Book 3 in American Exceptionalism Available for Preorder

 

Socialism sucks the soul out of a nation.

 

Socialism concentrates power in the state. No checks, no balances. Raw power is centralized in one place, where the most ruthless can grab it to dominate other human beings. For most of the eight billion people on Earth, this is their way of life. Why would we want to join them?

 

Socialism sucks

by James D. Best

Read all about it! 

 

Read all about it!

The Left Failed to Co-Opt Animal Farm

The Left used Hollywood to claim Animal Farm for itself. Andy Serkis’s adaptation reframes Orwell’s anti-communist classic as an anti-capitalist animated film. The $35M movie made $3.4M on opening weekend from 2,600 screens, averaging $1,307 per screen. Ticket buyers had their pick of seats.

The audacity is breathtaking. Orwell disemboweled communism in a simply told fairy tale that is considered a literary and political classic. The idea of revising someone else’s famous critique of the Left to sell the Left’s empty bombast was silly to begin with, but doing it was super-dumb. How many thought-challenged zealots on the Left will leave the theater with the intent of reading the book? Okay, not many, because few saw the film.

Yet films often revive interest in books. Many who skipped the film may read about its failure and think, "Hey, I remember that book from school," and, like me, decide to read it again. I did, and found it’s still a great story—just as relevant as 81 years ago. Human nature hasn’t changed.

Animal Farm uses the enduring form of a fable to reveal an eternal truth. Orwell succeeded. (The movie did not.) Having once believed in socialism, Orwell later changed his mind. People who have lived under socialism certainly don’t like it. Eastern Europeans aren’t buying this crap. Misery and despotism entrap North Koreans while their brethren to the south live in the eleventh richest nation on Earth. There are no refugee boats risking life and limb to reach Cuba. East Berlin didn’t build a wall to keep Westerners out. Even people in Russia and Albania prefer a kleptocracy to communism.

The truth is, socialism works exactly as portrayed in Animal Farm. The world needs this book to go viral. Buy a copy. Make George Orwell’s Animal Farm a bestseller once again.

 

 

Three cheers for Adam Smith, inventor of the world’s most effective contraceptive.

World Average GDP per Capita

You may remember Adam Smith as the 18th Century inventor of capitalism. You’d be right. But he also solved the problem of over-population. Capitalism is the greatest creator of wealth in history and wealthy families and nations have lower fertility rates. 

Let’s take the wealth side first. Think of Singapore versus Venezuela. Singapore has zero natural resources and Venezuela sits on one of the greatest oil reserves in the world. Or consider North versus South Korea. Or the People's Republic of China versus Taiwan. Or, in its day, East versus West Germany. 

 Capitalism beats a state run economy every single time. No contest.

Now, about those fertility rates. Look at the chart of U.S. birth rates in relation to income. Pretty obvious. The richer the family, the fewer the kids. It doesn’t matter why, the indisputable fact is that higher income, lowers the birth rate.

Does this relationship hold internationally? It does. Our indisputable fact went global: the higher the gross national product, the lower the birth rate.

Put these two observable phenomena together and you solve the Left’s most emotive fixation: global population control. Yet they reliably turn their back on capitalism because they distrust a system that makes some people richer than themselves. If the sustainability of Earth is an existential threat, then why discard obvious solutions? Many Leftists don’t think, others naively follow the catechism, but some purposely craft rationalizations for irrationality. 

Take population control: instead a real answer to their obsession, they promote every form of non-propagational sex, rabid feminism that separates men and women, people bunched up in tiny living quarters unfit for a family, ridicule of female homemakers, family dissolution, government dictates of family size, and when all else fails, they demand contraceptives and abortion for perverts who insist on an archaic relationship.

I sometimes wonder if anthropophobia is why Leftists frequently defend Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, and other tyrants who impose ruthless forms of population control. (Hitler seems to be the only socialist they refuse to give a pass for murdering his own populous.)

Try Googling “birth rates versus GDP.” You’ll get hits on studies, papers, and programs to reduce population in order to increase wealth. Backward. They’re convoluting cause and effect. Why? Because they loathe capitalism. It’s not allowed in their toolbox. So, without thinking, they flip cause and effect. In the Leftist’s world, there are many cures worse than the disease. For example, they hate carbon dioxide, but lose their stuff if carbon-free nuclear energy is mentioned. If the means are blasphemous, the end remains delusive. 

Leftists cannot accept that the surest path to population control is to promote capitalism in every corner of the world. In fact, capitalism cures pollution, hunger, housing, illness, and even throws a monkey-wrench into totalitarianism. Just ask the Pilgrims. They got all that stuff for the first Thanksgiving after they tossed socialism in the ash heap.

But the Left won’t alter course. They remain bound to an ideology that promises a dreamland … but never delivers. 

Don’t blame them. They can’t help themselves. It’s in their nature.

Ronald Reagan Warning America

 

A Republic, if You Can Keep It . . .

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787,  Franklin was queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation. In the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention,  a lady asked Dr. Franklin “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy.”  Franklin replied, “A republic . . . if you can keep it.”

Our Constitution created a limited representative republic.  A republic is different from a democracy.  In a democracy, the majority can directly make laws, while in a republic, elected representatives make laws.  Basically, in a pure democracy, the majority has unlimited power, whereas in a republic, a written constitution limits the majority and provides safeguards for the individual and minorities.

In the United States, we actually have both systems.  There is no way for Americans to directly enact legislation at the national level, but half of the states allow ballot initiatives which, if passed by a majority of the voters, have the force of law.

The Founders’ intent at the national level was a representative republic.  The word democracy is not mentioned in the Constitution.   Most of the Founders distrusted pure democracy.  Some had been frightened by Shays Revolt and equated democracy with mob rule. Others were convinced by Madison that different factions would come together until they formed a majority, and then take advantage of those who were not members of their coalition. In fact, Madison showed that throughout history, this phenomenon had destroyed every experiment in democracy.

John Adams wrote that “There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide,” and James Madison wrote in Federalist 10 that “Democracies have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” The reason pure democracies fail is that majorities learn that they can legally take property and/or liberties away from others. Those subjected to abuse can be anyone outside the majority coalition, and their minority status can be based on race, religion, wealth, political affiliation, or even which city or state they reside in. Demagogic leaders become adept at appealing to the emotions of jealousy, avarice, and entitlement. They also denigrate opponents in order to justify prejudicial actions taken by the majority.  Soon, oppression of minority classes causes enough conflicts to collapse the democratic process.

A major difference between a republic and a democracy is immediacy. The Founders wanted laws made by representatives in order to put a buffer between popular passions and legislation. In a democracy, decisions are made in the heat of the moment, while periodic elections in a republic provide a cooling off period. To a great extent, democracies are ruled by feelings, while in a republic, the rule of law governs. In a republic, politicians can take principled actions that go against the will of many of their constituents with the knowledge that they will be judged by all the actions they take during their entire term in office. Political leaders are also given time to explain the reasons for their actions.

Of course, if an elected official does something grievously offensive, then the voters can follow the advice of Alexander Hamilton, who in Federalist 21 wrote, “The natural cure for an ill-administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.” 

When the people’s will is thwarted, regular elections give them the opportunity to dismiss their representatives and appoint new ones.

Capitalism beats socialism ... every time

Socialism takes from people who produce to give goods and services to the "less fortunate." It is done under the premise of fairness. Everyone should benefit from the largess of the wonderful world that surrounds us all.

The prior paragraph may sound appealing, but there are three fatal errors embedded in the premise.

1. Fortune has little to do with income

2. Fairness is in the eyes of the beholder

3. The world is dangerous, not wonderful.

The term “less fortunate” makes it sound like success depends on luck. Except, what happens to “luck” under a socialist system. Under socialism, scarcity is the order of the day. Even commodities like toilet paper are in short supply. If “luck” brought all these goods to market under capitalism, why doesn’t “luck” deliver the goods under socialism?

If a person produces something through brawn, wits, or practiced skill, that person believes that fairness dictates that they should be able to keep what they produce. It doesn’t matter whether that “fortunate” person is a plumber, entrepreneur, or NFL player. Socialism sees fairness differently. People with more must give their “fair share” of what they produce to others. The recipient probably thinks it’s fair, but producers feels abused.

Advanced societies live in a wonderful world, but its wonders are due to capitalism. Our hardscrabble world offers no “largess” free for the taking. Before Adam Smith, the hoi polloi found food scarce, work backbreaking, bug-ridden shelters unpleasant, support systems nil, and life short. That was the world before capitalism. In fact, that’s the world today in the underdeveloped world. Life is harsh without capitalists to scrape the burrs off.

Those who can’t demand more than minimum wage want to believe that their problems result not from sloth, but from ill fortune, theft, or a rigged system. Socialism appeals to the indebted, the lazy, and the unskilled. For a period, socialism works, but socialism soon converts the productive into the skillfully lazy. Everyone is equal, but equally without. Except for the commissars and their friends and family. They live well. You see, socialism is really about trading places. The politically powerful trade places with the people who used to build stuff, create nifty things, or get it to market. The operative phrase in that sentence is used to. They no longer own the product of their sweat or wits, so they live off their already accumulated wealth, move, or cozy up to the state. Thus, no toilet paper.

Whenever capitalism and socialism are pitted against each other, capitalism always wins. Wherever and whenever free markets are allowed to reign, people are better off. All the people. Inequality grows, but inequality grows under socialism as well. The difference is that the socialist ruling class disguise their lifestyle while under capitalism, the rich revel in it. Why does capitalism work so much better than romanticized socialism? I can explain in one word.

Rewards.

That’s why capitalism wins. Always. Rewards for hard work. Rewards for being clever. Rewards for endless training in a sport or performing art. Rewards for taking risks. Rewards for developing skills needed by society. Even rewards for showing up on time.

Socialism? Not so much. Under socialism the only rewards are for exercising raw political power or being connected to raw political power.

That’s why socialism sucks. Big time.