Not Your Father?s Economic Theory
My friend Austin Russell wrote the below piece and, not having a blog to write on, asked me to put it up for him:
Yesterday morning, The Wall Street Journal published a recent interview with Raghuram Rajan, former Chief Economist of The International Monetary Fund. Rajan, like so many of his contemporaries, asserts what has become the most prominent of modern economic truisms: ?Some people” says Mr. Rajan, “are concluding that Capitalism doesn?t work.” Rajan’s words could be permanently included as a sub-title to the bible of modern economic theory.
Rejoicing in victory, advocates of a socialized economy continue to parade the collapse and subsequent recession of 2008 and 2009 as undeniable proof that Capitalism has failed its human masters and must now be replaced by regulation under the firm but benevolent rule of modern philosopher kings. Private individuals and corporations have demonstrated their incompetence and inability to manage their own affairs and must now bow to the rule of the better educated aristocracy. Apparently, “Yes We Can” applies only to the publicly anointed, whom, after ascending political office, must turn to their constituents, and continue “But you my friends, cannot.”
Capitalism is nothing more than a name for the political philosophy expressed in our very own Declaration of Independence. The truths that we hold self-evident, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” are the very foundation of Capitalism which allows individuals to dictate their own destiny without the intervention and regulation of a monarch or aristocracy. To reject Capitalism is to reject freedom-the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. While it is true that individuals will make mistakes, the alternative–stiff government regulation and control–only frustrates and discourages innovation in the name of protecting individuals from themselves. And so, just as the loving and protective parent must eventually learn to let her child grow into adulthood and independence, so too, governments must allow citizens to make their own decisions, to govern their own lives, and define their own destinies.
The Berlin Wall Today
Volokh had a couple of posts up commemorating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – here, here, and here for example.
I am too young to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union, but the idea of the wall, as I learned about it later, made quite an impression on me.? The Communists had voluntarily constructed a physical testament to their citizens’ fevered desire to escape.? And once that wall came down, the beneficent West welcomed the refugees with open arms.? But because I am too young to remember the Berlin Wall, another wall looms larger in my mind.
Today, a sickening parody of the past is unfolding.? A new wall goes up along our border, and the United States is building it.? It builds it not to keep its own rich well-fed citizens trapped inside, but to keep the poor and desperate out.? The Berlin Wall made a sick sort of sense.? The Communists needed to prevent the human material of their social experiments from escaping.? But the wall today is an aimless and demented cruelty, a jeering testament to our nation’s willingness to sacrifice its own prosperity, if only it can make our neighbors a little poorer.? It denies both the citizens inside our borders and those without the best operation of the capitalist system that was once the hope of desperate East Berliners.
Once we demanded that the Soviets tear down their wall.? Today we insist that our neighbors help us seal off our border.? So today, I look forward to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of a different wall, and a time when we will have seen it for the travesty that it is.
Irving Kristol (1920-2009). The Original ‘Neo’…
Dr. Harvey Mansfield writes in his succinct yet immensely important A Student?s Guide to Political Philosophy that ?the Political Philosopher? takes a stand with Alexis de Tocqueville who said that while he himself was not a partisan, he undertook to see, not differently, but further than the parties?(emphasis in the original).? Irving Kristol was, to many people on the right and the left, a political philosopher.? I was working at my desk when I got the message of his passing; politics would not be the same because of him, nor would it be the same after his departure.?
I started my own political travels on the right side of the ideological spectrum from birth.? Many people who inhabit the broad Conservative tent did not, and it was Irving Kristol who popularized the notion that some Conservatives were ?liberals mugged by reality.?? For myself, I was a Conservative who was injected with ?soul.?? Having grown up on military posts, my right-leaning stances went fairly unnoticed in large.? When I eventually found myself attending high school in the most liberal county in the state of Maryland, I couldn?t help but take notice of my membership in the political minority.? I had to fend for myself on a very primal level, which meant that everything was automatically politicized into camps or ?teams,? and you ?won? by defending your side with numbers and facts that could be verified and supported.? I continued with this mentality into college; as a young knee-jerk libertarian Conservative.?
My Conservatism, per se, was beginning to feel hollow and unfulfilling.? I spent my time reading and regurgitating facts, figures and talking points.? There was no ?soul? in it.? It was under the tutelage of Dr. Hartlaub that I was given the ability to undergo a semester-long independent study on outlining and defining Conservative thought and theory.? I shelved the Sean Hannity and Bill O?Reilly books, and replaced them with writings from Burke, Elliot, Santayana, Kristol and Strauss among many others.?
Some people gravitate more towards the writings of Hayek, von Mises and Rand.? Others, such as myself, find something more in Kristol, Tocqville and Strauss.? The very first Irving Kristol piece I consumed was his ?Capitalism, Socialism and Nihilism? which introduced me to a new term which is hardly in the vocabulary of modern academia: nihilism.? This essay eventually pointed me to Kristol?s Two Cheers for Capitalism, which taught me that one could defend capitalism from her incessant attackers on the left, without being a sycophant for capitalism as an ultimate ends.? She is a tempting siren that can lead to nihilism if we accept her unguardedly.? The next essay I read was ?The Case for Censorship.?? This one struck me at first, because I refused to wholly accept his argument.? ?It?s our goddamn right to free speech Hartlaub, and up to our other institutions to instill an inner-censorship: like church or family, et cetera? is what I said in more or less words.? However, not long after reading Kristol, our school hosted two former members of Congress for a presentation and a sort of mini-town hall.? It was during the question and answer segment that one young man decided that he was going to take his stand in full view of his peers, two former-elected officials, and the community.? His beef: the restrictions on file sharing and pornography?
Irving Kristol has been eulogized in print and on television by now, and I imagine that the number one thing he will be readily remembered as is the ?godfather of Neoconservatism.?? Bill Buckley, in writing on Kristol and his Neoconservative persuasion announced in the pages of Weekly Standard that we should drop the prefix and accept all Conservatives as-is.? Unfortunately, the term Neoconservative has been bastardized and used as slander against people on the Right.? Neocon is synonymous with ?war-hawk? or ?big-government conservative? or means that you are part of some surreptitious ?Jewish cabal? in our government.? Ironically, Neoconservatism came about because of liberalism’s failures to defend the country that kept them safe from the ravages of Communism, and their failure to adequately address the problems facing the poor and the inner-cities.? Irving Kristol did not write extensively on the middle east, and the need to overturn the regime in Iraq with his son and Mr. Kagan.? He wrote, for which he was best known, about the afflictions of modernity on our republic and her people.? He demonstrated that Conservatism was not an ideal, but the anti-ideal along with many Traditionalists.?
In the end, Irving Kristol passed on Friday.? There are myriad obituaries and tributes you can read to get a quick synopsis of his life, but it is important for us to understand how he changed the lives of others.? Mr. Kristol never knew who I was.? Nevertheless, one cannot take away his impact on my own political upbringing and my life.? He will be sorely missed.?
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-rj
