Dear Facebook: We know your political positions. We know you claim to be a neutral platform, while in fact you are a thoroughly partisan corporation with a vested interest in only one of our two major parties being in power. We know that YOU know that voting by mail made this the most subjective, questionable and inherently unfair election in American history. Facebook, COME ON! Drop the pretense. You will never change the minds of patriots.
Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason
Capitalism, and the American pharmaceutical industry that thrives under it, saves lives.
With the possible exception of “Big Oil,” there is no industry more demonized in America than the pharmaceutical industry. In some cases, the disdain for “Big Pharma” is both understandable and justified—as with the “commercial triumph” but “public health tragedy” surrounding the sale and regulation of OxyContin. But we are now on the precipice of one of those very pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer Inc., being granted permission by the FDA to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, in the hopes of eradicating a disease that has killed almost 1.3 million worldwide thus far.
The practice of calling various groups of industries as “Big”-fill-in-the-blank began not too long ago as a propaganda method to demonize specific industries. After the oil spill involving the Exxon Valdez in 1989, the term “Big Oil” came into vogue, as activists worked hard to portray the entire industry as anti-environment. We later saw similar efforts against “Big Finance” as activists went after Wall Street, and finally, “Big Pharma” as they set their sights on capitalist drug-makers.
“Bigness” has a lot of rhetorical power—even the right uses it, in reference to “Big Tech” which describes the growing technology industry. The problem is that the right and left are not unified in their motives for using the term. When the left uses “Bigness” as a descriptor, it is meant to lump together industries that they find problematic, and to dismiss these companies outright. When the right uses the prefix “Big,” it’s to designate industries, sectors, or institutions that have gone awry. Instead of acting in good faith and integrating civic responsibility with individual entrepreneurship, industries like “Big Tech” have engaged in lawlessness.
One of the worst examples of civic irresponsibility among American pharmaceutical companies—and indeed, among companies in any industry—has to be that of Purdue Pharmaceutical. Based in Stamford, CT., Purdue’s outrageously unethical marketing of the then-new painkilling drug OxyContin in the late-1990s began a domino effect leading to the opioid epidemic that still plagues the country, resulting in the deaths of approximately a half-million people. Purdue executives ended up paying out $634.5 million in fines for marketing OxyContin as “less addictive and less subject to abuse than other pain medications.”
And let’s not forget Martin Shkreli, the former hedge fund manager and CEO of the relatively unknown start-up Turing (now Vyera) Pharmaceuticals. Shkreli gained international notoriety when he acquired Daraprim, a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection and increased the sale price of the drug from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill—a 5,556% increase bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Intended to treat the disease toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by the consumption of undercooked meat and shellfish, the impact of the Daraprim price increase was predictable. After Turing inflated the medication’s price, hospitals struggled to keep Daraprim in stock, delaying treatment in some cases. Considering that the FDA considers toxoplasmosis as the most lethal food-borne illness, such delays proved highly problematic. “It’s not funny, Mr. Shkreli. People are dying, and they’re getting sicker and sicker,” the Late Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) told Shkreli, as he grinned during the congressman’s opening statement during a hearing on Capitol Hill.
The fact that Shkreli was later sent to prison for securities fraud didn’t soften the hatred toward him. Styling him “Pharma Bro” to mark their disdain, the left relished in his incarceration. Some media outlets regarded him as “The Most Hated Man in America,” and they were probably right. “He’s been called a ‘morally bankrupt sociopath,’ a ‘scumbag,’ a ‘garbage monster’ and ‘everything that is wrong with capitalism.’ And those are some of the tamer comments,” writes the BBC.
But as often is the case, our friends on the left have done their utmost to hold up Shkreli as the face of capitalism—not a corrupt exception to it. As ever, the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is leading the way: “Our political system is corrupt. Big Money controls much of what happens,” said Sanders when referencing the Turing affair. His then-campaign spokesman Michael Brigg took a more direct shot at capitalism calling Shkreli the, “Poster boy for drug company greed.”
The thing is, Martin Shkreli is no more representative of the typical capitalist than Ted “The Unabomber” Kaczynski is representative of the typical environmentalist. They are both sociopathic criminals on the most extreme fringes of their particular ideology. But the strategy of using Shkreli as their exemplar for the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry was not accidental; in fact, it is standard operating procedure for the left, which has a habit of seeking out the single-most extreme example of a situation, point to it as being indicative of the much larger group, and then exploit for the emotional response it generates.
This was the approach of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) when she claimed, “It was unethical when Turing did it, and it was just as unethical when the rest of the pharmaceutical industry jacks up drug prices.” The leftwing media frequently echoes Warren’s sentiment. In an opinion piece last year by The American Prospect, detailing the contention of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) that innovations from Big Pharma are a myth, and that most high profile drugs would not exist if it weren’t for public investment, the liberal magazine asserted: “Pharmaceutical companies routinely engage in price gouging (not to mention research misconduct and public manipulation)—unsavory practices for which there is virtually no oversight… Martin Shkreli, the former pharma CEO and current federal inmate, epitomized this mindset…”
Of the top six pharmaceutical companies in the world, four of them are U.S.-based: Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Pfizer, and AbbVie. Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News magazine reports that the combined revenues of those four companies exceeded $1 trillion in 2019. No other country’s collective pharmaceutical industry is even remotely close to the impact that U.S. pharmaceutical companies have on the world’s population.
Meanwhile, leftists like Sen. Sanders, and his socialist cronies, regard these numbers as demerits—examples of American capitalism taking advantage of some group of victims. “If the pharmaceutical industry will not end its greed, which is literally killing Americans, then we will end it for them,” Sanders promised in 2019 after Democrats gained control of the house and made lowering prescription drug costs one of their top priorities. In the mind of Sanders and other socialists, making a profit is greed and cannot be tolerated.
LEADING THE WORLD IN PHARMACEUTICAL INNOVATION
In reality, the numbers above reflect the greatness of capitalism and free-markets. That revenue was earned by providing medications and products to satisfy a demand—a demand that, in many cases, was for critical, life-saving drugs. True, U.S. pharmaceutical companies do generate earnings from the sale of non-critical drugs, for maladies such as hair loss and skin imperfections, but such drugs actually make up only a fraction of Big Pharma’s revenue. Of the top ten most prescribed medications in the U.S., four are medications that fight heart disease by addressing high blood pressure or high cholesterol; the remaining six drugs relieve afflictions such as bacterial infections and thyroid deficiencies.
In 2018, almost $80 billion of U.S. pharmaceutical companies’ revenues were used for research and development, a trend that’s been steadily growing since 1995, at least. That was money well-spent, yielding some extremely effective treatments and medical innovation over the years. According to the American Cancer Society, there were over 15 million cancer survivors in the U.S. in 2016, and they expect those numbers to increase to over 20 million by 2026. These improvements for cancer patients are largely due to a multitude of advancements that can be traced back to Big Pharma: advancements in surgical solutions, radiation treatment discoveries, and, of course, drugs and chemotherapy developments that can be attributed to the R&D investments made by pharmaceutical companies. One such recent advancement is Keytruda, a lung cancer drug developed by the U.S.-based Merck & Co and was approved for use in 2014.
A study completed last year shows that almost one-quarter of patients treated with Keytruda were still alive after five years—a remarkable improvement from the historic survival rate of 5%. According to Dr. Edward Garon, a lung cancer specialist from UCLA who led the study, “The uniformly negative outlook that has been associated with a diagnosis of advanced, non-small cell lung cancer is certainly no longer appropriate,” as a result of these improvements made by Keytruda. Lung cancer is easily the most deadly of all cancers and has historically been responsible for more deaths than cancers of the breast, colon, and prostate combined. It’s doubtful many of the patients who have had their lives saved from Keytruda oppose the pharmaceutical industry.
Modern medicine is truly miraculous, and we see evidence of that miracle constantly, and much of those wonders are due specifically to capitalism. The companies that design and manufacture the ultrasound equipment, for instance, that pinpoints tumors make a profit from selling that equipment—and that profit is key to incentivizing new medical innovation and the growth of treatment options for the world’s sick. For instance, GE Healthcare announced last year that a new ultrasound technique they developed can differentiate between malignant and benign breast tumors. Abbott Laboratories, working to develop better methods of testing our blood to identify coronavirus antibodies, and the industry giants working on cancer testing, make a profit from those methods. And the companies who make up Big Pharma—those who develop and sell drugs that save millions of lives every year from the ravages of disease—they make a profit as well.
The next time Sen. Sanders calls Big Pharma a “bunch of crooks,” salivating at the opportunity to ‘profit’ from COVID-19 (as though profit-seeking were somehow corrupt), consider how many jobs the Senator has created and how many lives he’s saved—and of how little use his socialist utopia or free healthcare would be if there were no Americans left alive to enjoy it. For those of us with loved ones who have survived cancer, imagine what their fate would have been without capitalism or Big Pharma.
Pharmaceutical companies are far from perfect—Purdue Pharmaceutical is just one hideous example, and they deserve our scorn. Those companies that engage in criminal behavior like price gouging or false advertising should be held accountable, exposed, and embarrassed when appropriate, and held criminally liable when justified. Purdue marketed OxyContin with the primary purpose of maximizing their profits, kick-starting the opioid epidemic in the process. A drug that may have been developed with the noble goal of helping patients manage their pain ended up causing tremendous harm as a result of the actions of the company’s leadership. Likewise, Martin Shkreli at Turing Pharmaceuticals clearly had profits as his primary objective.
But while capitalism and the desire for profit may have been the main driver for the misdeeds of Purdue and Turing, it has also been a key aspect in motivating companies such as Merck and others whose innovations save lives. We need Big Pharma—all of us.
With their frequent attacks on the pharmaceutical industry, the left has demonstrated once again their fundamental denial or ignorance of basic human nature. They would have us believe that if we removed the incentive of profit from the calculus of developing medicine, nothing would change except for a decrease in consumer costs. ‘Tax’ Big Pharma.’ ‘Restrict pricing’ for Big Pharma. Stick it to those capitalists in Big Pharma.
But that’s not how it works, and anyone paying attention understands that fact. It’s human nature to want to benefit financially from hard work, risk, and innovation. And there is nothing inherently corrupting in combining your desire to do good in the world and save lives with a drive for profit; we wouldn’t have the R&D capacity we do today without it. There are thousands of scientists and corporate executives who are millionaires today because they were responsible for developing life-saving medicines. Not only should we congratulate them on their financial success, we should collectively shake their hands, and say, “Thank you, and may God bless you.”
And while we’re at it, may God bless America and our capitalist way of life.
P. F. Whalen, Human Events
First, let me predict that this election is far from over. President Donald Trump will neither give up nor give in. He’ll take the fight to a level no one in American politics has ever seen. I see a clear and reasonable pathway for Trump to overturn the results for a stunning reelection victory that will shock the world. More on that later.
I know Donald J. Trump better than anyone. I’ve been studying him for 40 years. It started when I was a freshman at Columbia University in Manhattan. Trump was 33 years old and well on his way to becoming the king of New York real estate.
By the time I graduated Columbia in 1983, Trump was opening Trump Tower, the most amazing skyscraper in New York. I was hooked. Trump became my mentor, hero and role model. Like every young businessman in New York, I wanted to be like Trump.
I reviewed his every move. Trump was my MBA course. After a while, I knew Trump so well that I could predict his every move. I kept notes. Soon these notes turned into a book — over 300 pages long. And I practiced what I preached. I took these “Trump Rules” and lived them.
Before long, this SOB (son of a butcher) from the wrong side of the tracks, without a dime and without any connections, was living a fairy tale. In short order, I became one of the youngest political candidates in New York state history, one of the youngest TV hosts and anchormen on American TV, a bestselling author, and, soon after that, the media dubbed me “the king of Vegas sports gambling.
I became a self-made millionaire at 29 and bought a home on the beach in Malibu, California.
I enjoyed remarkable success in multiple careers: politics, business, television, publishing and gambling. Sound familiar? Those are the exact careers of Donald J. Trump.
The “Trump Rules” changed my life.
Why do I tell you all this? First, because my latest book, “Trump Rules,” is being released this week. It could change your life, too, no matter if you hate Trump or love Trump. And whether Trump eventually loses his bid for president or makes the greatest comeback in history and overturns the results of this election, I’ll report the same thing. Donald J. Trump is amazing. He’s more than a person; he’s a living legend. He is one of the most remarkable men to ever walk this planet. And the best is yet to come.
Learning, modeling and living the rules of Trump’s life can be life-changing for anyone, in any career. Love him or hate him, we all have something to learn and gain from these “Trump Rules.”
Now to the main event: the election. Timing isn’t everything in life; it’s the only thing. My timing is perfect. After studying Trump my entire adult life and predicting correctly what comes next, here is my opinion on the presidential election results: We’re all about to get a lesson in the “Trump Rules.”null
If you believe Joe Biden has already won, you don’t know Trump like I know Trump. Democrats and the media picked a fight with the wrong guy. They underestimated the wrong guy. Trump isn’t John McCain or Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush.
Sure, the media claims the election is over. Trust me, it’s not. It’s just getting started. Trump is the underdog. But I believe there is a reasonable chance Trump comes out ahead. Trump never gives up or gives in. You’re about to witness a fight that will make Ali vs. Foreman look like an amateur exhibition.
Trump loves coming back from the dead. He considers it the ultimate challenge. Trump is the Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote. Beep, beep. No matter how bad it looks, never bet against Trump.
I see a clear path to victory. I know Trump sees it, too. With Alaska in the bag, Trump has 217 electoral votes. With North Carolina in his column within days, Trump has 232. There are many paths to flipping Arizona, Georgia, Nevada or Wisconsin. Any combination of two of those puts Trump at 259. I believe the Supreme Court has tipped its hand. They would rule that any mail-in ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day are invalid and must be thrown out. That would give Pennsylvania to Trump and put him at 279. Voila. Trump is president again.
Trust me. I know Trump like no one knows Trump. This election battle for the ages isn’t over. Trump lives his life to make the impossible, possible. Never bet against Trump.
We’re all about to get a priceless lesson in the “Trump Rules.”
P.S. If Trump does eventually lose, then he’ll turn that into a win, too. He’ll start a conservative television network, destroy Fox News and build yet another multibillion-dollar brand. Then he’ll run for president in 2024 and defeat Kamala Harris.
Wayne Allyn Root is a CEO, entrepreneur, bestselling author, nationally syndicated talk-show host on USA Radio Network at 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. EST/3 p.m. to 6 p.m. PST. His new book, “Trump Rules,” is out Nov. 10.
Although Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s architect and perhaps the only real friend the Fuhrer ever had, has been widely characterized as efficient technocrat, he must also be considered one of the original green builders full of idealistic environmental sustainability plans that was to be implemented across Germany and the Greater Reich after victory. Nazi Germany had massive sustainability plans for much of Europe after the war. Speer was very sympathetic to green interests, practices, policies, and ideas. His environmental sustainability views were similar to Dr. Fritz Todt’s, the original green Nazi builder of the Todt Organization. Speer replaced Todt as Hitler’s armaments minister after he died in a freak plane crash in 1942.
In his famous book, Inside the Third Reich, Speer noted that his particular generation, including himself, had a strong and distinctive attraction to get to close to nature. That this would be the same generation which also foolishly accepted Adolf Hitler as its political leader is highly instructive.
These wandering free spirits, i.e. wandervogels, as they considered themselves to be – which some even have characterized as ‘right-wing’ hippies – were essentially trying to escape the responsibilities of the modern world, and thus found themselves captivated by the Fuhrer.
Indeed, modernity built on the bustle of the city was a world which Speer’s naturist generation really did not understand, nor desired either politically or economically.
The Jews, of course, became an easy target for foisting upon them such banal demands in the Weimar Republic that appeared to be so empty philosophically and spiritually. Speer thus noted that his particular generation’s love affair with nature “was not merely a romantic protest against the narrowness of middle-class life. We were also escaping from the demands of a world growing increasingly complicated.”
was, in fact, a world which they disdained, full of varied responsibilities and demands which selfishly refused to accept. It was also a world which they believed could be overcome by escaping to the great outdoors, if not even through mountain climbing. “Often, from the mountain tops, we looked down upon a gray layer of cloud over the distant plain. Down there lived what to our minds were wretched people; we thought we stood high above them in every sense.”
After spending many years in prison, Speer later acknowledged he and his climbing comrades were “young and arrogant.” Speer added, “We were convinced that only the finest people went into the mountains. When we returned to the normal life of the lowlands, I was quite confused for a while by the bustle of the cities.”
Speer and his generation of so-called wandervogels measured and compared themselves with others based on how close they were to nature. Nature was used as the Judge to determine who was good and what was valuable. They were looking for purity, simplicity and peace without the modern stress of working and making a living.
This was especially difficult in the trying times of the Weimar Republic, “We felt that the world around us was out of balance. In nature, in the mountains and river valleys, the harmony of Creation could still be felt. The more virginal the mountains, the lonelier the river valleys, the more they drew us.” The embarrassment, depression and defeat Speer and his comrades experienced in the Weimar Republic could all be forgotten in the lofty alpine hills. Abandoned and forsaken by the Weimar Republic, they found solace in the isolationist ideology of National Socialism. In the end, their strong interest in nature’s lonely places would find a solitary niche in the singleness of Adolf Hitler.
Speer later recalled how superficial and uncritical he was of Hitler’s political views. He admitted he could have easily taken a better look at the Fuhrer’s abysmal record, but he did not want to. In fact, at the most critical juncture of Speer’s life when he found himself spellbound by the mood of Hitler’s peasant-like simplicity and modesty, instead of taking a good hard look at the Fuhrer’s views by availing himself of all the political news that was accessible to him, his inclination was to withdraw into the woods to think it all over. “I felt I had to straighten things out in my own mind, to master my confusion. I needed to be alone. Shaken, I drove off into the night in my small car, stopped in a pine forest near the Havel, and went for a long walk.”
Needless to say, the silence of the woods did not help Speer make the right choice. He would have been far better off reading the newspapers, or talking to his dad, whose traditional liberal bourgeois views on self-determination and responsibility were in direct contrast to both the Communist and Nazi parties.
Even though Speer was an outstanding intellectual and highly educated, he was politically naïve. Speer commented that his particular “failure was rooted in my inadequate political schooling. As a result, I remained uncritical, unable to deal with the arguments of my student friends, who were predominantly indoctrinated with National Socialist ideology.”
As such, Speer fell prey to the counterculture ideology of National Socialism based on eugenics, health and environmentalism, and, in so doing, rebelled against the normal upper-middle-class upbringing his father had given him. Albert Speer became a mindless rebel without a cause. “My inclination to be relieved of having to think particularly about unpleasant facts, helped to sway the balance. In this, I did not differ from millions of others. Such mental slackness above all facilitated, established, and finally assured the success of the National Socialist system.” Albert Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931.
A little less socialist rebellion and more serious-minded thinking about politics and people would have spared Germany her darkest hour. Late in life, in another book entitled, Infiltration, Speer wrote that he felt uneasy about his own romantic green ideas because he recognized how closely it resembled the very political ideology of National Socialism. Yet Speer’s admission is disturbing. Has he really learned the lesson of National Socialism if he still holds to similar views years later? Further, how is it even possible Speer rediscovered that his own green romantic views in the 1970s were very similar to the National Socialists of the 1940s? What kind of Nazi spell was cast upon the likes of so many like Albert Speer that they have been able to separate themselves from Nazism, all the while holding to similar views throughout their lives?
As part of his defense after the war during the Nuremberg trial, Speer railed against the dangers of technology since the Nazis technocratically used it to control the populace. However, Speer later recognized how hollow this defense was since the Nazis were the very ones who said as much. Speer thus became a political hypocrite at the very least, an agent of destruction at worst. Even 20 years in Spandau prison could not shake him of this fatal attraction. The same feelings that initially drew him to Adolf Hitler were still with him years later. That this basic truth eluded Speer is a mystery as mystical as German Romanticism itself and as deep as the eugenic Nazi hell that was the Holocaust.
Mark Musser is a part-time missionary, author, and a farmer, depending on what time of day and year it is. His home is in Olympia, Washington, but he spends most of his time on the mission field in the former Soviet Union. He is currently a doctoral candidate at Corban University in Salem, Oregon, and is a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance. His book Nazi Ecology provides a sobering history lesson on the philosophical foundations of the early German green movement, which was absorbed by National Socialism in the 1930s and proved to be a powerful undercurrent during the Holocaust.
[There is a] dangerous little catch phrase which advises you to keep an “open mind.” This is a very ambiguous term—as demonstrated by a man who once accused a famous politician of having “a wide open mind.” That term is an anti-concept: it is usually taken to mean an objective, unbiased approach to ideas, but it is used as a call for perpetual skepticism, for holding no firm convictions and granting plausibility to anything. A “closed mind” is usually taken to mean the attitude of a man impervious to ideas, arguments, facts and logic, who clings stubbornly to some mixture of unwarranted assumptions, fashionable catch phrases, tribal prejudices—and emotions. But this is not a “closed” mind, it is a passive one. It is a mind that has dispensed with (or never acquired) the practice of thinking or judging, and feels threatened by any request to consider anything.
What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an “open mind,” but an active mind—a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically. An active mind does not grant equal status to truth and falsehood; it does not remain floating forever in a stagnant vacuum of neutrality and uncertainty; by assuming the responsibility of judgment, it reaches firm convictions and holds to them. Since it is able to prove its convictions, an active mind achieves an unassailable certainty in confrontations with assailants—a certainty untainted by spots of blind faith, approximation, evasion and fear.
Ayn Rand
The next time someone tells you you’re “closed-minded,” tell them, “You’re damned right.” A person who is “open minded” is an individual without principles. To be open-minded is the standard one applies to the choice between a basset hound and golden retriever. To be closed-minded is the standard one applies to the choice between good and evil.—Artful Dilettante
“A man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions…. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer–because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
All doctrines that have sought to discover in the course of human history some definite trend in the sequence of changes have disagreed, in reference to the past, with the historically established facts and where they tried to predict the future have been spectacularly proved wrong by later events.
Most of these doctrines were characterized by reference to a state of perfection in human affairs. They placed this perfect state either at the beginning of history or at its end or at both its beginning and its end. Consequently, history appeared in their interpretation as a progressive deterioration or a progressive improvement or as a period of progressive deterioration to be followed by one of progressive improvement. With some of these doctrines the idea of a perfect state was rooted in religious beliefs and dogmas. However, it is not the task of secular science to enter into an analysis of these theological aspects of the matter.
It is obvious that in a perfect state of human affairs there cannot be any history. History is the record of changes. But the very concept of perfection implies the absence of any change, as a perfect state can only be transformed into a less perfect state — i.e., can only be impaired by any alteration. If one places the state of perfection only at the supposed beginning of history, one asserts that the age of history was preceded by an age in which there was no history and that one day some events which disturbed the perfection of this original age inaugurated the age of history. If one assumes that history tends toward the realization of a perfect state, one asserts that history will one day come to an end.
It is man’s nature to strive ceaselessly after the substitution of more satisfactory conditions for less satisfactory. This motive stimulates his mental energies and prompts him to act. Life in a perfect frame would reduce man to a purely vegetative existence.
History did not begin with a golden age. The conditions under which primitive man lived appear in the eyes of later ages rather unsatisfactory. He was surrounded by innumerable dangers that do not threaten civilized man at all, or at least not to the same degree. Compared with later generations, he was extremely poor and barbaric. He would have been delighted if opportunity had been given to him to take advantage of any of the achievements of our age, as for instance the methods of healing wounds.
Neither can mankind ever reach a state of perfection. The idea that a state of aimlessness and indifference is desirable and the most happy condition that mankind could ever attain permeates utopian literature. The authors of these plans depict a society in which no further changes are required because everything has reached the best possible form.
In utopia there will no longer be any reason to strive for improvement, because everything is already perfect; history has been brought to a close. Henceforth, all people will be thoroughly happy.1 It never occurred to one of these writers that those whom they were eager to benefit by the reform might have different opinions about what is desirable and what not.
A new sophisticated version of the image of the perfect society has arisen lately out of a crass misinterpretation of the procedure of economics. In order to deal with the effects of changes in the market situation, the endeavors to adjust production to these changes, and the phenomena of profit and loss, the economist constructs the image of a hypothetical, although unattainable, state of affairs in which production is always fully adjusted to the realizable wishes of the consumers and no further changes whatever occur.
In this imaginary world tomorrow does not differ from today, no maladjustments can arise, and no need for any entrepreneurial action emerges. The conduct of business does not require any initiative; it is a self-acting process unconsciously performed by automatons impelled by mysterious quasi instincts. There is for economists (and, for that matter, also for laymen discussing economic issues) no other way to conceive what is going on in the real, continually changing world than to contrast it in this way with a fictitious world of stability and absence of change.
But the economists are fully aware that the elaboration of this image of an evenly rotating economy is merely a mental tool that has no counterpart in the real world in which man lives and is called to act. They did not even suspect that anybody could fail to grasp the merely hypothetical and ancillary character of their concept.
Yet some people misunderstood the meaning and significance of this mental tool. In a metaphor borrowed from the theory of mechanics, the mathematical economists call the evenly rotating economy the static state, the conditions prevailing in it equilibrium, and any deviation from equilibrium disequilibrium. This language suggests that there is something vicious in the very fact that there is always disequilibrium in the real economy and that the state of equilibrium never becomes actual.
The merely imagined hypothetical state of undisturbed equilibrium appears as the most desirable state of reality. In this sense some authors call competition as it prevails in the changing economy imperfect competition. The truth is that competition can exist only in a changing economy. Its function is precisely to wipe out disequilibrium and to generate a tendency toward the attainment of equilibrium. There cannot be any competition in a state of static equilibrium because in such a state there is no point at which a competitor could interfere in order to perform something that satisfies the consumers better than what is already performed anyway.
The very definition of equilibrium implies that there is no maladjustment anywhere in the economic system, and consequently no need for any action to wipe out maladjustments, no entrepreneurial activity, no entrepreneurial profits and losses. It is precisely the absence of the profits that prompts mathematical economists to consider the state of undisturbed static equilibrium as the ideal state, for they are inspired by the prepossession that entrepreneurs are useless parasites and profits are unfair lucre.
The equilibrium enthusiasts are also deluded by ambiguous thymological connotations of the term “equilibrium,” which of course have no reference whatever to the way in which economics employs the imaginary construction of a state of equilibrium. The popular notion of a man’s mental equilibrium is vague and cannot be particularized without including arbitrary judgments of value. All that can be said about such a state of mental or moral equilibrium is that it cannot prompt a man toward any action. For action presupposes some uneasiness felt, as its only aim can be the removal of uneasiness.
The analogy with the state of perfection is obvious. The fully satisfied individual is purposeless, he does not act, he has no incentive to think, he spends his days in leisurely enjoyment of life. Whether such a fairy-like existence is desirable may be left undecided. It is certain that living men can never attain such a state of perfection and equilibrium.
It is no less certain that, sorely tried by the imperfections of real life, people will dream of such a thorough fulfillment of all their wishes. This explains the sources of the emotional praise of equilibrium and condemnation of disequilibrium. However, economists must not confuse this thymological notion of equilibrium with the use of the imaginary construction of a static economy. The only service that this imaginary construction renders is to set off in sharp relief the ceaseless striving of living and acting men after the best possible improvement of their conditions. There is for the unaffected scientific observer nothing objectionable in his description of disequilibrium. It is only the passionate prosocialist zeal of mathematical pseudoeconomists that transforms a purely analytical tool of logical economics into an utopian image of the good and most desirable state of affairs.
Ludwig von Mises was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian school of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’s writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science that he called praxeology.
Joe Biden is claiming to be everyone’s president and the leader who will unite us and solve all our problems. Whether Biden becomes the victor in the presidential election or not, understanding the beliefs of his supporters and admirers is fundamentally important. They are a force that will continue to have to be reckoned with. In this regard, critical review of the Democratic Party platform is enlightening and still relevant.
First, for context it seems wise to have a comparison, but not to the Republican platform, for that would be comparing apples to oranges. As a historical perspective, why not compare to the 1960 Democratic Party platform on which John Kennedy was elected President? The 1960 platform celebrated the party of Jefferson, instead of the movement today to remove, deface, or destroy his national monument in Washington D.C. and rename hundreds, even thousands, of public schools. It promoted a strong military and economy to defend against the Soviet Union and Red China, rather than replacing the superiority of American military and economic strength with ineffectual diplomacy. It promised housing for everyone and the end of urban blight, as consequences of a strong economy, instead of government handouts and welfare. It recognized God rather than claiming that government is the only hope. It established the need for the end of pollution and the wise use of resources instead of the blind religion of environmentalism and climate change. It blamed previous Republican administrations for not accomplishing what the Democrats claimed they could only achieve, but without hatred. It understandably was political propaganda, but it was strikingly different than what the Democratic Party states they believe today.
The 2020 Democratic Platform reads as if it was written by Sandy O and her entourage. Joe Biden cannot honestly face the 70 million who voted for his opponent and call for unity while subscribing to such a platform. One also questions how the moderate Democrats can remain in their party while claiming that the socialist talk cost them too many seats in the House.
Sadly, the 2020 platform is filled with a pervasive and deep hatred of and vehemence against President Trump. Mitt Romney’s characterization of Joe Biden and his family as “people of good will and admirable character” is not true. Remember, Joe Biden said, “I am the Democratic Party.”
Following are quotes from the preamble to the 2020 Democratic Platform. They provide a sense of the contents of the document, but to understand the comprehensiveness and hypocrisy of its propaganda one must read the full platform, which is easily found on the Internet. One also must not be misled by nice-sounding words or concepts. They mean or refer to concepts that will result in unwanted governmental intrusions in our lives on a scale previously unknown. The statements in the Democratic Preamble that follow simply are not factual.
The challenges before us — the worst public health crisis in a century, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the worst period of global upheaval in a generation, the urgent global crisis posed by climate change, the intolerable racial injustice that still stains the fabric of our nation — will test America’s character like never before.
The bill has come due on the Trump Administration’s hollowing out of our public institutions: the sidelining of experts, the rejection of science, the underinvestment in research, and the gross corruption and abuses of power. President Trump’s dereliction of duty has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, the loss of tens of millions of American jobs, and lasting harm to our children’s education and future.
Friends and foes alike neither admire nor fear President Trump’s leadership — they dismiss and ridicule it. The Republican Party under President Trump has made America small.
Democrats will fight to repair the soul of this nation. To unite and to heal our country. To turn this crisis into a crucible, from which we will forge a stronger, brighter, and more equitable future.
In the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump and the Republican Party are trying to tear health care away from millions of people who depend on it for survival.
We will curb the corrupting influence of money in politics and protect the integrity of our elections from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
And we will end the war on government that has politicized our institutions, denigrated public services, and left the American people on their own instead of working to make them whole.
We know that four more years of the crass, craven, corrupt leadership we have seen from Donald Trump and the Republican Party will damage our character and our country beyond repair. Democrats call on all Americans to come together and seize this last, best chance to restore the soul of our nation.
The frightening thing is that those who wrote and adhere to the 2020 Democratic Platform sincerely believe it. They contend that it is the only way to restructure our nation, whereas in actuality it is a dangerous and real threat to our Democratic Republic and liberties. The point is that the Democratic Party, as articulated in its 2020 platform, believes the same thing about conservative, strict constitutionalist, nationalistic, law-abiding, moral, capitalistic, and patriotic Americans who believe in freedom of conscience and speech. In their minds, we are the danger, we are the threat, we are the deplorables, and we are the enemy. Those in the opposition who are not so engaged for only power and control believe that they have the high moral ground.
There is no amount of reasoning or compromise that can influence those who truly believe and support the tenets of the 2020 Democratic Platform. They are the foundation on which a Democrat-controlled presidency and Congress will formulate policy. There is no common ground. The only answer is to continue to defeat the current effort to steal this year’s election, stay intelligently informed, reliably communicate with one another, bring more independent thinkers into the fold, and enhance and expand the efforts and strategies to win and win big, both socially and politically, while praying that God will have mercy on us still.
Jim Forbes, FEE
I was a teenager, growing up in the Richard Allen housing project of North Philadelphia, when Emmett Till was lynched in Money, Mississippi, on Aug. 28, 1955, and his brutalized, unrecognizable body later recovered from the Tallahatchie River. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Roughly 73%, or 3,446, were black people, and 27%, or 1,297, were white people. Many whites were lynched because they were Republicans who supported their fellow black citizens and opposed the lawless act of lynching. Tuskegee University has the best documentation of lynching. It records an 1892 high of 69 whites and 161 blacks lynched. By the 1940s, occurrences of lynching fell to single digits or disappeared altogether.
At the time of my youth, today’s opportunities for socioeconomic advancement were nonexistent for black people. For all but a few, college attendance was out of the question because of finances and racial discrimination. If you were not admitted to the black colleges of Lincoln University or Cheyney State College, forget about college. I do not know of any student of my 1954 class at Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin High School who attended college. Though the quality of education at Benjamin Franklin is a mere shadow of its past, today roughly 17% of its graduating class has been admitted to college. The true hope for a youngster graduating from high school during the 1950s was a well-paying and steady job. My first well-paying job was as a taxi driver for Yellow Cab Company.
Younger black people today have no idea of and have not experienced the poverty and discrimination of earlier generations. Also, the problems today’s black people face have little or nothing to do with poverty and discrimination. Political hustlers like to blame poverty and racism while ignoring the fact that poverty and racism were much greater yesteryear but there was not nearly the same amount of chaos.
The out-of-wedlock birth rate among blacks in 1940 was about 11%; today, it is 75%. Black female-headed households were just 18% of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68% today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly higher than that of whites. Even during slavery, when marriage was forbidden, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. In New York City, in 1925, 85% of black households were two-parent households. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were two-parent households.
There’s little protest against the horrible and dangerous conditions under which many poor and law-abiding black people must live. It is not uncommon for 50 black people to be shot over a weekend in Chicago — not by policemen but by other black people. About 7,300 black people are murdered each year, and not by white people or racist cops, but mostly by other black people. These numbers almost make our history of victimization by racist lynching look like child’s play.
The solutions to the many problems that black Americans face must come from within our black communities. They will not come from the political arena. Blacks hold high offices and dominate the politics in cities such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New Orleans. Yet, these are the very cities with the nation’s worst-performing schools, highest crime rates, high illegitimacy rates, weak family structure and other forms of social pathology.
I am not saying that blacks having political power is the cause of these problems. What I am saying is that the solution to most of the major problems that confront black people will not be found in the political arena or by electing more blacks to high office.
One important step is for black Americans to stop being “useful tools” for the leftist, hate-America agenda. Many black problems are exacerbated by guilt-ridden white people. Often, they accept behavior and standards from black people that they would not begin to accept from white people. In that sense, white liberal guilt is a form of disrespect in their relationships with black Americans. By the same token, black people should stop exploiting the guilt of whites. Let us all keep in mind that history is one of those immutable facts of life.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at http://www.creators.com.
As I told you, the Democrats must impose more censorship in order to protect the tower of lies that they have constructed. Biden/Kamala means the end of free speech. The media has already abandoned free speech and serves as a propaganda ministry. The cancellation of free speech in America will spread throughout the world.
“As someone raised in a deeply liberal and Democratic family in Chicago, I do not know when the Democratic party became the party for censorship. However, limiting free speech is now a rallying cry for Democratic members and activists alike.” — Jonathan Turley
Paul Craig Roberts
