The statist Uniparty and its media are in a blind panic about defaulting on the national debt. Maybe we shouldn’t believe them that defaulting on the debt would be such an unmitigated catastrophe. It might be for THEM. Why? Because they rely on the idea of fiat currency — “funny money” — that can be “created” at will, so they can spend in literally unlimited amounts. On a gold standard, which the U.S. once had, such unconscionable debt was not possible. Only once the U.S. Federal Reserve and the government freed itself from any market-based, objective standard in the 20th Century did politicians get free rein to spend like there’s no tomorrow.
I’m not saying there will be no economic repercussions if the debt is “defaulted” on tomorrow. I am saying we don’t honestly know for sure. If there are problems, the blame would be on the politicians for turning our currency into fiat currency in the first place, and unhinging money from any kind of market-based, objective standard. When you pursue such a policy, sooner or later you have to pay the consequences.
It might be a GOOD thing if the federal government lost all fiscal credibility officially. It might mean we’d have to do what will soon have to be done anyway — start over.
As Joseph Solis-Mullen wrote at the economics think tank Mises Institute,
“The good news, at least for ordinary Americans, is that we personally just don’t hold very much of the debt. Fully two-thirds is held between the Fed, various other US government entities, and foreign governments. A US government default wouldn’t be the first time the latter have taken a haircut (Alexander Hamilton and Richard Nixon both undertook such necessary actions), and our own government has spent the money so poorly that no coherent argument can be made that justifies paying them back. They would just continue in their profligate ways. As for Wall Street, they’ve lived on corporate welfare long enough to justify their taking a one-time bath.
Apart from not paying perpetual interest on ever-increasing debt, another benefit of default, rarely mentioned but arguably one of the most important from the antiwar libertarian perspective, is that it would essentially end Washington’s ability to practice unbridled military Keynesianism. Slapping pointless wars and military buildups on the credit card has become Congress’s standard operating procedure. It is not a coincidence that our annual trillion-dollar deficits are approximately equal to the trillion dollars dumped into the the military-industrial complex black hole each year.”
When you hear the shrieking of the people who fear “defaulting” on the national debt, remember that the government defaulted on economics the minute it went outside the boundaries of the Constitution and unhinged us from a gold standard. The people with the most to lose are the least deserving.
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It Is Important to Give Back!” When I hear someone espouse this concept, my first thought is: “So, what did you take or borrow that did not belong to you? Your neighbor’s lawn mower?”
Of course, that is not what “giving back” means today. It means that if you are successful, you owe somebody something. But what do you owe, whom do you owe it to, and why? Often the answer is: “You should give back to society.” Remember, though, that society is a collection of individuals, 99.99999 percent of whom have nothing to do with you.
So, let’s start with people who may have helped you in life. For example, a teacher may have encouraged you to learn or given you wonderful career advice. You certainly owe that person recognition and thanks, though not your life savings. Your teacher did not create the wealth that you earned. The education or career advice that your teacher gave you may have been a piece of the puzzle, but it was not the full reason for your success. If it were, every student who received the same advice and encouragement would have reached the same level of success. You succeeded in the end because of your efforts, your hard work, and your commitment to productivity.
Perhaps you had a business and employed competent, hard-working people, so you are led to believe that you owe them something. Yet, the relationship was one that involved a trade. Your employees worked, and, ideally, you treated them fairly with competitive pay, earned bonuses or stock options, verbal recognition, and other awards. If you cheated them, say on salary, then you should give back what you owe them, but otherwise, it was your leadership, your willingness to take risks and make investments, and your reputation that allowed the business to thrive.
What about payback to those who produced the goods and services you bought (e.g., Apple, Amazon)? You paid them by buying what they sold, and, perhaps, by recommending their product.
What about giving to your community in the form of donations to parks, scholarships for students, or financial contributions in emergencies, such as storms or floods? This is wonderful if you can afford it. Such actions show generosity and create good will, but they are not the payment of a debt. Framing your generosity as “giving back” implies that you are completing your part of a pre-arranged deal between partners in which you were given something for which you must pay. But this is an inaccurate representation of the arrangement.
The implicit motive of the “payback concept” is to help you reduce your feelings of guilt for allegedly unearned personal achievement and pride. But why would you feel such guilt? This guilt arises if you accept the premise that you did not earn what you got, and that self-interest and pride are immoral, and that a moral person would work only for the good of others. Payback, in this context, is a way of seeking forgiveness for personal achievement. But you do not need justification for an achievement that you earned. You have a right to your own life and to pride in your achievements.
It is legitimate to ask: what if the city or state gave me a tax break for putting my business there? I am not in favor of such breaks (which are widely used) because they are unfair to the local businesses that did not qualify for the same tax breaks. But if you made a deal to hire 250 people in exchange for a tax break, you need to keep your promise or give back the money.
Maybe you are thinking: “I am worth millions or billions, what should I do with the money? It would bore me to spend it all on houses and yachts?”
Good question.
Your first order of business should be, if attacked, to defend your absolute right to the money you earned and to do what you want with it, assuming you earned it honestly and paid your legally owed taxes.
But you could then ask: “Now that I have the money, what else is personally important to me?”
Warning: there is a movement toward self-appointed gurus, with their own personal agendas, telling people what kinds of volunteer projects are “acceptable. Ignore such people. What you choose to do with your time and money is none of anyone else’s business.
Aside from supporting, but not spoiling, kids and valued relatives, the possibilities are endless. You could start a new business; support other entrepreneurs; fund think tanks; support research so scientists without political pull do not have to beg the government for money. You could open scores of private elementary schools, ideally based on the Montessori Method, open to all applicants and with scholarships for all students who are admitted if needed. (You could set your own admission standards.) You could open private hospitals with low fees; pioneer breakthroughs in low-cost, private housing; support non-profits that defend individual rights; provide college scholarships to high-achieving high school students; create and open high-tech (STEM) schools with admission based on merit only; give time and money to animal shelters; start an organization that donates money to universities that support individualism; or support a political candidate, if you can find one you can trust.
The options are endless; the key is to engage in philanthropic acts because you personally love the cause you are supporting and want a sense of purpose. Wanting to make the world you live in a better place is a great thing but do it through activities that have personal meaning to you.
EDWIN A LOCKE Edwin A. Locke is Dean’s Professor of Leadership and Motivation Emeritus at the R.H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the American Psychological Association, the Society for Industrial & Organizational Behavior, and the Academy of Management. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award (Society for I/O Psychology), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Academy of Management (OB Division), the J. M. Cattell Award (APS) and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Academy of Management. He, with Gary Latham, has spent over 50 years developing Goal Setting Theory, ranked No. 1 in importance among 73 management theories. He has published over 320 chapters, articles, reviews and notes, and has authored or edited 13 books including (w. Kenner) The Selfish Path to Romance, (w. Latham) New Directions in Goal Setting and Task Performance, and The Prime Movers: Traits of the Great Wealth Creators. He is internationally known for his research on motivation, job satisfaction, leadership, and other topics. His website is: EdwinLocke.com
A possible way to start on the elimination of the income/inheritance tax right now would be to fight for the immediate adoption of a universal exemption of at least 51 percent of everyone’s income from federal, state, and local income taxation under all circumstances.
The total abolition of the personal and corporate income taxes and of the inheritance tax is an essential feature of a procapitalist political program. It is required by the individual’s right to his own property. In addition, progress toward the abolition of these taxes helps to create the conditions required for economic progress, by increasing economic incentives and the ability to save, both of which serve to promote capital accumulation and thus a rising productivity of labor and rising real wages.
It must be stressed that the more rapidly economic progress can take place, thanks to reductions in the income and inheritance taxes, the more rapidly can the relative size of the government in the economic system be reduced. The consequence of this is that the degree to which people must experience the burden of the government’s exactions is correspondingly diminished. If economic progress can take place at a rate of, say, 3 percent a year, then even if government activity were not reduced at all, the relative size of the government in the economic system would be cut in half in a single generation. For in that time economic progress at a 3 percent annual rate would have succeeded in doubling the size of the economic system. Thus, the burden experienced even from supporting a government of the same size would be felt much more lightly.
These facts imply two important principles pertaining to our political program. First, in reducing income tax rates, our primary emphasis should usually be on reducing the maximum rates, until there exists only a single proportional income tax rate. Reductions in the upper brackets have the greatest impact in strengthening economic incentives and saving, and thus do the most to bring about economic progress. We need to make the public aware of how everyone benefits from these tax reductions–of how they operate to raise the demand for labor and thus wages, and, at the same time, progressively to increase the productivity of labor and thus the supply of goods relative to the supply of labor, which steadily reduces prices relative to wages and thereby steadily raises real wages. Of course, once the so-called progressive aspects of the income and inheritance taxes have been eliminated, work should immediately commence on the steady reduction in what remains of those taxes, and should continue until they are totally eliminated.
Second, a closely related minimal short-run political demand we should make is that the level of real per capita government spending be immediately frozen, so that it does not exceed its current level. Such a demand would be a call not for the immediate abolition of the welfare state and improper government activity of all kinds, but a demand for an immediate cessation in their further growth. Its implementation would result in a continuing automatic shrinkage in the relative size of the government, so long as economic progress continued.
A possible way to start on the elimination of the income/inheritance tax right now would be to fight for the immediate adoption of a universal exemption of at least 51 percent of everyone’s income from federal, state, and local income taxation under all circumstances. This would be in the name of the principle that the individual is the owner of his own income. The 51 percent exemption would constitute meaningful recognition of this principle. Over the years, we would work to increase the tax exempt portion of everyone’s income while reducing the rates on the taxable portion, until the income tax was totally abolished. Given the drastic reductions in welfare-type spending I have proposed and the achievement of economic progress, it should be possible to phase out the income tax entirely over the course of a generation.
The same phase-out procedure should be applied to the corporate income tax. In addition, in the short-run, we should demand the elimination of the double taxation presently entailed in the corporate income tax. It represents double taxation for a corporation first to be taxed on its income, and then for the stockholders of that corporation to be taxed again on what they receive from their own corporation, which has already paid a substantial income tax. The principle of the 51 percent exemption and its progressive enlargement should be applied to the total of every individual’s personal income plus his share of the profits of any corporation in which he owns stock.
However, the most important short-run goal that we should emphasize in connection with taxes is compelling the government to respect the ordinary civil rights of taxpayers. We should demand the abolition of criminal penalties for income-tax evasion, in the name of the principle that an individual cannot steal or fraudulently keep what is his own property to begin with. Also, just as in the case of government agencies seeking search warrants, we should demand that the Internal Revenue Service be compelled to obtain a prior court order authorizing any seizure of property or attachment of salaries and bank accounts it wishes to undertake. If it is not possible to obtain such elementary protection of individual rights, then a compromise that at least would be a move in the right direction would be the existence of automatic judicial review of all such IRS activities. And until criminal penalties for not paying taxes are eliminated, we should demand that the Fifth Amendment rights of individuals to remain silent in order not to incriminate themselves be applied to taxpayers, i.e., that no criminal penalties exist for failure to file an income tax return. In other words, we should demand that taxpayers, who are presently subject to criminal law, enjoy the full civil rights accorded to criminals. In answer to objections that the income tax cannot work without the violation of elementary civil rights, we should reply that if that is the case, then it is further proof of why the income tax must be abolished. So long as the supporters of the income tax wish to retain it, we must demand that they accept the burden of finding ways of harmonizing it with respect for such rights.
A further principle that I believe should be applied in connection with proposals for the reform of the income tax is that no reductions of any kind should ever be made in existing tax exemptions, shelters, or so-called loopholes. Our principle should be that no one’s income taxes should ever be increased over what they would be under existing law. It is true that the various exemptions, such as for interest paid on home mortgages, have some economically distorting effects by artificially encouraging some types of economic activity at the expense of other types, but those distortions will become less and less significant with the reduction in the burden of the income tax, and will disappear altogether when it disappears. We should take the position that every reform of the income tax must serve to reduce the income taxes paid by some or all people, and not increase the income taxes paid by anyone.
Still a further principle that we must uphold concerning tax reform, and one whose necessity should be obvious on the basis of all the preceding discussions concerning the role of capital formation and the consequences of inflation, is that tax reductions must be accompanied by equivalent or even more than equivalent reductions in government spending–specifically, in nondefense spending primarily. In view of the highly destructive effects of budget deficits, it should be clear why tax cuts must be accompanied at least by equivalent reductions in government spending of one kind or another. Deficits, it should be recalled, deprive the economic system of the benefit of the portion of the supply of savings that must be used to finance the deficits. In the absence of a gold standard, they also lead to the rapid inflation of the money supply, which, of course, also undermines capital formation. Cutting taxes without cutting government spending, therefore, is no solution for reducing the government’s assaults on the economic system.
The reason the reductions in government spending must be primarily at the expense specifically of nondefense spending is that defense is one of the few legitimate functions of government. Spending for defense should be cut only as it becomes genuinely safe to do so. It should be blatantly obvious that we should never advocate imperiling the defense of this country, which means, essentially, the defense of such freedom as exists in the world, in order to preserve any aspect of the welfare state. Indeed, our need for national defense exists for no other reason than to prevent the imposition of the underlying premise of the welfare state in a more extreme and more consistent form by outside military force. That premise, of course, is that some men have the right to enslave others for the satisfaction of their needs. Thus, not only must we never dream of sacrificing national defense to any aspect of the welfare state, but what we want national defense for is precisely to protect us from the logically consistent version of the welfare state that is represented by totalitarian socialism. Furthermore, what we should advocate in connection with national defense is overwhelming military superiority for the United States. That is our only real guarantee of avoiding war. If we have such superiority, we will not start a war, and it is unlikely that anyone else will dare to do so.
Copyright 1996 George Reisman. All rights reserved. The encyclopedic Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics is a required reference for every Capitalist’s library. Reisman’s treatise is now available in two volumes: Volume I (focuses on microeconomic issues) and Volume II (focuses on macroeconomic issues).
But there’s always a purpose in nonsense. Don’t bother to examine a folly–ask yourself only what it accomplishes. Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they’ll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. ’Universal Harmony’–’Eternal Spirit’–’Divine Purpose’–’Nirvana’–’Paradise’–’Racial Supremacy’–’The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’ Internal corruption, Peter. That’s the oldest one of all. The farce has been going on for centuries and men still fall for it. Yet the test should be so simple: just listen to any prophet and if you hear him speak of sacrifice–run. Run faster than from a plague. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master. But if ever you hear a man telling you that you must be happy, that it’s your natural right, that your first duty is to yourself–that will be the man who’s not after your soul. That will be the man who has nothing to gain from you.
Those of us on the side of civilizational sanity need all the help we can get in pushing back against the onslaught.
Last Friday, I attended the Heritage Foundation’s 50th Anniversary Gala, a sprawling and swanky affair featuring many fine presentations, a surprise Dierks Bentley mini-concert for the country music enthusiasts (yours truly among them) and an extravagant post-dinner fireworks show over the Potomac River. But the highlight of the evening, bar none, was former Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s electric keynote address and his (all-too-brief) colloquy on stage afterward with Heritage’s exceptional new president, Kevin Roberts.
Carlson’s speech was both wildly entertaining and poignant, at times slapstick funny and at other times humorously self-deprecating about his Episcopalian faith. But as Carlson began to reach his peroration, the key substantive takeaway he wished to impart unto his audience became clear. The relevant political and cultural battle lines in the year 2023 are not those befitting a civil and polite discussion where both sides are reasonable, both sides pursue their own version of the common good and the best think tank white paper wins out in the end, Carlson cautioned. No, our current civilizational struggle is not reflective of a refined policy debate between amicable partisans; rather, it is one that implicates fundamentally distinct theological and anthropological visions of mankind—of man’s very biology and his relation with his fellow man, the state, and God Himself.
I immediately hearkened back to an interview Claremont Institute President Ryan Williams did with the far-left Atlantic in October 2021, where Williams had this provocative (but accurate) line about America’s contemporary fault lines: “Even during the Civil War—I think we’re more divided now than we were then. As Lincoln said, we all prayed to the same God. We all believed in the same Constitution. We just differed over the question of slavery.” This is the precise sentiment that Carlson was getting at in his keynote speech at the Heritage gala last Friday.
We in the audience did not know it yet, at the time of Carlson’s speech—nor did Carlson, for that matter—but the broadcasting star had already given his last searing monologue for Fox News. In a stunning development, Fox News broke the news to their highest-rated host on Monday morning that he was fired. Hopefully, Carlson will retain something approximating his exceptional level of cultural and political influence in whatever role he next serves, because his witness to truth and civilizational sanity has never been more necessary.
This is perhaps most clearly true when it comes to gender ideology and transgenderism, which is the issue most directly implicated by Carlson’s framing of America’s fundamental divide as a struggle between differing theological and anthropological conceptions of man. Is sexual dimorphism an obvious empirical reality, rooted in Genesis 1:27, and mandating legal codification for any regime that claims a basis in truth and justice? Or is gender instead “fluid,” wherein man can replace God and change his gender on a lark, and wherein it is contemptible bigotry to deny anyone’s subjective sense of biological or sexual reality?
Tucker Carlson certainly knew his answer: He opened a memorable 2021 interview of former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson by asking the then-sitting governor, who had shamefully vetoed a bill to protect vulnerable children from the predatory scalpels of the woke-besotted medical establishment, why he had “come out publicly as ‘pro-choice’ on the question of chemical castration of children.” Oof.
That is not a debate where the “best white paper wins.” It is a zero-sum contestation of clashing visions of the human person, rooted in diametrically opposed substantive underpinnings. And, more to the point, the forces of godlessness, paganism, and civilizational arson certainly already treat the debate over gender ideology as a vicious winner-take-all battle.
The recent mini-insurrection in Nashville, which followed the tragic shooting of a Christian school and the temporary expulsions of two insurrection-complicit state lawmakers, can best be understood as one elaborate attempt to distract the public from the real issue: That a transgender lunatic shot up a Christian school, and that law enforcement has thus far been unwilling to defy the transgender lobby’s not-so-thinly-veiled blackmail, opting instead to deep-six the deceased shooter’s presumptively anti-Christian manifesto.
More recently, a similar situation unfolded in the state House in Montana, where Republicans banned a transgender lawmaker from attending or speaking during floor sessions following that lawmaker’s comment, during the debate over an anti-chemical castration bill similar to the one Hutchinson vetoed in Arkansas, that the lawmaker hoped colleagues would see “blood on (their) hands” when they bowed their heads in prayer.
Numerous protesters were arrested and forcibly removed from the legislature earlier this week, as they agitated in favor of the uncouth transgender lawmaker.
Large swaths of the modern Left have made the fight for gender ideology and transgenderism their foremost hill to die on, precisely because they are so infatuated with their own vogue anthropology and “theology” that they view the other side—the side of sanity—as wholly undeserving of the civility and respect that a normal exchange over public policy might entail. I know this all too well, myself: My writing that invariably elicits the most protests when I speak on university campuses is a short piece I wrote a few years ago praising U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan’s admirable use of biologically correct pronouns in a judicial opinion. I’d write the same thing again today.
But those protesters, whether in Nashville, Helena, Stanford Law School, or another academic corridor, are not open to rational debate. They are not willing to be reasoned with. Rather, they know their conclusions, because they have fully imbibed a highly fashionable—if false—anthropological and “theological” conception of man. Those of us on the side of civilizational sanity need all the help we can get in pushing back against the onslaught.
Are there still Democrats who believe in the First Amendment while being wrong about many other things?
I don’t know.
But if there are, Kennedy’s candidacy will be a thorn in the side of the Commie fascists who control the Party. Destabilizing the DemComs would be a good thing, even though election fraud still ensures the ruling regime won’t go anywhere.
DeSantis: Disney has “no legal right to corporate welfare.”
Absolutely correct. Nor does ANY business, large or small.
To paraphrase Ayn Rand, government and business should be totally separate in the same way, and for the same reasons, as church and state are separated.
Get government the hell out of business and wealth redistribution forever. End income taxes and most taxes as we know them. Defund the IRS immediately. Defund the EPA, the CDC, the FBI and most Cabinet departments immediately. The federal government is wildly and irredeemably out of control, using its power to go on the warpath against innocent citizens. The only peaceful way remaining? Defund and shut most of it down. Go back to funding only what the original Constitution provided: a military to protect our borders. Fire the woke generals. Call a Convention of States, not to rewrite the Constitution but to reaffirm it and to shut down and defund our corrupt federal government asap.
Too radical? Just wait to see what life under an unlimited and unaccountable government will be like after 1 or 2 more faux election cycles. Then talk to me about too radical then.
The thing about corporations in a fascist economy, as opposed to a free market economy? They can do stupid things — and not worry. In a free market economy, they would pay for doing stupid things; but not in a fascist economy.
Fox just lost it’s biggest money maker — the biggest money maker EVER. A profitable business would not have let this happen, not even for the sake of settlement in a lawsuit. Clearly, political factors — not economic or business factors — were at work here. It seems unlikely that Tucker Carlson, given the nonstop display of courage on his part over the years, and his stance on issues — would participate in some coverup to conceal what was actually quitting on his part. And why would he quit?
The behavior of Fox resembles the behavior of CNN and other propaganda companies who don’t worry about lower ratings or massive losses in profits. Why — you’d almost think they’re getting their money from somewhere else.
In our now fully developed fascist system that used to be American (more or less) free market capitalism, the federal government acts the same way. They’re brazen to the point of bragging about the weaponization of the DOJ, the FBI, the IRS, the CDC and everything else. They’re only starting to flex their muscles. In 2022, the propaganda media’s own polls showed a massive bloodbath in the Congressional elections with Republicans as the victors. We saw what happened. In 2020, neither the media nor the Party expressed concern about having the least visible, least capable, least cognitively present presidential candidate in all of American history, a candidate literally confined to his basement as the vote counts shifted from defeat to victory in the wee hours of the morning. “No worries. Wink wink. We’ve got this,” seemed to be their attitude throughout both 2020 and 2022. And it’s the same about the 2024 election, as poor Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis prepare to go through the motions of providing us with a show where we already know the ending.
I suppose the lesson here is: If you’re a totalitarian authoritarian fascist oligarchy, and you have ALL the money behind you and ALL the force of government behind you — then you have no worries. You can now count Fox News among them.
While campaigning in 2019, Joe Biden guaranteed “we’re going to end fossil fuels.” What he didn’t say is that eliminating fossil fuels will create a troublesome scarcity of electricity. He also didn’t say that was part of the plan, even though it just might be.
Now with the power of the presidency behind him – again we ask, how could such a disastrous event happen? – Biden is just a few pages of paperwork away from forcing natural gas- and coal-fired power plants to sharply cut their greenhouse emissions. If the emission caps can’t be met, power plants will then have to adopt carbon capture technology, which is quite expensive.
Our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity had an interesting response to the news.
“Ben Franklin,” they said, “is often heralded as the man who discovered the power of electricity. Joe Biden wants to be the president who abolished it.”
Output cuts that will be required under the proposed regime “are so stringent,” says the CTUP, that “fossil fuel plants – which supply around 65% of America’s power – would be technologically incapable of complying.” The only way they will be able to stay open and generating power is if Americans’ utility bills are raised “dramatically.” If not, they close, and the power they produce is gone.
The administration knows this. The administration doesn’t care. The administration, driven by the hard-left zealots that run the Democratic Party, wants the rest of us to make do with less.
It’s the much same in California, where progressive politicians are committed to an unachievable target: As 2045 expires, all retail electricity sold in the state and used in government buildings must be produced by renewable resources, which are effectively limited to solar and wind.
Actually, the objective can be met. But there won’t be enough electricity to meet demand because the natural gas and nuclear power that’s taken off line won’t be fully replaced, so California is looking at a future of blackouts, rationing and rates more punishing than they already are. Either policymakers are aware of this and it doesn’t bother them, or they are completely inept and incapable of critical thinking.
We are naturally reminded of Ida Auken, the Social Democrat member of the Danish parliament, who in a World Economic Forum essay insisted that in the future we will own nothing and be happy. The headline – “Welcome to 2030: I own nothing, have no privacy and life has never been better” – made it clear that some powerful people are trying to turn the world into a commune which they of course will run…..
To Joshua Muravchik, “communophiles” could be distinguished by their virulent criticism of capitalist democracies like the United States, which they considered so flawed that they needed radical transformation, rather than mere reformation. Credit: Jmuravchik. License: https://bit.ly/3HHc8Rh.
Summary: The United States of America has arguably been the single most indispensable force for global good over at least the past century. Yet a distinct and longstanding vein of activism on the American Left—the anti-American Left—argues that American influence is harmful and deleterious to the well-being of the rest of the world. The anti-American Left’s fault lies not in its criticism of any given aspect of American foreign or domestic policy—on the contrary, criticism can sometimes be productive. The real harm is in its incessant and dishonest portrayal of the United States as some uniquely malevolent global influence, while brushing aside the brutality of some of the world’s true bad actors and ignoring America’s unparalleled (if imperfect) record of confronting them. What’s more, in many cases the anti-American Left receives substantial funding from mainstream philanthropy—wealthy individuals and foundations that have benefited tremendously from the peace and prosperity engendered by American military power and the global spread of democratic capitalism.
Communophilism
The conclusion that the United States of America has functioned as the single most indispensable force for global good over at least the past century is rather difficult to escape. While it didn’t come close to doing it alone or doing it perfectly, the list of alternative historical outcomes that the United States can plausibly be credited with preventing is long, cumulative, and scary. Likewise, despite regular setbacks and failures, the broad global trend toward economic prosperity, geopolitical stability, and respect for human rights has been driven largely by the model of capitalist democracy championed by the United States and its allies.
Understanding the opposite perspective—those who not only disagree with this assessment but criticize American influence as harmful and deleterious to the well-being of the rest of the world—can be equally difficult. This is especially true with domestic critics, over whom interstate rivalries, cultural differences, and an allowable degree of historical subjectivity should wield considerably less influence. Indeed, a distinct and longstanding vein of activism on the American Left advocates almost exclusively from this viewpoint—an ideology that might collectively be termed the “anti-American Left.”
It is important to clarify a distinction between “anti-American” and “un-American,” for the latter not only conjures up troubling ghosts of mid-century McCarthyism, but also implies that expressing opinions on matters of public importance, no matter how radical or unpopular, is something less than fully American. The truth is of course precisely the opposite, and reasoned criticism is often constructive.
Rather, “anti-American Left” refers to those domestic activists and groups that—consistently and almost without exception—depict the international influence of the United States in a negative light. Blanket criticism of American foreign policy is a core tenant of their activism. Put another way, the anti-American Left operates from the basic premise that the less the United States involves itself in world affairs, the better. Classically, such activists tend to espouse strong anti-military and anti-capitalist convictions, and they generally consider the two concepts to be inextricably linked.
Those associated with the anti-American Left are also conspicuous how they often portray foreign authoritarian regimes, in terms ranging from equivocation to qualified support to outright praise. Almost as a rule, poverty, corruption, political repression, human rights violations, and armed violence in such places are minimized or explained away by blaming the United States in some manner. Cuba is probably the paradigmatic example, but Iran, Venezuela, Nicaragua, China, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and other countries are regularly held up as victims of American and/or Western “imperialism.”
Hostility toward Israel is also a defining feature, as is opposition to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other supranational entities in which the United States plays key roles. The pattern often appears to simply follow the inverse of how well-aligned a given foreign government or international institution’s interests are perceived to be with the interests of the United States.
This is not a new phenomenon. Back in 1984, author Joshua Muravchik coined the term “communophilism” to describe a particular form of leftism with distinctive features that didn’t quite fit within existing patterns of liberalism, socialism, or communism. To Muravchik, “communophiles” could be distinguished by their virulent criticism of capitalist democracies like the United States, which they considered so flawed that they needed radical transformation, rather than mere reformation. They were broadly sympathetic toward foreign communist and other far-Left movements without being beholden to any specific one, though they did tend to favor those originating in the Third World over the Soviet model. While noting that there was no “strict consistency,” Muravchik argued that communophiles evidenced “a general attitude that the future of mankind lies, as it should lie, with the communist world.” Although the world looks rather different in 2023 than it did in 1984, much of Muravchik’s “communophilism” analysis remains relevant to understanding contemporary activism.
Plumbing the anti-American Left’s funding is also important. It is one thing for a group of radical activists to form a small nonprofit to promote their fringe views. The barriers to doing so are relatively (and rightly) low. It is another thing entirely for those same radical activists to receive funding from some of the largest and most sophisticated grantmakers in the country. This is a crucial prong to understanding the issue: In many cases the anti-American Left receives substantial funding from mainstream philanthropy—wealthy individuals and foundations that have benefited tremendously from the peace and prosperity engendered by American military power and the global spread of democratic capitalism.
In the next installment,Institute for Policy Studies opposed the Vietnam War and stood in solidarity with North Vietnamese communists.
Robert runs several of CRC’s specialized projects. Originally from Indiana, he has a B.A. from Hanover College and a J.D. from University of Richmond School of Law, where he graduated…
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