Volume 8, Issue 19
Progressives see government policy as black or white. Standardization of society provides equal outcome, and in their viewpoint, security. To produce this result requires total government control. They accept no other opinion and they accept no other facts. Friedman’s quote is taken out of context. He meant that ideas currently discussed are often enacted without careful consideration. He believed in eternal principles for the governance of mankind.
A true discussion of “ideas lying around” includes not only a full comprehensive review of both liberal and conservative theories of government policy but also societal economics, structural economic systems that impact a country’s cultural way of life. A nation’s identity is more than the mathematical equation of the equal distribution of wealth. A nation’s character is represented through government support for the way of life that allows families to choose personal morality in their pursuit of happiness.
America is definitively unique in the world societally by two measures. One, over 60% of the population declares to be Christian and believes in the power of prayer. Progressives argue that religion is simply a reflection of a past emotion that is now irrelevant. Two, small businesses (companies with fewer than 25 employees) in the U.S. economy employ 50% of the non-farm adult workforce. They contribute to 50% of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Further, these small businesses are the engines that create 80% of all new jobs, particularly after a recession. These entities, in fact, have been recognized by the initial federal rescue packages as essential and critical to stabilize the U.S. economy.
However, little is mentioned about the fact that 2/3 of these businesses (approximately 20 million) are family-owned. And further, 1/3 (or 10 million) are Christian family-owned businesses. These Christian businesses employ approximately 40-50 million people. Nowhere else in any country of the world do small and family-owned businesses make up such a large segment of the economic system either in GDP or per capita job creation.
Socialism restricts small and family-owned businesses. They are not large enough to meet the government dictates of standardization. If private ownership is allowed in a socialistic system, it can only be accommodated for large businesses. Small business provides the benefit of flexibility and innovation that makes large business more efficient. This creativity is incompatible with socialistic standardization.
It is this concept of freedom in the United States that combines limited government with a social conscience maintaining religious freedom and liberty. These have been the key ingredients of unleashing the potential of individuals and families to create the greatest economy the world has ever known.
Part and parcel of what makes the U.S. economic system homogenous in intent and purpose is that over 60% of the population, in accepting Christianity as a creed, approves of Christian family-owned businesses and small business in general. It has only been recently that atheists have found cause to reject the motives of Christian family-owned businesses.
The Declaration of Independence in 1776 was a proclamation of the rights of individual liberty in the choice of one’s pursuit of happiness and the family’s moral authority to determine their own values. Individual liberty meant that the option for non-conformity of any standardization of morality by the state was a personal choice.
In measuring the efficacy of political systems for economic outcomes, progressives tend to be selective in the facts and opinions to be reviewed. Bregman, in his analysis of the “ideas lying around,” highlights Thomas Piketty and his book Capital in the 21st Century. Piketty comes to the conclusion that capitalism fails in the equal distribution of wealth. Therefore, socialism is more successful in producing egalitarianism in society. Bregman, in advocating socialism, totally ignores without mention Amity Shlaes and her work Coolidge. She documents in her book, with great precision, how President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal government expansion may have, in fact, prolonged the depression.
Besides failing to treat the conservative viewpoint as even relevant in consideration of the facts at hand, progressives are incognizant of the concept of societal economics and its impact on the family. The term “individual thought” and therefore, individual morality, is an anathema to the liberal. Standardization of thought and morality is critical to the component structure of a totalitarian state. One lives for the state. In the security of the totalitarian state, one is deemed to be happy. To a totalitarian leader, there can be no flexibility of thought, and therefore, no security in the diversity of morality and the individual pursuit of happiness.
Milton Friedman did not just consider the “ideas lying around.” He believed in eternal principles found living in history.
In the 1980s, I had the undeserved privilege to be associated with Milton Friedman. He was singularly the most important intellectual economic influence in my life. His consistency in theory was confirming. Like Albert Einstein, his universal theories were all-encompassing. He believed individuals rightly desired different economic pursuits of life. Wealth was not the only factor for personal contentment in Friedman’s economic model. Experiencing life together with one’s family in the workplace was a most admirable objective. It not only fulfilled human desire. It was an efficient structure for job creation and productivity.
Dr. Friedman was a religious man. He practiced Judaism. On occasion, we discussed religious philosophy, he as a Jew, I as a Christian. We did agree on the laws of the Old Testament. In one session, he discussed that throughout history, at any given time under any system of government, approximately 10% of the people are in need of either food, clothing or shelter. As an economist, he reduced this finding to a mathematical equation. He then offered to me, “Do you think it’s a coincidence that in the laws of the Old Testament the primary tithe is 10%?”
He was not just a great economist. He was a great visionary of the character of mankind. In his advice to Ronald Reagan, he combined free enterprise economics with God’s purpose for a family’s right of freedom to choose their own destiny.
Milton Friedman often said that religious freedom is impossible without economic freedom. And economic freedom is impossible without religious freedom.
Equal distribution is therefore not the only measure of a sound economic system. Of course, the poor must be respected. An economic system absolutely must allow for all levels of economic structure to result in a decent living for a family. Taxes must be paid. The government has a role in society. Yet, to come to the conclusion that equal outcomes are the only goal for a government is impervious to the facts. Government restricting economic choice results in slavery to the system and loss for one’s own choice of destiny.
It’s not just government policy, as determined by liberals or conservatives, that matters. It is more important that government facilitates the freedom of one to choose his or her own destiny, as inherently felt spiritually, by the philosophy and doctrines of their religious beliefs.
In the early 1980s, I was counsel to Milton Friedman as he testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts was in the Chair. In questioning Dr. Friedman, Senator Kennedy attempted to direct the debate away from conclusions of the importance of free enterprise and towards the importance of more government control. Senator Kennedy was losing the debate badly. Finally, Dr. Friedman said, “Senator Kennedy, socialism has not worked in six thousand years of recorded history. Why won’t you give up on it?” Senator Kennedy rose from his chair and glared down at us. He answered, “Socialism hasn’t worked in six thousand years of recorded history because it didn’t have me to run it.” He then walked out on his own hearing.
An ironic ending to this Senate hearing. The Kennedy empire was started by Senator Kennedy’s grandfather, Patrick Joseph “P.J.” Kennedy, as a small family-owned business.
For the Great Reset, in response to the Great Reckoning, to deny the human dignity of free choice of destiny is to deny America’s destiny, in all this chaos, still “lying around.”
My name is Marc Nuttle and this is what I believe.
What do you believe?