A True Modern Miracle -- Capitalism

More essential reading from Kevin Williamson -- a caution to religious intellectuals to steer clear of matters of which they know little.

“As Marx pointed out,” Professor (Stuart) Smithers writes, “capital is full of contradictions. Capital not only creates wealth, value, and jobs — it also destroys wealth, value, and jobs. Those ‘wondrous technologies’ also manifest as wrathful deities, efficiently eliminating or reducing the need for labor.” The implicit economic hypothesis here is that producing a certain amount of goods more efficiently — in this case, with less labor — makes the world worse off. (“Why not use spoons”) The reality is the opposite, and that is not a matter of opinion, perspective, or ideology — it is a material reality, the denial of which is the intellectual equivalent of insisting on a geocentric or turtles-all-the-way-down model of the universe.

The increasingly global and specialized division of labor and the resulting chains of production — i.e., modern capitalism, the unprecedented worldwide project of voluntary human cooperation that is the unique defining feature of our time — is what cut the global poverty rate in half in 20 years*. It was not Buddhist mindfulness or Catholic homilies that did that. In the 200,000-year history of Homo sapiens, neither of those great religious traditions, nor anything else that human beings ever came up with, made a dent in the poverty rate. Capitalism did. 

... “The poor you will always have with you,” Jesus said, but in the capitalist world, that simply is not true — there is no poverty in the capitalist world comparable to poverty in the early 18th century, much less to the poverty that was nearly universal in Jesus’ time. Our people are clothed, fed, and housed, and the few shocking exceptions, as with the case of the neglected mentally ill, are shocking because they are exceptions — and those are not economic failures but political failures.

There's much more. Read it all here --

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/379954/catholics-against-capitalism-kevin-d-Williamson

*From an article in The Economist --

In 1990, 43% of the population of developing countries lived in extreme poverty (then defined as subsisting on $1 a day); the absolute number was 1.9 billion people. By 2000 the proportion was down to a third. By 2010 it was 21% (or 1.2 billion; the poverty line was then $1.25, the average of the 15 poorest countries’ own poverty lines in 2005 prices, adjusted for differences in purchasing power). The global poverty rate had been cut in half in 20 years.

For a longer term perspective; a true "hockey stick" graph --

Heroic Courage

Kevin Williamson discusses the case of Miss Pennsylvania USA, Valerie Gatto, who was conceived following the rape of her mother. In the article, Williamson offers a startling personal revelation.

There are many kinds of courage in the world, of which a mother’s courage is a very specific and demanding variety. Rape is a special kind of cruelty in that it transforms the life-giving act into an act of torture. To suffer the crime and yet cherish the life is an act of transcendence, a perfection of generosity rarely if ever equaled by the merely human.

My own view is that those in the pro-life camp who wish to carve out legal exceptions for cases of rape are undermining their own position. If our desire is to protect the lives of the innocent unborn, then the circumstances of their conception, no matter how horrible, cannot be allowed to overrule their standing as members of the human family. But that is not to say that the circumstances do not matter. We should be fully cognizant of exactly what our position implies, and of the extraordinary burden such a standard would impose on women who have suffered a particularly heinous kind of assault.

But set aside, for the moment, the question of the legal status of abortion. The fact is that abortion is at the moment legal and widely available. Miss Gatto was born in 1989, well into the age of the universal abortion license. Her mother could have terminated her pregnancy easily, and the matter could have remained entirely private. She chose to do otherwise, and then took the additional step of taking on the burdens and difficulties of raising the child rather than giving her to adoptive parents. This is by no means to denigrate the decisions of women who do give up their children for adoption — I myself am grateful that such a decision was made in my own case, and that abortion remained illegal in Texas in 1972. I have no idea whether my biological mother, whom I have not met, would have been tempted by the availability of legal abortion; still, I object to the notion that my own life should be optional under the law. Miss Gatto’s mother must have known that she was not choosing an easy road, even with the support and assistance of her parents.

The remarkable fact is that a not insignificant number of women who become pregnant through rape do not choose to terminate their pregnancies, deciding instead to forgo adding to the sum of violence in the world, even though a portion of it has been cruelly visited upon their own persons. In a culture that treats abortion as barely if at all distinguishable from mere contraception, that is heroic. And it is heroic regardless of our specific political differences on the issue of the legal standing of abortion, important — fundamentally important — as that question is.

It should be noted that Williamson's position on rape and abortion mirrors that of Richard Mourdock, who, though heavily favored, lost the 2012 Indiana race for the U.S. Senate because he made the comment, “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that’s something God intended to happen.” It's unclear whether Mourdock would have lost had he not foolishly associated rape with God's will. Had he presented the case as eloquently as Williamson does (in the first two excerpted paragraphs above), the election result may have been different.

Or not. The subject of rape and abortion is a third rail for pro-life politicians. Republicans would probably do well to heed Ann Coulter's advice --

I...think all Republican candidates should be trained with shock collars and cattle prods to automatically respond, upon hearing some combination of the words "abortion," "rape" and "incest": "Yes, of course there should be exceptions in the case of rape or incest, and I also support giving rapists the death penalty, unlike my Democratic opponent, who wants to give rapists the right to vote. Now, back to what I was saying about Obamacare ..."

One more thing -- Given the current cultural mood, Valerie Gatto has no chance to win the 2014 Miss USA contest.

Praise The Swiftboaters

Jonah Goldberg on the Bergdahl affair, focusing on how it was (mis)managed by the White House.

"This president, we are constantly told, gets his information about scandals in his own administration the same way we do: from the newspapers. This raises an interesting question: Why have an office in the White House? Apparently you can do this job from anywhere.

Maybe Obama needs to get a subscription to Rolling Stone? If he’d read the story from two years ago, he’d at least know that Bergdahl’s case was like Norwegian weather in September: a lot of gray. In fairness, I don’t want the president of the United States wasting his time reading that rag. But in the old days, someone in the White House would have read up on the guy. A pro would have said, “Hey, let’s type Bowe Bergdahl into the Google machine and hit the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button!” If they’d done that, they would have at least known not to say Bergdahl was captured on the “battlefield” and that he had served “with honor and distinction.” On why this was outrageous see Ralph Peters. On why this was politically stupid, see the entry in the dictionary for "Duh".

This White House went a different way. They sent Susan Rice — Susan Rice! — out on the Sunday shows to beclown herself again. This woman was going to be secretary of state until she went out on the Sunday shows and read Ben Rhodes’s talking points verbatim. Apparently that’s sort of her thing. She reads what the hacks above — or below — give her. It’s like she’s the Ron Burgundy of foreign policy. But you’d think this time around she’d go over with her staff exactly what they know — and don’t know. You’d think she’d be like Roy Scheider in Jaws 2 telling the town council, “As God is my witness, I’m not going through that Hell again.” Instead she’s like Mikey from the Life cereal commercials and the White House political hacks are like the other kids. “Give these talking points to Susie, she’ll say anything.”

And now, to cover their mistakes, these guys are complaining anonymously to Chuck Todd that Bergdahl is being “swiftboated” by his former comrades. My friend Iowahawk called this one perfectly. Seriously, what’s the point of putting the hacks in charge if they can’t even hack right?

It’s amazing how good liberals are at creating terms that attack motives in order to deflect inconvenient facts. I have my problem with the uses and abuses of “McCarthyism,” “witch hunts,” “climate deniers,” “reality-based community” etc. But “swiftboating” really stands out as slimy piece of business. What the Swiftboat vets did was tell the truth as they saw it about events they had firsthand experience with. Some of their recollections may have fallen short of accurate, but many were completely accurate. I guarantee you not one in a hundred people who throw the term “swiftboating” around can tell you exactly what the vets did wrong.

Well, I take that back. They can tell you what they did wrong: They created problems for the Democrats. What they can’t tell you was what the vets said that was inaccurate — because they don’t care."

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/379771/release-white-house-hacks-jonah-Goldberg

Jonah likes making allusions to movies. Well, I have one. Obama's crusade to close Gitmo is reminiscent of an EPA official (played by) William Atherton ordering the shut down of the ingenious and effective ghost containment system fabricated by "Ghostbusters" (played by) Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. Predictably, when the system is turned off, all hell breaks loose as the evil spirits are released and wreak havoc on New York City. Prepare for a similar effect as Gitmo is emptied. Who ya gonna call then?

"Ghostbusters" spot-on portrayal of the EPA as a rigid, misguided adversary of a beneficial private enterprise helped earn it the number 10 spot on National Review's list of 25 top conservative movies (2/23/2009).

Culture Clash

The best informed and most astute reading of the Bowe Bergdahl affair comes from retired Army Colonel Ralph Peters. Excerpted at length below.

"In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor (Susan Rice), on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.

But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)

...(Obama) has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl’s release — as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden’s death was trumpeted.
Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military. The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms. This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.

But compassion, please! The president and all the president’s men and women are not alone. Our media elite — where it’s a rare bird who bothered to serve in uniform — instantly became experts on military justice. Of earnest mien and blithe assumption, one talking head after another announced that “we always try to rescue our troops, even deserters.”

Uh, no. “Save the deserter” is a recent battle cry of the politically indoctrinated brass. For much of our history, we did make some efforts to track down deserters in wartime. Then we shot or hanged them. Or, if we were in good spirits, we merely used a branding iron to burn a large D into their cheeks or foreheads. Even as we grew more enlightened, desertion brought serious time in a military prison. At hard labor.

This is a fundamental culture clash. Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World. (Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle — the sacred trust Bergdahl violated.)

President Obama did this to himself (and to Bergdahl). This beautifully educated man, who never tires of letting us know how much smarter he is than the rest of us, never stopped to consider that our troops and their families might have been offended by their commander-in-chief staging a love-fest at the White House to celebrate trading five top terrorists for one deserter and featuring not the families of those soldiers (at least six of them) who died in the efforts to find and free Bergdahl, but, instead, giving a starring role on the international stage to Pa Taliban, parent of a deserter and a creature of dubious sympathies (that beard on pops ain’t a tribute to ZZ Top). How do you say “outrageous insult to our vets” in Pashto?

Nor, during the recent VA scandal, had the president troubled himself to host the families of survivors of those vets who died awaiting care. No, the warmest attention our president has ever paid to a “military family” was to Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl.

(I will refrain from criticism of the bumptious attempts to cool the flames of this political conflagration by Secretary Hagel: I never pick on the weak.)"

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/379481/why-team-obama-was-blindsided-bergdahl-backlash-ralph-peters

Good vs. Bad Inequality

In today's WSJ, John Steele Gordon explains the true reason for periodic large disparities in wealth and income between the rich and the relatively less so, and why those disparities are usually indicative of progress and prosperity.

The great growth of fortunes in recent decades is not a sinister development. Instead it is simply the inevitable result of an extraordinary technological innovation, the microprocessor, which Intel brought to market in 1971. Seven of the 10 largest fortunes in America today were built on this technology, as have been countless smaller ones. These new fortunes unavoidably result in wealth being more concentrated at the top.
But no one is poorer because Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, et al., are so much richer. These new fortunes came into existence only because the public wanted the products and services—and lower prices—that the microprocessor made possible. Anyone who has found his way home thanks to a GPS device or has contacted a child thanks to a cellphone appreciates the awesome power of the microprocessor. All of our lives have been enhanced and enriched by the technology.
This sort of social transformation has happened many times before. Whenever a new technology comes along that greatly reduces the cost of a fundamental input to the economy, or makes possible what had previously been impossible, there has always been a flowering of great new fortunes—often far larger than those that came before. The technology opens up many new economic niches, and entrepreneurs rush to take advantage of the new opportunities.

 

Steele lists some of the other breakthrough technologies throughout history that have immeasurably improved the living standards of the general public while concurrently producing a new class of fabulously wealthy individuals - the full-rigged ship, the steam engine, railroads, Edwin Drake's oil drilling technique and the Bessemer converter for steel production. Steele warns that attempts to promote economic "equality" by punishing success will ultimately diminish overall prosperity.

The French economist Thomas Piketty, in his new book "Capital in the 21st Century," calls for an 80% tax on incomes over $250,000 and a 2% annual tax on net worth in order to prevent an excessive concentration of wealth.
That is a monumentally bad idea.

...Any attempt to tax away new fortunes in the name of preventing inequality is certain to have adverse effects on further technology creation and niche exploitation by entrepreneurs—and harm job creation as a result. The reason is one of the laws of economics: Potential reward must equal the risk or the risk won't be taken.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/john-steele-gordon-the-little-miracle-spurring-inequality-1401751381?mod=Opinion_newsreel_3

There's the "good inequality" described by Steele, that which is produced by entrepreneurs in the private sector and is a byproduct of rapid economic growth and job creation. There's also "bad inequality", that which comes about by government obstruction of economic growth. The latter category is exemplified by the Obama administration's recent announcement of new carbon emission rules.

From an editorial in today's WSJ --

The EPA claims to be targeting "polluters," but the government is essentially creating an artificial scarcity in carbon energy. Scarcities mean higher prices, which will hit the poor far harder than they will the anticarbon crusaders who live in Pacific Heights. The lowest 10% of earners pay three times as much as a share of their income for electricity compared to the middle class. If you want more inequality, this is an ideal way to ensure it.

And the payoff for this government sanctioned impoverishment?

...The irony is that all the damage will do nothing for climate change. Based on the EPA's own carbon accounting, shutting down every coal-fired power plant tomorrow and replacing them with zero-carbon sources would reduce the Earth's temperature by about one-twentieth of a degree Fahrenheit in a hundred years.

Danger And Dishonor

President Obama has gone ahead and released five of the most notorious and dangerous al-Qaeda jihadists from Guantanamo prison in exchange for U.S. army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl who had been held captive in Afghanistan for five years. Bergdahl is a man who reportedly walked off his post - possibly going AWOL, the facts aren't clear - before being picked up by the Taliban. Such a deal!

Bret Stephens (WSJ) and Rich Lowry (National Review) note that some of Bergdahl's former colleagues aren't all that thrilled with his release.

Stephens

I spoke Monday with a highly decorated former Special Forces operator and asked what he thought about Bowe Bergdahl, the Army sergeant who was released over the weekend after five years of Taliban captivity in exchange for five hard cases out of Gitmo.
The former operator suggested a firing squad might be appropriate.

Lowry

Afghan vet Nathan Bradley Bethea participated in the search for him. In a powerful piece for The Daily Beast, he writes that “Bergdahl was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.”

At least six soldiers were killed looking for Bergdahl who had expressed his pre-captivity attitude in e-mails to his parents,

the US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at,

I am sorry for everything here (Afghanistan). These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.

I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. … I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.

Berdahl's father weighed in with this lovely sentiment on Twitter (before he removed it):

I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen! (sic).

Andrew McCarthy itemizes the bill paid for Bergdahl's release:

(The released detainees) include Mullah Mohammed Fazl, perhaps the Taliban’s senior warrior (its “army chief of staff”) and a longtime al-Qaeda ally; Mullah Norullah Noori, a senior military commander who fought side-by-side with al-Qaeda; Abdul Haq Wasiq, a senior Taliban intelligence official who helped train al-Qaeda and fought with it against U.S. forces after 9/11; Khairullah Khairkhwa, a Taliban governor and al-Qaeda trainer who brokered an alliance with Iran to collaborate against American-led forces; and Mohammed Nabi, who worked with the Haqqani Network and al-Qaeda to coordinate attacks against American and coalition forces.

The swap is great for the released terrorists, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Bowe Bergdahl. Taliban leader Mullah Omar is happy, saying the release of his troops is a "great victory". Obama is happy too. He managed to free a like-minded American soldier wishing his country harm and five highly trained and experienced enemy soldiers willing to do his country harm. Stephens:

Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice states: "Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct."

But wait: We are not "in time of war." We are in Time of Obama.

In Time of Obama, dereliction of duty is heroism, releasing mass murderers with American blood on their hands is a good way to start a peace process, negotiating with terrorists is not negotiating with terrorists, and exchanging senior Taliban commanders for a lone American soldier is not an incentive to take other Americans hostage but rather proof that America brings its people home.

In Time of Obama, we may get the facts about the circumstances of Sgt. Bergdahl's disappearance and captivity. But first his parents are going to get an invitation to the White House so Mr. Obama can milk the occasion for his own political purposes.

...In Time of Obama it has become impossible to credit claims by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and National Security Adviser Susan Rice that a prisoner exchange had to be made because Sgt. Bergdahl was in dangerously declining health.

This assertion was instantly contradicted by eyewitness accounts that the sergeant was "in good condition" when he was released by his captors. "Freed U.S. soldier Bowe Berghdal developed a love for Afghan green tea, taught his captors badminton, and even celebrated Christmas and Easter with the hardline Islamists," the AFP reported Sunday, citing a Pakistani militant commander.

In Time of Obama, the testimony of the Pakistani militants regarding Sgt. Bergdahl's health is at least as credible as anything Susan Rice has to say, on any subject, on any Sunday talk show.

Most importantly, for Obama, that scourge of humanity known as Guantanamo is that much closer to being emptied. Lowry assails the administration's twisted thinking:

“I will continue to push to close Gitmo,” President Obama said in his West Point speech last week, “because American values and legal traditions do not permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders.” Pressed on the Gitmo releases, Susan Rice said Sunday that “the existence of Guantanamo Bay is itself a detriment to our national security.” By this logic, trading terrorists for American captives, so long as those terrorists come from Gitmo, makes us safer.

Our willingness to negotiate with terrorists won't go unnoticed warns Rep. Mike Rogers.

The No. 1 way that al-Qaeda raises money is by ransom – kidnapping and ransom. We have now set a price. If you negotiate here, you’ve sent a message to every al-Qaeda group in the world – by the way, some who are holding U.S. hostages today – that there is some value now in that hostage in a way that they didn’t have before. That is dangerous.

Expect 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed to be at the top of al-Qaeda's shopping list.

And, another day, another broken law. Obama managed that by releasing prisoners from Guantanamo without consulting with Congress.

Obama claims that "This is how wars end in the twenty-first century", with the bad guys winning. What ever happened to, “Here’s my strategy on the Cold (or any) War: We win; they lose.”?

Irreplaceable

Kevin Williamson with a paean to National Review. Amen.

Even in those few happy places where conservatives can prevail politically, the Left owns the culture. The mighty Lubbock Avalanche-Journal had wall-to-wall coverage of Friday-night lights, but its national and international news came mostly from the Associated Press, as is the case for most U.S. daily newspapers, which means some of the worst economics writing and biased political reporting you can find. At my high school, American history began with the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, reached its apex with the New Deal, and ended with Watergate. Capitalism was unmitigated greed, Reagan was the Antichrist, and what appeared to the unenlightened to be an age of possibility and prosperity was in fact the prelude to environmental apocalypse and the virtual enslavement of the American worker. And if that was the witches’ brew of lies and nonsense I was being dunked in daily in Lubbock, who knows what they were enduring in some comparatively liberal metropolis such as Albuquerque?

But somewhere out there on the barren Llano Estacado was a quiet hero, whose identity still is unknown to me, who changed my life in a profound way — by ensuring that National Review was available at my library. This was in the dark days before the Internet and before National Review Online, when most of the information and insight you needed was still on paper. Woody Allen lampooned National Review in one of his films by placing the magazine in the pornography section of a Manhattan newsstand, but the newsstand, and all of the choices that it offers, would have been a luxury in my part of the world. We were still dependent on the good graces of librarians, who are not, as you may have heard, particularly sympathetic to conservatives. Years later, Rush Limbaugh would capture the experience precisely describing his own first encounter with National Review: It was like stumbling across the in-house newsletter of some sort of secret society dedicated to cultivating the intellectual institutions that support a free, prosperous, and secure society with wit and good cheer and very little inclination to suffer fools gladly. It was like meeting someone for the first time and knowing you were going to be lifelong friends.

...National Review was a gift, and, like many gifts, it carried with it implicit reciprocity, the obligation to live up to the conversation. The fruits of that labor were very sweet: My professors, and, later, my editors at the various newspapers where I worked, all knew what the New York Times had to say about income inequality; I knew what the New York Times had to say about income inequality, too — and I knew why it was wrong.