What a sad day in this
country when our capitalist system is
equated with evil. With the emergence of
the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the
Obama administration urging them on,
class warfare has pulled up an unwelcomed
chair. Surely I am not the only one
deeply disturbed by anarchists chanting
eat the rich. When asked to
comment on the protest, the criminally
unfunny Roseanne Barr joked (at least I
thought it was a joke) about bringing
back the guillotine. In her nostalgia for
the French Revolutions Reign of
Terror, she generously offered to reserve
beheadings for the worst of the
worst capitalists.
Whether it stems from ignorance or gross
misinformation, a large percentage of
these occupiers truly believe that
communism and socialism are superior to
our system of free market capitalism. I
know public education is one hot mess,
but what kind of malarkey are we teaching
these kids? Are they not taught about the
forced labor, starvation, oppression and
brutality under Stalins Russia,
Hitlers Germany, Communist China or
North Korea?
You can hardly blame them. We have ruined
the occupy generation with decades of
revisionist history, moral relativism,
no-fault divorces and a society where
everybody wins and anything goes. You
have to feel sorry for a culture that
believes Che Guevara, the sadistic, mass
murdering, narcissistic hit-man for Fidel
Castro, is a cult hero worthy of a
clothing line.
In startling contrast, I offer you the
miracle of capitalism as expressed in the
book The 5,000 Year Leap: In
Americas infancy, settlers used the
same primitive tools and farming methods
which had been around for 5,000 years.
Yet, because of the unique freedoms they
came to enjoy especially property
rights and the ability to trade freely
with one another in just a few
hundred years Americans were providing
food for the world and landing on the
moon.
Free market capitalism was not the
colonists first choice, but an
experiment tried after collectivism
failed miserably -- for the same reason
it always fails because some
people would rather sit around and let
others do the work. Our system has a
mechanism for dealing with the lazy
others prosper while the lazy do
not. In this country, industrious people
who wish to succeed will do so, if given
freedom and incentive (or as the Left
calls it, greed). In communist and
socialist countries without personal
freedoms people only do what they must in
order to avoid being punished by
governments that force people to work.
The invention of electricity,
automobiles, air travel, vaccines, air
conditioning, refrigeration and computers
did not happen by accident. They were
created by people motivated to improve
the quality of life for themselves and
their families. Besides making a profit,
they just so happened to vastly improve
millions of lives along the way. In our
capitalist system we all get richer and
our lives get easier when entrepreneurs
prosper.
Compared with the rest of the world,
Americans have few obstacles to
succeeding, with countless examples and
stories of rags to riches. Socialists and
others on the left insist that a
multitude of groups are under-privileged
and oppressed. While granting these
people victim status, they eliminate
their drive to succeed, creating
dependency and doing them a grave
injustice. Remember, big government types
have a vested interest in people
remaining dependent on the big government
programs they create.
Capitalists, on the other hand, want
everyone to succeed. Just because I get
wealthy does not mean that you cannot.
Leftists will tell you that corporations
only get rich by exploiting workers. Last
time I checked there were no forced labor
camps in this country. If you are unhappy
with your salary, you are free to
negotiate with your employer for whatever
amount you believe your skills are worth.
To increase your earning potential it is
your responsibility to obtain the
necessary skills. A grocery bagger at
Market Basket may believe his skills are
worth $20 an hour. While he may be a
superb bagger, in an hour he does not do
$20 worth of work.
Occupy protestors blame capitalism for
all the ills of mankind. They say the
system is corrupt and should be
destroyed. The cause of most corruption
is governments interference, not
the lack of it. Capitalism in its purest
form is inherently free of government
involvement. In a true free market,
individuals trade with each other to
their mutual benefit. When a company is
unethical or negligent and people find
out (they always do) the business suffers
and eventually goes bankrupt. When
government interferes and deems company A
too big to fail or exempts
company B from taxes in reward for
campaign contributions, then we have a
big problem.
Capitalism is also blamed for child
labor and sweatshops in
underdeveloped countries. While salaries
in places like Bangladesh or Indonesia
seem meager to us, lives are dramatically
improved simply by providing employment
in the first place, not to mention
allowing them to earn an above average
standard of living. To say these people
are poor is a gross understatement
Third World poor should not be confused
with American poor, who have air
conditioning, televisions and access to
healthcare. These are countries where the
alternative to working in so called
sweatshops may be starvation, child
prostitution and disease.
As a conservative, I am often accused of
supporting the rich. If that
describes inventors, business owners,
scientists, job creators, innovators and
entrepreneurs, then color me guilty. If,
along the way I encounter a poor person
who creates jobs and radically improves
the lives of his fellow man, Ill
gladly support him too.
Please join our next Tea Party meeting:
December 14 at 7 p.m.
VFW, 32 Park Street, N. Andover
Christine Morabito is a resident
of Haverhill and a member of the
Merrimack Valley Tea Party. You can email
her at christine.morabito@hotmail.com>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>