A Plea for Productivity

May 6, 2012 | Culture

Socialism has never succeeded in its extreme form, communism. As the past several years in Europe have shown, it does not work in its milder form of social democracy either. If European history teaches us anything, it is that prosperity is closely correlated to economic freedom.

Growth can not be decreed: It is the result of unpredictable decisions and actions by countless individuals, all capable of effort and imagination. And growth can only come if these countless individuals’ impulses are not paralyzed by regulations, taxes, or dependence on the state. That is the path down which Mr. Hollande’s socialist policies would lead us, with the support of his inevitable Communist and environmentalist allies: A France that can produce nothing but economic stagnation and ever-higher unemployment and poverty, as the debt burden becomes unbearable.

Sadly, whatever happens on Sunday seems unlikely to deliver France from socialism—our choices range from the status quo of a statist right, to the grand visions of a more-statist left. There is only one solution to restore hope to France: Abandon socialism entirely. To let it grip us even more tightly, as Mr. Hollande promises, would be a fatal error.

Democracy and Self Determination of Peoples: Euphenisms for Mob Rule in the Middle East

Jan 27, 2012 | Culture

The Obama administration supports “democracy” and “self determination” in the Middle East—two euphemisms that, in the real world, refer to “mob-rule” and “Islamic radicalization,” respectively. Yet, as Jimmy Carter recently put it: “I don’t have any problem with that [an “Islamist victory” in Egypt], and the U.S. government doesn’t have any problem with that either. We want the will of the Egyptian people to be expressed.”

Sounds fair enough. The problem, however, is that Muslim clerics openly and unequivocally characterize democracy and elections as tools to be discarded once they empower Sharia law. Thus Dr. Talat Zahran holds that it is “obligatory to cheat at elections—a beautiful thing”; and Sheikh Abdel Shahat insists that democracy is not merely forbidden in Islam, but kufr—a great and terrible sin—this even as he competed in Egypt’s elections.

The Obama administration can overlook such election-exploitations because the majority of Muslims are either indifferent or willing to go along with the gag—with only a minority (secularists, Copts, etc.) in Egypt actually objecting to how elections are being used to empower Sharia-enforcing Muslims.

But what if Muslims do not win elections? What if there are equal amounts of non-Muslims voting—and an “infidel” wins? What then? Then we get situations like Nigeria.

While many are aware that Boko Haram and other Islamic elements are waging jihad against the government of Nigeria, specifically targeting Christians, often overlooked is that the jihad was provoked into full-blown activity because a Christian won fair elections (Nigeria is about evenly split between Christians and Muslims).

According to Peter Run, writing back in April 2011:

The current wave of riots was triggered by the Independent National Election Commission’s (INEC) announcement on Monday [April 18, 2011] that the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, won in the initial round of ballot counts. That there were riots in the largely Muslim inhabited northern states where the defeat of the Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari was intolerable, [but] was unsurprising. Northerners [Muslims] felt they were entitled to the presidency for the declared winner, President Jonathan, [who] assumed leadership after the Muslim president, Umaru Yar’Adua died in office last year and radical groups in the north [Boko Haram] had seen his ascent [Christian president] as a temporary matter to be corrected at this year’s election. Now they are angry despite experts and observers concurring that this is the fairest and most independent election in recent Nigerian history.

Note some key words: Muslims felt “entitled” to the presidency and seek to “correct” the fact that a Christian won elections—which they assumed “a temporary matter.”

Of course, had elections empowered a like-minded Muslim, the same jihadis would still be there, would still have the same savage intent for Christians and Westerners—Boko Haram means “Western education is forbidden.” But there would not be a fullblown jihad, and Obama would be singing praises to Nigerian democracy and elections, and the MSM would be boasting images of Nigerians with ink-stained fingers.

Yet the same jihadi intent would be there, only dormant. Like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood—whose ultimate goal is “mastership of the world”—they would not need to expose themselves via jihad, would be biding their time and consolidating their strength.

Now, back to the Egyptian clerics, specifically Sheikh Yassir al-Burhami—yet another leader in Egypt’s Salafi movement, who teaches that Muslims must preach peace when weak but wage war when strong. Discussing the chances of a fellow Salafi, Burhami asserts:

We say—regardless of the outcome of the elections—whether he [his colleague, the aforementioned al-Shahat] wins or loses, we will not permit an infidel [kafir] to be appointed to a post where he assumes authority over Muslims. This is forbidden. Allah said: “Never will Allah grant to infidels a way [to triumph] over the believers [Koran 4:141].” We are not worried about losing elections or al-Shahat losing votes. We will not flatter or fawn to the people.

What will you and your associates do, Sheikh Burhami—wage jihad? Of course, that will not be necessary: unlike Nigeria, most of Egypt is Muslim; one way or another, “elections” will realize the Islamist agenda.

Thus, whether by word (al-Burhami) or deed (Boko Haram) those who seek to make Islam supreme prove that democracy and elections are acceptable only insofar as they enable Sharia. Conversely, if they lead to something that contradicts Sharia—for instance, by bringing a Christian infidel to power—then the perennial jihad resumes.

Salsman on the Anti-Capitalist Conservatives

Jan 23, 2012 | Culture

Most people assume GOP conservatives are reflexively pro-capitalist, that they embrace free markets, profit-making, and the pursuit of happiness through worldly success. But this assumption is far from the truth, as should now be evident after the anti-capitalist harangues launched at GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney by the much-touted “conservative alternatives” in the race – Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Rick Perry.

Now conservative voters in South Carolina have through the ballot box stated that they prefer Mr. Gingrich, with his ethically challenged public and private lives, to Mr. Romney, whose personal life and professional career have been morally and productively impeccable. Evangelicals representing 60% of GOP voters in the South Carolina primary claimed to care most about family values and the sanctity of marriage, yet revealed their hypocrisy by disproportionately favoring Gingrich to Romney.

Sad to say, but conservatives and leftists alike don’t actually believe Mr. Romney’s career as a financier has been moral, because they assume the finance profession itself is fundamentally unproductive and parasitical, that it somehow saps or robs the “real” economy, which is popularly defined as that mass of common folk who work not with their minds for profits, but with their muscles, backs and callused hands for plain wages. This is the age-old Marxist myth that only manual labor creates wealth or value-added (profit). It’s one of the worst myths in the whole history of political economy, because in truth the mind is the main source of wealth; widespread ignorance of that basic truth makes people demonize financiers as exploitative thieves.

Myths aside, one of the world’s hardest jobs is that of financial capitalist, and sustained success at such work simply isn’t had by luck. It’s akin to being a consistently successful investor. Who can say this is a commonly held skill? It isn’t. The venture capitalist or private equity specialist must study and comprehend how best to allocate pools of capital (savings) to their most productive, efficient and profitable use. He must choose among thousands of potential companies, industries, and financial instruments. Most people find such work to be far too complex, too difficult, too time-consuming, and too ill-paid to undertake alone; yet most such spectators are also suspicious or even hateful toward the very few who earn millions succeeding at finance.

The profession of financial capitalist aside, it’s even more difficult today being a consistent ideological capitalist – i.e., an advocate of capitalism as a moral socio-economic system that enshrines rational self-interest, profit seeking, individual rights, the rule of law, and the pursuit of earthly happiness. Historically, capitalism is the radical system, and most religions (Marxism included) have decried it.

Read the rest…

Salsman: Newt Gingrich Reveals The Deep Rot Within the GOP

Dec 16, 2011 | Culture

[…] Finally, take the case of Newt Gingrich, who despite posing earlier as the sober GOP candidate who’d run a positive campaign and wouldn’t trash his GOP rivals, this week chose to trash one of them: Mitt Romney, the only genuine wealth-maker among the entire GOP bunch. For context, note that when Gingrich first won a House seat in 1978 he was making a mere $10,000 a year; he went on to win nine more terms, the last couple as Speaker of the House (1995-1999). In 1994, the year before he became Speaker, Gingrich reported annual income of $675,000 a year – or many multiples of his official salary. In 1999 Gingrich was forced to resign from the GOP-controlled House and as Speaker, after being disciplined for wrongdoing (with a lop-sided vote of 395-28) and paying a $300,000 fine; it was the first time in U.S. history a Speaker was disciplined for ethical wrongdoing.

By the time Gingrich left as Speaker in 1999 – as a so-called public servant – his net worth had grown to astounding $7.5 million. What possible market value did Gingrich produce to attain such net worth while occupying political office?

[…] Mitt Romney, in contrast, has been a genuine creator-maker of wealth who earned his millions honestly and productively, first as a management consultant and then as a venture capitalist. 

[…] That Gingrich would equate his record of taking with Romney’s record of making is truly despicable. This is a career-long taker of wealth viciously and shamelessly assaulting a career-long maker of wealth, to the glee and applause of GOP conservatives, Barack Obama and the liberal media alike. This is Newt Gingrich the demagogue, assaulting Mitt Romney the epitome of a good, productive capitalist. Indeed, this is the same smear campaign run against Mitt Romney by Ted Kennedy in 1994.

Newt Gingrich is a corrupt, unprincipled power-luster who’ll say anything and take any position necessary to attain high office, and if he can’t do that, he seeks to take wealth by selling his access to political offices.

Nothing reveals more the deep rot within the GOP itself than the fact that its conservatives-evangelicals so despise wealth-makers like Mitt Romney and so sympathize with wealth-takers like Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich.

Salsman: Capitalism Isn’t Corporatism or Cronyism

Dec 8, 2011 | Culture

Capitalism is the greatest socio-economic system in human history, because it’s so moral and so productive – the two features so essential to human survival and flourishing. It’s moral because it enshrines and fosters rationality and self-interest – “enlightened greed,” if you will – the two key virtues we all must consciously adopt and practice if we’re to pursue and attain life and love, health and wealth, adventure and inspiration. It produces not only material-economic abundance but the aesthetic values seen in the arts and entertainment.

But what is capitalism, exactly? How do we know it when we see it or have it – or when we haven’t, or don’t?

[…]

Capitalism has been blamed for the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and for the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, but it’s not “capitalism” but the mixed economy and corporatism-cronyism that did it. We’ve had corporatism in the U.S. for roughly the past century, and it’s getting worse over time; it’s also the system we’ve seen in Europe since at least the time of Germany’s Otto von Bismarck, who launched the womb-to-tomb welfare state in the 1870s. In the interim, of course, Europe also imposed communism, socialism and fascism. The result, we know, was mass murder, world war, and the continent-wide destruction of wealth.

Capitalism’s greatest intellectual champion, Ayn Rand (1905-1982), once defined it as “a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.” This recognition of genuine rights (not “rights” to force others to get us what we wish) is all-crucial and it has a distinctive moral foundation, according to Rand:

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.” “The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve “the common good.” It is true that capitalism does—if that catch-phrase has any meaning—but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man’s rational nature, that it protects man’s survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.

Elaborating, Rand explained in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) that historically, politically, economically, and morally, capitalism was the superior socio-economic system, yet also how, for decades, its achievements and virtues had been hidden and buried deliberately in an avalanche of prejudice, distortion, and falsehood. Rand argued that capitalism is a moral ideal yet also was made real, and to the greatest extent, in America in the 19^th century, especially during the Gilded Age (1865-1890). Thus she called the U.S. “the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.”

Read the rest of Capitalism Isn’t Corporatism or Cronyism over at Forbes.

Event: The History of Ancient Greece — The Early Fourth Century

Jun 1, 2011 | Culture

I will be doing a three-day course on Greece in the early fourth-century: The History of Ancient Greece: The Early Fourth Century.

The fourth century BC is often seen as the decline of the Greeks, a process that began with the defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. But this gives short-shrift to a vital period. At this time the Athenians achieved a stable government under decent legal processes, the Greeks developed nascent federal political systems, markets thrived, orators brought forth groundbreaking ideas, and the philosophical schools of Plato, Aristotle and others were established. In bloody clashes the slave society of Sparta was neutralized, and freedom greatly extended. This course focuses on the defining political events of the first half of the century. Emphasis is placed on the political and military events that set the stage for the rise of the Macedonians under Alexander the Great.

The course draws in part from chapter two of Dr. Lewis’s book, Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History.

Check it out here–and sign up!