2. President Robespierre.

3. The solutions are out there.

4. Obama’s political skills are lacking.

5. Why does Peter Schiff even bother trying to reason with these people?

6. California’s economic suicide. I’m seriously think it’s time to move…

2. Economic growth in the first months of 2011 was 1.8%. At the same time inflation is surging:

Milk. A gallon of skim. At the local Giant in Central Pennsylvania:

January 11, 2011: $3.20
February 28, 2011: $3.24
March 6, 2011: $3.34
April 23. 2011: $3.48

That would be a 28 cent rise in a mere 102 days, from January to April of this year. The third year of the Obama misadventure.

Then there’s the celery. Same sized bag. Same store.

January 11, 2011: $1.99 a bag.
March 6, 2011: $2.49 a bag.

A rise of 50 cents in 54 days.

Vodkapundit has charts.

3. Disarming while at war:

From 1940 to 2000, average annual American defense expenditure was 8.5% of GDP; in war and mobilization years, 13.3%; under Democratic administrations, 9.4%; under Republican, 7.3%; and, most significantly, in the years of peace, 5.7%. Now we spend 4.6%, but, less purely operational war costs, 3.8% of GDP. That is, 66% of the traditional peacetime outlays. We have been, and we are, steadily disarming even as we are at war.

4. Andrew Bernstein on “Religion vs. Morality”; Harry Binswanger debates a socialist who equates Ayn Rand with Nietzsche. Both are around two hours long.

5. Keynes vs. Hayek. Is it my imagination or are the production values in this video higher than those seen in the Atlas Shrugged Part 1 trailer?

6. The Democrats released an ad claiming Paul Ryan’s budget would “end Medicare,” hoping to scare seniors. I always fall for these negative ads and think better of the Republicans. Going by Democrat attacks, I’d be ready to put Paul Ryan’s face on Mt. Rushmore. Turns out, alas, the ad is a lie. Ryan’s budget increases spending on Medicare. His budget is an attempt to make the welfare state run on time. The Democrats are so locked into their playbook of demonizing Republicans and fear-mongering pressure groups that their claims have no relation to reality.

UPDATE: Revised the description of the socialist in item #4.

2. Onkar Ghate reveals what is wrong with environmentalism. (Like everything.) This is the stuff you only get from Objectivists.

3. Barry Rubin writes that Hamas is moving toward war with Israel.

Hamas can fire an advanced anti-tank rocket because the Egyptian revolution has ended a regime that acted in its own interest to block most arms shipments to Hamas. The Egypt-Gaza border is now open. Terrorists and superior weapons are flooding into Gaza.

4. Marian Wright Edelman gives us the leftist case against budget cuts, and leaves no liberal cliche behind. You see, the Republicans want to rob from poor children in order to give money to corporations. You knew that, right? Her argument is economically ignorant but full of moral indignation — and that’s all she needs to flummox conservatives.

5. Yaron Brook on Capitalism Without Guilt, with a good Q&A session.

6. Vasko Kohlmayer is not impressed with Paul Ryan’s budget plan. Amy Peikoff wants cuts now, not over a 10-year period.

2. When Newt Gingrich jumps on the religion bandwagon, does it mean that a longtime power seeker senses the way things are going in America?

3. The Obama Administration’s ineptness.

The foreign-policy ineptness we’re seeing from the Obama administration is quite striking. Its key players are sending out contradictory messages one after the other. One day Hosni Mubarak’s regime is stable; the next day he has to go. One day Bashar Assad is a reformer; the next day he’s a butcher. The president tells Members of Congress he expects we’ll be actively involved in military action against Libya for days, not weeks; the secretary of defense, when asked how much longer we might be in Libya, says, “I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that.” The president says, Colonel Qaddafi “must step down from power and leave” immediately; the caveat is that his exit can be achieved only through non-military means.

I have long thought that the left’s subjectivist epistemology makes them stupid. When you’re convinced reason is useless, you stop using it.

4. Yuval Levin has written a long essay, “Beyond the Welfare State,” arguing that we need to trash the welfare state and find a new type of society. His argument is mostly practical, although he believes the welfare state is immoral in its unintended consequences. His program is better than what we have now, but is it something people would rally around? Would it hold in the long run? Would his concession to altruism undermine the better elements?

5. In case you missed the tsunami ravaging Kesennuma Port, it’s amazing. You see the ocean wipe out a town in six minutes.

6. Edward Cline looks at the lunacy of an altruistic war.

I remember when I was young scraping by for three or four days on $5 until I got paid. Granted, I was eating cheap stuff, but now I would shudder at having to live even one day on just $5. (Remember those books with titles like “Europe On $5 a Day”?)

Peter Ferrara looks at the grim outlook on inflation and more. If he is right, our national survival is at stake.

Here is a tape of leftists discussing their goal to take down the capitalist system and redistribute wealth. At the end a speaker mentions Cloward and Piven’s idea of creating “ungovernability” — so the left does take their ideas seriously, and it’s not just right-wing hysteria to say so.

Elan Journo argues that intervention in Libya is not in U.S. national interest.

David Horowitz is no longer a Neo-Conservative.

Michael Hurd on Obama’s little war.

Actors talk about what it’s like not to be a leftist in show business.

Michael Hurd explains Charlie Sheen.

Evan Sayet looks at how leftists portray themselves in movies and TV. I think the explanation is that the left accepts the mind-body dichotomy, which is as old as Plato. The moral ideal is altruism, they believe, but in the reality of the flawed world we live in, everyone is petty and selfish. Comics like Larry David understand that there is more comedy in cynicism than in the left’s moral ideal.

If you like Classic Rock, Gary Moore gets quite a tone on “Red House.”

Spending cuts in perspective.

This piece in the New York Times about pharmaceutical companies is depressing. Government intervention is destroying the drug industry. And it will only get worse:

The new law also contains a major threat to drug industry profits in a little-known section that would allow centralized price-setting. Beginning in 2015, an independent board appointed by the president could lower prices across the board in Medicare unless Congress acted each year to overrule it. Medicare pays more than 20 percent of the nation’s retail drug bills.

And where did that $29 billion go?

The money has gone to state governments in fiscal trouble because of declining revenues and (in some cases) profligate spending. This insulates public employees union members from the painful effects of recession that are being felt by almost everyone else, with the added political benefit of channeling money to unions, which in turn channel some of it to Democratic politicians.

The money helps public employees unions, who will be expected to funnel money to Democrat Congressmen seeking reelection next year. The only thing being stimulated so far is the reelection of Democrats. Your tax dollars at work — and your children’s and your grandchildren’s…

Robert Tracinski and Tom Bowden explain why Sonia Sotomayor should not be a Supreme Court Justice.

There is good news. Some of the July4 Tea Party speeches are up on YouTube. The speech from John Lewis, Part 1 and Part 2; and the speech from Yaron Brook.

Commentary has two good ones. Decoding Obama by Peter Wehner looks at Obama’s lies. The man has no shame and will say anything. As we have learned from the 20th century totalitarian regimes, the truth is always their first victim — and those who destroy the truth as a matter of policy (as opposed to the occasional hypocrisy or moment of weakness) are capable of any enormity.

The Abandonment of Democracy by Joshua Muravchik argues persuasively that Obama does not value human rights and democracy. By democracy I take Muravchik to mean fair elections, one of the pillars of a free society.

The most surprising thing about the first half-year of Barack Obama’s presidency, at least in the realm of foreign policy, has been its indifference to the issues of human rights and democracy. No administration has ever made these its primary, much less its exclusive, goals overseas. But ever since Jimmy Carter spoke about human rights in his 1977 inaugural address and created a new infrastructure to give bureaucratic meaning to his words, the advancement of human rights has been one of the consistent objectives of America’s diplomats and an occasional one of its soldiers.

This tradition has been ruptured by the Obama administration. The new president signaled his intent on the eve of his inauguration, when he told editors of the Washington Post that democracy was less important than “freedom from want and freedom from fear. If people aren’t secure, if people are starving, then elections may or may not address those issues, but they are not a perfect overlay.”

Obama is ideologically consistent. He believes in altruism, collectivism and statism. The state must control the individual’s life to “free” him from want and fear. All this can be done with excessive concern over human rights and free elections. Moreover, if the choice is state control or freedom, Obama chooses the former. (Better yet, he chooses dictatorship and calls it freedom.)

People have been writing about how Obama is learning from events in Iran. Fouad Ajami calls it Obama’s Persian Tutorial. I think he understood the nature of the Iranian regime; he just didn’t care. His evolving statements about the unrest in Iran, each a bit tougher than the first, do not represent learning, but Obama saying what he must say to stop criticism and falling poll numbers.

Is Obama at all moved by the violent repression of the protesters? I hear no particular emotion or empathy in voice. He saves his anger for big businessmen in America. The Iranian state is killing rebellious individuals for the good of the collective. Why would this bother Obama? It’s the way of the world in his eyes.

Commentators like Ajami assume that Obama has traditional American values; they don’t understand how radically leftist Obama’s values are. They should have been tipped off by the fact that Obama started his political career in the living room of former Weatherground terrorist William Ayers, an unrepentant anti-American who has been photographed standing on the American flag. (Jack Cashill argues that Dreams Of My Father might have been ghost written by Ayers.)

Today Rush Limbaugh read Obama, the African Colonial by L.E. Ikenga. The problem with the piece is that you could make every point substituting leftist for African Colonial. Obama is the complete leftist, and Ikenga shows how that ideology manifests itself in Africa. It’s wrong to make “African Colonial” fundamental to explaining Obama.

Not Much Ado About Nothing by Nancy Coppock looks at the philosophical decline of our culture in general, with some mention of how that applies to Obama. Aside from the author’s Christian mysticism, she makes some interesting observations. Freedom cannot be maintained by a people that cannot think logically, with a primary orientation to facts rather than feelings. Unfortunately, her argument is undercut by a belief in a supernatural power that cannot be defended by the facts of reality; in the end, she believes because she feels like it.

Ed Cline over at Rule of Reason is always good on Obama. His latest, The New Sons of Liberty, focuses on the fight against our growing fascism, comparing it to the American Revolutionaries. Nice to get the positive point of view once in awhile!

After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.

Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology.

The Chinese navy harasses American ships and Secretary Clinton doesn’t have the spine to note that our ships have every right to be in international waters. Clinton and Obama want a new image abroad for America — America is compassionate and altruistic now that the cowboy Bush is gone! — so we can’t even stand up to the bullying of an aggressive dictatorship.

Meanwhile at home, Obama emulates the communists he appeases abroad by appointing someone to oversee culture in America. Just what we need — government approved culture!

Amid the bad economic news, Obama announces he has complete confidence in Treasury Secretary Geithner. A statement of confidence is always a bad sign, as presidents needn’t say such things about those who really have their complete confidence.

And politicians are outraged over AIG bonuses. But of course it takes a Republican, Senator Grassley, to make the most foolish statement — that AIG execs should commit suicide. Maybe the Senator has watched too many samurai movies.

Despite the endless cavalcade of idiocy that is the Obama Era, there has been a most unexpected development in American culture (done without the Culture Czar’s participation). The Tea Party Movement has arisen to protest Obama’s big government policies.

Ayn Rand’s ideas are, if not the underlying philosophy, then a major theme in this movement.

View the photo blogs of tea parties and you’re guaranteed to see on every one at least two Ayn Rand citations, a few Atlas Shrugged posters, more pork and bacon references than a congressional committee meeting, and lots of concern for future generations. There is commonality of conviction and cause in all the tea parties. But that’s it in the movement’s Department of Organization and Strategy.

“Going Galt” has entered the American idiom. I read one leftist sneer that no one yet has actually “gone Galt.” He is thinking of the concrete events of Atlas Shrugged, not abstracting the principles. Anyone who has worked less to remain in a lower tax bracket has gone Galt. Every wife who stays at home as a housewife because taxes penalize a working couple has gone Galt. Every small businessman who gave up because regulations and health care made his venture unprofitable has gone Galt.

Objectivists might disapprove  of Ayn Rand’s sudden popularity and the use of her character’s name by a movement full of conservatives and libertarians who disagree with her. These are the types like the conservative businessman in the ’60s who offered Ayn Rand $1,000,000 if she would believe in God. (Now, there’s a fool and his money.) These are the types who dismiss her novels for reasons ranging from “They are just novels” to “They are not novels.” Whatever.

First, we should be delighted by the publicity. You can’t buy PR this good. Atlas Shrugged, a 50-year old novel, recently topped the Amazon list. People are buying the books. Perhaps they are even reading them.

Second, we should take this phenomenon as evidence that Ayn Rand’s philosophy has entered the culture and has changed it some — not enough, but some. People understood, however incompletely, that the answer to Obama’s quest for control of the economy in the name of altruism is not any conservative or libertarian theorist, but is the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I think this is one of the most encouraging developments I have seen in my time of watching.

First, Robb at Robbservations has a good post on the concept’To big to fail.’ He shows how the whole policy is wrong headed.
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Doug Reich at The Rational Capitalist takes a liberal writer to task for misrepresenting Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in a post titled “How can we take these people seriously?”
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Rob at The Morality War discusses your relationship to yourself and to others in a post titled “Who do you think you are?”
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Stephen Bourque at One Reality posts on the Republican’s role in the banking collapse in “Ted Kennedy’s down Payment.”
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Brian Phillips at Live Oaks laments Houston mayoral candidate Peter Brown’s desire to fashion Houston after other cities in terms of government provided services while ignoring Houston’s success at doing without them. I commented that Mr. Brown is a power luster since Houston’s freedom caused success means nothing to him.
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Ever wonder what a trillion dollars looks like? Beth at “Wealth is not the problem” links to another site that shows how awesome that number really is. And to think our new government is throwing multiples of that quantity around like it was candy.

2. “Book is Rallying Resistance to the Antivaccine Crusade” also appears to be rallying the antivaccine crusade itself, if the Amazon page is any indication. I’m tempted to say that natural selection will take care of this crowd over time, but it is a moral travesty that children are being denied needed immunizations. I have met several mothers who subscribe to this garbage and they are the most fad-conscious, secondhand people I have encountered. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is at work since the likelihood that any child will be autistic is fairly minimal.

3. The Huffington Post is decidedly in the tank for global warming, this bout of sense notwithstanding. From Huffington herself: “It was an error in judgment. I would not have posted it. Although HuffPost welcomes a vigorous debate on many subjects, I am a firm believer that there are not two sides to every issue, and that on some issues the jury is no longer out. The climate crisis is one of these issues.” This is yet another salvo in the left’s war on dissent and it is very much akin to religion’s fervent desire to squelch doubt in any form. The introduction of doubt cannot be tolerated by either for it gives the lie to their purported (and coveted) legitimacy. Without that, the coming government repression in the name of “doing something” to stop the irreversible climate change.

4. US Government Spending is a handy little site for data mining federal budgets. For example, federal spending declined every year from 1920 to 1929. Strangely, we think of the decade as the “Roaring Twenties” and a time of unalloyed prosperity. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Or maybe that’s the real way (as opposed to this one) to stimulate the economy—by removing the drain that the federal budget represents.

5. This report from the Pacific Research Institute on the benefits of economic freedom is just the thing that would persuade a politician who wants to do whatever works. Right? Oh, he’s just saying that to disarm his critics.

6. “Health Care Reform: Why So Much Talk and So Little Action?” {via} attempts to outline the roadblocks that traditionally have stood in the way of meaningful health care reform. The real obstacle to reform has been the American people’s shaky hesitation to tamper with something that is literally a matter of life and death. Everyone agrees that there’s something wrong with the system, but no one dares to change things up in a significant way. And they certainly don’t trust the federal government to do it right. For all of Michael Moore’s posturing, the average American can see that the rest of the world flocks here when serious medical problems arise. Sadly, this makes the likelihood of a radical restoration of individual rights in medicine similarly low.

7. James Hansen’s former supervisor has publicly castigated Hansen as an embarrassment to NASA. I think that’s probably as close as we’re going to get to Mike’s dream headline.

First is Dr. Michael J. Hurd Ph.D. who now post his Daily Dose of Reason for all to read.

Second is Dr. Ellen Kenner Ph.D. who has her own radio show titled “The Rational Basis of Happiness”. You can listen to some of her past shows via pod casts or even listen in on a live one. Her show is carried on 44 stations in North America and 2 in Canada.

Third is Fire Fly Sun hosted by Dr. Scott J. Adams Ph.D. This is an interesting and large site to explore. You’ll also see contributions by both the above Dr. Hurd and Dr. Kenner as well as others.
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At his blog Scott Holleran informs us that “Penguin has announced that it will publish a trade paperback for We the Living by Ayn Rand.”

And…

“The powerful We the Living, one of my favorite novels, is the last of Ayn Rand’s four novels to be reprinted in the larger trade paperback format. Publicity materials also make reference to a biography of Ayn Rand (1905-1982) that’s slated for sale next month.”

Now that’s good news.

4. The Never-Ending War. It’s been seven years now since September 11, 2001, and American troops are still dying in the Middle East. We have settled for a state of permanent war and altruistic nation building because all-out war would be an assertion of our national self-interest that would anger the rest of the world. Every American death in the Middle East now is a sacrifice to the gods of altruism and world opinion.

And how much of our never-ending war is a function of welfare state pressure-group politics? The libertarians and paleo-conservatives, though wrong on many things, have a good point with the link between the welfare state and the warfare state. Randolph Bourne said, “War is the health of the state.” I predict that at the end of President Obama’s four years we will still be have troops in the Middle East. Do you think that a statist like Obama would want to give up that power?

3. Political Surprises. 2008 defenestrated conventional wisdom. The long primary process, which seemed as never-ending as the war for a while there, held some interesting surprises. Hillary the Inevitable turned out to have miscalculated when she thought she could take Democrat primary voters for granted. Following the policy of her husband and the moderate Democrat Leadership Council, she voted to support the invasion of Iraq. After seeing candidates from McGovern to Dukakis get beat up by Republicans for being soft on national defense, Senator Clinton was determined that would not happen to her. The Democrat base voted for its principles over Clintonian calculations. Senator Obama (more about him below) upset Senator Clinton and won the nomination.

The Republicans had a passel of candidates that were unsatisfactory to one faction of the party or other. Rudy Giuliani, for example, was hated by the social/religious conservatives for supporting abortion. The religious Huckabee was unsatisfactory to the fiscal conservatives. Republicans finally settled, disastrously, on Senator McCain, a big government guy who had become the media’s favorite Republican by poking his own base in the eye. The moment he won the nomination he was no longer the media’s pet, but, like all Republican presidential candidates, the enemy. After spending the last 10 years or so pleasing the liberal media, McCain was unable to run a competent campaign against a Democrat. He loved to “take the high ground,” even when it meant ignoring a legitimate issue like Obama’s relationship with his anti-American pastor and mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It seemed as if McCain felt morally stained when he was forced to “throw red meat” at the troglodytes in his own party. It turns out that “can’t we all get along” is a lousy campaign slogan.

McCain provided another surprise in the summer by picking Sarah Palin as his Vice-President running mate. Like Obama, Governor Palin of Alaska was something different. She was a woman — and not a bad looking one. (When was the last time you voted for a sexually attractive female? Like never, maybe?) She was an authentic, American middle class mom, and not a liberal; her type had never been seen before at the presidential level. And she knows how to shoot a gun! Liberals immediately loathed Sarah Palin and the press went into their feeding-frenzy mode, desperate to turn Palin into Quayle. This just made Republicans circle their wagons around her.

The CW now is that Palin and Huckabee, two religious conservatives with little understanding of economics, are the future of the Republican Party. Let’s hope that CW gets thrown out the window, too.

2. Obama Wins. Americans elected a black man as President. Let us take a moment to enjoy this. Think of all those effete welfare states in Europe that look down their nose at America because we’re supposedly racist. How many black presidents have they elected?

The only other good thing about Obama I can think of is that he seems to be a sincere family man who loves his wife. This is better than Bill Clinton.

There is a lot of bad about Obama. Just how bad he will be we’ll find out in the next four years. He is perhaps the least experienced man to be elected president in US history. I write “perhaps” because some of the 19th century presidents are just names to me. He won because a) his empty rhetoric sounded idealistic; and b) he was black. You could add c) he was a Democrat at a time when Republican approval ratings were at historic lows. It’s nice to set the precedent of electing a black man, but these are not very good reasons to elect someone president.

Although statists such as David Brooks swoon over Obama’s intellect, I have yet to hear the President-Elect say anything intelligent. This hardly makes him unusual among politicians. He is a welfare state mediocrity, his mind filled with PC platitudes and altruistic bromides.

He is aware enough of Ayn Rand to attack the virtue of selfishness. In response to the McCain camp attack on Obama’s plan to raise taxes, he said,

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic…. You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

Obama has been around communists, far-leftists and anti-Americans all his life. His father was a hard-line communist who denounced moderate communists who went against Marxist doctrine in a futile attempt to make the Kenyan economy work. Obama’s mentor when he was a teenager was the communist Frank Marshall Davis. Obama’s political career started in the salon of the anti-American terrorist William Ayers. (Astonishingly, the MSM ignored all this. The facts came out only because of diligent bloggers.)

Obama seems to have used the radical left to further his political career — and what does that say about the state of the Democrat Party? — without entirely buying their ideology. He is, rather a social metaphysician (one who places what others think above the facts of reality) and a pragmatist. This all means that we’ll get more of the welfare state status quo (see below). Obama will continue Bush’s lead in expanding government and diminishing freedom further and further.

1. Crisis and Leviathan. An economic crisis in the mortgage industry created by government intervention brought about a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, a massive further intervention. This led Congress to attempt to bail out Detroit automakers for $14 billion, but the bill did not pass. Bush then decided by himself to give the automakers even more money, $17.4 billion. As George Will writes, the Executive Branch is flouting the separation of powers written in the Constitution. The President is supposed to administer the spending that Congress authorizes.

If a Democrat president had done all this, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt and the rest would be screaming across the airwaves about how we’re becoming a dictatorship. But Bush is a Republican, so we get a few tired statements that the bailouts won’t work, then the talk show hosts turn their attention to the devil they love to hate, the Democrats.

Thanks to George Bush’s forging new ways to destroy our liberty, Obama will merely take up where Bush left off. And that is the biggest story of 2008.

Our march to fascism accelerated in 2008; 100 years from now this might be the only thing remembered about this dismal year.

Those are my picks for the top five stories of the year. If you disagree or think I missed a story, don’t be shy. Let me have it in the comments.

2. This headline is not from the Onion: Gay penguins expelled from zoo colony for stealing eggs are given their own to look after following animal rights protest.

3. The Kossacks are upset at Senate collegiality. They want Democrat Senators to hate the Republican Senators as much as they do. Trapper John gets hysterical about Senator Corker, who led the fight against the auto bailout:

Bob Corker just led the charge to kill the American auto industry, and with it some 10% of the American economy, because he wasn’t allowed to bust the UAW.  As such, Bob Corker is definitionally one of the most traitorous and despicable human beings ever to track slime across the floors of the Senate. He is attempting to take advantage of the financial crisis to literally dismantle the American middle class. He is beneath the contempt with which partisans regard even their most radical and craven domestic political opponents. 

4. The Kossacks are also angry at Harry Reid because he is ineffective in crushing those traitorous and despicable Republicans. Kos argues Reid is a crappy Senate leader. (Interesting graph in that post.)

But let’s not sniff at partisan bickering. As long as Republicans and Democrats are at one another’s throat, then less will be accomplished by the federal government — and that is the best we can hope for. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of politics!

5. Over at Eschaton Atrios is upset because corporations want to dispose of their property in a way different from how Atrios would do it. It doesn’t take much to make Atrios cuss, and this report did it:

The celebrated openness of the Internet — network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic — is quietly losing powerful defenders.

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

In the name of “internet openness” the left wants the government to regulate the internet. They would rather the state violate property rights in the name of equality than let greedy capitalists employ their property in the pursuit of profit.

6. These are heady days for the left. Not only is the state expanding faster than Aunt Bessie’s dress size, but now the Madoff crime proves, to the eyes of the left, that all capitalists are crooks. Anne Applebaum believes Madoff will cripple US capitalism — wishful thinking of the left. She says one of our culture’s mistakes is believing that wealthy people “have earned their money.” Every Marxist knows this is not so.