beauty of nature and save the planet from (pollution). In short, one vision makes you somebody special and the other vision does not. These visions are not symmetrical.”[6] In short, progressives are good and conservatives are evil. (parentheses mine)

Why aren’t conservatives good?

“They favor capitalism and self-interest”, say the progressives.

“No we don’t” say the conservatives. “We want capitalism because we believe that it is the best way to achieve “the highest good.” We're just like you.”

“How is that possible? Isn’t capitalism about greedy acquisition and theft from the poor?” ask the progressives.

“Yes, it is,” say the conservatives. “But we can control that through regulations and Antitrust. We just want to manipulate the market so it can achieve “the highest good.””

“So do we,” say the progressives. “That’s why we want to re-distribute wealth.”

“But that will create distortions in the marketplace. We don’t want any distortions, do we?”

“See,” say the progressives. "You really don’t mean what you say. You are really just working for those greedy capitalists.”

This is called “the moral argument” and it is based on the premise that all human action should be without self-interest; that it should be “for others”. The conservatives have no answer except to say they agree; they just want to accomplish social well being in a different way, a way that works.

“Trickle down,” say the progressives. “Capitalism has failed. We’ve got a better way. Let’s just take the money.”

The problem for the conservatives is that pesky little word “self-interest”. Because of their altruistic (utilitarian) premises, they just can’t get around the idea that capitalism is really about self-interest. They wish that it weren’t so.

"But the Founders established our traditions and those are good, aren't they?"

The progressives just chuckle at the hypocrisy.

Indeed, self-interest is a pretty bad motivation if you believe that man's duty is to sacrifice for others. The conservatives are stuck with the contradiction. And the dubious utilitarian argument just doesn’t seem to work when you’ve got those left-wing protesters out on the streets in front of television cameras complaining about greed and riches and theft and MONEY, even wild parties and lots of sex too. Once you lay that guilt trip on them, conservatives shut up and vote the way the progressives want.

The progressives have been successful in manipulating the conservatives into being the agents of “self-interest”. Not only have they painted the conservatives into the corner as stealthy advocates of it, but they are also the teachers who have put the proverbial dunce caps on them as well. The conservatives simply cannot get out of that corner until they learn to claim the moral high ground. They are evading the moral arguments for capitalism, the very arguments that hard working Americans in the Tea Party Movement would champion and support. These are the arguments that they need if they are to establish the moral fervor necessary to withstand the same progressive arguments that have silenced the conservatives for so long - and that make the conservatives into weaklings hardly worth getting out of bed to vote for.

How do they find that moral high ground? You might be surprised to hear that they can't do it by quoting God at every turn. No voter is going to get excited about "moral contrivances" designed to restrict immoral actions. Voters are only going to get excited about a bright new future that liberates men to solve their own problems through hard work and that protects their earnings from thieves who call themselves representatives of the people. They will only get excited about the possibility of working hard and keeping their earnings so they can benefit themselves (and their families). They need a "selfish" reason to vote.

They have to reject the view that man’s nature is part of any “tragic” vision. They must stop focusing their arguments on the idea that man is fallible, that he can only survive by sacrificing for others; they must stop implying that men will always make the wrong moral decisions and that government is there to hold him back. These arguments do not justify freedom; they justify coercion against individuals. Under this view, choosing to live, to create values, to trade values, to organize companies, to be productive, to think, to produce, to make a (huge) profit, to flourish and to enjoy life are all immoral decisions. Conservatives must learn to embrace morality by embracing the pursuit of happiness and by being guiltlessly proud of it. It is not a sin to declare that man is a creature with the ability to reason, to choose and to enjoy life.

As I wrote in my recent blog, “The Immoral Roots of Anti-capitalism”, “Altruism is not the moral base of a capitalist system. We can’t have a successful capitalist system if we just want to help people. Capitalism requires an independent mind. We must want men to be successful, we must know that it requires work, we must honor the independent mind and we must give credit where credit is due. Altruism requires a mind ruled by the edicts of superiors and it tells man that to be moral he only needs to follow the easiest path of all: the road that preaches sacrifice as virtue. Capitalism requires integrity. Altruism requires that man fight his bodily nature with his spiritual self-sacrificial code. Capitalism requires honesty. Altruism requires that one deceive one's own mind. Capitalism requires justice. Altruism requires that justice be suspended among men, that men do society's work by being unjust towards those who refuse to sacrifice. Capitalism requires productiveness. Altruism requires that the productive are not as important as those who give away the confiscated money of the productive. Capitalism requires pride. Altruism requires both humility in some men and pretentiousness in others. Capitalism requires principled action based on abstract concepts that are tied to reality. Altruism requires Kantian mush, vague, disconnected equivocation, switching contexts, unintelligibility, one reality that is inaccessible by the mind and a second mental universe that is incompetent. Capitalism is a challenge to the individual and it demands his best effort. Altruism demands only envy and hatred of capitalism.”

The Founders understood that man should be free to make a better life. They knew that he can only do so by identifying reality, understanding what is in his best interest, knowing or discovering how to achieve it and then taking action. They understood that man was good because they had themselves achieved success in life by means of study, practical action and reason. This is the source of our “rugged individualism”; the source of a unique image of a man with the self-confidence and the ability to survive in the wilderness. “Daniel Boone was a man!” This is why they based our society upon the principles of “life, liberty and the pursuit happiness”. This is why they limited the power of government to violate those rights.

The Founders understood that freedom makes possible the unhindered pursuit of values. And in order to produce values, a man must have the ability to identify what values are, what human purposes they achieve and not only how to create them but also how to price them, deliver them and discuss their features and benefits in terms of value for the purchaser. A value can only be created as an outgrowth of a rational process, a thinking process that identifies what is in the maker's and the buyer's mutual self-interest.

Values must be proudly selfish because their creation depends upon a person’s choice, and in order for you to choose a life-enhancing value, it must first be validated by a process of reason that justifies it in terms of benefit to the life of the valuer. There is no other way to think about values. Conservatives will never argue for capitalism on this basis and this is why you see Professor Sowell attempting to explain the differences between conservatives and progressives on grounds other than an individual’s moral right to the pursuit of his own, individual happiness.

Contrast the politician of today with an architect such as Frank Lloyd Wright and you will see the difference between a valuer and a nihilist. Wright and his designs are pro-man, pro-life, pro-value. The architect expressed his love of life and of values by means of manipulating natural resources to express in his buildings a concept of priceless utility combined with ultimate beauty and the enjoyment of both. The designs of his buildings expressed so much more than just lines and corners; they expressed the beauty of nature, the organization of natural resources and the feelings of comfort and relaxation. The emphasis on values is so implicit yet so real that you must grow intellectually in order to comprehend the beauty within the mind of the architect. He brings you to a new evaluation of man and all that is possible through him. This is what America and American business is all about, this love of values, this moral high ground, not the sleazy smile of a person who has done nothing notable except write grants for non-profit (and unprofitable) organizations, write books about nothing that he has done and became famous for writing books about nothing that he has done. Contrast a Wright with an Obama and you’ll see the difference between a person who creates values and one who re-distributes them. One is a businessman who creates life as a natural outgrowth of loving life and the other creates poverty through flim flam and manipulation. One inspires the upward glance; the other inspires the glance of hatred and envy aimed at any man with a mind.

This refusal by the conservatives to defend capitalism on proper moral grounds has created a situation where there is no opposition to the progressives; and it opens the door to the vilest forms of nihilism. At every turn, President Obama destroys values. Whether it is American free enterprise, the sacredness of contract, the rewarding of failure, the bailouts, the dismissing of our allies (and especially of Israel), the hand (full of cash) extended toward dictators, unilateral nuclear disarmament, the unwillingness to take on Iran, socialized medicine, Cap and Trade, Union Card Check – everything he does destroys values.

• The President’s antipathy toward free enterprise moves businessmen to hold off investment in the future, freezes cash expenditures and destroys economic recovery.

• His violation of the Chrysler contract with investors has established the precedent that destroyed the sacredness and inviolability of contract, a pillar of all great civilizations.

• His boondoggles and “social justice” programs have taken money from the hands of honest working people, lowering their standards of living and creating poverty and hunger.

• His bailouts of banks and other companies has turned these companies into oligarchs, harmed their competitors, slowed their growth, caused them to lay off employees and spend inordinate amounts of money in campaign contributions to Democrats.

• His dismissing of our allies on various occasions will harm international cooperation for years into the future and give dictators a stronger reason to attack our troops, our citizens and our long-time friend Israel, creating a more unsafe world.

• His outreach to dictators and his bowing before potentates sends a clear signal that the United States is now under the control of a person who has offered it up as a sacrificial lamb to be bled by sundry third world non-entities.

• His unilateral canceling of the nuclear defense shield has put Poland and other former Soviet satellites inside the gun-sights of Russia and it has emboldened Iran in her pursuit of nuclear weapons.

• His “ObamaCare” program will destroy the medical profession, reduce the number of hospitals, reduce the quality of health care, put insurance companies out of business and increase costs while also raising taxes and rationing care.

• His Cap and Trade Bill will create a large oligarchy of companies that will milk money from the taxpayer to build unproductive factories, producing unwanted products, lowering energy consumption, reducing the output of other factories, destroying jobs, raising taxes and lowering our standard of living.

• Union Card Check will give unions the upper hand in shaking down businesses, destroying production, increasing graft and corruption and destroying jobs while raising wages that will put companies out of business or cause them to move to other countries.

This "victory of nihilism" that Obama has wrought is clearly the fault of conservatives who did not fight for capitalism and freedom in a way that defended the rights of Americans to live, succeed and enjoy life. It has destroyed our ability to produce abundance, but more importantly, it may have destroyed our futures. And because conservatives have too easily attempted bi-partisan cooperation with progressives for so many decades, Americans will wonder if the conservatives they elect to save our country will not merely continue to do what they’ve always done – promise smaller government but deliver bigger budgets.

In order to defend limited government, we must defend the capitalist system that is its product. In order to defend the good men who are living moral lives by being productive, we must have a different view of man, a view that sees man, not as a tragic joke who needs to be free because he is stupid - but as a healthy, strong and independent thinker who can make the right decisions about this life and actions – and who needs to be free because it is his right to use his mind. Only when we defend man’s competence, can those who advocate limited government and individual rights capture the moral high ground.

But here’s the nagging question for me and it should give those in the Tea Party Movement some thought. It is understandable that freedom of religion is a fundamental right and it should be fought for whenever it is being threatened. It is a fundamental right because a belief in religion comes from a decision made by each individual mind and, if a person chooses to believe, that right is his alone. But in making a big issue about freedom of religion in the Tea Party Movement, are we perhaps putting ourselves in danger of having religious conservatives co-opt the movement and turn it into a Trojan Horse for theocracy? Are we inadvertently making room for the kind of system that is antithetical to a free society? Is it possible that these arguments are being inserted into the Tea Party debate by those who would take over the Tea Parties and use them to create a national religion established by the government? These are important questions.

In my view, the Trojan Horse could come into the Tea Party Movement under the guise of traditional values, family values, charity and sacrifice. The emphasis on faith, hope and charity is conservatism, a veiled effort to square religious collectivism with individual freedom. The result would be the destruction of individual freedom. Religious collectivism is as great a threat to our freedoms as is progressive collectivism.

How will they do this? They will continue to argue, like many conservative speakers in the past, that our freedoms are from God (rather than leaving the individual alone to decide about the source of his freedoms). They will continue to advance issues around legislated morality rather than individual freedom and they will attempt to divert the Tea Party passion for freedom toward the conservative insistence on religion in government. Once they win politically, by associating with the success of the Tea Party Movement, there may be no opposition to the establishment of a national religion. Just like the progressives who are attempting to hide their fundamental goal which is a totalitarian society, the theocrats are hiding their fundamental goal which is a theocracy, a form of totalitarian society that was defeated by the American Revolution.

Should the Tea Party Movement make common cause with the conservative movement? I say no. The Tea Party Movement should only make common cause with individuals. It should be about what America is about; freedom for every individual; freedom of thought, speech, property, self-defense, limited government and constitutional protections. It should welcome every person regardless of color, creed or origin. We must stand on the inviolability of the individual not the collective. If individual conservatives want to change their basic principles and become champions of freedom and individual rights, that should be welcomed. They can join the Tea Party movement. But the Tea Party Movement should never allow the conservative movement to take over the debate and replace it with a veiled argument for theocracy. In addition, we should scrutinize conservative political candidates and insist on their adherence to individual rights and constitutionally protected liberties. And they should tell us what they will do specifically to change the institutions of government to reflect those principles.

I think it is critical to the success of constitutionally protected liberty that we not become champions of religious collectivism. We must honor the individual and his rights.

The Founders did not create a society that was based on the imperfectability of man. If any of them expressed that view, they were wrong. In fact, they created a society based on the Enlightenment view of man as a creature of reason and they established the governmental machinery that protected man's mind from the encroachment of unreason. They wanted to foster free expression, free thought, free choices, free markets, in short, liberty; the right of man to live as he chooses without the imposition of government – including without the imposition of a religion.

Jefferson said, “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity (of religious thought). What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.”[7] (Parentheses mine)

Many of the original settlers of our country were concerned about finding a place where they could practice their religion. Few of them were concerned about spreading their faith to other men. They had experienced too much of that imposed upon them in Europe. They wanted the freedom to experience and practice their religious principles in their own way. In fact, many of these sects saw religious faith as an individual choice to be contemplated and enjoyed individually in the wondrous and scenic nature that our new land provided. Many of them clearly understood the importance of religious tolerance. We should follow their example.

I think the insecurity of many conservatives stems from a feeling that religion will someday go away. I think they are afraid that they don’t have an argument against science and reason and they want to convince us that if religion goes away so will freedom. Many of them probably believe this. Their insistence that reason and science (secularism) will turn man into a wild wanton sinful brute is the flaw in their argument. Their belief that man cannot be good without God is intolerant and insulting to many Americans who have fought for the principle of religious freedom while also holding to their own philosophies or religions. In truth, only free men want to think the highest thoughts; they want to traverse the frontiers of the planet and the universe. If they discover God at the end, it is their right to think as they wish. If they do not, that is their right as well. In truth, only free men can be perfect and that perfection is not a threat to God.

I would like to state that I admire Thomas Sowell immensely. His defense of capitalism through these many years has undoubtedly required heroic courage and intellectual honesty considering our present political climate. He is truly an admirable man who deserves the highest praise. With that said, I think he is wrong on this crucial issue. If you believe that man is tragically imperfect, the logical conclusion is that you should not leave him free; you should restrict his freedom. And this is clearly what Doctor Sowell advocates when he says that “social contrivances seek to restrict behavior that leads to unhappiness, even though these restrictions themselves cause a certain amount of unhappiness.”

In fact, the correct view of man is that he is a perfect being, fully capable of survival and success using his own considerable and wonderful attributes. He is a creature that should be allowed to discover his perfection through his freely chosen thoughts and actions. Because man is perfect, he must be free. If there is anything in this world to "believe" in, it is the glorious possibilities of man.

Only a free man can be moral.

[1] Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, hardcover page 77
[2] Ibid page 77
[3] Ibid, Page 76
[4] Ibid page 78
[5] Ibid page 78
[6] Ibid page 79-80
[7] Thomas Jefferson, The Notes on Virginia

Anti-capitalism – the Evil Idea Part 3

In a previous post entitled “Anti-capitalism is Evil” I reported on my trip to Washington DC on September 12th, 2009. In that post, I discussed the anti-capitalist views of many young people in the universities. In a companion post entitled “Anti-capitalism – the Evil Idea Part 2, I responded to a comment on my first post with general observations. In this post, I am answering the specific statements made by the commenter point-by-point.

You write:
“The anti-thesis you build in this essay is false. Anti-capitalists aren't protesting small businesses or the use-value of products and services, i.e. the Real Economy you and your family belong to.”

Response:
Apparently, you think that the correct anti-thesis in our economy is between small business people being pandered to by the Obama administration and Wall Street types who use the Obama administration to give themselves an advantage over their competitors.

This is certainly a novel approach to anti-thetical thinking. However, correct economic anti-theses don’t work that way. Logically, a set of correct anti-theses is supposed to contain two exact opposites. To say that Wall Street elites are the anti-thesis of main street small business people reveals an illogical approach. A telling aspect of this approach is that it does not exhaust all of the possibilities. For instance, where does this leave fascism, socialism, Keynesianism, free market theory, etc. Properly, you must define your anti-thetical couples as two opposites that express the principle of “A versus non-A”.

This technique of using contraries as if they were contradictories makes it possible for progressives to change positions whenever it is politically expedient. By being vague on the true divisions in thinking, they leave the door open to insert some of the most ridiculous "solutions". It helps them pander to voting blocks. They attack capitalism and then deny that they are anti-capitalists. They pretend to be, instead, practical “liberals” who really advocate capitalism but are only against the violators of capitalism; the fat cat elites. Quite a nifty little maneuver, if I say so myself. For a full explanation of their deceptive methods, see George Lakoff.

Let’s get back to the real world. In order to find the anti-thesis of capitalism, we have to compare a whole range of economic systems. For instance, let’s analyze fascism, socialism, welfare-statism, capitalism, oligarchy and monarchy. The general category that these “isms” fall under is, of course, "economic systems". The fundamental principle that enables us to find the correct set anti-theses among them is the principle of the role of force in an economy. By identifying that principle in each system, you learn that capitalism is the only system in the group that removes force from men’s economic dealings while the others require government coercion. If you reverse the principle to the role of freedom in an economy (which means the lack of force), you find that the same distinctions apply; capitalism stands against the other systems. There is no difference between capitalism for the rich and capitalism for the middle class. Also, if you outlaw force from men’s dealings under fascism or any of the other systems, you change their essence and move toward capitalism.

You can ask questions about other fundamental principles and you’ll get the same answer. Questions such as which systems rely on collectivism, or which systems are based on altruism, or which are based upon self-sacrifice or re-distribution and you’ll get the same divisions: all other systems versus capitalism. The fundamental anti-theses among these systems are capitalism/individualism versus statism/collectivism.

Your point that there is an anti-thetical relationship between Wall Street capitalism and small business capitalism, and that anti-capitalists are against one and in favor of the other is not only historically inaccurate, it is epistemologically inaccurate given the analysis I have made.

Further, if you study the history of anti-capitalism, the founders of this attitude, Marx and Engels, did not say there was a difference between small business and large corporations. They based their arguments on, among other theories, the “labor theory of value” which held that all value in capitalist production was derived from the amount of labor expended on it. They did not differentiate labor from small business versus large business. They saw all capitalist activity as theft and exploitation. In my post, I clearly argue against the labor theory of value. It is a false theory, clearly refuted by other competent economists. I have discussed these refutations in other posts. When you ask the question, did Marx, in the development of the labor theory of value, discuss only rich capitalists and exclude small business capitalists, you learn that he did not make such a distinction.

You write:
“They (the progressives) are protesting the wild speculation and unregulated risk that takes place on Wall Street, where the wealthiest 1%, insulated by their accumulated wealth, gamble with the livelihoods of the workers and consumers that made them rich in the first place.

Response:
In my second post, I wrote:

“Almost everything you say about "the wild speculation and unregulated risk that takes place on Wall Street" is true but you don't seem to recognize that your statement is not true of capitalism. Fake bubbles, speculation based on insider knowledge or illegal manipulation, and the resulting temporary growth are caused by government intervention into the economy, not capitalism. They are the products of fascism.”

My definition of fascism is not my own. It represents what fascism actually is; a system where private property is allowed to exist but the government dictates through laws and regulations what businesses and individuals must do. Again, this definition relates to the role of force in an economy and clearly defines the difference between the other systems and capitalism. For instance, socialism is a system where the government owns the major industries in society. In a communist system the government owns everything, all industries and all citizens, and makes all decisions in the economy including prices, supply and production goals.

Fascism was the system of Hitler and Mussolini and it is the system that we have. We are fast moving toward socialism through the efforts of the Obama administration.

To continue, consider the following facts regarding Wall Street:

1. The financial services sector is one of the most highly regulated sectors in the economy. It is virtually already managed by government. Yet, the government claims it is a virtual free market zone full of greed. Most of the poor practices done by government-favored businesses on Wall Street were mandated to them by government including the investment in derivatives that were supposedly backed by the government and, because they were backed by government, not only did Wall Street companies invest in them but AIG insured them. You can’t indict capitalism for flaws that are created by government. Whenever you mix government coercion with capitalism, you no longer have capitalism.

2. It is a leftist/progressive lie that oligarchic fascism is capitalism. For decades the progressives have said that fascism is a system of the right while socialism is a system of the left. This is a lie that removes the left from being blamed for the atrocities committed by fascism in the last decade. Any system that advocates government force or manipulation is statist in nature and can only be leftist. Notice that the government not only fosters the lie that fascism is a system of the right but it is the very demon practicing oligarchic fascism that you claim to be against.

3. We need to fight against oligarchic fascism and my post was not a defense of such a system. I advocate full, unregulated capitalism, unfettered by government interference of any type. Such a system existed most consistently during the 19th Century and is responsible for most of the wonders that we enjoy today. We do not have a “true” capitalist system today; we have a mixture of freedom and force which can only be defined as fascist.

4. Although you claim to be against corrupt business practices that use government to accomplish theft, you also advocate it in other parts of your posts…so I’m sure you don’t understand what it is you are against. Such an attack on capitalism makes you an advocate, by default, of the very system you criticize. Progressives advocate government force through programs such as the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, etc. and these are violations of the rights of citizens because they require the expropriation of the taxpayer’s money…just as do the practices of bailing out Wall Street giants.

5. True capitalism is essentially freedom; it is economic activity without the intervention of government. It is the anti-thesis of government planning which you obviously favor. I advocate a full and complete Constitutional separation of economy and state. This would eliminate all the corruption that you falsely attribute to capitalism.

You write:
“(Please note that progressives and leftists were protesting the business practices of the World Banking system a decade before the Tea Party woke up and smelled the coffee.)”

Response:
You aren’t looking far enough into the past. The World Banking system, including the Federal Reserve System, was invented and put into place by progressives of the last century. The only reason that radicals today protest the World Banking System is because they make the same mistake as you; they consider oligarchic fascism to be capitalism. Today’s street radicals are not advocates of capitalism; judging from their signs, they are advocates of violent communist revolution or anarchism. Therefore, they accept all the Marxist lies about capitalism. They are brazenly anti-capitalist.

You write:
“I celebrate the risk you took to establish your own small business. It should be noted that progressives have always supported loans and government help to small businesses, in addition to supporting things like a minimum wage and anti-trust laws, which are, in effect, limitations placed upon the freedom of the market designed to minimize exploitation.”

Response:
Did it ever occur to you that the act of progressives supporting loans and government help to small businesses is fascism not capitalism? It is just as wrong as giving home loans, paid for by taxpayers, to people who can’t afford to pay them off. This is nothing more than re-distribution and serves no economic benefit. If I were to take a loan from government to run my business, would I not be an oligarch? Would I not be using government to gain an advantage over my competition?

To illustrate this point, let’s imagine I am a businessperson who sells a package of food that will feed you for one month. I charge $100.00 for this package. Now let’s imagine that the government taxes you $100.00 and gives it to me so I can run my business. You come to me and give me another $100.00 for the package. Is it right that you have to pay for this package twice?

Now you have $100.00 of food and I have $200.00 of your money. Next month, the government gives me another $100.00 that is taken from you and the cycle starts over. Multiply this situation hundreds of thousands of times per day and you can see that re-distribution to businesses is wrong.

An honest businessperson does not want money re-distributed from other people to himself. In fact, many people refuse to take government money because they know that other people are suffering as a result. They want people to keep their money to spend or invest as they see fit. Government loans violate the very principles of individual rights, free trade and honest work. You don’t seem to realize that you can’t create wealth through re-distribution; you only take produced wealth from one person and give to someone else.

The only way to create wealth is through production. Production is done when someone saves her own money in a bank or invests it in the stock market. This money is loaned to a business. The business takes the borrowed money and creates productive jobs where employees can make money for themselves and for the business owner. Some of the money made by the business owner goes back to the investor as interest paid. Every party is benefited. No one is abused.

When the government takes money from the productive worker, it does not invest that money. It spends it on people who merely consume it; this stops the productive use of that money. Because the taxpayer, who has had his money taken by government, does not spend that money to meet his own needs, the businessperson has fewer customers. The only thing the government does is distort the marketplace by selecting the winners who will get the money the government has stolen. The “multiplier-effect” of re-distributed money is a myth. This is why re-distribution (economic stimulus) does not increase employment in the private sector.

The minimum wage is theft that causes unemployment. It forcibly raises the price of labor so businesses cannot afford to hire the very people it claims to be helping. Once again, the progressive thinks he’s making things better but he is in fact making things worse.

You have to ask yourself; if raising the minimum wage is such a good thing, why don’t they raise it to $100 an hour? Wouldn’t that be better for low-skilled workers than a mere few pennies? Certainly, the wage earner at McDonalds would be better off making $100 an hour – and you’d be creating more purchasing power, right? In fact, you’d put people with low skills out of a job because their labor is not worth $100 an hour – and the resultant increase in labor costs for the businessperson would mean that he’d have to raise prices which might cause customers to go away. You cannot create more value by raising a person’s hourly pay.

Anti-trust laws are some of the most oppressive laws on the books. They punish companies for being successful. And it is in the area of anti-trust prosecutions that you see the most virulent hatred of success. As I wrote in Part 1:

“Yes, hatred of the good, the clean, the intelligent is at the heart of anti-capitalism. It takes great men (and women) to create great industries. It takes independence to put one’s savings on the line and bring a great new idea to market. It takes intelligence to come up with a great idea that would make the lives of people better, and it takes self-confidence to offer people a product that improves their lives. Only hatred would want to stop better living. Only hatred could move a person to scream that the capitalist is a thief, a charlatan and a deceiver. In fact, it takes a thief, a charlatan and a deceiver to be an anti-capitalist.”

and

“What is inside the soul of an anti-capitalist? Is it the desire to make a better world? Does the elimination of capitalism actually make a better world? What was the world like before capitalism? No, I think the anti-capitalist has a different motivation; it is the motivation of a soulless person, someone who sees the image of a thinker, an independent mind, a person striving for success and, rather than admiring that image, hating it; and more, rather than merely hating it, wanting to see it suffer and die.”

If you study the history of anti-trust prosecutions you’ll find it to be full of vague interpretations of vague laws intended to punish more productive companies for the benefit of less productive companies. If anything causes people to suffer, it is anti-trust laws and their oppressive imposition upon mostly honest businesspeople. It puts honest businesspeople in jail for providing customers with better products at lower prices.

You write:
“Anti-capitalists don't hate the real value markets create in the world. They hate the fake bubbles of speculation and temporary growth that allow the richest 1% to line their pockets, shelter that money off-shore, and run for the hills when the walls come crashing in. Anti-capitalists don't hate creativity and profit. They hate the ABUSES of capitalism.

Capitalism must be regulated in order to function properly. Enron and Madoff prove this. Capitalism is not the same thing as freedom. And, as China proves, capitalism is not inherently democratic. Capitalism is not life.”

Response:
Fake bubbles and temporary growth are created by oligarchs seeking to sell short after government has created a bubble. This selling short is theft perpetrated on productive people who have accumulated wealth. Real capitalism has never had such massive fake bubbles. You have accepted the leftist/progressive lies that blame capitalism for the damage done to the economy by government.

China is not a capitalist society; it is a corrupt oligarchy run by communist rulers. The only thing that makes it possible for China to experience growth is the presence of other free markets in the world with the ability to purchase Chinese products at low prices.

Enron was a company that used government in order to be successful. It was not a capitalist institution. It was oligarchic in nature. Madoff, on the other hand, was a crook, and had he not been able to use the SEC to fool people, he would have been exposed long before he did his damage. The SEC, which is a government regulatory body, repeatedly looked the other way while Madoff committed his crimes. Capitalism was not to blame for Madoff’s crimes; regulation was the problem. Capitalism does not benefit crooks. Only government can help them get away with their crimes. Madoff’s crimes, and the fact that he got away with his theft for so long, are actually an argument for capitalism. The free market would have put him out of business long before the government decided to investigate him.

When politicians lie that capitalism is exploitation and theft, they hide their complicity in skimming profits. Stealing wealth from producers is the goal of all oppressive governments; and this especially includes governments run by progressives. The massive controls and government picking of winners and losers create those bubbles you talk about. You complain about it but, as a progressive, you also support it.

Capitalism does not abuse people. Only government can abuse people. Government is the agency of force in society; capitalism is based on voluntary trade. That is why corrupt CEOs use government to regulate their industry; the government can help them corner a market and put their competitors out of business. The progressive movement justifies helping these corrupt businesses by claiming that it must help capitalism work.

How do progressives get away with their lies? First, they attack the principles and the abstractions that build up society. They attack the concept of “rights” by claiming that you can’t see a right in action, or that you can’t see the connection between rights and voluntary exchange, or that a right is a belief that does not exist in reality. By attacking rights as an abstract concept devoid of meaning, they give themselves the cover they need to violate the rights of real living people.

When the progressives say they are only trying to bring about “universal health care, living wages, affordable housing, peace, a healthy environment, and voting systems we can trust” they are assuming that these goals can only be accomplished by government force against some citizens (the productive) on behalf of other citizens…and they think that government force can actually accomplish these goals. They assume that everyone agrees that expropriation of income from productive citizens is moral; as if theft can accomplish benefits that will last. Look at the disasters caused by Medicare and Medicaid, government-favored unions, the Community Reinvestment Act, onerous and unnecessary environmental regulations (and the coming Cap and Trade Bill), and voter fraud on behalf of Obama engaged in by ACORN and you can see the real results of doing “good” on the backs of the “good” people who produce.

Capitalism is not a “zero-sum” game as progressives seem to think. In fact, it is not a game. Capitalism is based upon a moral principle that each individual has a right to keep the product of his labor. That labor consists, not only of the precious time a person spends to make his product or deliver his services, but also of the value that his thinking is able to bring to the purchaser. The transfer of money in a voluntary trade makes it possible for the purchaser to get value from the seller and for the seller to purchase valuable products for himself. This is not zero-sum, it is plus-plus.

One thing that I’m sure some will question is my statement in Part 2 of this post that the poor get richer and the rich get poorer in a capitalist society. This is true, though to a lesser degree, even of a mixed capitalist nation such as ours.

I had always wondered about the progressives’ charge that in capitalism the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I had considered that this was a function of how rare it is when individuals come up with the outstanding ideas that create the ultra-rich. I had always thought that this was not an indictment of capitalism but one of the reasons why we need to leave people free. In my view, this “fact” should make people want to work harder and smarter rather than have the government equalize incomes.

Yet, now I find that it isn’t true; in capitalism, the poor get richer and the rich get poorer. In his book, Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell writes:

“Perhaps the most fertile source of misunderstandings about incomes has been the wide spread practice of confusing statistical categories with flesh-and-blood human beings. Many statements have been made in the media and in academia, claiming that the rich are gaining not only larger incomes but a growing share of all incomes, widening the income gap between people at the top and those at the bottom. Almost invariably these statements are based on confusing what has been happening over time in statistical categories with what has been happing over time with actual flesh-and-blood people.”(1)

“Although such discussion have been phrased in terms of people, the actual empirical evidence cited has been about what has been happening over time to statistical categories—and that turns out to be the direct opposite of what has happened over time to flesh-and-blood human beings, most of whom move from one category to another over time. In terms of statistical categories, it is indeed true that both the amount of income and the proportion of all income received by those in the top 20 percent bracket have risen over the years, widening the gap between the top and bottom quintiles. But U.S. Treasury Department data, following specific individuals over time from their tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service, show that in terms of people, the incomes of those particular taxpayers who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1996 rose 91 percent by 2005, while incomes of those particular taxpayers who were in the top 20 percent in 1996 rose by only 10 percent in 2005—and those in the top 5 percent and top one percent actually declined.

While it might seem as if both these radically different sets of statistics cannot be true at the same time, what makes them mutually compatible is that flesh-and-blood human beings move from one statistical category to another over time. When those taxpayers who were initially in the lowest income bracket had their incomes nearly double in a decade, that moved many of them up and out of the bottom quintile-- and when those in the top one percent had their incomes cut by about one-fourth, that may well have dropped them out of the top one percent. Internal Revenue Service data can follow particular individuals over time and from their tax returns, which have individual Social Security numbers as identification, while data from the Census Bureau and most other sources follow what happens to statistical categories over time, even though it is not the same individuals in the same categories over the years.”(2)

“Behind many of those numbers and the accompanying alarmist rhetoric is the very mundane fact: Most people begin their working careers at the bottom, earning entry-level salaries. Over time, as they acquire more skills and experience, their rising productivity leads to rising pay, putting them in successively higher income brackets. These are not rare, Horatio Alger stories. These are common patterns among millions of people in the United States and in some other countries. More than three-quarters of those working Americans whose incomes were in the bottom 20 percent in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent of income earners at some point by 1991. Only 5 percent of those who were initially in the bottom quintile were still there in 1991, while 29 percent of those who were initially at the bottom quintile had risen to the top quintile.”(3)

While trying to absorb this data, I realized why it is true that the rich can get poorer and the poor can get richer. The commonly accepted idea (that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer) is based on a false premise; that wealth is a static (zero-sum) quantity and that an improvement in the wealth of one person must necessarily reflect a decrease in the wealth of someone else. Since it is assumed that the rich are better at “getting” money, it is also assumed that the rich are taking wealth from the poor who are not as good at getting money.

Wealth is created by production and new production takes nothing from the wealth of another person; it adds to the gross domestic product. For instance, I could never have invented the wireless telephone, but for a mere few dollars, I become more effective by purchasing one. My communication with my customers is improved significantly and I am able to make much more money because they can reach me at any time, I can send them brochures and other collateral materials by email attachment and I can discuss the contents of these materials while we are chatting over the phone. We can even browse my website together so I can inform them of my services while their questions are hot and their need to buy is immediate. I am getting richer through this process. I might have been poor without this device and many other inventions offered by businesses all over the country.

The facts that give rise to capitalism derive from the basic fact that man survives by means of reason. When I acknowledge this fact, I conclude that each man is an individual who must think in order to survive. If he is allowed the freedom that is inherent in his nature as a thinking being, regardless of where he starts in life, the result, most often, is better decisions that benefit the individual and those who choose to deal with him. There is nothing zero-sum about this. Further, capitalism is not philosophically justified by the results attained (this is the conservative approach); it is justified by a recognition of man’s nature as a being that uses reason. Man should be free, not because freedom works, but because his nature requires freedom.

Rights are an abstraction based on the nature of man as a thinking being. Man cannot survive without thinking; and the concept of “rights”, once recognized and honored, allows men to deal with each other honestly and morally. Rights to free speech, free thought, free association, property, self-defense, etc. set the foundation for a civil society that protects people against theft by criminals (in or out of government).

Progressives constantly violate individual rights in order to accomplish their version of the “good”. They do it by advancing such fallacies as “the will of the people”, self-sacrifice, collective joining, democracy and altruism. From these false principles, the worst atrocities in the history of man have been done.

When you attempt to morally justify the forceful imposition of government, you introduce the principle that men cannot decide for themselves what is in their self-interest; and, through government, you assume the moral authority that allows you to impose your view on people (about what you think they should do). It does not matter that the imposition is “small” such as with a tax of 1 cent to “give” to a starving boy or a tax of $50,000,000 to give to Goldman Sachs, it is not the size of the sacrifice that is the issue. The real issue is that you do not have the right to impose your view of man's nature on anyone, and you do not have the moral authority to point a (government) gun at people and make them do what you think they should.

As has been written by many free market economists, when government officials take upon themselves the power to manipulate the millions of decisions made in the free market, they necessarily create disaster. They are not able, in spite of their vaunted wisdom and “superior” knowledge, to make, on a macro level, the decisions that individuals would make more effectively on the micro level. If you leave people free to make their own decisions, by recognizing their property rights and economic freedom, you make possible correct decisions that make things better for more people. The government can never be wiser than the people. This is why our Founders decided to recognize individual rights and establish a governmental framework that prohibits forcible decision-making by government.

The mistake that progressives make, if it can be called a mistake, is to postulate a good result such as “isn’t it good to give a poor person his next meal?” and assume that the forcible extraction of that meal from another individual is right. This violates the individual rights of the second individual. What gives progressives the right to say that they have “no problem” with forcing people to give up their earnings for the sake of "social" goals? It is time to say to progressives that "I have a problem with that".

What does it mean in practice that you, the individual, have the right to pursue your happiness? It means that happiness is possible. It means that you have a right to make your own decisions and to stand or fall on the quality of those decisions. And, more importantly, it means that once you achieve your happiness, that happiness must not be taken from you by government. No progressive can rightfully state that, on the one hand, he is in favor of people pursuing their happiness…but, on the other hand, he just doesn’t want to see that pursuit victimize others.

Success in life is about flourishing, achieving more than happiness, achieving it in abundance and not having to worry about the evil eye of envy.

In my post, “Plucking out the Parasites”, I wrote:

“Capitalism is a perfect economic system because it allows the consumer to choose what he needs and then find the products to fill those needs, and in the process tipping off the capitalist about where to invest for future production. Everyone wins. Socialism is full of inefficiencies because the goal is not the satisfaction of requested needs but of "social" needs that a central authority deems proper, fulfilled by unwilling providers and presented in a “take it or leave it” way with little concern for the desires of the consumer. The only “satisfied” party in a socialist transaction is the central authority.”

In “Laissez nous Faire (Leave us Alone)”, I wrote:

“All dictatorships are re-distribution schemes in one form or another. Fascism is the redistribution of wealth from productive property owners to the government and special interests that they designate. Socialism is a more advanced form of fascism where the government controls the major industries in order to accomplish the same goals. Welfare-statism is the focus of government on re-distributing income from the wealthy to the non-working poor. Communism is the re-distribution of property once owned by a propertied “class” for the sake of the workers who are an exploited proxy for government elites.

All these schemes result in the expropriation or theft of productive power by the means of political power. All re-distribution equalizes results for all people regardless of effort. Once re-distribution takes hold, the more able people will slow their effort because they know their product will be given to others. On the other hand, the less able people will also slow their effort because they know the government will re-distribute money from the rich to them. There is no incentive to excel in a re-distribution scheme so all effort is reduced and the system becomes nothing more than finger pointing and bickering about who is working hard enough to support the group. This is why no socialist system ever works. Re-distribution is theft of property and energy and because so it reduces both the amount of property created and the effort required to produce it. It is statism that has failed, not capitalism. This is not an opinion. It is a historically proven fact.”

You write:

“You are right that capitalism was a great thing and it built this country. But you can't possibly believe that the correct destiny for capitalism in America was to bring us to a situation where 90% of wealth is controlled by 1% of the citizens! Capitalism has no intrinsic stopgaps against abuse or disaster. It functions according to Creative Destruction. Great if you're creating something. Not so great if you are being destroyed. Shouldn't government protect its citizens from being destroyed? If hundreds of people lose their jobs at Enron because of the bosses' "creative" and foolhardy and criminal behavior, did those people DESERVE to lose their jobs? Why shouldn't a civilization provide protection to those made vulnerable by disaster and criminal mischief?”

Response:
You praise capitalism but then you complain that it makes people rich. You ignore the fact that the poor also get richer under capitalism. What is it that you hate; people getting rich or poor people leading better lives? You act as if wealth already existed before it was created by hard working and intelligent people. Without those people who were free to get rich, then you’d have none of the wonderful products that capitalism makes possible. This is why I say anti-capitalists hate the intelligent and successful.

You misunderstand “creative destruction”. Creative destruction is a process where better products and services obtain investment dollars that were previously invested in less efficient products and services. Nothing is actually physically destroyed through creative destruction; especially people who are given opportunities to find better jobs when capital moves from a bad idea to a better idea.

In fact, no one is destroyed in capitalism. If you work, you will find customers or employers. If you don’t work, you will destroy yourself. Capitalism has nothing to do with it. But it is true that government can destroy you if it attempts to help a competitor through anti-trust prosecution of your boss. But you favor that, right? Government can cause unemployment through minimum wage laws that you advocate. Government can create tariffs that force companies to move to other countries in order to survive, but as a progressive, you favor those tariffs to protect jobs. Government can tax small businesses or force them to provide health care that destroys their profit margins and you favor that. Government can re-distribute your money to ACORN in order to engage in voter fraud to elect Obama, but to progressives, that is helping people. You say you are against businesses cheating and hurting people but you advocate the very policies of progressives that create the ability of dishonest businesspeople to use government to hurt people. You advocate the very things you say you are against.

Yes, government should protect citizens from being destroyed by criminals. But when the criminals are in the government, they call themselves progressives and the last thing they do is protect citizens. They violate the citizens’ rights repeatedly through high taxes, massive spending, the unemployment they create through re-distribution, and they even put honest businesspeople in jail through anti-trust. These are all things you favor. You said so.

You ask “Why shouldn’t a civilization provide protection to those made vulnerable by disaster and criminal mischief?” The answer is that you can’t protect vulnerable citizens by violating the rights of others. If your goal truly is to protect vulnerable people you would allow them the freedom to survive by their own self-reliance; not by expropriating and destroying the freedoms of all citizens. If you truly want to help people, you would advocate a return to full unregulated capitalism.

The “Robin Hood” approach to government, re-distribution, is not helping the poor. This approach is what keeps them poor. Schools run by progressives continue to fail and keep the poor from getting the education they need to advance. Welfare convinces the poor that they are entitled to other peoples’ money and reduces the amount of effort they need to lift themselves up. Likewise, entitlement programs enslave the next generation in order to take care of the older generation. Progressivism creates disaster and criminal mischief. The help you intend to give to people cannot be accomplished by the methods you advocate.

Progressives constantly bring up “problems” that they would like to fix. If they say the problem is poor education, even though they’ve been in charge of our educational system for decades, they tell us we need to spend more money for the teachers unions to get better teachers. The only thing they accomplish through this process is give more money to failing teachers…and the educational system is made worse. This is the pattern of progressives…they don’t care if the problems are really solved.

You write:
“Are you against the minimum wage? Medicare? Social Security?”

Response:
Absolutely, I am against them because they violate the rights of individuals. If you want to accomplish good in the world, you don’t do it by stealing someone’s property and giving it to someone else. This is why anti-capitalism is evil…it advocates the violation of individual rights. Not only do these policies not work, they make the pursuit of happiness impossible. It is the very progressive ideas you advocate that create the evils you blame on capitalism.

Finally, I’d like to repost the following. I’d like for you and other progressives to think of your roles in destroying our culture.

“Anti-capitalists, including these young men walking in tandem, do not realize their role in history as destroyers. Once you outlaw the bases of capitalism, individual rights and property rights, you are left with only coercion, government force. You are left with central planning which has never worked through out history. Their anti-capitalist hatred makes them dupes who ignore the most atrocious and immoral acts that happen in the name of anti-capitalism; they have put themselves in the position where they have become blind to the damage done by re-distribution, corruption, nepotism, force and plunder.

Our educational system is making ignoramuses of our young people. And because of the education they have been given, because they have been taught what to think rather than how to question, it is these young people whose futures are being washed down the proverbial drain by the spending of the Obama administration.”

I would be remiss if I didn’t explain to you the basic premise that makes progressivism wrong. Today’s educational establishment never tells you about the root ideas that have created today’s progressive movement as well as the education they have given you. The progressives get their basic premises from philosophers like Plato, Hume, Kant, Popper and Dewey to name a few. Starting with Plato, they believed that man could not learn from reality because he is incapable of connecting his sensory mechanism to the real world. This created the view that individual men could not make rational decisions. Their view that man was cognitively imperfect and immoral, led to the idea that only people in specialized fields could make decisions for him.

The result of these views was a belief that only government could solve peoples’ problems, only government could make the right decisions for men. This view led to a more virulent collectivism and eventually to the atrocities of collectivist societies like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Communist China where millions of people (capitalists) were killed because they did not march lock-step toward the governments’ collective goals. Today, progressives use pseudo-science to “justify” their supposed advanced knowledge that would give them the power to control peoples’ lives. They believe that only a centralized power can effectively advance society. This view wiped out the view of our Founding Fathers that man should be free, that he had unalienable rights and that government should stay out of his life.

The “mistake” made by Hume and his philosophical children is that they promised to solve the problem of man’s irrationality; to accomplish this, they looked around at irrational men and concluded that man was irrational. This was the most devastating and destructive case of “circular reasoning” in the history of the world. It gave us Hitler and Stalin to name a few. Today, our progressives are followers of this false view of man and they are moving us headlong into another disaster. They are educating our children to accept this view by teaching them that there is no alternative to altruism, collectivism and government coercion.

And while we are talking about anti-thetical thinking, let’s perform the same exercise on the philosophy of the progressives. If capitalism recognizes the importance of the mind in man’s life, anti-capitalism is a belief that the mind is ineffectual. Since capitalism releases man to be moral, anti-capitalism holds that man cannot be moral. Since capitalism recognizes individual rights, anti-capitalism holds that man has no rights. Since capitalism makes possible the freedom that leads to prosperity, anti-capitalism outlaws freedom and prosperity. Where men need freedom as a matter of right and survival; anti-capitalists tie men down to altruism, collectivism and slavery. When reality does not comply with their wishes, progressives lie about capitalism and freedom.

Because their ideas, from the very foundation, are based on a false view of man’s nature, they do not work in the real world, and in order to stay politically viable they profess a false love for mankind and a desire to help people; they indoctrinate us and our children about the value of self-sacrifice and they insist that we live with just a little bit of government force that inevitably will turn into oppression, persecution, censorship and government expropriation. What they cannot destroy outright, they destroy piecemeal. This is the history of the progressive movement.

This is why you see the Tea Party protests. We know that the progressives’ “little bit of force” is nothing more than a gun pointed at our pocket books that enables them to rule our lives by spending our money. The Tea Parties throw the tea into the harbor, so to speak, because they know that taxing that tea is not how you build a free society.

The answer to the progressives is not that capitalism works, though it does; the answer is that man is cognitively competent, that he does not need a central authority to do his thinking. We must understand that any collective authority is doomed to imperfection, while the individual, left to his own devices, with his unalienable rights recognized, can solve his own problems. This recognition of man’s ability to think leads to a peaceful, civil society based on voluntary decisions and associations. It is a society that functions on reason, peace, hope for the future and the unfettered pursuit of happiness. Freedom works; slavery kills.

To all young people, I’d like to ask you to question what you are being told by your teachers and the government. The choice for you is very clear. You must either advocate freedom and its corollary capitalism or you must advocate prejudice against talented people and their enslavement. Either we live as free men or we live as slaves. It is your choice because it is you who will have to live through the decaying future you are creating; the future of decline I’m trying to prevent. You must decide between capitalism and slavery. You can either learn from us, the older generation, or you can learn from those who seek to exploit you.

(1)Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell, Basic Books, Page 36
(2)Ibid, Page 37
(3)Ibid, Page 38

Who is John Galt?

During the July 4th Tea Party in Indianapolis, I sat quietly next to my homemade sign, crouching under my orange poncho to protect myself from the rain. The sign read, "Who is John Galt?" in bold letters. I had also pasted two pictures on the sign, one of author Ayn Rand and another of the hardcover version of her famous novel Atlas Shrugged.

A young woman walked up to me. “I have that book on my shelf but I haven’t picked it up yet. Can you tell me in one sentence why I should read the book?”

What a challenge. One sentence describing a novel that is over 1000 pages long. I should have expected that such a question would be asked…and by a young person. Atlas Shrugged was written over fifty years ago and has experienced a revival lately because it seemed to predict what would happen in our country once a collectivist government gained power.

The question caused me to pause. Not only was I surprised by it but I also wanted to give an answer that fulfilled her request. I wanted her to read the novel. So after a few seconds, I answered: “It’s a story about a man who discovered that one idea is destroying the world; it tells you what that idea is and how he was able to defeat it.”

I looked at her face to see whether I had lit a spark. “Are you going to read it?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said and walked away with her friends.

I first read Atlas Shrugged during a two-week layover in Fort Gordon, Georgia. I had just completed my advanced training as a Radio Teletype Operator in the U.S. Army and was waiting for orders to learn whether I would spend my active duty tour in Vietnam or some other part of the world. During this period, I devoured the book, making sure I took time to digest some of the ideas that I could apply to my own life – ideas, the likes of which I had never encountered in any other book. The person who had recommended Ayn Rand to me some 6 years earlier had told me that Rand challenged the entire Judeo-Christian philosophy (the only philosophy I knew at the time) and that she would change my life.

The central character of the novel is John Galt, a mysterious man hiding in the background throughout most of the novel. The story follows the heroine, Dagny Taggart, as she struggles to learn his identity and why he seems to be destroying the world. While pursuing this “villain” she is also on a quest to find the man she loves, an ideal that seems impossible in the world of her day that is crumbling economically and fast becoming a dictatorship. The slogan, “Who is John Galt?” is on everyone’s lips, a sort of fad that people utter at strange times; in moments of despair mostly, when people are afraid for their future.

The time period portrayed in the novel is one when people are asking questions that don’t seem to have an answer such as “What is wrong with the world?” The answer is another question: “Who is John Galt?” It means, “Who knows?” or “How can anyone know?” Some people think they have the answer: He is a man who “would stop the motor of the world” or he is the man who found the island of Atlantis. Like a grey ghost, John Galt seems to hang over the land, a faceless avenging angel whose curse brings failure and decline. Every government scheme to "make things better" accomplishes the opposite of its intent and few know why society is descending further into malaise.

Needless to say, the book did change my life. It kept me from becoming a 60s radical influenced by Karl Marx and made me into a radical for capitalism. It started a quest for me to understand philosophy, economics, human psychology and the Founding Fathers. I read everything I could that was written by Ayn Rand and other thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Leonard Peikoff, Henry Hazlitt, Hannah Arendt and Isabel Patterson to name a few. Although Rand stands alone above all other thinkers for me, my quest for knowledge has been well-rewarded.

Fast forward to September 12, 2009; Washington DC, me and my “Who is John Galt?” sign again. Through out the events of that day, I never had so many conversations about Atlas Shrugged. From people who just gave me the thumbs up to people who said they loved the book; to people who were wearing Ayn Rand T-shirts, this day was a spectacular event that made me realize I was not alone in loving freedom and liberty. I saw an old friend from my Florida days, Wendy, who asked me about the novel and I met Robert Tracinski, a great freedom writer whose sign read “Brother, you ain’t my Keeper.” Another young man told me that he had not read a single book since graduating from college and was now reading Atlas Shrugged and loved it.

Two encounters stand out as special in my mind. One took place as we gathered before our walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I was sitting on a bench listening to the speakers and reading the colorful signs all around me. At this point my sign was still out of sight in my plastic bag. A lady sat on the bench next to me and we started talking about various topics that had to do with where we were from and why we were here. We had chatted for about ½ hour when I asked to see her sign. To our amazement, we both had signs that said “Who is John Galt?” Kay, a lawyer from Nebraska, is now a Facebook friend. The second encounter happened, later, on the lawn at the Capitol Building; a lady walked up to me and asked me "Who is John Galt?" and I pointed out to the huge crowd: “They are.”

I’ve had conversations over the years about Ayn Rand’s characters and the most common complaint is that they are too perfect. “No one is like that. Dagny is the greatest woman on earth. Galt is the greatest man on earth.” I think this sort of complaint misses the point that Rand clearly knew. Idealized fictional characters serve as positive role models for readers. They present us with clearly-drawn examples of what people can be. They demonstrate, if they are consistently portrayed, the relationship between thought and action. They are normative in nature and can teach us important lessons. Those who criticize Rand’s characters for being too perfect are betraying their own conviction that they do not want to be morally perfect…or that they can’t be. Rather than find inspiration from a character that pursues reason, they would rather believe that such a person is impossible; that one should instead spend one’s life in pursuit of whims and disconnected actions animated by a lack of purpose.

I believe Ayn Rand’s portrayal of idealized and morally perfect characters is one of the reasons her novels are still popular today, and why after more than 50 years since Atlas Shrugged, people are still debating her ideas. Rand suggests that you should "discover" morality, not return to a philosophy that makes morality impossible. In some respects, Rand is now making her characters into reality. Today, John Galt is a Tea Party protester.

In fact, he started the Tea Parties. He was a man who saw, in the idea of sacrifice, the very principle that is destroying our nation. He vowed to fight against the idea that man should spend the precious moments of his life living for others. Rand would say, instead, pursue happiness; it is not evil, it is the end in itself to which your thoughts and actions should be dedicated. The fact that the government today demands that each person give up his life, time, work and production against his will is the reason why people still ask the question, “Who is John Galt?” It is the reason they started the Tea Parties.

What can we learn from the character of John Galt? John Galt represents a philosophy of success and achievement. If your time is not taken up by hard work and dedication toward high accomplishment...you will not achieve the highest possible to you. If you don't hold a passion for high values, your future will be made up of failure and confusion. If you don’t rebel against the idea that man is a sacrificial animal, you deserve the kind of society you get.

If you know that you survive by the use of your mind, if you have taken it upon yourself to be self-reliant, if you know you have a right to keep the rewards of your work and enjoy your success, if you use your own mind and love that use, then you too will shudder at the thought of living in a society that demands “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

John Galt and the American citizen, when faced with the demands of slavery, both said, “Enough!”

White Bird

This song has been haunting me today. Do you remember it?

White bird,
in a golden cage,
on a winter's day,
in the rain.
White bird,
in a golden cage,
alone.

The leaves blow,
Across the long black road.
To the darkened skies,
in its rage
But the white bird just sits in her cage,
unknown.

White bird must fly
Or she will die

White bird,
dreams of the aspen trees,
with their dying leaves,
turning gold.
But the white bird just sits in her cage,
growing old.

White bird must fly or she will die.
White bird must fly or she will die.

The sunsets come, the sunsets go.
The clouds roll by,and the earth turns old.
And the young bird's eyes do always glow.
She must fly,
She must fly,
She must fly.

White bird,
In a golden cage,
On a winter's day, in the rain.
White bird,
In a golden cage alone.

White bird must fly or she will die.
White bird must fly or she will die.
White bird must fly or she will die.

Here's how I interpret it: There are two kinds of enslavement; real slavery of the gun and whip represented by the cage and mental slavery the bird has imposed upon herself because she's afraid to do what is in her nature; to fly.

The white bird yearns for freedom; yet she stays because the cage of her mind prevents her from flying, not the real cage. She will die when the coming dark storm engulfs her little cage. She will be too old and too weak to fight for her life by then.

You can trade the tyranny of guns for the tyranny of God but you're still living in a cage. This bird does not realize that the door to her cage is open and she holds the key to freedom locked tightly in her mind.

The Common Good

A friend of mine recently wrote that there is no such thing as the “common good”, that the idea has no cognitive meaning. He argued that a society is a collection of individuals each with his own idea of what is “good”, each pursuing life according to his or her judgments and values. Fostering the common good, as government today claims to do, means that the interests of some individuals are to be sacrificed to the interests of others; an idea that requires coercion by the government.

You cannot argue that government re-distribution is really best for the public. There are no facts to support such a view, no examples in history to prove it. What is good for one group of citizens may actually be bad for another. In fact, an argument can be made that this does not result in any good at all if we look at the results of re-distribution in the many failed societies that have tried the idea. It is impossible to measure such a good and, as my friend says, the idea is cognitively meaningless. There is no such thing as a public good.

I agree with these points, but there is a “sense” in which the term “common good” has a real meaning; and I think this is the sense the Founders meant when they used the term in our founding documents. A case can be made that the Founders thought government promotes the "common good" only by protecting individual rights; in other words, it did not get in the way of the individual’s pursuit of his own happiness and this created a common good, a condition of society that was good for all citizens individually. For those who had succeeded, no one would take their wealth. For those yet to succeed, no one would stop them, and for those who had failed, the possibility of success was still open if they worked hard. So, in this sense, cognitively, the common good is a smoothly running peaceful society based on individual rights.

To support this idea, you must understand that the Founders lived it. They were steeped in their own local communities and they had learned first hand the difference between tyranny and freedom. These ideas didn't just spring up from the Enlightenment alone; they sprang up among these thousands of people living in the wilderness and small communities, many of whom came here to escape tyranny, and who learned to love the freedom found in that wilderness. When they came together to fight for freedom, they already agreed on many of these ideas. It rang true to them from experience.

They would not have used such a term as the “common good” lightly without giving it a lot of thought. They labored over the words in their founding documents and they debated them vigorously. And their experiences made them much more intellectual than we might think. They were thinkers and doers and they experienced first hand the success that comes from living and thinking freely. I think their other statements and their willingness to fight for freedom confirm this view of the common good; a view that is 100% removed from that which is presented by progressives and statists of many varieties. Had the founders thought the term held within it any tinge of sacrificing for the sake of others, they would not have used it. It was completely outside their experience to see the term used in that way.

Their slogan “Don’t Tread on Me” says it well. Collectivists they were not.

Meddling

President Obama today warned us about “meddling” in Iran's affairs due to the past history of Iran and the U.S. I would suggest that the President should meddle some more…lest those freedom loving Iranians accuse him of being irrelevant. In fact, I think he is rationalizing his fear of taking a stand and is looking for a way to avoid making a mistake. In the process, he has made the biggest mistake of all; he is broadcasting to the world that he has no backbone.

What is it that has the Iranian protestors so upset? Is it because an election has been stolen from them? Do you think they do not know that their country is run by a religious council that makes all the decisions? Do you think they do not know that the position of the President of Iran is meaningless?

Of course they know this. This election in Iran is about eliminating or at the very least diminishing the power of the mullahs. It is about getting a foothold for secularism in a country run by religious fanatics. It is a cry for freedom and President Obama does not want to support them because the oppressors of Iran might consider that we are meddling.

Does this mean that President Obama is hedging his bets in the event that the mullahs wind up imposing their system once more on the people? If so, well, I’d have to say I’d rather be back in the Cold War when we had the courage to help resistance movements against dictators under the Soviet thumb.

The truth is that we will be accused by the Mullahs of meddling whether we like it or not. They certainly understand that a secular society like that desired by the Iranian protestors is similar to that found in the United States. They will consider us to be meddling merely because we exist.

Our openness is a symbol for freedom fighters around the world; and that means we are the perfect scapegoat for oppressors who seek to prosecute “spies” sent from America. Why do you think they imprisoned the young Iranian-American journalist? They want to accuse America of meddling in their affairs. Why do you think they rail about “the Great Satan”? That's because we are a secular society where people are free to choose their religion or choose no religion at all. A secular society, for them, is like an evil seductress, constantly offering freedom, self-determination and immorality. They would rather destroy the bringer of freedom because, in their twisted moral chaos, freedom is immoral, not the liberator of people who can decide for themselves how they will be moral.

Why does President Obama want to appease these dictators when the secularism of the people in Iran would be the very thing we need to help bring peace to the region? In fact, Iranian secularism would strengthen the position of another secular country nearby called Israel.

Of course the people of Iran are slaves to the Mullahs…but they don’t want to be…and a whiff of even some freedom, some accommodation of secularism in the society, could have major repercussions around the world. And a U.S. President who stands by their side and supports their struggle would do more to change the region than anything. Certainly, appeasement of the Mullahs would do nothing but strengthen dictatorship and provide a justification for killing dissenters. Haven't we, since the late '70s, appeased these Mullahs enough? Don't you think it is amazing that a large segment of the population of Iran is still yearning for freedom in spite of the fact that we have been too cowardly to support them during all those years?

I don't agree with the idea that helping the Iranian people become free would be meddling. You cannot impose freedom on people, you cannot impose liberty...not if you understand what freedom and liberty are. Freedom means no tanks and guns killing people in the streets. Liberty means living as you see fit without a moralizing Mullah telling women that they have to cover their heads or they can't wear make up. Any society that dominates people like that deserves to be meddled with. And it is moral to do this kind of meddling. No, we don't need to send troops into the street or sacrifice our young lives and millions of dollars; but providing moral support is the right kind of meddling in a situation where people are being killed for not towing the line.

But, according to President Obama, we don’t want to meddle; we don't want to impose our views on how people should live. If a government is murderous that's their culture and we have to respect that (Well, you know what I think of that idea). Obama has no problem dealing with murderous dictators. It is this view, this pacifist, failed idea, that will cause Obama’s foreign policy failures. We should have elected a President who understood what evil is and who was prepared on day 1 to give it no quarter. Instead, we got a mealy-mouthed compromiser who thinks you can negotiate with people who have sworn to destroy you. That is a major blunder and we will now have to live with the destruction that is to come from this failed, naïve foreign policy default.

Obama is not a man who understands freedom and its unique position in history. In fact, he would prefer that the people of Iran do their own work for freedom so he can take credit for it; like the politician he is; who, like a modern day Chamberlain, has no sense of cause and effect. He wants the credit for Iranian aspirations while he does everything he can to destroy freedom in his own country; and while he is asking the enemies of freedom to love him. This is a man who is unwilling and ideologically incapable of taking a stand for freedom. You have to know how rare it is before you are willing to put your life on the line for it. The people of Iran, who are getting beaten on the streets today could teach him a few things about meddling.