The Land of Plenty--Thanks to Capitalism

Americans celebrated the Fourth of July this past Monday.  For European readers (apparently, I get between two or three French readers every day--merci!)--or people living in progressive enclaves in the cities or up north--allow me to explain how our Independence Day celebrations work:

- Tons of food:  As will come as no surprise, Americans love to eat.  What better way to celebrate the bounteous blessings of freedom than by consuming copious amounts of barbecue (pulled pork, of course, preferably mustard- or vinegar-based)?

- Fireworks:  We like to blow stuff up (not the way radical Muslims do--we do it for fun, or to protect the weak and defenseless).  Note that we are the land of glam metal and Kid Rock.  Again, what better way to celebrate prosperity than by exploding lights in the sky, all choreographed to the strains of "Rock Me Like a Hurricane"?

- Family:  Despite the rapid growth of children born out of wedlock, and increased rates of co-habitation (and decreased rates of marriage), we Americans still honor the importance of family as the building block of any productive society.  Families also instill the values of a nation, and are the incubators of the kind of self-government and personal self-control that are the cornerstones of a free people and a free republic.

There are, of course, many other reasons to love the Fourth of July--great weather, awesome parades, bald eagles--but what makes all of this celebrating possible?  How is it that even the least-fortunate Americans are able to enjoy a hot dog and fireworks on the Fourth?

 

Sure, it's not South Carolina pulled-pork, but I'd eat it.

(Source:  http://www.public-domain-image.com/free-images/food-and-drink/barbecue-grilling-food/porterhouse-steaks-grilling-barbecue-grills-meat)

The answer is the prosperity made possible by our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  The Declaration clearly sets forth the right of all humans to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."  The "pursuit of Happiness" is no idle phrase or call to hedonism; rather, it enshrines the freedom of any person to pursue that life which is most fulfilling to him, so long as he does not infringe upon the liberty of other free men.

The Constitution--which Abraham Lincoln called the "frame of silver" around the "apple of gold" of the Declaration--provides the legal and institutional framework to safeguard liberty.  The Constitution is also, as free-market economist Milton Friedman once said, the "rules" of the economic "game."  Not only does it protect the rights of individuals against the power of the state; it also spells out how individuals can pursue happiness by limiting the government's ability to jury-rig the economy in support of favored or well-connected interests (at least, that's how it's supposed to work).

The Constitution establishes an incredibly flexible economic framework that strictly limits congressional power to a few areas.  In other words, the Constitution enshrines a (lightly regulated) free market capitalist system.

Capitalism--when supported by a pro-growth government, protected by rule of law and the courts, and sustained by a free and responsible people--has done more to improve human life than any other economic or political system ever devised.  When China adopted free market reforms in the 1980s, it transformed from a massive, impoverished nation that experienced widespread famine and low productivity throughout the Maoist years into an economic powerhouse.

(China's continued reliance on corporatist schemes and non-representative authoritarian rule, however, has finally caught up with it; China will either become more free politically, or more repressive and, therefore, less productive; my bet is on the latter.)

 "The 'pursuit of Happiness' is no idle phrase... rather, it enshrines the freedom of any person to pursue that life which is most fulfilling to him."

Capitalism works so well that we occasionally seem to enjoy too much prosperity.  Throughout history, people have struggled against hunger.  Now, people in the Western world struggle to lose weight.  We often see the worst cases of obesity among the poorest members of society.  What kind of system creates so much food, at such a low cost, that it actually makes poor people fat?

For that matter, capitalism has created so much wealth, we can now afford to pay more money for food that is produced less efficiently.  The very hipster-elites that decry capitalism and "systems of oppression" at Bernie Sanders rallies can only enjoy their trust-funded non-GMO, organic, pesticide-free kale salads because capitalism gives people the ability to choose to eat these foods (for what it's worth, I'm on an all-GMO, factory-farm only diet).

Imagine transporting an American from 1933--during the Great Depression, and not even 100 years ago--to 2016.  He would be dumbfounded to find poor Americans struggling with fatty diets, and skeptical to witness the spiritual descendants of the New Dealers pushing for limits on the size of Coke bottles he could purchase.  He would also be blown away by the massive diversity of goods and services available (like the two-liter bottle of Coke).

Capitalism is not perfect.  It depends upon a fair and predictable legal system, and a people committed to self-control and self-government.  If anything, capitalism creates so much luxury that people become unwilling to do the work necessary to maintain their comfortable lifestyles.  It also creates enough wealth to shield its beneficiaries from poor decisions and bad moral choices, the costs of which are shifted to responsible citizens.

Nevertheless, capitalism is vastly preferable to the alternatives, and for every layabout there are dozens of eager upstarts ready to try something new.  To continue to enjoy its fruits, we must recommit ourselves to personal self-control, self-government, and moral instruction.  Otherwise, we'll party ourselves into perdition, all the way voting ourselves "free" goodies from the public treasury, because the prosperity we've earned will been seen as a "right," not a privilege.

Let's avoid this fate.  Let's exercise a little self-control--and demand it of our elected officials, too.  Then let's eliminate confusing, onerous regulations and once again unleash the creative potential of 330 million Americans.  That's a recipe for long-term happiness.

American Values, American Nationalism

I've been teaching American history and government for six years (and continuously since 2011).  Part of my regular teaching duties includes US Government, a standard survey course that covers the Constitution, federalism, the three branches of the federal government, and other topics of interest.  It's a simple, semester-long course that, while not terribly novel, is absolutely essential.

Before we even read the Preamble to the Constitution, though, I introduce the students to the idea of America.  This lesson plan is not a unique creation; it comes from the textbook Government By the People by David Magleby and Paul Light, which I used to use for the course (I don't know Magleby and Light's political leanings, but the book is a fairly straightforward and useful primer on the mechanics of US government).  I follow the authors' course by starting with what they call the "Five Core Values" of America, which are as follows:

1.) Individualism

2.) Popular Sovereignty

3.) Equality of Opportunity

4.) Freedom of Religion

5.) Economic Liberty

Why do I start each semester in this fashion?  I've found that many Americans--and not just teenagers and young adults--aren't exactly sure what makes American special.  Sure, many can point to our military dominance and our economic clout, but during a time when both appear to be losing ground to other nations, we can't solely make our case on those grounds.

Others might point to our superior educational system, our extensive infrastructure, or our superior health.  The United States certainly is blessed with these qualities, but study after study shows that we're falling behind the rest of the world academically, and everyday experience (especially here in South Carolina) demonstrates that our roads are crumbling.  And don't get me started on the mess that is the Affordable Care Act.

So if we can't rest our claims for American greatness on these grounds--or, if we can only hope to do so temporarily--what really does make the United States special?  Is American exceptionalism only truly relatively, as President Obama implied in April 2009 when he proclaimed, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism"?

The answer--as you've probably guessed--are the very values listed above, the values enshrined in our founding documents, in our political culture, and in our hearts.  The powerful but fragile legacy of liberty handed down from English common law, these values still energize the United States.

What makes the United States unique, too, is that these values form the basis of our sense of nationhood.  No other nation--at least, not prior to the declaration of the United States in 1776--can claim a similar basis.

The term "nation" itself refers to a specific tribal or ethnic affiliation based on common blood, and usually linked to a specific (if often ill-defined) bit of soil.  The nation-states of modern Europe followed this course; for example, French kings over centuries gradually created a "French" national identity, one that slowly subsumed other ethnic and regional identities (Normans, Burgundians, etc.), into a single, (largely Parisian) French culture and nation.

The United States, on the other hand, is not a nation built on ties of blood and soil (although we do owe a huge debt of gratitude to the heritage of Anglo-Saxon political culture for our institutions), but, rather, founded on ideas, ideas that anyone can adopt.

We believe, further, that these ideals are universal, and are not, ultimately, specific to our place and time.  Sure, some countries might lack the institutional stability and political culture to sustain a constitutional republic like ours, but, ultimately, we believe that any people, anywhere in the world, can come to adopt our American values.

The concept of American nationhood, therefore, is flexible and adaptive to many contexts, but is ultimately grounded in firm absolutes.  Often these values butt up against one another, or there is disagreement about their importance.  When, for example, does the will of the individual become so out-sized that it threatens, say, popular sovereignty, or freedom of religion?

The Constitution was designed to adjudicate these disputes fairly and transparently--with a Supreme Court acting in good faith and in accord with the Constitution--to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority, and to protect the majority from the tyranny of minority special interest groups.

In this regard, perhaps, American nationalism has faltered.  The consistent undermining of our carefully balanced constitutional order--the centralization of federal power, the aggrandizement of the executive and judiciary, the delegation of legislative powers to the federal bureaucracy, the equivocation of Congress--has served to damage our national identity and our national values, turning the five core values above into distorted perversions of their proper forms.

To wit:

1.) Individualism--the protection of the individual's rights--has become a grotesque, licentious individualism without any consequences, one that expects the state to pick up the tab for bad decisions, which can no longer be deemed "bad."  Alternatively, actual constitutional rights are trampled upon in the name of exorcising "hate speech."

2.) Popular sovereignty--authority flowing upward from the people--has been flipped on its head, becoming, instead, a top-down sovereignty of the enlightened technocrats and un-elected government bureaucrats.

3.) Equality of opportunity--an equality that recognizes that everyone is different but enjoys the same legal and constitutional safeguards to fail and to succeed--morphs into equality of outcome, a radical form of egalitarianism that brought us the worst excesses of the French and the Russian Revolutions, and ultimately breeds authoritarianism and demagoguery.

4.) Freedom of religion--the most important of our constitutional rights, as it rests both at the foundation of our republic and of our very souls, the freedom of conscious itself--now becomes a vague "freedom of worship," which is really no freedom at all.  Religious observation is to be a strictly private affair, one (impossibly) divorced from our public lives.

5.) Economic liberty--the freedom to spend and earn our money as we please, with a token amount paid in taxes to support the infrastructure we all use and to maintain the military and police that protect our freedoms abroad and domestically--becomes excessive economic regulation, with many potential economic opportunities simply regulated out of existence.  Rather than laws forming in response to new technologies or ideas, regulations are crafted to protect existing firms and and well-connected special interests.

With such a distorted view of our national values and our rights--stemming, in many cases, from ignorance of them--many Americans find it difficult to articulate what exactly it means to be an American.  In this light, problems like illegal (and, in some cases, excessive legal) immigration take on a whole new tenor:  how can we expect foreign migrants to adopt our values--to become part of the American nation--if we ourselves cannot articulate what American nationhood and values are?

The solution starts with proper education and a realignment of our thought toward the proper definitions and forms of our values.  As Margaret Thatcher said, "Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."  Understanding our national philosophy--our "Five Core American Values"--will allow us to rediscover our exceptional nationhood.