We are all Classical Liberals Now

In 2008 elections the Democratic Party, lead by its leftist members, swept into the White House and took control of both chambers of congress.  The MSM eagerly and giddily pronounced Conservatism dead.  Shortly after Obama’s inauguration Newsweek went so far as to do a cover proclaiming, “We are all Socialists now.”

In the mid-term elections of 2010 Conservative Republicans returned to congress in-force.  They took back control of the House of Representatives and all but eliminated the Democrat majority in the Senate.  The American people had put the brakes on the Socialist schemes of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi.

This swift shifting of the pendulum left the liberal elites confused and dazed.  I can recall one commentator observing that, “In 2008, they elected Liberals.  Now they elected Conservatives.  This just shows that the American people do not know what they want.” 

At the time, I remember thinking, “No, the American people know what they want.  The problem is that neither party is offering it to them.”  

It has been my experience that the majority of Americans are neither 100% Conservative nor 100% Liberal.  But we tend to take these titles because they are the only two of three options from which we have to choose.  Or we go with the third option of being an independent.  

This does not mean that the American people do not have a political foundation.  They do. It is the uniquely American form of Classical Liberalism.   Although we may argue over implementation, most Americans support the classical liberal principles of: 

·         Limited Government

·         Individual Rights

·         Private Property

·         Free-market Economics

The first two guarantees political freedom while the latter two provide the opportunity for economic freedom.

This was the “Great American” experiment.  It was these principles of classical liberalism on which this nation was founded and remained its basic political philosophy for over 100 years.  Millions of immigrants from all corners of the globe, seeking freedom, were drawn by the hope that classical liberalism offered.   More significantly, it resulted in America becoming the most prosperous and powerful country in history.  A country that, when true to these principles, is truly the “shining light on the hill.” 

Unfortunately, since the early 1900s, there has been an aggressive campaign to eradicate this nation’s Classical Liberal roots.  This campaign has been so successful that most people have never heard of Classical Liberalism.  It is no longer taught in school.  Even political science or history classes, if it is taught, it is done so as a long lost political philosophy from the Enlightenment Age of Europe. 

It is remarkable that its principles still exist.  But they do.  They are in the heart of every American who believes that America is an exceptional country, which, I believe, is the majority of us.

No, Newsweek, the American people are not Socialist. They are not even Liberal or Conservative.  They are what they always have been; Classical Liberals! 

Back to School History Lesson

Last month my daughter returned to school.  As a high-school junior, she is required to take American History.  When I asked her about the class, she told me that they were starting from the beginning.  “Christopher Columbus and all that” is how she put it.  She then handed me the class outline.  The sections leading up to the American Revolution was the same story that most Americans learn.  It essentially starts with the discovery of America by Columbus and then progresses through the settlement of Jamestown, the French and Indian War, and terminates with the events immediately preceding the Revolutionary War, such as the various tax acts, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party.  It confers on the student the impression that nothing of importance was transpiring in Mother England during that time.  That England was asleep until one day George III wakes up and exclaims, “My God, I have colonies.  Let’s tax them!”

The reality is that there were many events that transpired in the mother country that profoundly influenced the development of the American colonies.  In 1707, for example, the union of England and Scotland meant that although the colonies started off as English they fought Britain for their independence.  The most notable and significant of those events was the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  Although the Glorious Revolution took place almost 100 years before America’s struggle for independence, it did more to bring about the American Revolution than any other event in America’s pre-independence history.  It could be argued that if the Glorious Revolution of 1688 did not occur or had the outcome been different the American Revolution probably would not have happened at all.  Additionally, the success of the thirteen colonies forming into one constitutional republic would not have been possible without the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The events surrounding the Glorious Revolution are so vital to the creation and development of the United States that in “Liberty Inherited: The untold story of America’s exceptionalism” I dedicate over a quarter of the book to the subject.  In summary, the road to revolution started when James II wanted to return England to the absolutism that the monarchies on the continent enjoyed.  In this system, the king has absolute power over everything in his realm including its people.  In England, this form of servitude was restricted by a series of covenants or contracts, including the Magna Carta (1215).  Upon seeing this threat to their liberty, the English rose up and through a series of events replaced James II with the Dutch ruler the Prince of Orange and his wife Mary.  But before the Prince of Orange could become William III, King of England, he had to accept what became known as the Declaration of Rights.

This declaration ensured that England would continue on its path to developing the tradition of limited government, of parliamentary supremacy, of personal freedom and of the common law.  The limitations placed on the monarchy by this document meant that the king could not act without the consent of the people as represented by parliament.  Additionally, it ensured the rights and liberties of individual Englishmen.   It guaranteed his right to bear arms, to a speedy trial, to due process, to be safe and secure in his life and property.  Like all good Englishmen, the Founding Fathers believed these to be their God-given rights and made sure that, in one form or another, they were included in the Bill of Rights.  The fact is that the framers of the constitution used the declaration, the system of limited government it established, and the rights it protected as the template for establishing the United States of America.

Additionally, I believe that if James II had not been removed from the throne of England the United States would not exist today, at least in its democratic form.  Once he assumed the throne James set out to reform the colonies along the same authoritarian format used by France and Spain.  His plan was to form the thirteen colonies into four captaincies.  This would be followed by the elimination of the colonial assemblies and an appointment of a Royal Governor with absolute authority and answerable only to the king.  At that time, many of the colonies were just beginning to enjoy representative democracy.  To eliminate it at this point would result in the colonies losing almost 100 years of the democratic experience they would need to establish the new nation.  Under those conditions, it is highly unlikely that the American Revolution would have been fought, much less won.  The events immediately following a victory by the Patriots would certainly have been different.  The probability of establishing the liberty based country we have today would certainly have been almost zero.  Instead, the liberty focused revolution would probably have resulted, not in a Washington, but in an American version of Napoleon, Santa Anna, Lenin, Stalin, or Chavez. 

Until a few years ago I, like most Americans, was ignorant of the Glorious Revolution.  This ignorance was not out of a lack of interest but a result of the way American history is taught.  This is not a partisan issue since both sides have benefited from keeping Americans uneducated.  Conservatives do so because it supports the myth that the establishment of this nation was miraculous.  Liberals do it because if the American people understood the origins of their liberties they would realize what a threat an ever-increasing and powerful government is to those liberties.  Therefore, much to the chagrin of our British cousins, Americans are not informed of the struggles that made this country possible.  This limited education has had dire consequences for our country.  Without this part of our history, we do not have a context to put the American experience into.  We lose the sense of what it means to be an American and clarity as what type of nation the United States was established to be.  We fail to recognize the implication of being an English colony had for the development of the United States.  More tragically we fail to recognize the dangers that threaten to eliminate our liberties forever.

As I explain in “Liberty Inherited: The untold story of America’s exceptionalism,” the founders of this extraordinary nation did not accidently stumble onto the system of government they established in 1789.  It was developed over several centuries and, while I still think that America is based on a miracle, I now realize that that miracle took place several hundred years earlier in a place called England.  In fact, the more I study the origins and history of our liberty the more I marvel at its existence.  The more I learn the more I appreciate the improbability of its survival.  This becomes strikingly clear especially when compared to what was going on in the rest of the world at the time, which, for the common man, was slavery and servitude.  This leads me to ponder a couple of questions:

If schools did not omit the tremendous struggles for liberty that were occurring in England at a time when the United States was nothing more than scattering of fledgling colonies, would we, as Americans, feel or think differently about our country?

Would we still be having the political debate that is currently dividing this nation?  

What do you think?  Leave your comments and thoughts below.

A Historical Argument for Capitalism Part 2: The Alternatives

In part 1, I covered the criticism that capitalism is a flawed system because it creates economic inequality within the society.  But the analogy that the capitalist “tide does not raise all boats equally” actually has two parts; one expressed and the other implied.  By not going beyond the initial critique of capitalism, the opponent of the system is silently implying that the alternative he is proposing will address this flaw.  In this article, I will examine the past performance of the alternative systems to determine if they can produce the implied result of creating wealth for all.

To do this, we need to understand that all the alternative economic systems that are being pursued have their roots in Marxism.  This in itself does not make it good or bad.  It only means that we have about a 150 year track record to assess.  To some it may seem unfair to make a determination on the effectiveness of these alternatives, much less compare them to a system that has had 700 years to develop, but in those 150 years, the Marxist-based philosophies of communism, fascism, Nazism, and socialism have left an indelible mark.  Furthermore, that mark has been extraordinarily consistent in the results that are produced.

Last century marked the high point of the experiment with Marxism.  By the early 1900s, progressives around the world were aggressively promoting their versions of the Marxist dream.  Russia was their first success and after the Revolution of 1917 full-blown communism was established.  This was followed by success in Italy, which established the fascist version in 1922.  The depression of the 1930s offered the critics of capitalism a crisis to exploit and a chance to spread the Marxist philosophy to other countries.  They successfully convinced the people of many countries that capitalism was flawed and that their system was better by being more scientific, more enlightened, more perfect.   Although their greatest success was in Germany, with its own version called Nazism, many other countries of the world fell for the claims and embraced or adapted Marxist alternatives, including France which adopted the milder socialism. 

These Marxist-based, big government systems initially had some extremely remarkable success.  This was especially true of Nazism, which created what was hailed as the “German Miracle.”  At the height of the depression, Germany had almost 11 million unemployed; by 1938, unemployment was almost nonexistent.  Similar, though less dramatic, results were being achieved in Communist Russia (renamed the Soviet Union) and Fascist Italy.  This brought worldwide acclaim, especially from celebrities, academics, and media elites.  Many, jumping onto the Marxist bandwagon, flocked to view for themselves the new “workers’ paradise and utopias.”  They eagerly claimed that man had created the ideal economic system and that the antiquated, flawed, and cold-hearted Capitalism was dead.  The enthusiasm was so widespread that even the stalwarts of free-market economics, Britain and the Unites States, incorporated aspects of Marxism into their economies.

The fact is that the admirers of Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler had been thoroughly duped.  These ruthless leaders understood that their admirers (or “useful idiots” as Lenin would call them) would see only what they wanted to see. This voluntary blindness meant that those praising these dictators refused to recognize that the immense economic achievements of communism, fascism, and Nazism had more to do with the tyrannical practices of the government than it did with their economic systems.  In Germany, for example, women and Jews were excluded from employment and were replaced by male, non-Jewish workers.  Furthermore, since they were prevented from working, women and Jews were excluded from the unemployment count.  Soviet Russia’s success relied heavily on the slave labor of its Gulag system, and Stalin’s collectivization and industrialization programs resulted in the death of tens of millions of people.  Although it did result in a better standard of living for those who survived the “Great Terror,” that prosperity was paid for with the blood of its victims.

Winston Churchill was one of the few who were not blinded by the charade.  From the very beginning, he wailed against and warned of the dangers these systems posed to the world.  He recognized what insiders, such as the architect of the Nazi economic plan, Dr. Hjalmer Schacht, knew; that the Marxist economies could not be sustained since they could not generate the required wealth.  Once all the current wealth had been redistributed the society would begin to descend economically.  The only way to stave off such an outcome was to find new sources of wealth.  This set these three countries, plus fascist Japan, upon a course of imperialism and exploitation that makes capitalist imperialism look benign.  Within a decade, Marxist-based imperialism would kill, enslave, exploit, and pillage more people than the British Empire ever did in its almost 400 year history.  By the end of fascist Italy in 1944, Nazi Germany and fascist Japan in 1945, and Soviet Russia in 1989 over 100 million individuals would lose their lives to the wars, starvation, deprivation, and genocide these economic-political philosophies caused.

With such a conclusion, one would think that Marxism would be discredited and discarded forever.  But its supporters were quick to point out that the problem with communism, fascism, and Nazism is that they took Marxism too far to the extreme.  What was needed was capitalism mixed with the perfect amount of Marxism.  This hybrid system, called socialism, would use capitalism to create wealth and Marxism to distribute it.  In other words, capitalism would create the “tide” and Marxism would ensure that the tide “raised all the boats equally.”  It was perfect since it incorporated the best of both systems while eliminating their flaws. 

After the deprivations of the Second World War, the democracies of Western Europe were eager to restart their war-torn economies and Socialism appeared to be the ideal system.  By the 1950s, every country in non-communist Europe, from Spain to Sweden and Italy to Britain was socialist to one degree or another.  Once again, the new system showed promise.  In quick time, the war savaged economies rebounded and had growth rates on par with the United States.  The prosperity of these countries was considered proof of what could be accomplished with Socialism. 

Unfortunately, once again, the system demonstrated that it was not the panacea it promised to be.  The main flaw was that if the perfect combination of capitalism and Marxism could be found it could not be maintained.  One of the by-products of socialism is that the people became dependent on the government.  As that dependency grows the people feel more and more entitled to government services.  This sense of entitlement results in people placing more demands on the government.  In turn, the government feels compelled to meet the demands of its citizens, and the perfect balance between capitalism and Marxism is lost.  Additionally, the dependency on government means that once the balance is lost it is almost impossible regain.  (This last point is painfully evidenced by the riots and civil disturbances that have recently rocked Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and, of course, Greece.)

Over time, this results in the decline of prosperity and societal wealth.  At a recent lecture Nobel Laureate and economist Robert Lucas points out that, for the first 70 years of the 20^th century, the economies of Western Europe grew at nearly the same rate as the United States.  That changed in the 1970s when the negative effects of socialism started to be felt.  During that time, Socialist Europe’s GDP per person dropped 30 percent, thus resulting in a 20 to 40 percent income gap between it and the United States.  This coincides with what Daniel Hannan writes in his book, The New Road to Serfdom.  In the book, he notes that Western (Socialist-based) Europe’s share of the World’s GDP shrunk from 36 percent in 1969 to 26 percent in 2009 and is projected to be only 15 percent in 2020.  During the same period, the United States share had remained steady at around 26 percent.   Additionally, in 1970 the unemployment rate of Western Europe was just above 2 percent while in the United States it was about 5 percent.  By the end of the decade the rates flipped and, for the rest of the century, Europe’s unemployment rate ranged from 2 to 3 percent higher than that of the United States. Today, several of the socialist economies of Europe are on the verge of total economic collapse.  Any attempt dial back the Marxist component of their economies is met with resistance by their government-dependent populations.  This opposition is often expressed with violent protests, civil disturbances and rioting that threatens to undermine the society as a whole.  

History shows us that the claims of the critics of capitalism are valid.  That capitalism does not benefit all members of its society equally.  But there is nothing in history that indicates that their Marxist alternatives offer anything better.  The 20^th century experiment with Marxism ended as a complete and catastrophic failure.  The death, destruction, and deprivation it created resulted in the century being the most bloody and brutal in the history of man.  Even the socialist hybrid, by slow draining of wealth, has proved itself more of a bane than a boon for the societies that embrace it.  So, while the “tide” from the sea of wealth that capitalism creates does not “raise all boats equally,” it does raise all boats.  Whereas, the alternatives, rather than being oceans of wealth, create landlocked seas that, once drained, leave all boats stuck in the mire and muck.

Is preserving life worth the loss of individual freedoms?

The debate on health care has once again raised one of the greatest criticisms against those with conservative principles; that they do not care about the welfare of others. That they will let people die so that they can go on living the privileged life they hold so dear. To a degree, I guess, this is correct. I mean the crusade to eliminate death at all cost has always bothered me. I have always felt that if people want to engage in an activity that threatens or shorten their lives then they should have the freedom to do so. But with this freedom comes the responsibility of recognizing the consequences of their actions and if that activity should lead to an early demise then so be it.


This may sound cruel and heartless but only if we limit ourselves to being worried about the people who are inhabiting the planet at this very moment. My concern is greater than that and it expands all of human existence. It comes from the understanding that for most of its history mankind’s story is one of slavery, bondage, and servitude. That those with power controlled the powerless to such a degree that they could, just by their word, sentence people to death. It also comes from the stark realization that it is when individual freedom is sacrificed that the value of life comes to have so little meaning.

Yes, there was Greece, or more accurately Athens, where democratic ideas first took root and then the constitutionally controlled Roman Republic. But it must be recognized that these were anomalies in the history of mankind. The majority of the world’s civilizations, such as those found in the bible, are more known for their records of oppression then they are for freedom (or in today’s terms: Human-rights). Even outside of the bible we see that human life had very little value. Slavery was common throughout the world up until the mid-1800s when the British Empire declared war on the “uncivilized” practice. The sacrifice of individuals for the greater good was seen in its extremity in ancient America where people where ritually killed in order to please an unhappy deity. On one such occasion in 1487 the Aztecs sacrificed 80,400 prisoners in a bloodbath that lasted non-stop for four days.

Of course the argument is that that was ancient history. We have evolved into a more enlightened and sophisticated people. In fact, the 20th century, during which those of us over ten were born, could be called the bloodiest in history. Totalitarian regimes killed hundreds of millions of people and enslaved whole societies. There are people still alive who witnessed the Nazi program that lead to the extermination of 12 million people and the tens of millions more who were to perish in Stalin’s “workers paradise.” The fact is that this will always be the result whenever the principles of individual freedom are sacrificed.

This is why I put “conservative” or, more accurately, American principles over life and welfare. I recognize that what was started in 1776 was an experiment unlike any other in history. True, it did get its roots from the great thinkers of the 18th century Scottish enlightenment (when most of the people of the world were still suffering under some form of bondage) but it took great Americans to put theory into practice. I also recognize that for those living today 234 years seem like an eternity but in reality it is a small sliver of man’s history. A small sliver that brightly shines in all the darkness that preceded it.

So you see, I do care about people’s lives. The difference is that I accept the fact that death is part of living and it cannot be outlawed. That people will make choices that put their lives at risk and they must be allowed to do so. By trying save everyone we run the risk of losing the principles that not only has preserved life but has also made the pursuit of life an alienable right! A right that says that we, as individuals, determine what we want to do with our lives. Finally, by putting the principle of individual freedom above life itself, I do not limit it to those who are fortunate enough to happen to be on the planet at this time. I am preserving it for my children and generations that are to follow. And that, my friends, is greater than life itself!