Posted on 05/28/2012 5:22:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Winston Churchill captured what this presidential election is about when he observed “the inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
It’s why the young black Democrat mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker, got high level repudiation from the Obama campaign, including from the president himself, when he insolently suggested that Bain Capital, the investment firm once headed by Mitt Romney, might actually do positive things.
Booker, an Obama campaign surrogate, went off script on Meet the Press when he refused to justify a campaign attack ad depicting the evils of Bain. “I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity….Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital.”
This was more than insubordination to Booker’s campaign handlers.
It was unmitigated heresy driving to the core of the Obama campaign message. The narrative, telescoping the theme of four years of this presidency, says that the American economy collapsed because of unbridled capitalism. To recover, the narrative continues, we must allow all knowing, all powerful, but compassionate political leadership in Washington to re-arrange the American economy and make sure businessmen never steamroller Americans again.
But Booker, educated at Stanford, Oxford, and Yale Law School, is a new breed of young black politician, who is actually trying to make a difference. And he is too close to realities on the ground to deny the truth he sees.
As mayor of Newark, he governs a city that is more than 50 percent black with a 25 percent poverty rate. It’s clear that what Newark needs is more business and investment, not more government.
George Mason University economist Walter Williams recently noted that America’s poorest cities with populations over 250,000 – Detroit, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Miami, St. Louis, El Paso, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Newark – have one common characteristic. For decades they have been run by liberal, Democratic administrations. The mayors of six of them have been black.
The big government, high taxation, overreaching regulation model of governing has been a saga of failure in America’s cities. And it certainly has not served well the black populations that disproportionately populate them.
And interestingly, in another paradox of black political behavior (I wrote last week about the stark contrast between the values that blacks embrace in church on Sunday and the values they vote for on Election Day Tuesday), blacks are voting with their feet against the same political regimes that they are supporting in the voting booth.
The New York Times reported last March that, according to new census data, blacks are departing our failed northern cities and heading south. Blacks may be pulling the lever for “blue” candidates, but they’re leaving the blue states and moving to the red ones.
Michigan, Illinois, New York, and other major Northern black population centers have shown net black population decreases over the last decade, and “among the 25 counties with the biggest increase in black population, three quarters are in the South.”
Professor of history Clement Price at Rutgers University in Cory Booker’s Newark says “the black urban experience has essentially lost its appeal with blacks in America.”
These black Americans on the move are young and educated – 40 percent between 21 and 40 and one in four with college degrees – and looking for opportunity.
And the places in America today with the growth and opportunity they seek are those areas that embrace freedom and entrepreneurship.
Cory Booker knows this. And he knows that fixing America’s blighted urban areas means pushing back on the smothering government that caused this decay and inviting in creative and courageous business minds and their investment capital.
So Booker’s defense of Bain and capitalism should come as no surprise.
wouldn't have known that if they hadn't told me.
so, business and investment will automatically restore law and order to that cesspool?
it's clear that it needs good government, from which an environment that is amenable to business and investment would follow.
I thought Town Hall people were supposed to know wtf it's all about. I guess I get them mixed up with First Things for some unknown reason.
It’s an amazing thing.
Without capitalism, there’d be no point for unions to negotiate for anything, period.
Without capitalism, there’d be no real taxes to put upon industry.
Without capitalism, there’d be no growth of jobs, just permanent stagnation.
Without capitalism, there’d be few universities because there’d be no need for smart or intellectual guys to advance anything much.
Without capitalism, there’d be no I-Phones, I-Pad, Google, or Pepsi-Max.
Without capitalism, there’d be no smoothies, no ABS brake systems, no heated seats, or TV remote controls.
Without capitalism, we’d be lucky to having flushing toilets, a microwave in every house, the NFL, or beer in a can or bottle.
I suspect that most Democrats really do grasp the necessity of capitalism, and kind of appreciate the evils that come from it. It’s just the one-percent group of Democrats who really do hate capitalism. It’s funny though....the same group never says anything harsh against heated seats, or toilets that flush.
Booker is smart enough to realize that anti-business political rhetoric has some anti-business real world consequences.
Cory Booker, bless his heart, is sending a message to all Black Americans that Barack Hussein Obama is not the one, and...never will be. It is as simple as that. He and many other smart and perceptive Black leaders see the train wreck coming for millions of American Blacks because of their blind and foolish support of America hater, Obama. Never before in American history have a group of American citizens been so misled and used as have have American Blacks by Obama. SAD!!! Of course they will do nothing, and blindly support Obama as he purposely continues to destroy their chances and opportunities in the future. You can lead a horse to water, but....you cannot make him drink!!!
Cory Booker is the mayor of a city that has been desperately trying to get private businesses into its downtown core for years. They just started construction of the first large office building in Newark in two decades: the building that will become the new U.S. headquarters for Panasonic.
Oh, good grief. How long has it been since we were allowed “unbridled capitalism”?
The enduring principles of Creator-endowed individual rights, liberties, combined with equality before the law--the principles underlying America's Constitutional limitations on government and protections for freedom of individual enterprise (sometimes called "capitalism"), when honored and protected, are the principles which result in opportunity, individual freedom, innovation, productivity, plenty, and expansion of the wealth of nations.
The counterfeit idea which assumes individuals in government, as a group, have "special" rights to plan, control, pass laws to confiscate and redistribute the earnings of their fellow citizens is repugnant to every principle which underlies the Constitution's strict limits and bounds on coercive government power.
Individual members of every ethnic background, every religious persuasion, and every economic background are made more free, have more opportunity, when they are left, as the Founders and early Supreme Court justices asserted, the KEEPERS of their Constitution and its limits on those who would be arrogant enough to think they know better than the least of their fellow citizens how to spend those citizens' earnings.
As more citizens come to study and understand the difference between the ideas of arrogant redistributionists and the ideas of America's Constitutional restraints on their leaders' power, there will be fewer and fewer citizens willing to be led to slavery by an "artful" (Geo. Washington's Farewell Address description) leader who only wants power over their lives.
Thanks. Great summary. See my post above.
Thanks for another great and thoughtful post
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