On November 6, Democrats and liberals had a good election night; Republicans and conservatives had a bad one. These things happen. It’s certainly true that the Republican Party and its candidates made some serious mistakes and could have done a number of things better than they did; but it would be tragic—and foolish—for the Party or the conservative movement to abandon its principles. Those principles are true and good. They are the principles on which our nation was founded, and their restoration and defense is vital to its future. Contrary to the claims of the Democratic Party and the cultural-political left, they have not been repudiated by the American people.
Still, all-too-predictably the recriminations have been flying back and forth between different elements in the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Many economic conservatives claim that the Republicans lost the presidential contest and took a drubbing in the battle to win a majority in the United States Senate because of the strong pro-life and pro-marriage stands of the party’s platform and candidates. Their mantra is “time for a truce” (i.e., surrender) on social issues.
Some social conservatives lay blame for the Republican defeat on those whose pro-market and small government convictions and rhetoric allegedly lead working class people and other voters to believe that the party and its candidates are only concerned to protect the economic privileges of the rich and don’t care about ordinary people.
Both sides need to knock it off. Economic and social conservatives need each other—and not merely to win elections. The marriage of economic and social conservatism, while not always a love match, is no mere marriage of convenience. It is a union rooted in shared principles. Let me offer some reflections on why I believe that to be true.
Any healthy society, any decent society, will rest upon three pillars. The first is respect for the human person—the individual human being and his dignity. Where this pillar is in place, the formal and informal institutions of society, and the beliefs and practices of the people, will be such that every member of the human family—irrespective of race, sex, or ethnicity, to be sure, but also and equally irrespective of age, size, stage of development, or condition of dependency—is treated as a person—that is, as a subject bearing profound, inherent, and equal worth and dignity.
A society that does not nurture respect for the human person—beginning with the child in the womb, and including the mentally and physically impaired and the frail elderly—will sooner or later (probably sooner, rather than later) come to regard human beings as mere cogs in the larger social wheel whose dignity and well-being may legitimately be sacrificed for the sake of the collectivity. Some members of the community—those in certain development stages, for example—will come to be regarded as disposable, and others—those in certain conditions of dependency, for example, will come to be viewed as intolerably burdensome, as “useless eaters, as “better off dead,” as lebensunwertes Lebens.
In its most extreme modern forms, totalitarian regimes reduce the individual to the status of an instrument to serve the ends of the fascist state or the future communist utopia. When liberal democratic regimes go awry, it is often because a utilitarian ethic reduces the human person to a means rather than an end to which other things including the systems and institutions of law, education, and the economy are means.
The abortion license against which we struggle today is dressed up by its defenders in the language of individual and even natural rights—and there can be no doubt that the acceptance of abortion is partly the fruit of me-generation liberal ideology—a corruption (and burlesque) of liberal political philosophy in its classical form; but more fundamentally it is underwritten by a utilitarian ethic that, in the end, vaporizes the very idea of natural rights, treating the idea (in Jeremy Bentham’s famously dismissive words) as “nonsense on stilts.”
In cultures in which religious fanaticism has taken hold, the dignity of the individual is typically sacrificed for the sake of tragically misbegotten theological ideas and goals. By contrast, a liberal democratic ethos, where it is uncorrupted by utilitarianism or me-generation expressive individualism, supports the dignity of the human person by giving witness to basic human rights and liberties.
Where a healthy religious life flourishes, faith in God provides a grounding for the dignity and inviolability of the human person by, for example, proposing an understanding of each and every member of the human family, even those of different faiths or professing no particular faith, as persons made in the image and likeness of the divine Author of our lives and liberties.
The second pillar of any decent society is the institution of the family. It is indispensable. The family, based on the marital commitment of husband and wife, is the original and best ministry of health, education, and welfare. Although no family is perfect, no institution matches the healthy family in its capacity to transmit to each new generation the understandings and traits of character—the values and virtues—upon which the success of every other institution of society, from law and government to educational institutions and business firms, vitally depends.
Where families fail to form, or too many break down, the effective transmission of the virtues of honesty, civility, self-restraint, concern for the welfare of others, justice, compassion, and personal responsibility is imperiled. Without these virtues, respect for the dignity of the human person, the first pillar of a decent society, will be undermined and sooner or later lost—for even the most laudable formal institutions cannot uphold respect for human dignity where people do not have the virtues that make that respect a reality and give it vitality in actual social practices.
Respect for the dignity of the human being requires more than formally sound institutions; it requires a cultural ethos in which people act from conviction to treat each other as human beings should be treated: with respect, civility, justice, compassion. The best legal and political institutions ever devised are of little value where selfishness, contempt for others, dishonesty, injustice, and other types of immorality and irresponsibility flourish.
Indeed, the effective working of governmental institutions themselves depends upon most people most of the time obeying the law out of a sense of moral obligation, and not merely out of fear of detection and punishment for law-breaking. And perhaps it goes without saying that the success of business and a market-based economic system depends on there being reasonably virtuous, trustworthy, law-abiding, promise-keeping people to serve as workers and managers, lenders, regulators, and payers of bills for goods and services.
The third pillar of any decent society is a fair and effective system of law and government. This is necessary because none of us is perfectly virtuous all the time, and some people will be deterred from wrongdoing only by the threat of punishment. More importantly, contemporary philosophers of law tell us the law coordinates human behavior for the sake of achieving common goals — the common good — especially in dealing with the complexities of modern life. Even if all of us were perfectly virtuous all of the time, we would still need a system of laws (considered as a scheme of authoritatively stipulated coordination norms) to accomplish many of our common ends (safely transporting ourselves on the streets, to take a simple and obvious example).
The success of business firms and the economy as a whole depends vitally on a fair and effective system and set of institutions for the administration of justice. We need judges skilled in the craft of law, free of corruption, and disciplined enough to respect the limits of their own authority in the constitutional system. We need to be able to rely on courts to apply legal rules and principles faithfully to settle disputes, including disputes between parties who are both in good faith, and to enforce contracts and other agreements and enforce them in a timely manner.
Indeed, the knowledge that contracts will be enforced is usually sufficient to ensure that courts will not actually be called on to enforce them. A sociological fact of which we can be certain is this: Where there is no reliable system of the administration of justice—no confidence that the courts will hold people to their obligations under the law—business will not flourish and everyone in the society will suffer.
A society can, in my opinion, be a decent one even if it is not a dynamic one, if the three pillars are healthy and functioning in a mutually supportive way (as they will do if each is healthy). Now, conservatives of a certain stripe believe that a truly decent society cannot be a dynamic one. Dynamism, they believe, causes instability that undermines the pillars of a decent society. So some conservatives in old Europe and even the United States opposed not only industrialism but the very idea of a commercial society, fearing that commercial economies inevitably produce consumerist and acquisitive materialist attitudes that corrode the foundations of decency. And some, such as some Amish communities in the U.S., reject education for their children beyond what is necessary to master reading, writing, and arithmetic, on the ground that higher education leads to worldliness and apostasy and undermines religious faith and moral virtue.
Although a decent society need not be a dynamic one (as the Amish example shows) dynamism need not erode decency. A dynamic society need not be one in which consumerism and materialism become rife and in which moral and spiritual values disappear. Indeed, dynamism can play a positive moral role and, I would venture to say, almost certainly will play such a role where what makes it possible is sufficient to sustain it over the long term.
That is, I realize, a rather cryptic comment, so let me explain what I mean. To do that, I will have to offer some thoughts on what in fact makes social dynamism possible.
The two pillars of social dynamism are, first, institutions of research and education in which the frontiers of knowledge across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences are pushed back, and through which knowledge is transmitted to students and disseminated to the public at large; and, second, business firms and associated institutions supporting them or managed in ways that are at least in some respects patterned on their principles, by which wealth is generated, widely distributed, and preserved.
We can think of universities and business firms, together with respect for the dignity of the human person, the institution of the family, and the system of law and government, as the five pillars of decent and dynamic societies. The university and the business firm depend in various ways for their well-being on the well-being of the others, and they can help to support the others in turn. At the same time, of course, ideologies and practices hostile to the pillars of a decent society can manifest themselves in higher education and in business and these institutions can erode the social values on which they themselves depend not only for their own integrity, but for their long-term survival.
It is all too easy to take the pillars for granted. So it is important to remember that each of them has come under attack from different angles and forces. Operating from within universities, persons, and movements hostile to one or the other of these pillars, usually preaching or acting in the name of high ideals of one sort or another, have gone on the attack.
Attacks on business and the very idea of the market economy and economic freedom coming from the academic world are, of course, well known. Students are sometimes taught to hold business, and especially businessmen, in contempt as heartless exploiters driven by greed. In my own days as a student, these attacks were often made explicitly in the name of Marxism. One notices less of that after the collapse of the Soviet empire, but the attacks themselves have abated little. Needless to say, where businesses behave unethically they play into the stereotypes of the enemies of the market system and facilitate their effort to smear business and the free market for the sake of transferring greater control of the economy to government.
Similarly, attacks on the family, and particularly on the institution of marriage on which the family is built, are common in the academy. The line here is that the family, at least as traditionally constituted and understood, is a patriarchal and exploitative institution that oppresses women and imposes on people forms of sexual restraint that are psychologically damaging and inhibiting of the free expression of their personality.
As has become clear in the past decade and a half, there is a profound threat to the family here, one against which we must fight with all our energy and will. It is difficult to think of any item on the domestic agenda that is more critical today than the defense of marriage as the union of husband and wife and the effort to renew and rebuild the marriage culture.
What has also become clear is that the threats to the family (and to the sanctity of human life) are at the same time and necessarily threats to religious freedom and to religion itself—at least where the religions in question stand up and speak out for conjugal marriage and the rights of the child in the womb. From the point of view of those seeking to re-define marriage and to protect and advance what they regard as the right to abortion the taming of religion, and the stigmatization and marginalization of religions that refuse to be tamed, is a moral imperative.
It is therefore not surprising to see that they are increasingly open in saying that they do not see disputes about sex and marriage and abortion and euthanasia as honest disagreements among reasonable people of goodwill. They are, rather, battles between the forces of “reason” and “enlightenment,” on one side, and those of “ignorance” and “bigotry,” on the other. Their opponents are to be treated just as racists are treated—since they are the equivalent of racists.
That doesn’t necessarily mean imprisoning them or fining them for expressing unacceptable opinions—though “hate crimes” laws in certain jurisdictions raise the specter of precisely such abuses; but it does mean using antidiscrimination laws and other legal instruments to stigmatize them, marginalize them, and impose upon them and their institutions various forms of social and even civil disability—with few if any meaningful protections for religious liberty and the rights of conscience.
Some will counsel that commercial businesses and business people “have no horse in this race.” They will say that these are moral, cultural, and religious disputes about which business people and people concerned with economic freedom need not concern themselves. The reality is that the ideological movements that today seek, for example, to redefine marriage and abolish its normativity for romantic relations and the rearing of children are the same movements that seek to undermine the market-based economic system and replace it with statist control of vast areas of economic life.
Moreover, the rise of ideologies hostile to marriage and the family has had a measurable social impact, and its costs are counted in ruined relationships, damaged lives, and all that follows in the social sphere from these personal catastrophes. In many poorer places in the United States, and I believe this is true in many other countries, families are simply failing to form and marriage is disappearing or coming to be regarded as an optional “life-style choice”—one among various optional ways of conducting relationships and having and rearing children. Out of wedlock birthrates are very high, with the negative consequences being borne less by the affluent than by those in the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society.
In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Harvard professor who was then working in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, shocked Americans by reporting findings that the out-of-wedlock birth rate among African-Americans in the United States had reached nearly 25%. He warned that the phenomenon of boys and girls being raised without fathers in poorer communities would result in social pathologies that would severely harm those most in need of the supports of solid family life.
His predictions were all too quickly verified. The widespread failure of family formation portended disastrous social consequences of delinquency, despair, violence, drug abuse, and crime and incarceration. A snowball effect resulted in the further growth of the out-of-wedlock birth rate. It is now over 70% among African-Americans. It is worth noting that at the time of Moynihan’s report, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for the population as a whole was almost 6%. Today, that rate is over 40%.
The economic consequences of these developments are evident. Consider the need of business to have available to it a responsible and capable work force. Business cannot manufacture honest, hard working people to employ. Nor can government create them by law. Businesses and governments depend on there being many such people, but they must rely on the family, assisted by religious communities and other institutions of civil society, to produce them. So business has a stake—a massive stake—in the long-term health of the family. It should avoid doing anything to undermine the family, and it should do what it can where it can to strengthen the institution.
As an advocate of dynamic societies, I believe in the market economy and the free enterprise system. I particularly value the social mobility that economic dynamism makes possible. Indeed, I am a beneficiary of that social mobility. A bit over a hundred years ago, my immigrant grandfathers—one from southern Italy, the other from Syria—were coal miners. Neither had so much as remotely considered the possibility of attending a university—as a practical economic matter, such a thing was simply out of the question.
At that time, Woodrow Wilson, the future President of the United States, was the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. Today, just two generations forward, I, the grandson of those immigrant coal miners, am the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. And what is truly remarkable is that my story is completely unremarkable. Something like it is the story of millions of Americans. Perhaps it goes without saying that this kind of upward mobility is not common in corporatist or socialist economic systems; but it is very common in market-based free enterprise economies.
Having said that, I should note that I am not a supporter of the laissez-faire doctrine embraced by strict libertarians. I believe that law and government do have important and, indeed, indispensable roles to play in regulating enterprises for the sake of protecting public health, safety, and morals, preventing exploitation and abuse, and promoting fair competitive circumstances of exchange. But these roles are compatible, I would insist, with the ideal of limited government and the principle of subsidiarity according to which government must respect individual initiative to the extent reasonably possible and avoid violating the autonomy and usurping the authority of families, religious communities, and other institutions of civil society that play the primary role in building character and transmitting virtues.
But having said that, I would warn that limited government—considered as an ideal as vital to business as to the family—cannot be maintained where the marriage culture collapses and families fail to form or easily dissolve. Where these things happen, the health, education, and welfare functions of the family will have to be undertaken by someone, or some institution, and that will sooner or later be the government.
To deal with pressing social problems, bureaucracies will grow, and with them the tax burden. Moreover, the growth of crime and other pathologies where family breakdown is rampant will result in the need for more extensive policing and incarceration and, again, increased taxes to pay for these government services. If we want limited government, as we should, and a level of taxation that is not unduly burdensome, we need healthy institutions of civil society, beginning with a flourishing marriage culture supporting family formation and preservation.
Advocates of the market economy, and supporters of marriage and the family, have common opponents in hard-left socialism, the entitlement mentality, and the statist ideologies that provide their intellectual underpinnings. But the marriage of advocates of limited government and economic freedom, on the one hand, and the supporters of marriage and the family, on the other, is not, and must not be regarded as, a mere marriage of convenience.
The reason they have common enemies is that they have common principles: namely, respect for the human person, which grounds our commitment to individual liberty and the right to economic freedom and other essential civil liberties; belief in personal responsibility, which is a pre-condition of the possibility and moral desirability of individual liberty in any domain; recognition of subsidiarity as the basis for effective but truly limited government and for the integrity of the institutions of civil society that mediate between the individual and the centralized power of the state; respect for the rule of law; and recognition of the vital role played by the family and by religious institutions that support the character-forming functions of the family in the flourishing of any decent and dynamic society.
Congressman Paul Ryan has put the matter well:
A “libertarian” who wants limited government should embrace the means to his freedom: thriving mediating institutions that create the moral preconditions for economic markets and choice. A “social issues” conservative with a zeal for righteousness should insist on a free market economy to supply the material needs for families, schools, and churches that inspire moral and spiritual life. In a nutshell, the notion of separating the social from the economic issues is a false choice. They stem from the same root . . . . They complement and complete each other. A prosperous moral community is a prerequisite for a just and ordered society and the idea that either side of this current divide can exist independently is a mirage.
The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institution of marriage. These institutions will, in the end, stand or fall together. Contemporary statist ideologues have contempt for both of these institutions, and they fully understand the connection between them. We who believe in the market and in the family should see the connection no less clearly.
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.
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Comments:
Respect for the person
Respect and support for the family
Fair and effective government.
Which is why only voters set in their ways are continuing with the existing partizan patterns and each new voting cohort is going for the liberal coalition 2/3 or 3/4. There is an increasing reality gap between the goals of conservative theory, the promise of conservative rhetoric and the reality of conservative governance. Until this basic problem is addressed, conservatives will remain the party of the sunset and liberals the party of the ascendent.
As this has not come in to play much with conservative post election analysis, with the acception of the usual apostates (Frum, Larison), tells me that this out of power faze may last awhile.
Contempt? I don't agree at all, but they may be because we define "contemporary statist idealogues" differently. If, as I suspect, you see the modern Democrats as filling this position, then we would certainly agree. Unfettered capitalism -- not a regulated market economy, but unfettered capitalism -- has, as can be seen from economic history -- led to disaster. It was unambiguously condemned by JP II. The Great Depression and the near miss of an equally great depression in 2008-2009, since which time the economy has slowly been recovering, both had their roots in lack of reasonable market regulations. Economic success requires a balance between freedom and rules. Where, among modern day Democrats, do you see contempt for the institution of marriage? Flexibility and pragmatism, yes, but contempt? President Obama made it very clear in the recent presidential debates that strong, loving, supportive families are very helpful in promoting the healthy growth of youngsters. The ugly rhetoric, suggesting liberals are somehow morally "lesser", is hurting the Republican Party. I'm not Republican, but I don't want to see the Democrats entirely lacking valid opposition, which is the direction in which we're headed. The Republicans are alienating themselves from more and more groups.
While the ability to exercise a certain degree of independent initiative is an important aspect of human potential, such action is far from the determinant of human worth (no such determinant exist at all) and, furthermore, no action is completely autonomous and independent. Every action is a response to an already existing reality and depends to some degree on other existing realities--on other persons, different objects and the natural worlds. The incoherence in "conservative" thought is clear when conservatives such as Paul Ryan honestly and intelligently articulate the sanctity of life but then make, albeit mainly superficial, appeals to individualist ethos that glorifies a fantasy notion of autonomous and self-reliant action as the epitome of human capability--if such autonomy is the epitome of human life, than that certainly leaves bleak prospects for the most vulnerable and dependent among us.
Although they leave much to be desired and space for improvement, Paul Ryan's policy proposals are more reasoned and compromised than the caricatured criticisms lead on. His willingness to improve upon former proposals is important and his bi-partisan work with Ron Wyden and Alice Rivlin offers good example for other legislators in both parties. Yet, his rhetorical appeals to an autonomous ontology only confirm suspicions and undermine his flawed but solid attempts at appeals to the principle of subsidiarity.
The State-centric "progressive" reduction of solidarity also begets an individualism although one that is less visible or perhaps more acceptable to many. The "progressive" ontology sees its political and social manifestation in a State-individualism in which the State is the protector of the individual from oppressive inherited ties and the source of social solidarity. Furthermore, such an ontology centers on a therapeutic non-judgmental moralism and the State, in seeking to remove all impediments to autonomous licenses seeks to ensure that no Church or oppressive inherited form intrudes on the individual's right to unimpeded autonomy. Thus, in the guise of protecting against rights-denying intrusion, the State justifies its own intrusive and rights-denying policies.
The "progressive" ontology makes moralistic appeals to solidarity under the guise of a "public" rhetoric--anything in the "public" sector, funded with "public" dollars, or any "public" program must be in the "public" interest. Really, the term "public" in this sense only means that the initiative is funded via tax dollars and its success depends on the need for the initiative or program, how those "public," tax, dollars are allocated, the interest and abilities of those involved in the initiative and the initiative or program's design. Many "public" initiatives and programs of course often serve against the common good and benefit private interest--the interest of entrenched unions, government agencies corporations , private firms and investors. Nonetheless, the "progressive" reduction of solidarity remains popular in the absence of another evident option in the political realm and "conservative" appeals to autonomous gain fail to offer something better and more human.
And I wish every Ron Paul fan could read this quote. Libertarians are the first to blame social conservatives for any Republican loss, as if we're the ones who want to "impose" our values on everyone else. No, it's the il-liberal statists that want to do that.
In my work (electrical engineering), I deal with many people from India and China. They are generally not Christian but see government playing an important role in providing healthcare and are willing to pay for it, usually by supporting universal health care. In China, people without the ability to pay for blood transfusions die on the spot, and they don't want to live in a society so individualistic.
I would be interested in your thoughts someday on this. About 75% of Asians voted for Obama, and as a statistical matter, they are general net taxpayers.
Present day China, The USSR, Nazi Germany, Cuba, Venezuela all show that the greatest peril to the individual comes from state directed economies.
"What do we see when we look precisely at the periods in history in which the free market has reigned most free?"
Sinful, imperfect men pursuing their empires and in doing so, innovating and producing goods and services that put what were expensive playthings in reach of most people (Model T Ford, for example).
"There was a time when big business was seen as the greatest threat to the dignity of the individual. "
Am I to sit in rapt attention to the populist indignations of the likes of Puck magazine, published in the late 19th century? I'm not suggesting the industrialists were saints, but they got rich by producing something useful, unlike the politicians that sought to "fix things" to enhance their power and secure their positions. A century ago, Henry Ford was bringing automobile to the masses, and Woodrow Wilson and his collaborators were bringing us the federal income tax. It is an interesting comparison.
I suggest you get a copy of Burton Folsom's "The Myth of the Robber Barons". It's quite good at cracking the ossified attitudes that are a product of an education system that is woefully bad at trying to present economics as something other than an exercise in predation.
Then how does the good Prof. explain why there is now more upward social mobility in Europe-- including the Scandinavian countries where marriage and out-of-wedlock rates are pitiful-- than the United States.
Abstract philosophizing is no substitute for experience and I wonder if the Prof. grasps the profound effects globalization has on the family. Try maintaining a healthy family life, being a 40 -something father of four who has to work 80-100 hrs per week, compete with slave wages in China, just to barely keep a roof over our heads, forget saving for luxuries like college. How is it conducive to family life and community if I can't even afford to give my children healthcare, am forced to move every four years due to 'off shoring,' and rarely even see my family let alone spend quality time with them.
If anyone treats people like meres 'cogs in the machine' it is the economic conservatives and their right-wing corporate allies.
I voted Democrat this time because I felt like I wouldn't be able to survive if things got any worse. I've been honest and worked really hard all my life and I'm not too proud to say I need help. My kids need healthcare and my wife and I need some job security. "The free-market" has failed us. It seems to only be working well for ppl at the very top like the good professor, whose salary is at least partially subsidized by the federal government providing university grants and student loans.
Perhaps, then, Professor George can explain why in "Coming Apart" Charles Murray made the supportable claim that class mobility in the United States is lower than any country in the industrialized west... in fact lower than any country in Europe, which so many malign as a backward continent. Charles Murray shows that this lack of class mobility is in fact driven by market forces in the United States: the increasing "market value" of brains, the ever decreasing market value of labor. Despite Murray's protestations to the contrary, which are entirely ideologically driven, it is self-evident that thanks to free trade with Communist China and union busting... gifts of so-called "conservatives..." we are seeing the destruction of the American middle class. If the middle class (specifically middle class WAGES) are what makes traditional family life possible, then can't a strong argument be made that buying into republican economics on the one hand, while defending the traditional family on the other, are mutually exclusive positions?
If it were true that the free market gave us class mobility, and upward mobility, we would see both such things in the United States, which has only had 4 years of Democrat rule in the White House since President Clinton (who presided over a period of tremendous prosperity, but a prosperity that was doomed to end).
The hard truth is that President Obama has not raised taxes in four years, and has also pumped the economy full of stimulus, and the middle class is STILL disappearing. How could a Romney Presidency do anything to reverse these long term trends?
The data seem to indicate a different narrative than the one Professor George buys into. This is one of my concerns with Republicans. They seem to be a party that is unconcerned with data and science.
If the crash we just lived through was caused by the sort of economic policies advocated by the Bush administration (and most think it is), then I think Dr. George ought to re-think his position. I for one am no longer interested in making bed-fellows with economic traitors, and those who wish to destroy the American working and middle classes just to enrich themselves at the cost of American society, as if the social contract that used to exist was a mere myth.
No more for me. Romney is a traitor, and as much as I dislike Obama, I dislike Romney just as much. Shame on our elites for foisting such candidates upon us.
You expect "job security" from the guy who presided over 40+ plus months of 8% plus unemployment and worse, and the lowest labor force participation rate in decades?
Have you seen how many layoffs were announced since the election? How about the businesses that announced the reclassification of jobs from full time to part time? The articles discussing the number of small banks that are in danger because of Dodd-Frank?
Did you know that Obamacare contains a medical device tax that is forcing manufacturers to offshore production?
As for the free market failing, we haven't had anything like a free market for a century. Instead, we get more laws, more rules, more regulation, more bureaucracy.
I'm not sure what you think you were getting for your vote-but I'm pretty sure we'll all pay.
Of course, I made a guess in late September that Obama would win. I went liquid and short, so perhaps I should thank you, at least until my job goes away too.
'I'm not sure what you think you were getting for your vote....'
Healthcare for my kids. Do you have any idea what it's like to worry about what you'll do if one of them gets seriously ill or injured? Between my wife and I, we have 3 jobs and none provides any health insurance.
'As for the free market failing, we haven't had anything like a free market for a century. Instead, we get more laws, more rules, more regulation, more bureaucracy.'
Yeah, well, from what I read, I'd happily accept Norway or Germany's economy, which provides universal healthcare and education, with lower unemployment, more job stability, and greater government intervention. And you're right. We did get more laws, rules, regulation and bureaucracy in the last 100 years. There was also tremendous economic growth from 1912-2012, which merely shows your argument falls flat. If you want fewer 'laws, rules, regulations, bureaucracy' move to Somalia. I'm sure the 'free-market' is thriving there.
'Of course, I made a guess in late September that Obama would win. I went liquid and short, so perhaps I should thank you'
You're welcome. Maybe some day I too will have investments to 'short' and can make money on the market despair caused by hedge fund managers having their capital gains taxed at 20% instead of 15%.
The 20th century saw tremendous destructiveness towards traditional family life in the United States. Contraception was considered a boon, and certainly was a gift of the market. No fault divorce resulted largely from market pressures. The United States in the 20th century is an economic success story, a triumph of free markets, but we saw a steady slide in the traditional view of the family throughout that century.
Over at the National Review Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote on Greece's troubles: "In theory, with the ability to devalue the drachma and be freed of enormous debts, the Greeks could return to business as it was practiced in the 1970s. In those sleepy days before the massive transfers of northern European money, I lived in a Greece that was a Balkan backwater without advanced surgery, autobahns, suspension bridges, sleek subways, or a modern airport. In that era of genteel poverty, divorce, abortion, drug use, and crime were rare in Greece. Now, all are commonplace. Back then, rural Greece was more Middle Eastern than European." http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/303515/greece-alone-and-broke-again-victor-davis-hanson
Now, in an earlier Greece, before American style mega-capitalism brought consumerism and materialism to bear, we see that "divorce, abortion, drug use, and crime" were rare in Greece. Something happened as Greece became "wealthy" during the boom years, and it was not the rise and thriving of traditional family life. Quite the opposite.
Therefore, it seems, that Prof. George's case here is arguably ahistorical (if the experience of the United States and Greece are any indication).
Markets are a force of nature. They exist. They are neither moral or immoral. It seems that Prof. George wants to argue that they are somehow an inherently moral force. It is of course laughable to call markets "moral." They are just a thing that is. But that will not stop republicans from deifying them. That is a serious concern for the believer, for some of us perceive dangerous heresy in this position.
I am really sorry you have that anxiety. This is not a "prolife" situation! It's so unfair that people can work at Walmart full-time, not get health care, and still qualify for food stamps, while, the Walton family is one of the richest in the world. With Romney as president, we'd have been headed for an Ancien Régime situation.
I just watched the opening episode of The Dust Bowl on t-v. (My mother migrated from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl to pick fruit.) It seems that when the price of wheat began to collapse during the Great Depression, plains farmers responded by planting enormous additional acreages of wheat to make up their losses. Any local U.S. farm bureau agent should have been able to tell them the result: a glut of wheat on the market, no buyers, and a further collapse of prices. But that was the "free market" in action: no rational regulation of the behavior of the farmers. Emre Akter, above, has it right: markets are absolutely amoral forces, similar to the forces of nature. Enshrining them as sacrosanct "institutions" smacks of idolatry.
