This is a fundamental, human right. Well, within the context of property rights, anyway, and it is thus all the more significant that the way this right is made possible in practice is the market economy. One of the few glorious remainders in America's libertarian legacy has been a residual and proud capitalism, made quite clear in Americans' shameless enjoyment of food, great dining establishments, and liberally sized portions. This, of course, is what Obama and the Democrats want to do: Destroy our few remaining liberties. What a disgusting election year. I still prefer him to McCain, but it is utterly depressing that I come to this conclusion.
All too many Democrats today would be perfectly satisfied to see a Scandanavian welfare state fastened upon the empire. A minority of them, the ones who cheered on Ron Paul, dissent from this socialist impulse. But organizationally, the Democratic movement has for five generations been the party of socialism and the military-industrial complex. All their complaints about the party leadership boil down to an alleged failure to emulate the very worst Democratic tyrants, especially FDR.
Lew's new speech is all too timely. This is one of my favorite parts:
"All of history has been defined by the struggle for food. And yet that struggle has been abolished, not just for the rich but for everyone living in developed economies. The ancients, peering into this scene, might have assumed it to be Elysium. Medieval man conjured up such scenes only in visions of Utopia. Even in the late 19th century, the most gilded palace of the richest industrialist required a vast staff and immense trouble to come anywhere near approximating it.
"We owe this scene to capitalism. To put it differently, we owe this scene to centuries of capital accumulation at the hands of free people who have put capital to work on behalf of economic innovations, at once competing with others for profit and cooperating with millions upon millions of people in an ever-expanding global network of the division of labor. The savings, investments, risks, and work of hundreds of years and uncountable numbers of free people have gone into making this scene possible, thanks to the ever-remarkable capacity for a society developing under conditions of liberty to achieve the highest aspirations of the society's members."
Even the semi-mild form of socialism promulgated by Obama is a threat to our civilization. And so Lew does not exaggerate when he says, "the wish for socialism is a wish for unparalleled human evil."
