What is the most important defining characteristic of today’s progressive left movement? My answer to that question would be, hatred of America and everything it stands for. Progressive look at today’s United States, and all they can see are flaws. And they think they have a vision that can, through the magic powers of government coercion, fix all those flaws in short order.
Ask college-age kids what they dislike most about America, and the answer you are likely to get is “capitalism.”
But what is “capitalism”? The funny thing is that it’s not an “ism” at all. Except for the word “capitalism,” the suffix “ism” denotes a belief system, particularly a highly-structured belief system that has been intentionally constructed by a person or group of people. Notable examples are major religions. “Catholicism” is an ism. “Protestantism” is an ism. So are Buddhism and Hinduism. Communism and Socialism are also isms, with large numbers of structured beliefs to which many adherents subscribe. The similarity to the major religions is not an accident.
But “capitalism” is not a belief system at all. There is no political party anywhere that claims to stand for “capitalism.” There is no place you can go to find a list of the beliefs in the capitalist creed. A person who is described by himself or others as a “capitalist” is not someone who subscribes to some belief system of “capitalism,” but rather just someone who deploys investment capital in a business.
Rather than referring to a belief system, the word “capitalism” is best viewed a merely a descriptive term for an economic system that arises naturally under certain conditions. But “capitalism” is a terrible word to be used as a descriptive term for this system for two reasons: (1) because the suffix “ism” gives the completely false impression that this is a belief system, when that is not true at all, and (2) because the word gives the suggestion that “capital” and the use of capital are the most important characteristics of this system, when instead there are other far more important characteristics to pay attention to.
In other posts over the years I have suggested the term “freedom-based economic order” as a far preferable term. Unfortunately, I have not been able to come up with any one-word term that captures the essence of the concept. Neither has anybody else.
The relevance of this discussion to Independence Day is that a freedom-based economic order is very much provided for by our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The freedom-based economic order is no more than what arises naturally in human affairs when there are secure rights in private property that can then be freely exchanged. The pertinent phrase in the Declaration, is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which are said to be “unalienable rights” coming from the “creator”:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. . . .
In the Constitution, the concept of “liberty” as a fundamental purpose of the new government starts in the preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to . . . promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . .
And then the right to hold private property secure as against the government itself is made explicit in the Fifth Amendment:
. . . nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
So what are the aspects of the freedom-based economic order that, in my view, are far more important than the presence of capital and capitalists? Here are my big three:
A tremendous prosperity has been unleashed, unlike anything the world had previously seen.
People can live with a great degree of independence and autonomy from overlords and ruling elites; and
While in pre-existing systems people organized by tribes and ethnicities and fought endless wars for control of land and resources, now people of all ethnicities are able to live together in peace and create mutual prosperity by exchange of goods, services, intellectual property and labor.
I would rank number 3 as the most important, and somehow almost unrecognized by our progressive intellectuals. Those who rail against supposed “oppression” of ethnic minorities in the United States somehow can’t see ethnic minorities by the dozens rapidly working their way up the economic ladder here, while Communist China seriously oppresses ethnic minorities like Uyghurs and Tibetans, and while ethnic and tribal conflicts persist endlessly in places like Africa and the Middle East.
But for the progressive, Independence Day is just another day to hate on America. The New York Times reports on July 3 that the American flag has become the “Symbol of Unity That May No Longer Unite”:
What was once a unifying symbol — there is a star on it for each state, after all — is now alienating to some, its stripes now fault lines between people who kneel while “The Star-Spangled Banner” plays and those for whom not pledging allegiance is an affront.
Somehow, for those who arrogantly think that they have all the answers to perfect and save the world, the blessings of what they have have become impossible to see.
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