Free Republic

When a ship called the Mayflower set sail for the Americas on August 1, 1620, no one would have thought that a historical lesson in politics would be learned by those who gave up everything for a chance at a new life in a new world. 102 passengers set sail with William Bradford that day and once they were on the high seas they all signed an agreement. This agreement, or contract if you may, established what was to be a just and equal law for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. What the settlers...

Michael Moore’s latest blockbuster lacks luster. After languishing in theaters for two months, Michael Moore’s anti-capitalism movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, has officially bombed. In its painfully short run of two months, the movie grossed 14.2 million. Approximately 55% of sales make it back to the studio, that leaves eight million to cover production costs and advertising costs, in other words the film has finished in the Red, how appropriate. Moore scored big with Fahrenheit 9/11, it had a 120 million domestic gross. Since then his films have been falling faster than a fat man on ice. Sicko made a...

Communist China, 1995, The Dawn Of Capitalism Economics / Economic Theory Nov 19, 2009 - 07:47 AM By: Steve Selengut The Hong Kong based guide talked about the free enterprise zones, building projects, golf courses, and roads with a chest full of pride and visible excitement. Capitalism was everywhere along the tour route, and judging from the advertisements on billboards and posters, the world was coming to China! But although the government was embracing "for-profit" business for the first time, the train-ride out of the country evidenced the abject poverty of what would become a willing and able workforce. Another...

Left-wing media matters Cliff Kincaid, November 17, 2009 A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Robert W. McChesney has said that “media reform” should be part of the march toward socialism in America and that capitalism has to be dismantled “brick by brick.” Van Jones, the ousted communist “Green Jobs Czar” of the Obama Administration, served with McChesney on the board of Free Press, a George Soros-funded organization, in 2007 and 2008. Despite its socialist orientation, Free Press is financially supported by extremely wealthy individuals such as George Soros, the leftist billionaire, and Marcy Carsey, one of the creators...

How does Israel—with fewer people than the state of New Jersey, no natural resources, and hostile nations all around—produce more tech companies listed on the NASDAQ than all of Europe, Japan, South Korea, India, and China combined? How does Israel attract, per person, 30 times as much venture capital as Europe and more than twice the flow to American companies? How does it produce, for its size, the most cutting-edge technology startups in the world? There are many components to the answer, but one of the most central and surprising is the Israeli military's role in breaking down hierarchies and—serendipitously—becoming...

<p>It's a little early to issue a death certificate for the career of Michael Moore -- but his latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," has grossed just $14 million in seven weeks of release.</p>

Soros: The World Is Facing Another Stark Choice By Rocky Vega 11/09/09 Stockholm, Sweden – George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management, has written a piece that examines the “stark choice” between “international capitalism,” which he sees as the flagging US model, and “state capitalism,” represented by a rising China. To him neither of these two options is ideal, and he looks instead towards the development a new multilateral system. His editorial is strongly supportive of the expanded usage of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), and the vigor of his enthusiasm seems bearish for the dollar. He recommends international cooperation...

Healthy eating, curbing the obesity epidemic—it's hard to find much of anything Mr. Mackey says that's controversial. But the health-care reform lobby continues to attack Whole Foods as if he were an apostate. In response to the hullabaloo, Mr. Mackey has been understandably defensive. In early September, he wrote about the op-ed on his blog: "I gave my personal opinions. Whole Foods has no official position on the issue." So I ask him, does he regret writing the article? "I regret the controversy that it caused for Whole Foods, but I don't regret writing it, because I think what I...

Having purchased, rented, or placed a down payment on all the political influence up for sale in America, leftist troublemaker George Soros now plans to ramp up his war on markets worldwide by creating an “Institute for New Economic Thinking” (INET). “The system we have now has actually broken down, only we haven’t quite recognized it and so you need to create a new one and this is the time to do it,” Soros told the Financial Times last month. Soros said he wants Communist China to run this new financial system. “You really need to bring China into the...

With the history of twentieth-century science and technology largely a saga of Jewish accomplishment, in retrospect it might seem foreordained that after World War II the rising Jewish nation in the Middle East would emerge not only as a financial power but also as a scienti�c and technological leader. Yet surprisingly, for all the talk of deserts in bloom, the predictable miracle did not occur. Forty-some years on, Israel by 1990 was still mostly barren of technology and finance. Apart from military breakthroughs, the scores of thousands of brilliant Jews assembled in Israel generated few significant companies or technologies, no...

The primary trailer to Michael Moore's latest hideously unwatchable “documentary” Capitalism: A Love Story features a narration of a series of events surrounding the financial crisis beginning in late 2008 and the federal government's particular method for addressing it with Moore ultimately proclaiming that “By spending just a few million dollars to buy Congress Wall Street was given billions.” No arguing with that proposition. After just 22 seconds time Moore takes us to Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D) of Ohio who laments the fact that “Everything was being handled by the Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs...they [influential Wall Street firms] had...

We all know the Rap on capitalism: That it is fundamentally greedy and immoral. That it enables the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. That open markets are Darwinian places where the most ruthless unfairly crush smaller competitors and where the cost of vital products and services like health care and energy are almost beyond the reach of those who need them. Capitalism has also been blamed for a range of social ills--from air pollution to obesity. Not only have educated, successful people bought into capitalism's bad Rap, but the Rap is taught in our schools....

Yes, he has made millions of dollars from his documentaries which attack the profit motive of the capitalist system, and this does indeed look like the most embarrassing irony for him. But when you understand him, or at least when you understand his misunderstanding of capitalism, you will see that he is not in fact consciously contradicting himself. He is merely a victim of a common but very subtle economic fallacy that has afflicted societies since ancient times.

Since his brother left office in January, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been mostly diplomatic when discussing the Obama administration. On Wednesday, he took a sharper tone. During remarks to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce legal summit in Washington, Bush had tough words for the president in response to an audience question. "I think President Obama has used the bully pulpit as a way to attack capitalism," he said, according to LegalNewsline.com.

Played by veteran actor Chelcie Ross, Conrad Hilton is now advertising man Don Draper's new client on the AMC series, which is set in the early 1960s world of Madison Avenue. To many viewers Hilton may seem unusual—and he does represent a refreshing break from Hollywood's negative depictions of corporate businessmen. The Hilton character in the show, like the real-life man on whom he is based, was a Christian anticommunist who believed that America and capitalism were positive forces in the world. In one scene, Hilton expresses his outlook to Draper: "This country is a force of good because we...

Pravda indicates that because of America’s decline she is forced be friends with all world powers, Russia included. Pravda points out that America is changing from a leadership role in the world to a more humble and submissive posture in line with other world governments. Is this the turning point in world history? One where one socio-political philosophy is dimming from the world stage to be replaced with another? Pravda certainly suggests so. Pravda reminds us that approximately 400 years ago [t]he Western European society discovered a new hierarchy of values. Feudalism that valued service and chivalry was replaced with...

It is bad when an anchor from a sister network feels compelled to call out a colleague about the lack of ideological balance, but that's just what CNBC's Larry Kudlow did on his Oct. 27 program. In a time when some of CNBC's critics demand the network be held to a high standard when it comes to balance, a different standard is applied to MSNBC. And lack of balance is something Kudlow pointed out. Kudlow, referring to the Oct. 26 broadcast of MSNBC's "The Ed Show," which featured Rep. Barney Frank, perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader and the host Ed...

AMERICAN.COM A Magazine of Ideas Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism By Jay W. RichardsThursday, October 15, 2009 Filed under: Big Ideas, Culture, Economic Policy, Public Square Capitalism doesn’t need greed. What capitalism does need is human creativity and initiative. After months of hearing the media and pundits pronounce the untimely death of capitalism, it did my heart good to see a recent Newsweek cover story challenge the familiar trope. The author, Fareed Zakaria, noted that this pessimistic pronouncement gets air time in the wake of every financial downturn. But in reality, capitalism, over the long haul, has...

The Associated Press posted an interesting piece revealing that the health insurance industry is far from the image that Democrats and other leftists want to present. Insurance companies are so often presented as rapacious, fat-cats ripping off all their customers and growing fat on profits. But the AP finds that reality does not quite fit the left-wing image. In fact, the insurance industry makes far less profits than other industries. As the AP notes, the Hershey chocolate company even has a higher profit margin than health insurers. Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6...

Lately I have observed any number of our leftist US leaders denouncing the “evils of capitalism” and simultaneously suggesting that if we would just launder our money through the government that life would be so much better. Pardon my cynicism, but I can’t help but be just a little suspicious when the fox proposes to stand watch over the hen house(!) Until last night these thoughts had been simmering more in my subconscious than they had been finding their way to my voice and keyboard. However, last night I happened to accompany my wife on a shopping trip to look...

If you define "socialist" as advocating government ownership of the "means of production," which is what I've always understood socialist to mean, then, no, modern leftists (or progressives or whatever they want to be called) no longer believe that, right now at least, widespread government ownership of economic enterprises is a good strategy. As a sketch of that now-obsolete view of socialism, consider Lenin in State and Revolution: "The development of capitalism ... creates the preconditions that enable really "all" to take part in the administration of the state. Some of these preconditions are: universal literacy, which has already been...

Irving Kristol, who died last month at age 89, inspired some highly mixed feelings in me. On the positive side, this renowned public intellectual was possessed of political realism, a firm anti-utopian grasp of the possible. Like Thomas Sowell and P.J. O’Rourke, though more understated, he had a superb gift for deflating the morally-charged conceits and histrionics of Left egalitarianism. On the negative side, he exhibited a shockingly narrow and vitriolic view of contemporary culture. That hatred, unfortunately, did much to sour his view of capitalism. And his widespread influence on this count has become painfully apparent. Arguably more than...

Amid the worst recession in generations, Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people�, got a thumbs up from the Vatican overturning a century of Catholic hostility to his creed. Marx, who predicted that capitalism would be destroyed by its internal contradictions, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church, The Times newspaper said on Thursday. The British daily, quoting the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, said Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation� felt by...

Michael Moore today posted his "15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now" on his DailyKos diary. I'll analyze it here to spare you a visit to the Kos Kidz. Let's see what Mr. Moore wants us to do... You've Seen the Movie -- Now It's Time to ACT! Shock! Here comes Moore's real agenda which the MSM seems all too eager to ignore. 2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. No doubt Mr. Moore hopes Obama's "choice and competition"...

Now is the time like no other for Americans to make their voices heard throughout the halls of government. We cannot continue to buy into this con that is being perpetuated on us. We have all of the power and the government only has the power we relinquish to them. It is time to stand up, unite and tell Washington we are not blind. We see what you are doing and we will stop you. Read full article http://newsflavor.com/opinions/isolate-obama-take-back-america-2010/

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Jack Bogle published "The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism" four years ago. The battle's over. The sequel should be titled: "Capitalism Died a Lost Soul." Worse, we've lost "America's Soul." And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic. That's why a man like Hong Kong's contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: "The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today." No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street's "too-greedy-to-fail" banks....

RUSH: Now, this is an interesting story from Bloomberg News, ladies and gentlemen, and it's a snapshot out of economy. I love the story for its teachable moment. "Harvard's Bet on Interest Rate Rise Cost $500 Million to Exit." Now, that's the headline. It's a teachable moment about capitalism versus liberal capitalism. Harvard University. Now, what is Harvard? It's our citadel! I mean, it's the best and the brightest, the smartest, the brainiest, our best. The people who know more than the whole world combined are at Harvard. It's America. "Harvard University's failed bet that interest rates would rise cost...

(HITPIECE ALERT) http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59F5GX20091017SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc is taking its ferocious price cutting into new markets as the economy shows hints of recovery.

The PBS news program Frontline is about to launch an "expose" of the financial crisis and blame it on free markets. The program is titled, The Warning, and is to be first aired on October 20. It will blame the current financial crisis on supposed free market advocates (and this, I guess, is not a PBS joke), Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. Greenspan, at the time, was the head of the Federal Reserve, which is responsible through monetary manipulations for the distortions that do cause the business cycle. Rubin is a former Goldman Sachs CEO, who like all...

Shocking, eh?It looks like hajj-trekking, first Muslim congressman in the United States has answered a question we posed in a December 11, 2008 Creeping Sharia post, U.S. Congressman Ellison attends hajj where Saudi cleric urges sharia:More importantly, will Ellison follow the demands of the Grand Mufti and begin to renounce capitalism in favor of sharia law?We asked this question in response to Keith Ellison's free trip to Mecca to perform the Islamic ritual of hajj - paid for by a Muslim Brotherhood entity, the Muslim American Society (read link for details on MAS' denial of paying for that trip and...

While the debates rage on with health care, cap-and-trade, and the overall role of government in the average American’s life, economic societal terms like “capitalism,” “socialism,” and “communism” often get careless bandied. Many on the right feel like America is on the move towards “socialism” and many on the left believe that “capitalism” is the root of all social ills. The only way to set the record straight is to understand the precise definitions of these terms and how are they being used in today’s rhetoric. Capitalism has been blamed for the Great Depression and the current financial crisis. It...

With Rush Limbaugh's venture into possibly bidding on the St. Louis Rams franchise there's been polls asking if it would be right to ban Limbaugh from owning apart of an NFL team? The argument was that the United States is a free market system based on the idea of capitalism. So, I figured it's time to actually go over what kind of market systems there are. According to businessdicitionary.com the definition of an economic system is: An organized way in which a state or nation allocates its resources and apportions goods and services in the national community. There are different...

Living in Fort Collins, Colo., provides quick access to some of the best trout fishing in Colorado. A few nights ago I made my first outing to the Big Thompson River. I found a stretch of river with pools and pockets of easy-flowing water. After 20 minutes, I felt a strike on my line, and a brown trout surfaced in his struggle to free himself from the hook. I nearly had the trout to shore, but with one last thrash he freed himself and slipped back into the river. If you’re an angler, you know the deep disappointment that grips...

It’s no secret that Michael Moore hates economic liberty; the theme of his movie Capitalism: A Love Story is that the free market is evil. But unlike most on the extreme left, Moore attempts to justify his views based on his Christian Catholic religion. Moore asks, “Would Jesus be a capitalist?” He answers that capitalism “is opposite everything that Jesus ... taught” and that all religions are clear about one thing: “It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what’s left for everyone to fight over.” (Sadly, he’s ignoring the fact that wealth isn’t a static...

"There's one costume so hideous, so vile and so extreme, that it'll make this Halloween a nightmare for everyone you meet!!" NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thank you very much!

Promoting Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore is beating the drum of his Catholicism in a way that he hasn't previously. Check out this clip from Moore's appearance last night on Sean Hannity's TV show. When Hannity suggests possible political labels for Moore, the filmmaker responds: "Christian." Then Moore quizzes the Fox News host, a fellow Catholic, on the last time he's been to mass. Trying to out-church him, Moore implies that Hannity is fibbing about having attended mass last weekend. It's no accident that Moore's new openness about his religious faith is coming now, after the Democratic Party has...

In my last analysis of the interview between Neo-Communist filmmaker Michael Moore and Neo-Socialist comedian Bill Maher I demonstrated how Moore has embraced a kitsch Marxism. He simply updated the terminology of Marxism but maintained the notion of class conflict. Here Moore addresses Maher's (entirely correct) criticism that the opposite of capitalism (no government control of the economy) is communism (complete government control of the economy):

Remember when Rush Limbaugh used the term "Gorbasm" to describe how the left in America used to react Mikhail Gorbachev? I ask because in today's Huffington Post, Dan Siegel had what can only be called the first ever public, multiple Moore-gasm while describing the newest hypocritical piece of trash from Michael Moore, the successful, capitalist filmmaker who hates capitalism. In the piece, titled (seriously) Michael Moore's Grapes of Wrath, Siegel sets a new standard for leftist hero worship. "Michael Moore has made the most important and urgent political film of our time. In fact, he might have made the most...

Last week the American Enterprise Institute hosted Jay W. Richards, visiting Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of the new book Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem. The conversation focused on why capitalism and Christianity are compatible. Highlighting three of the eight myths surrounding capitalism he makes in his book, Richards explained the “Piety Myth”, which he defines as well-intended people ignoring unintended consequences when searching for a quick fix solution to an economic or social problem. An example of this is the United States enforcing western-style laws outlawing child labor on...

Eavan forgot it was picture day. Enjoy Capitalism!

How is wealth created? Seemingly a strange question for Forbes readers, but the question is hardly an academic one in the wake of the credit crisis and ensuing global recession. It has profound political implications that will affect our economic future. Clearly, a sizable portion of the assets created in recent years turned out to be "make believe," the result of an unsustainable, ephemeral bubble in housing and the churning out of increasingly exotic, ultimately toxic financial instruments. It's one thing for folks and institutions that hold suspect paper to lose out, but it's quite another when the process that...

Michael Moore is destined to really hate capitalism, for his new movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" appears to have totally flopped at the box office. This comes despite all the gushing and fawning by Moore-loving media members prior to the film's October 2nd release. Take heart, fellow capitalists, for according to Deadline Hollywood this could be a flop of epic proportions:

In just 2 1/2 minutes, Milton Friedman explains—albeit, in a backhanded way—why capitalism works and socialism is doomed to failure… Video Link

Though he has profited by over $50 million selling his product in the marketplace, left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore contends that capitalism hasn’t done him any good. “If I made all that money, where is it?” Moore asked. While wags may jibe that there is ample evidence that Moore has put a large portion of his profits into augmenting his personal girth, Moore contended that “a system that allows a person to frivolously spend on items that endanger their health, like America does, victimizes people.” Moore argued that “a socialist government like Cuba would’ve still let me make movies, but would...

funny thing happened on the way to the collapse of market capitalism in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It didn’t. Indeed, in Germany voters relieved Chancellor Angela Merkel of the necessity of cohabiting with a left-wing party, allowing her to form a coalition with a party favouring lower taxes and free markets. And in Pittsburgh leaders representing more than 90% of the world’s GDP convened to figure out how to make markets work better, rather than to hoist the red flag. The workers are to be relieved, not of their chains, but of credit-card...

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... What Mr. Mackey is proposing is more or less what he has already implemented at his company—a plan that would allow more health savings accounts (HSAs), more low-premium, high-deductible plans, more incentives for wellness, and medical malpractice reform. None of these initiatives are in any of the Democratic bills winding their way through Congress. In fact, the Democrats want to kill HSAs and high-deductible plans and mandate coverage options that would inflate health insurance costs. The Whole Foods health-care story has been largely ignored by proponents of a government-run system. But it could be a template for those in...

Steven delivers another funny and observational video.

This week I attended the Washington premiere of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story." It was my first trip ever down the red carpet, and I was a bit disappointed that "Entertainment Tonight" wasn't there to comment on my wardrobe (black jacket over open-collared tattersall shirt) or get my reaction to the film ("Entertaining propaganda -- * *.") But, hey, it's not every day you get to watch a documentary about the housing crisis and Wall Street greed while sitting across the aisle from Frank Raines, the ousted chairman of Fannie Mae. Frank didn't stick around for the big after-party....

Documentary film director Michael Moore, who has become a millionaire thanks to the profits from his movies, told CNSNews.com that “capitalism did nothing” for him. CNSNews.com spoke with Moore on the red carpet at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night before the premiere of his upcoming documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Stor