l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Christopher Chantrill
British conservative Charles Moore visited the Occupy chaps at St. Paul's
Cathedral in London and came away a bit bemused.
The protesters seem to imagine that, without their tented witness to the
wickedness of the rich, no one would have noticed that capitalism is in its
biggest crisis since the early 1930s. "Abolish wealth," cried one of their
posters. Don't the angry campers realise that the West's bankers and
politicians are managing it nicely without needing any extra help?
Good point, Charlie. There's nobody to equal a politician or a bailed-out
banker when it comes to managing the destruction of wealth. Let's just hope
they don't abolish the wealth that produces iPhones and the artificial
fibers used in modern outdoor tenting.
But I take exception to the notion that "capitalism is in its biggest crisis
since the early 1930s." Really, I thought that conservatives, at least,
understood that capitalism's notorious crises almost always issue from a
crisis of government.
Don't like the failed banks of the Crash of 2008? You can't understand them
without the government-sponsored mortgages made to bad credit risks. Don't
like the failing euro-banks of 2011? You can't understand them unless you
remember that the banks are required to eat government debt for breakfast.
Didn't like the Great Depression? You can't understand it without
understanding government's insistence on "calling all the big plays" from
the Fed's failure to act as lender of last resort to the Smoot Hawley tariff
increases to wage-price controls in the National Industrial Recovery Act of
1933.
If you want to understand the current economic crisis, try this. Every
politician, from the Obamis to the subsidy whores to the amateur Occupy na&#
239;fs is trying to game the capitalist system -- to get it to shovel loot
into the laps of his supporters.
The chaps at St. Paul's have a banner that reads "Capitalism is Crisis." No
doubt they imagine that the banner speaks truth to power in a startling and
original way never before achieved. If they had spent a year or two in
the real world instead of a lifetime at the local liberal seminary learning
how many community organizers can dance on the head of a pin, they would
know that capitalism is the answer to crisis. Capitalism answered the
crisis of $3 per day survival with today's $100 per day prosperity.
Capitalism is the system of bringing dreamers down to earth. The capitalist
asks the practical question: Will it pay? Back in the 19th century lefties
like William Morris thought that this capitalist interrogatory proved the
low and mean mentality of the average practical man. But now that we have
experienced a century or so of the impractical dreams of lefties and their
bloody systems of enforcing heaven on earth, the average person longs for a
practical man. Back in the day, Diogenes searched the Greek world looking
for an honest man. Really? How about a sensible, practical man that can
invent horizontal drilling and "fracking?"
When Peter Schiff went down to Obamaville to dialog with the Occupiers, his
interlocutor was dumbfounded that anyone could find the EPA, the FDA or the
board of education a problem. But think about it. A society that cares
about the environment, safe drugs, or education will find a way to make it
happen -- with or without government bureaucracy. It is the moral impulse
that matters, not the government program. The Occupier's faith in
government programs is a fetish.
The Occupier 1% should worry about the impression their 99% is making. In
the good old days the community organizers were careful to keep their rank
and file chanting slogans and away from the media. But the internet age has
obsoleted great chunks of left-wing tactics; now anyone can go down to the
Camp of the left and get rank-and-file "wisdom" on a smartphone. Perhaps
the curriculum commissars at the Midwest Academy should take note that it's
time to update Community Organizing 101. Keep those young skulls full of
mush away from the Flip ultraHD.
The Occupiers' great gift to America is the chance to push back on their
message, and Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) speech on "Saving the American Idea" at
the Heritage Foundation on October 26, 2011 does just that.
The American Idea is not tried in times of prosperity. Instead it is tested
when times are tough: when the pie is shrinking, when businesses are
closing, and when workers are losing their jobs... That's when the
temptation to exploit fear and envy returns - when many in Washington use
the politics of division to evade responsibility for their failures and
advance their own narrow political interests.
When the times are tough, the tough leaders get going to remind us that a "
crisis of capitalism" is really a crisis of bad government and bad
politicians.
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his
usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us.
At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto:
Life After Liberalism.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/11/capitalism_in_crisis_surely_you_jest.html#ixzz1cYCP3GI9 |
|
