The New Clarion

A recent poll by the Rasmussen Reports indicates that support for “capitalism” has dropped to 53% of those surveyed. Given the pillorying the “free market” has endured by President Obama, I am honestly surprised that that many Americans would admit to believing in capitalism.

The problem with this survey is that most Americans haven’t the faintest notion of what “capitalism” means. When Obama can say “I strongly believe in a free-market system” and no one disputes that, I think it’s safe to say that the definition of capitalism has become too inclusive.

Capitalism is the political system that protects the individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property. That definition is sufficient to distinguish it from all the other political systems that ever were or ever will be. Capitalism is not “the political system that has markets” or “the political system where lots of industries are private” or the tautologous “the political system of the United States.” European socialism fits many of those descriptions, and that’s what the leftists are counting on.

Words and definitions are important. We defenders of freedom have let “liberalism” and “progressive” slip out of our grasp, but we must not let them take “capitalism.” It gives statists the guise of respectability, of being descended from a tradition of freedom, individualism, and independence that made this country great. They know that and they use it at every opportunity. We must call them on it.

[UPDATE: Added definition paragraph as an obvious oversight.]

(HT: Daily Pundit)

From Matthew Continetti:

When Obama says his budget heralds “a new era of responsibility,” he’s not talking about individual responsibility, or the responsibility of families to raise the next generation. Nor does he mean government’s responsibility to provide for a decent measure of social and national security, and a legal and regulatory framework that allows civil society and the free market to flourish. No, Obama is talking about the responsibilities government is going to impose on us in the form of higher taxes. The upshot is more government, and still more debt. Not to mention a dependent citizenry.

A new era of responsibility — to the state. In this new era, you are responsible for working for the state, and in return the state is responsible for taking care of your needs.

Oh, and while the state is caring for you from cradle to grave, it also gets to control your life. All for your own good, of course.

(One question: if we can depend on the state to provide for all our needs, whether or not we choose to work, does not this new era of responsibility actually encourage irresponsibility? Just asking while I still can — before the state outlaws dissension for the common good.)

The Sunday 4/5/09 Detroit Free Press has three editorials,here, here, and here, that are chickens coming home to roost. They are titled
>”Michigan must take long view to fix growing gap between revenues, spending.”
>”How the budget soared out of reach”
>Emergency cuts are no long-term fix”
and each one calls for long-term thinking and decries all the concrete bound, range of the moment fixes of the past. For example:

Even in this time of economic crisis — especially in this time of economic crisis — lawmakers and the governor must summon the fortitude to make long-range fixes.

And:

Finally — and this is truly Step One — Lansing has to make long-term projections and honor them. Officials can visualize the tightrope walk or use another mental image, but they have to budget as if every decision will make a difference 10 years from now — because it does.

And finally:

In other words, emergency cuts, extreme as they may be, rarely represent the kind of change that would bring the budget into balance over the long haul.

I left comments in the online edition one of which said:

“This is the third editorial in the Freep today calling for long-term or long view thinking. And properly so. Long range thinking is desperately needed today nationally not just in Michigan. But thinking long-term is precisely what pragmatism discourages. The father of the economic policies that President Obama is currently deploying, John Keynes, once remarked, in response to a question on the long-term consequences of his policies, “In the long run, we’re all dead”, in other words, who cares about the long-term? It is this short term thinking that the media has adopted in its advice to politicians, and to us, on how to fix things. A principled method of thinking is sorely needed but before the press can adopt one it must realize that pragmatism is a disastrous method of thinking and abandon it.”

And:

All three editorials taken together are screaming “Pragmatism doesn’t work”, yet the authors don’t seem to to see it that way.

This is the dead end of pragmatism and what it will do to a human mind. A pragmatist, looking at its disastrous results, can only stamp his feet and insist that short-term thinking must be made to have good long-term results. How? Somehow.

Congress and the media’s continual criticism of the domestic auto industry is that they lost out because they weren’t being enough like Toyota. (No, I don’t mean using non-union labor. Of course they didn’t mean that.) The repeated cry is that Detroit failed because they were “living in the past” by building large and powerful vehicles rather than making smaller, “more-efficient” cars and – especially – hybrids.

But was Toyota’s success because they produced small cars and hybrids like the Prius, or was it in spite of that fact?

(more…)

Watch this video (sorry, but I can’t embed) and read this transcript. Really makes you appreciate Daniel Hannan even more, doesn’t it?

I predicted last year that outrage over executive pay wouldn’t stop at the top:

Whether or not executives are worth their pay is not a social issue; making it one puts all contracts in peril.

Sure enough, within four months of that blog entry, there is a proposal in Congress to extend retroactive government control over pay to all employees of companies that accept government money and President Obama has fired General Motors’ CEO.

Further, the president has told a group of bankers that he summoned to the White House that his administration is “the only thing between you and the pitchforks.” He also rejected several attending CEOs’ desire to return the TARP money that has enabled the federal government to exercise unprecedented prerogative.

It is growing exceedingly hard to remain optimistic in these troubling times. With the amount of chaos and expansion that have taken place in his first two-and-a-half months in office, the two years until the next set of Congressional elections seems like an eternity. Luckily, we have the power of the blogosphere to spread the word about his fascist interventions—at least, for now.

Business Week’s Debate Room features a debate between Onkar Ghate and Christina Patterson, a Brit who is obviously a leftist. The difference in the quality of their arguments is striking. Ghate argues that Ayn Rand provides the philosophical foundation for the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness put forth in the Declaration of Independence. Patterson offers nothing but sneers, and asserts without evidence that Rand is a “crypto-fascist.”

Patterson’s argument, or lack thereof, is so typical of the left. Instead of a principled discussion of ideas, they go for ad hominem attacks and intimidation.

(more…)

James Bovard writes about the GIVE Act and AmeriCorps:

On March 18, the House of Representatives voted 321-105 to pass the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, and the Senate is expected quickly to follow suit. The GIVE Act more than triples the number of slots for AmeriCorps members from 75,000 to 250,000. And it takes a giant step toward expanding Washington’s power to make “service” compulsory for all young Americans.

President Obama praises AmeriCorps for embodying “the best of our nation’s history, diversity and commitment to service.” In reality, AmeriCorps’s essence is paying people on false pretenses to do unnecessary things.

Since President Clinton created the program in 1993, politicians of both parties have endlessly touted its recruits as volunteers toiling selflessly for the common good. But the average AmeriCorps member receives more than $15,000 a year in pay and other benefits, and almost 90 percent go on to work for government agencies or nonprofit groups. Rather than financial martyrdom, signing up for AmeriCorps is, for many, akin to a paid internship.

(more…)

In a recent town hall meeting, President Obama said the following:

This is what Americans’ success demands and this is what our budget will do. And I’m under no illusions that a better day will come about quickly or easily. It’s going to be hard. But as I said the other night at my press conference, I’m a big believer in the idea of persistence—the idea that when the American people put their mind to something and keep at it, without giving up, without turning back, no obstacle can stand in our way, and no dream is beyond our reach.

He’s made such statements before. At every opportunity, he’s let the American people know that he expects a lot from them. He’s going to need them to bring his notion of persistence to bear on the obstacles that stand in Obama’s way, to achieve the dream that has thus far proven “beyond our reach.”

The obstacles he cites should not be news to readers of this blog. His stimulus plan and upcoming budget have demonstrated an egalitarian streak that rivals anything from the European socialists. The demagoguery is nothing new in American politics, but in Obama it is as if the envy and class hatred has been distilled to its purest form yet. Each successive administration has shed a few bits of the characteristic American spirit of independence, self-reliance, and freedom.

(more…)