PROSPERITY 

This chapter will deal with the laws of economics. We live in a physical world that has laws guiding it such as the law of gravity. There are laws just as powerful for the creation of wealth. The thesis of this book is that people must realize that many laws of the universe have already been discovered, and it should follow them. For example, the Boy Scouts have an oath and 12 laws that I had memorized and they helped to guide my life. One of the laws that the Victorian founder of Scouting, Lord Baden-Powell taught was the virtue of thrift. In the 19th century most people owned their own home and rarely took out loans. The 20th century, as usual, threw it out for the instant money of loans. That is why there was a depression in the 1930s and half a million people file for bankruptcy every year. People want to get rich quick. The difference between the 19th and the 20th centuries is the difference between the hare and the rabbit in Aesop's fable. The hare won, the rabbit lost. Aesop lived thousands of years ago, and that truth will always be fresh. Men should save and accumulate money for many reasons. One of them is to invest in businesses. Zig Ziglar is a devout Christian and one of the greatest motivational speakers on salesmanship and wealth. He and others like him such as Norman Vincent Peale correctly interpret the Bible and teach how money is spiritual.

Leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt with his high sounding idealistic New Deal programs shifted power from men to Uncle Sam and emasculated the men of America. President Johnson's Great Society sounded good, as Satan makes his ideology sound good, but America became less great because men became less good. Why be good if solutions only come from the Emerald City from Washington D.C. Politicians threw out the virtue of paying as you go and now we have an astronomical debt. Robert Schuller has an excellent book on the debt and the grotesque deficits our so-called leaders run up every year called America's Declaration of Financial Independence. The inside cover says,"The American government is $5 trillion in debt! Is this any way to run a country? Eighteen percent of the federal budget is allocated to pay the interest on the national debt. The national debt is more than 70 percent of our Gross National Product."

The Power of Being Debt Free

"In 1985, Robert Schuller, popular author and pastor of the world's largest televised church audience...warned about the dangers of an escalating national debt in his book, The Power of Being Debt Free (updated to America's Declaration of Financial Independence ten years later). In a year when the debt stood at $1.8 trillion, they predicted that if America just 'muddled through," it would be $5.9 trillion." His prediction has been"frighteningly accurate." He shows in his book why and how it is possible to be debt-free."It's a moral issue," says Robert Schuller. 'Thou shalt not steal.' You have a right to borrow money, but you don't have the right to borrow money if you never intend to repay it. We are stealing from our children." I agree that it is wrong to have our children pay for our loans, but I'm not as casual as Schuller is about saying loans are all right. I feel the government should pay as it goes. And it should have a savings for emergencies, just as a family should. The only time to borrow money is if the U.S. is fighting a physical war with another country who is invading us. Let's look at WWII to illustrate. The Japanese invaded Pearl Harbor and the U.S. government needed to mobilize the country. It was right to borrow money and have the same generation pay it back. It was wrong that we were weak militarily. It was wrong that we were not debt free already. It was wrong that we did not have emergency funds. It was wrong to encourage married women to leave the home and work as Rosie the Riveters. It was wrong to incarcerate Japanese Americans.

There are many books on the national debt and our annual deficit spending. I think Sculler's book is the best to start out with. Being debt-free brings power. Burdening our children is immoral as Schuller says,"American children today are inheriting a burden they did not ask to bear the freedom to grow into healthy and happy individuals in a stable economic society. Not only are we stealing income from our children, but we are also robbing them of economic freedom. This is not just unfair; it is irresponsible, unjust, and immoral."

"The time has come for the people of the United States of America to call for a declaration of financial independence. Let us unite to pay off the national debt and give our children the opportunity of enjoying the fruits of their labor and creativity."

"We can be a debt-free nation! To be debt free would give us real wealth and real power: power to maintain our middle class; power to wipe out poverty; power to educate all citizens." It is difficult to walk the line and not cross over and do the wrong thing. We can be critical of Congress for poor leadership. Looking back and criticizing is easier than being there and fighting. I'm not trying to be a Monday morning quarterback criticizing the Presidents of the U.S. I don't mean to sound arrogant and negative. The U.S. did its best. Truman was gutless and fired McArthur. But I thank him for going in and at least saving the messiah's life. FDR made a mistake in creating Social Security and other domestic agencies, but he was strong in fighting Hitler. I could go on and on dividing the babies and the bathwater.

God is for being debt-free. There are always exceptions. A mortgage on a house is the only one I will consider. Never on cars, furniture or credit cards. I don't even think loans for college or to start a business are right. There is too much risk of going bankrupt. We must become masters of money. We have to become greater than Christians like Zig Ziglar and greater than Mormons like Stephen Covey and Marriott. Father wants us to be awesome and superior. It is all right that he borrows money, but it is not right for the average person. If we borrow we will end up losers like the rabbit. We have to go down a different road than this world.

Debt-free

Some people are beginning to see the fallacy our century has done by rejecting some of the old-fashioned values. The most famous Christian finance counselor is Larry Burkett. He is a best-selling author and teaches why and how to get debt-free. I don't believe everything he says, but he is basically on target. Satan corrupted economics by 1920 to thwart the Messiah by creating a chaotic environment. Knowing that, we can read even more significance into what it really means when we read, "Prior to the 1920s, Americans were characterized as frugal, self-reliant people who had a strong faith in God. Debt was certainly not unknown, but it would have been unusual for the average American to borrow for anything other than the purchase of a home, and even that loan was for no more than seven years or less." Everyone should pay off a home as soon as possible. Make double payments and pay it off in 15 years instead of the usual 30.

Burkett writes, "Having a debt-free home should be one of your primary financial goals. If you're like most homeowners, you probably did a double take when you read this principle. After all, the common wisdom is that it's always best to have a mortgage on your home so that you can take advantage of interest write-offs on your tax returns."

"But I take issue with this common advice. In the first place, it's relatively recent common advice. As mentioned earlier, during the 1920s nearly everybody in the United States owned his home debt free. But today, nearly everyone leases a home with a mortgage attached. In other words, we've shifted from a principle of outright home ownership to a principle of home leasing through indebtedness. Not only has this trend placed the average American family in peril of losing its home, but it has also driven the cost of homes out of the range of the average family's income. Any sizable financial crisis will find most families unable to make their house payments."

"There's a tendency these days to look at people who redirect assets toward paying off their home as a little 'odd.' On the contrary, the person who works to own his or her own home is one of the wisest among us. The simple truth is, a mortgaged home is always in jeopardy of being repossessed. It only takes an occurrence only a matter of the right (or wrong) economic conditions. A debt-free home represents economic security."

"In our high-inflation economy, why should you want to pay off your home? And what about the loss of your tax deductions for mortgage payments? First of all, nobody ever made money by paying out interest to a bank, and especially not at the exorbitantly high rates lending institutions now charge. The only way you can make money on a mortgage, except through whatever equity increase you may get on the underlying property, is to put the money that might go for a house purchase into income-producing investments that can earn more than the interest paid on the mortgage. That's hard for most people to do consistently, and it still leaves the home in jeopardy. For example, what happens if the investment dries up?"

"Also, having the security of a place to live, even if you're without a regular job, is an almost immeasurable psychological advantage in hard times. I counsel many professional athletes, who have quite high incomes for a short number of years and then often have very little coming in during the transition period between leaving their sport and finding a regular job. One of the first goals we encourage is to pay off their homes."

"Many of the tax attorneys and accountants disagree with this advice, pointing out the usual tax-write-off arguments of a mortgage. But these athletes and particularly their wives have a much more solid foundation to operate from when they know they have a place to live. The knowledge that their families are secure in a debt-free home has gone a long way toward reducing marital tensions and heading off potential divorces."

"It is unfortunate that most Americans have been duped into accepting long-term debt on their homes as normal. With the prices of homes being what they are today, most young couples need extended loans to lower their monthly payments initially. But any couple can pay their home off in 10 to 15 years simply by controlling their lifestyles and prepaying their principal a little bit each month."

"A simple investment strategy to follow is to make the ownership of your home your first investment priority. Then use the monthly mortgage payments you were making to start your savings for education or retirement. If you can retire your home mortgage before your kids go to college, they can graduate debt-free (and you too)."

"The most common argument against paying off a home mortgage early is the loss of the tax deduction for the interest. Allow me to expose this myth once and for all." I can't quote forever. You'll have to read his books to get all the arguments. He knows what he is saying is controversial, especially with financial planners. They will say this makes no economic sense. Members should be the sharpest people in the world and see through Satan's lies. He is a master at making his ideology seem good. Everyone should be debt-free and should stay away from financial planners. There are good books on finance. Don't have blind faith. Brothers especially need to manage money and not give that responsibility to their wives or someone else. The very first thing a brother needs to do is make sure he has a ton of life insurance so his family can live in a debt-free home and have income from investments if he dies. Most insurance companies push whole life that gives very little protection. Term insurance is what everyone needs. And lots of it. Almost all financial planners are snakes. One of the best articles on the reason to buy only term life insurance is Venita Van Caspel's chapter in her book Money Dynamics. Use this chapter to fight off financial planners who push whole life.

And don't take money out of equity to give to a financial counselor to invest in distant mutual funds. Impersonal mutual funds are not spiritual. We should invest only in what we can love and control. Where would you want your money if the economy turned bad? In mutual funds or in a rental unit you own? You have no control over the mutual funds. You don't even know what companies you are investing in. You do know your little rental house for rent, and you probably can do something to make it produce wealth. You can lose your mutual fund at the blink of an eye. You have a chance with your rental unit. And if it's paid off all you have to come up with are taxes. You probably won't lose anything. It would be better for brothers to get together and buy rentals or little businesses and love them. Let's build our own local little mutual fund companies that consist of friends loving a piece of ground and buildings that they can touch and personally make things blossom. There is no love involved in mutual funds. The managers of mutual funds are not loyal to any company. They will drop them in a second and rush over to some other company. What has this got to do with being spiritual? Spiritual means to look long-term, not short term profits.

Mary Pride in her book All the Way Home has a chapter on personal finance that goes into this concept of personal investing. Burkett gives good reasons for paying off a home instead of listening to financial counselor's reasons that it is smarter to take advantage of tax deductions on the mortgage and invest in their securities. This is Satan's trap. Run from them.

We can't witness unless we have peace of mind and money problems cause so much anguish. Don't depend on distant, impersonal companies. Get a home paid off as soon as possible. Maybe there will never be a depression again, but if it comes you will have a roof over your head instead of some financial counselor for some New York investment firm calling you up to say he is very sorry, but you have lost everything overnight. My mother is retired and trusted one of these big companies and lost a good part of her investment because he invested in some Houston real estate investment trust that went belly-up and in some gold mine in South Africa that practically went bankrupt. There are too many books out there showing the horrors and tragedies these investment counselors have caused. There is risk in anything, but we must not gamble. And mutual funds are gambling in my book. You will need Larry Burkett to give to financial sharks to explain why you're first financial goal is to have a debt-free home and to never take equity out of it. Burkett has spiritual reasons as well. One of them is that women need a home that is safe. As long as there is a big mortgage, she isn't safe.

James Paris is a Christian financial writer who is not concerned with the national debt and sees people like Burkett as gloom-and-doom. He says good things like buy term insurance over whole life and no load mutual funds over paying a commission to a broker, but I feel it doesn't matter if the economy goes under or not, it is best to live in a community that helps each other and invests locally in things they control.

Your Money or Your Life

Another good book on finance is Joe Dominquez's Your Money or Your Life which shows why and how to be debt-free and financially independent. With disciplined saving and being frugal and goal-oriented anyone can do it. An example given is Amy and Jim Dacyczn. They "had a simple dream. They wanted to raise a family in a big farmhouse in a rural area." But after twenty years of marriage and both of them having worked full-time, they had only $1500 in savings to show for it. They focused on their goal. They visualized it. And they started to be frugal. The number one rule for being frugal is to stop eating out and focusing on wholesome but inexpensive food like whole grains. Amy quit her job as some kind of writer and graphic design artist and focused on the children and being frugal in her home. She came up with hundreds of ways to save money. It was even fun. Often when women give up their job and go home, the family starts having more money. This happened with them. An added benefit was that there was more love between them. We read, "They thrived on this challenge to their creativity, and their relationship thrived on their shared purpose. In seven years they had saved $49,000." They are now in their rural Maine farmhouse, and Amy is famous for her book about this experience, The Tightwad Gazette which is full of practical tips on how to be frugal. They have lots of kids and prove that people can be happy living on one salary. Mary Pride and her friends write that this is the way to live and anyone can do it. Pat Schroeder, the liberal congresswoman who's life's ambition is to get women into combat, writes as many do on the Cain side that "no one" can live off one salary. To live off one salary and within one's means and to pay for everything with cash is spiritual and deeply rewarding. The book being reviewed says it well, "Their story is testimony to the fact that simple dreams, like having a house in the country and staying home to raise a family, are truly within reach." Shakespeare was right: "Neither a lender nor a borrower be." The Bible teaches, "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender."

The Alternative to Budgeting

Dominquez has many good points on how to get control of money. For example, under the topic of budgeting he says most people don't budget and he gives the reasons why. The following is an idea that has helped me in budgeting. It is the idea of keeping track of every penny.

He says,"Write down everything you spend, every day. It helps to list your expenditures in specific categories, so you can see your running total at a glance for evaluation purposes. Soon you will have a clear picture of where your money is going. At first it may seem difficult to remember to do, but don't give up. Psychologists have learned that it takes just three weeks to make or break a habit. (Incidentally, this principle holds true for establishing any habit, whether it be a daily exercise routine, teaching your kids to make their beds and even quitting smoking!)"

"Remember that no expenditure is too small to be recorded, not even a 50-cent candy bar. There is no cheating allowed on this money diet! As you use this system, you will find that you avoid impulse purchases because you know they will be recorded and reviewed by the family."

"Next, establish a regular savings program, which you can call your 'stake.' This is your investment capital. Don't make impulsive purchases because you know it will take money away from your stake."

"We have found that when people examine their own spending habits, two things generally happen. First, they are often shocked to discover where their money has been going. 'We can't be eating that much!' is a common reaction. Second, and more significantly, they automatically begin to make adjustments that cut the waste from their monthly expenditures, without having to establish a formal budget."

"Once you have decided to use this 'no-budget' budget, you will find that it is very easy to implement. Soon, and without any painful effort, you will begin to make intelligent choices about how you use your money. It is a wonderful feeling to know that, finally, you are controlling your finances instead of letting them control you!"

Writing everything down may not be the answer for everybody. But for those who are serious about wanting to gain control of their spending habits, it is an important beginning."

"If this process seems to be time-consuming, be assured that you will not need to do this for the rest of your life. We have found that a year of intensive self-evaluation is generally enough time for most people to change their attitudes about money and gain control of their spending habits. After that, the evaluation techniques will become an automatic, subconscious element of your spending decisions. You may want to resume the practice occasionally when you face major financial changes -- growing family, different income levels, moving to a new town or adjusting for inflation, for example."

"We conclude that strict formal budgeting will never work for most Americans for one overwhelming reason: it requires a lot of hard work and discipline over a long period of time. Too many forces are at work making it easy to go off the budget --easy credit, impulse buying, inflation and government tax policies that encourage spending. Writing it all down, item by item, on a daily basis will help you get hold of your financial picture."

"The system we have presented here will tell you where you are spending. The next chapters will tell you how to start saving."

Every person should see the spirituality in money. Money represents this earth and getting it consumes the majority of a man's time and effort. How we earn and invest money is highly spiritual. Money can come and go. Millionaires find themselves broke overnight. Big businesses go under. If we handle money correctly it will grow forever. We should look at everything long range. We should earn money honorably and with so much service we have customers for life and we invest in a way that it grows for generations. We should be more in tune with forces of wealth than anyone. Father says we have "to be involved in economics activities." We "must become a professional in economic activities. If not, you can only become a beggar in the satanic world."

To make sure we never become beggars we should invest in our children and grandchildren. If we earn money all of our life and never retire we should be able to set them up with all their physical needs taken care of and they can work to build houses, businesses etc. for their descendants. Children should be set up when they turn 18 with a debt-free house and income from investments so they don't have to worry about every day, mundane concerns and can concentrate on doing work that matches their creativity and personality. In God's ideal a person doesn't work to provide for himself, but for his descendants. There is a deep foundation of wealth coming from well managed businesses that are debt-free and vast. The money should be spread out in everyone's name so that if one person were to lose control of his investments because he got possessed or because he was attacked, as Father has been taken court, if he lost everything then other members of the family and community could come to his aid after he has lost from his lawsuit. No matter what happens everybody should have this kind of insurance as back up to make sure he has food, clothing and shelter and income guaranteed for life, no matter what happens. This doesn't mean that everyone has equal money. If someone becomes a billionaire he doesn't have to distribute it evenly to all relatives. I'm not talking pure socialist equality.

Money is often lost by descendants of wealthy people because they are not united. Blessed couples will be the beginning of empires that will be so united that eventually we will own every square inch of this earth. Our future descendants will never know job or financial insecurity.

How much and how do we tithe?

There are many testimonies of people who say they have been rewarded 10 to 1 by tithing to their church. The UC needs to write a detailed statement about this important topic. Do we give 10%? Or are we supposed to give 20 or 30 percent? Do we give a percentage calculated after taxes or before? Who do we give it to? A percentage to headquarters and other percents to the regional, state and local centers. Are members supposed to tithe if they are poor and don't have the basic necessities? If a member inherits a fortune or earns a large income is he to give it all to the church? Is this decision up to him or is he to ask his immediate Abel and do as he says?

The Decline of Thrift

I really like this passage from The Decline of Thrift in America about the Victorian black leader, Booker T. Washington: "Washington went on to build his own Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and, declaiming that thrift and toil and savings were the highway to progress and equality, he gained a reputation as black America's leading orator. Washington climaxed the Yankee missionary gospel of thrift and piety to black America. Individuals and civilizations who succeeded were those who saved time and money, Booker emphasized in his Sunday evening Tuskegee chapel talks: 'We cannot get upon our feet, as a people, until we learn the saving habit; until we learn to save every nickel, every dime and every dollar that we can spare.' Saving money required self-control, the ability to say no: 'I want you to be able to go by a store and, as you notice the things in that store -- whether candy or spring hats, or whatever it is that attracts you -- to be able, notwithstanding the fact that you have the money in your pockets to buy, to exercise a self-control that will enable you to pass these things by and save your money to invest it in a house.' Saving should not be postponed until after marriage; all young people should save: 'Resolve that no matter how little you may earn, you will put a part of the money in the bank. If you earn four dollars a week, put two dollars in the bank. If you earn ten dollars, save four of them. Put the money in the bank. Let it stay there. When it begins to draw interest you will find that you will appreciate the value of money.'"

"Booker's message of economic self-sufficiency was shared by virtually all black leaders at the turn of the century. Professor W.E.B. Du Bois spoke for black capitalism and savings bank frugality. Religious leaders, such as Reverend E.C. Morris, president of the National Baptist Convention, advised: 'Let every man among us get a home, improve it, and then add to that a good bank account. Go into the unbroken forest, buy forty, sixty or a hundred acres of land, build a house, move into it and stay there until the last dollar of the purchase price has been paid. Never come to town, except on business, and then to sell rather than to buy. Let the politician, the office-seeker and the merchant look for you, instead of you looking for them."

The author explains how America began to lose the value of thrift in the 1920s. The 19th century championed it. He goes into detail giving the history of thrift. I don't have time to even summarize what he says, but I will quote one passage to give you a flavor of how people in the past valued thrift. He writes, "The YMCA ran a program in cooperation with bankers. The Y, which had added thrift to its religious concerns during the war, continued to support the cause through a National Thrift Week in January, declaring thrift a fundamental part of character development: 'The Association has come to see that habits of wastefulness and extravagance rot character. They make a man poor, they rob him of his judgement, steal his health and undermine his integrity. Most of the evils that beset and ruin the individual go back to the gaining, dividing and use of money.'"

Victorian virtue of thrift

One tactic of Satan to destroy the world was to take away the Victorian values (or virtues as they called them). One of the deepest held virtues was thrift and paying as you go. By making homes leased with mortgages Satan was able to take away the security of women in having a debt-free home. This is a major cause of women leaving the home and for divorce. Satan creates a tense atmosphere where there is little safety. By corrupting the self-discipline of saving and living debt-free, Satan created a hyped atmosphere in the 1920s that led to a thinking of get rich quick and in 1929 the stock market crashed leading to a protracted depression that led to FDR starting the alphabet soup agencies such as the ponzi scam of the misnomer Social Security. From every angle Satan destroyed every virtue of the Victorians in the 20th century.

Again, I can't emphasize enough that the Victorians were not perfect. But they were on the right track on many basic issues. Father was to elevate them even higher by having them teach these values to the world. Instead Father had to start at the bottom. A good book on the destruction of the virtue of thrift is David Tucker's The Decline of Thrift in America. He writes,"Faith in hard truths from the age of scarcity had faded amid the prosperity of the twenties. 'We are living in the midst of that vast dissolution of ancient habits,' Walter Lippmann observed in A Preface to Morals (1929). The culture -- schools, pulpit, and press -- no longer pressed the importance of foresight and savings upon the young. The National Education Association had abolished its Committee on Thrift in 1925 and sales of Horatio Alger novels had declined so sharply that in 1926 the publisher ceased to reprint these nineteenth-century celebrations of industry, frugality, and thrift."

"Character and morality were no longer required for success. Public morality had broken from the old-style inspirational oration that had always restrained the self .... Popular speakers of the 1920s could no longer be expected to speak from within religious restraints." The author goes on to criticize"the amoral orator of the new success ethic, Dale Carnegie" who is into"personality, style, and psychology -- rather than character and morality. In the popular culture, success had little to do with character and morality .... Certainly, islands of belief in the old values still existed; the prohibition amendment remained in force with the support of rural and small town values. But in advertising, psychology, literature, and religion, the culture of self-restraint had lost its dominance." This is what Stephen Covey says in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People although he hasn't the guts to mention Carnegie by name and to give the values people are to live by. Covey is amoral in his popular secular best sellers. The only modern motivational speaker who will mention traditional values is Zig Ziglar. Even he is pretty weak on explaining them and emphasizes technical things like goal setting and time management like all the rest. I love motivational speakers, but they need to give right values.

In The Return of Thrift: How the Coming Collapse of the Middle-Class Welfare State Will Reawaken Values in America, Phillip Longman gives some excellent insights into how government has destroyed our economy and spirit. He not only gives good theoretical arguments but gives stories of real people to illustrate his points. He begins with this example to show the absurdity of impersonal bureaucracy to help people. "It was the kind of story that sets conservative radio talk show hosts to howling. Uncle Sam, a congressional report revealed, was regularly mailing benefit checks to forty indigent alcoholics, in care of their local Denver liquor store. The tab came to $13,000 a month, most of which, no doubt, went straight for Colt 45 and Thunderbird."

"How could this be? Well, the Denver drunks were entitled, it turned out. The Social Security Administration had deemed all forty alcoholics to be 'disabled' by virtue of their 'illness." These men lived on the streets and got this income from the branch of government called Supplemental Security Income (SSI), an entitlement program that pays benefits to the poor and disabled. In 1993, SSI paid out $1.4 billion to 250,000 addicts. Very few are required to seek any kind of treatment. Some are dealers with a criminal record. He writes, "This sort of government benevolence, remarked the director of a Denver homeless shelter, amounted to nothing less than 'suicide on the installment plan."

The writer teaches that middle-class Americans take more unearned money from the government than genuinely poor people. He writes, "Middle-class Americans know and think a lot these days about addiction. The bookstore shelves groan with self-help titles about overcoming dependency, whether to alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, sweets, speed, sex, and even romantic love. The concepts and cliches of recovery programs ('denial,' 'co-dependency,' 'twelve steps,' 'stinking thinking') now pervade the popular culture -- even our humor. 'Denial ain't no river in Egypt,' Stuart Smalley jokes on 'Saturday Night Live.' Never before in our history has the stigma associated with addiction and dependency been stronger."

"With one huge exception: dependency on government benefits."

"During the Great Depression and even as recently as the 1960s, the biggest problem met by social workers in the United States was convincing down-and-out Americans to overcome the 'humiliation' of accepting a helping hand from government. Today every American -- rich, poor, and middle class -- knows he or she is entitled to a plethora of social benefits as a matter of 'earned right .... This book will confront middle-class America's $2 billion-a-day addiction to entitlements."

He writes, "Middle-class Americans have plenty of reason to be alarmed and angry about the degree of welfare dependency in today's poorer neighborhoods. But don't scapegoat 'those people' on the other side of the tracks for running up your taxes or the national debt. Certainly they are part of the problem, but the rest of us are a far bigger part. In 1990 fully 75 percent of all direct outlays for federal entitlements went to families earning $20,000 or more annually. Even families earning $50,000 or more, it turns out, are major consumers of the welfare state."

Social Security is a Ponzi scam

He explain how Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and old people are cashing in. "In the retirement villages of Florida and Arizona, few residents could afford to have retired as early as they did, or to shop and travel as they do, without being able to rely on Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements as a financial base." These monies are windfall profits paid for by future generations. "When speaking among themselves, politicians often refer to Social Security, for example, as the third rail of American politics: 'Touch it,' they say, 'and you die.' Tampering with the home mortgage deduction is equally, if not more, politically incorrect."

"Behind all the political sloganeering in support of entitlements lurks a darker reality -- one that most Americans privately suspect but still often want to deny. It's that middle-class America's binge on entitlements is as unsustainable as a welfare mother's crack habit. While Newt Gingrich has been busy trying to reinvent the orphanage, another Victorian idea is in even greater need of rehabilitation: middle-class thrift and self-reliance."

Once again the most perceptive critics of society are turning toward the values that were good in the nineteenth century and the twentieth has thrown out. He writes, "Thrift. In the 1870s, that most eminent Victorian and popular moralist Samuel Smiles became famous for his lively defense of what was then the orthodoxy of the striving middle-classes in both Europe and America. 'It is the savings of the individual which compose the wealth -- in other words, the well-being of every nation,' Smiles asserted in his relentless volume, simply entitled Thrift. 'On the other hand, it is the wastefulness of individuals that occasions the impoverishment of states. So it is that every thrifty person may be regarded as a public benefactor, and every thriftless person as a public enemy.' For Smiles, as for most other Americans of his era, individual thrift was not only a virtue in itself. Its widespread practice was considered a requisite of civilization and nation building. Americans who hope to attain or maintain middle-class status in the next century will have to adopt a similar thrift ethic."

He says that when the welfare state collapses people are going to "become more reliant on family ties" and return to being extended families. "The elderly will need the support of their adult children much more than they do today, and will find themselves in much greater need of maintaining proximity and usefulness to their adult children."

He says that Americans have to restore the work ethic. Life spans have increased and the age of retirement has decreased "leaving American workers free from labor for up to 30 percent to 40 percent of their adult life spans." He says the middle-class will be "forced to become more self-reliant" and "change their view of the proper relationship between government and the individual." People have to stop thinking they are victims. "Beginning in the last century, farmers saw themselves as victims of an industrial economy in which farm prices lagged behind rises in the cost of living, and so argued that they were entitled to crop subsidies. Senior citizens, particularly in the 1970s, saw themselves as victims of inflation and of a youth culture that denied their generational achievements, and so believed were entitled to generous Social Security pensions. Today beneficiaries of the home mortgage deduction claim they are owed this tax subsidy because they bought their homes on the assumption that it would always be available. And so it goes."

"As we shall see in this book, traces of the attitude can be found as far back as the days of Valley Forge, when General Washington's officers threatened to desert him if he didn't grant them half-pay pensions for life. The difference today is that ordinary citizens have developed a righteous sense of entitlement without ever having marched barefoot through the snow for their country. The process of corruption was so subtle and gradual that hardly anyone noticed it was occurring. Today understanding how and why the middle class became addicted to entitlements is essential to understanding our present predicament and what it will take to survive its consequences in the future."

Like this book, the author sees that America needs to restore the good values of the past that this century has thrown out. He writes, "It was a harsh code, but the bourgeoisie of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were convinced (correctly, it turned out, in the long run) that American greatness depended at the very least on middle- and working-class Americans not accepting benefits they had not earned." The turning point was the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935. He goes on to tell the story of how Senator Carl Curtis of Nebraska fought it, but everyone liked it including President Eisenhower. Senator Curtis spent 40 years in the senate and supported Father on his Watergate statement and represented America on Father's 60th birthday celebration in Korea and gave him a gift. Everyone saw Social Security as insurance when it was really a scam. He writes, "Both the politicians and the people had come to love this wonderful, seemingly harmless high provided by getting something for nothing." I don't have time to go into all the details he gives on the entitlements. His chapter called "Subsidizing Suburbia" on the home mortgage deduction is something no one thinks about. He says that the average person gets housing aid directly and indirectly and "his dependency on government can objectively rival that of many welfare mothers. And in many ways, the results of such an addiction are no less harmful."

Entitlements "erodes the bourgeois spirit in American life, creating in its place a mass of dependents who look to politicians to fulfill their expectations of the good life .... A nation saving less than 1 percent of its income, as the United States currently does, cannot expect to realize rapid increases in productivity. Moreover, if we have learned anything as a society in the last thirty years, it is that affluence is not automatic and that growth of the economy does not necessarily eliminate growth of the underclass, the national debt, or other compounding claims on the next generation's wealth."

"The ultimate solution to the crisis of the U.S. welfare state will be a cultural revolution among the American middle class that will elevate the prestige of such bourgeois values as thrift, work, and family .... Americans will have to rediscover the values that propelled the United States as an industrial power in the last century: they will have to reinvent themselves as sturdy, independent, and thrifty bourgeoisie."

"So pervasive has our debt-driven consumer culture become that it is next to impossible for any individual to see it for the dangerous addiction it is .... Why is the current culture unable to rediscover or reinvent the thrift ethos it so desperately needs to restore long-term prosperity? One reason is that thrift still has no champions." Unfortunately, he goes off the deep end and pushes for "the federal government" to "undertake a public education program about the importance of saving, similar in scope to the campaigns it has launched against smoking." He goes on to say the government should even force people to save as the Japanese government has done. He says many countries have "mandatory savings plans." You know where I stand about government. It's none of their business. He is not looking deeply enough at how to get people to do right. You do not do it with a gun to their head. He says, "Without coercion, tens of millions of Americans will fail to save adequately to finance their old age or prepare for other life contingencies." He's wrong. It would only make people less responsible.

He correctly says at the end of his book, "The demise of the middle-class welfare state will also foster another cultural change many Americans today say they yearn for: stronger families. In a world without Social Security and other middle-class subsidy programs, more and more stigma will attach to divorce, just as in Victorian times, because of the huge financial risks it will pose to all involved. Similarly, middle-class parents will once again have an extra and all-important incentive to invest their time, money and energy in the well-being of their children: they will need their children's gratitude and support in old age. For many Americans, saving up enough to be protected against all potential financial threats will be impossible. Thus, Americans will have more reason than ever to build strong family relationships and other mutual aid networks, just as pioneers on the prairie did. And like those pioneers, we will all be able to take pride in our independence from distant governments." He says "the pain of withdrawal will be excruciating, but every generation has its challenges." He says "we are all the beneficiaries of that discipline [thrift and industry] practiced by previous generations; our only burden is now to take up the same torch and to carry it into the twenty-first century."

The 19th century believed in individuals and communities taking responsibility for their lives. The 20th century believes that elites living thousands of miles away should guide them. The 19th century focused on the private, the intimate, the personal. The 20th century focus on the public, the bureaucracy, the impersonal. Father is into the 19th century, America is into the 20th. He is for decentralization; America is into centralization.

The Third Blessing is dominion over creation. In the ideal world everyone has adequate food, clothing and shelter. Satan works very hard to create a world where people live in hunger, rags and shacks. For decades an average of 40,000 children die of hunger and disease every single day. In America, millions of pets are fed better than millions of people in poor countries. The question is how do we organize the world so everyone and every pet eats good food every day forever. Father says he wants to end world hunger by having everyone live in international communities. I'll discuss some ideas on communities in chapter nine. The question is what is the blueprint for communities and nations.

Father is for capitalism. Don't believe me? Answer these questions. Is Father for entrepreneurs and decentralization, or is he for elites planning everyone's lives at headquarters? Let me say it another way. Is he for public schools or private schools? Let me say it in still another way. Is he most interested in what goes on in the grass roots little governments of people's homes where he says the man is the president, or is he more interested in bureaucratic big government playing Big Brother or Big Daddy?

Father has consistently been for decentralization. The core difference between capitalism and socialism is that capitalism is decentralized and socialism is centralized. Those who hate capitalism teach Satan's lie that capitalism is centralized because a few greedy billionaires take money from the poor and then go eat caviar on their yachts. Socialists, who think they are more sensitive, idealistic and spiritual, say the materialistic capitalists creates inequality and teach that we must force the rich to give to the poor. They are robin hoods fighting the evil rich in their lavish castles.

The problem gets down to the word "equality." Communists, socialists and feminists are obsessed with this word. They see capitalism as too messy, too dirty, too competitive. Competition disgusts them. They want gentle, warm, gooey cooperation. Capitalism scares them. It is too rough and tumble. It is too full of surprises. Socialists are neat freaks. They want everything to be in its place and predictable. They see most people as stupid and selfish and therefore in need of their wise guidance.

Father is spending billions helping those who are for decentralized economics and politics. And he wants to see the world organized into communities where people help each other locally. At one of his science conferences, Father gave Nobel prize winner of economics, Friedreich von Hayek, a check for $50,000. Hayek is one of my heros. I've been reading him for fifteen years now. I love this champion of capitalism and this great fighter of socialism.

Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal

Ayn Rand named a book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. She meant laissez-faire capitalism, not the mixed economy we have now. Capitalism is truly an unknown ideal to most people. Capitalism has been unjustly criticized for over a hundred years. Lately, there is beginning to be a turn around in the academic community toward appreciating it. Arthur Seldon's book Capitalism goes into this.

Hayek writes eloquently that this should be a treasured belief. Murray Rothbard writes, "Hayek has written that one of the great attractions of socialism has always been the continuing stress on its 'ideal' goal." Hayek writes, "We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia (by liberal, Hayek is using the 19th century word for free enterprise)...a truly liberal radicalism...which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. They must be men who are willing to stick to principles and to fight for their full realization, however remote...Free trade and freedom of opportunity are ideals which still may rouse the imaginations of large numbers, but a mere 'reasonable freedom of trade' or a mere 'relaxation of controls' is neither intellectually respectable nor likely to inspire any enthusiasm. The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and thereby an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote."

Marx's written goal came true

When Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto his goals, who would have thought they would have come true in America. He wrote the goal for substituting home school for public school. And 100 years later America does exactly what he wants. What was considered dangerously socialistic became years later"mainstream." He was crystal clear in his goals. Christians were vague. Socialists are dedicated and keep pushing their agenda and everyone gets tired of saying no and just gives in. Senator Rudman left the U.S. Senate after 12 years and wrote a book saying that if could do it over again he would have stood against his party and President Reagan when they increased the national debt. He is right that we must stand up for principles instead of just going along.

Hayek is right in that we must fight as the socialists fight for their beliefs. They are long range and chip away until they win. God's side is in a fog and thinks there is some truth to what they say and progressively accept their ideology. It's the story of the frog getting boiled and not knowing it until it is too late. Hayek is doing his best to teach America and the world the evil of socialism and few listen. Even conservatives will look at him and say he's too "extreme". Milton Friedman is respected in the Republican Party, but he is labeled "extreme". The UC is "extreme" in teaching an ideal world. We should be teaching "extreme" libertarian economics and not letting up till we win. Hayek says, "Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost."

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

The classic book on the magic of capitalism to produce wealth is Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. God works through capitalism. Smith said in a famous passage that there is an "invisible hand" that works mysteriously in free enterprise, private property and competition. He says, "As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry...every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it .... and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." God works in mysterious ways. God made it that billions of people can concentrate on their talents and by doing so the work of the world gets done without some bureaucracy. God and Father hate bureaucrats. Government regulators can't keep up with and get in the way of capitalist's creativity.

Common sense says that if you just leave people alone, if you have the attitude of laissez-faire, people will die of starvation. Common sense also says the earth is flat. Freedom works. It is a law of nature as powerful as the law of gravity. The 19th century was close to being laissez-faire capitalism, and we had giants like Jefferson and Lincoln. Entrepreneurs like Edison gave us light, and the Wright brothers gave us flight. There was a burst of invention and wealth the world had never seen. God wanted the 20th century to continue being capitalist, but Satan brainwashed everyone through such socialists as Marx and Engels. America gave up their children to state schools and their local associations to help the poor to state welfare. Power went to the top instead of being at the bottom. Taxes went from 10% to 50%, and problems increased ten-fold.

Satan has everyone thinking they have gone "beyond" the Victorians. Libertarians teach that that view is wrong. Robert Ringer in Restoring the American Dream says that people are wrong in believing that capitalism was cruel to people in the 19th century. Mankind was going through a growth period and what capitalists offered was better than what they had without them. It was bad in the factories, but it was worse in the country. He writes, "The conditions of the factories, by comparison, were like the Promised land to him. Never before had he lived so well. People do not voluntarily leave one job for another if the new job offers lower pay, longer hours and inferior working conditions." Hayek in Capitalism and the Historians presents a truer picture of what happened during the Industrial Revolution than the common myth everyone believes. Hayek writes, "Who has not heard of the 'horrors of early capitalism' and gained the impression that the advent of this system brought untold new suffering to large classes who before were tolerably content and comfortable? ... The widespread emotional aversion to 'capitalism' is closely connected with this belief that the undeniable growth of wealth which the competitive order has produced was purchased at the price of depressing the standard of life of the weakest elements of society." Hayek goes on to explain how capitalism developed to produce an economic miracle and brought "enormous improvement" to the masses.

In Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World the author says,"The nineteenth century was the ultimate product and expression of the intellectual trend of the Renaissance and the Age of Reason, which means: of a predominantly Aristotelian philosophy. And, for the first time in history, it created a new economic system, the necessary corollary of political freedom, a system of free trade on a free market: capitalism."

"No, it was not a full, perfect, unregulated, totally laissez-faire capitalism -- as it should have been. Various degrees of government interference and control still remained, even in America -- and this is what led to the eventual destruction of capitalism. But the extent to which certain countries were free was the exact extent of their economic progress. America, the freest, achieved the most."

" Never mind the low wages and the harsh living conditions of the early years of capitalism. They were all that the national economics of the time could afford. Capitalism did not create poverty -- it inherited it. Compared to the centuries of precapitalist starvation, the living conditions of the poor in the early years of capitalism were the first chance the poor had ever had to survive. As proof -- the enormous growth of over 300 per cent, as compared to the previous growth of something like 3 per cent per century."

There is a mistaken notion that if you took the wealth from the rich and distributed it, everyone would have all they need. One man told this to John D. Rockefeller, one of the richest men in the world. He responded by taking out a silver dollar and threw it on the table saying, "Here's your portion." Marx hated the rich. Stalin killed them. There are not finite pieces of pie in economics. Because one man has more money than another does not mean he has taken from someone else.

George Gilder

George Gilder in Recapturing the Spirit of Enterprise says in his chapter "The enigma of enterprise" that disparity of wealth is good and criticism of those who have money is wrong. Doesn't Father have a lot of money? Is he the only person on earth who is spending it wisely? Gilder gives reasons why it is good that entrepreneurs have money. He says, "Why should the top 1 percent of families own 20 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom 20 percent have no measurable net worth at all? On a global level, the disparity assumes a deadly edge. Why should even this bottom fifth of Americans be able to throw away enough food to feed a continent, while a million Ethiopians die of famine? Why should the dogs and cats of America eat far better than the average citizen on this unfair planet?"

"We all know that life is not fair, but to many people, this is ridiculous. These huge disparities seem to defy every measure of proportion and propriety .... Most observers now acknowledge that capitalism generates prosperity. But the rich seem a caricature of capitalism. Look at the 'Forbes Four Hundred' list of the wealthiest people, for example, and hold your nose. Many of them are short and crabby, beaked and mottled, fat and foolish." Many, he says never finished high school or college. "But capitalism exalts a strange riffraff with no apparent rhyme or reason. Couldn't we create a system of capitalism without fat cats? Wouldn't it be possible to contrive an economy that is just as prosperous, but with a far more just and appropriate distribution of wealth?

"Wouldn't it be a better world if rich entrepreneurs saw their winnings capped at, say, $15 million. Surely Sam Walton's heirs could make do on a million dollars or so a year of annual income."

"Most defenders of capitalism say no. They contend that the bizarre inequalities we see are an indispensable reflection of the processes that create wealth. They imply capitalism doesn't make sense, morally or rationally, but it does make wealth. So, they say, don't knock it." He says some people defend greed as making the system go. Gilder criticizes Adam Smith for having such a cynical view of people for saying "it is only from the entrepreneur's 'luxury and caprice,' his desire for 'all the different baubles and trinkets in the economy of greatness,' that the poor 'derive that share of the necessaries of life, which they would in vain have expected from his humanity or his justice."

"In perhaps his most famous lines, Smith wrote of entrepreneurs: 'In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they proposed from the labours of all the thousands they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires...they are led by an invisible hand...and without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of society.' Thus did capitalism's greatest defender write of the rich of his day." Gilder says people like John Kenneth Galbraith today "speak of the rich wallowing in their riches and implicitly bilking the poor of the necessities of life."

Gilder is disgusted with this attitude towards hard working, creative people who provide goods and services: "What slanderous garbage it all is! This case for capitalism as a Faustian pact, by which we trade greed for wealth, is simple hogwash. America's entrepreneurs are not more greedy than" most other people. He says, "they work fanatically hard. In proportion to their holdings or their output, and their contributions to the human race, they consume less than any group of people in the history of the world."

Gilder loves capitalists. He says it is worth bringing out violins and getting teary eyed at the cornucopia of abundance and beauty they give. Instead of looking at all the things at the mall as greed, we should be inspired and excited. Once my wife went shopping with an early member of the UC, Lady Doctor Kim. They went into a mall, and my wife saw how excited this lady was at all the beauty. She told my wife that the ideal world will be so beautiful, and everyone will have all these nice things.

Gilder is the 20th century's greatest apologist for capitalism as being spiritual. He gives capitalism a theology. It is socialists who are unspiritual. He says, "Far from being greedy, America's leading entrepreneurs -- with some unrepresentative exceptions -- display discipline and self-control, hard work and austerity that excel that in any college of social work, Washington think tank, or congregation of bishops .... If you want to see a carnival of greed, watch Jesse Jackson regale an audience of welfare mothers on the 'economic violence' of capitalism, or watch a conference of leftist professors denouncing the economic system that provides their freedom, tenure, long vacations, and other expensive privileges while they pursue their Marxist ego-trip at the expense of capitalism."

Gilder explains that the rich have their money tied up in businesses that can go under the next day. The world is changing so fast that nothing is secure. Everyday you have to compete and win the customer. The competition to serve is great. It requires constant attention. All my life I have typed on a typewriter from a company that dominated the industry, Smith Corona. Last year they went out of business. Computers came and everyone went that direction. The free market is exciting, not a dog-eat-dog world. It is as exciting as watching athletes compete or playing chess. The president of the UC was not chosen at random. He won the favor of Father. He works hard and pleases his boss. He has equal value to me, but we do not have equal access to Father. There is order here. Should Father have to report to anybody to make that decision? Of course not. Why should the owner of a barber shop have to report to anybody? But he does. He has to report to many government agencies that tell him in a hundred ways how to run his business. Father had to report to these socialists, the IRS, and they took him to court. Regulators are everywhere, and they use force if you don't do as they say. The only role of government should be to protect people from violent criminals and to be an umpire to settle disputes in court. That was the vision of our Founding Fathers. They left people alone to build their dreams whether it was a garbage company or a church.

Gilder says, "In a sense, entrepreneurship is the launching of surprises. What bothers many critics of capitalism is that a group like the Forbes Four Hundred is too full of surprises. Sam Walton opens a haberdashery and it goes broke. He opens another and it works. He launches a shopping center empire in the rural south and becomes America's richest man. Who would have thunk it?" God works in mysterious ways. The messiah is the ultimate surprise. God wants people to be open to surprises. He wants a free market so the messiah isn't crushed by socialists who are out to protect everyone.

Automatic transmissions -- frivolous luxuries?

What is one man's greed today, often becomes common household items tomorrow. When automatic transmissions came out on cars just before WWII, few could afford them. Some at that time said it was a frivolous luxury. Of course, it is common place now. When WWII came, both America and Germany were trying to perfect them to use in military vehicles but because America had so much experience from the private sector using many thousands of these transmissions on personal cars, the Americans quickly applied it to military purposes. The military used it build a tank and that helped us to win the war. Socialists are nay sayers and don't know the effects of what they call greed. Who knows how much electronic games have contributed to inventing military devices that keep us safe. The marketplace produces cigarettes, but it also produces books teaching against it. It is better to win through persuasion than forcing people to do right. Socialists make more mistakes than the marketplace. Socialists killed Jesus and tortured Father in their quest for world peace.

Here is the story about the technology that helped us win the war because of what some would call greedy, hedonistic people absorbed with luxury. In Mainspring Henry Weaver says before the Second World War he read an article in a magazine on inventions. The author said that America needed government social planning. He said that there was too much wasted effort by people working on "non-essential gadgets" instead of "useful inventions. He was particularly critical of automobile design and made special mention of the trend toward automatic transmissions as an example of gadgetry gone rife. To make a long story short, it added up about like this: 'Right at a time when the world is tottering on the brink of disaster -- right when so many important things need to be done--the automobile industry is prostituting its talents and diverting its engineering genius to working out gadgets that relieve people of the inconsequential task of shifting gears by hand.'"

"Well, it was quite true that the world was tottering on the brink of disaster and it was also true that some of the automotive engineers had worked out a way to shift gears automatically. I didn't quite agree that it was a useless gadget, but maybe I was biased." He goes on to say a few years later during the war "tanks were being equipped with automatic transmissions .... This made the driving of a tank so simple that the operator could be trained in a matter of hours instead of weeks. The job no longer called for a muscular giant, and in a pinch the driver could help with the fighting. Along with these advantages and of even greater importance, the gears could be shifted without bringing the tank to a stop. This reduced the danger of getting hit." These automatic transmissions "made in American automobile factories played an important part in winning the war for ourselves and our Allies."

"Adding it all up, my thoughts began to turn back to the article that tried to draw hair-splitting distinctions between essential inventions and unnecessary gadgets." He goes on to explain how free people are creative and achieve more than people who are not. God works in mysterious ways, especially when people are free.

Entrepreneurs (like Father) drive socialists crazy because they come out of nowhere and mess things up. Socialists want to make people like widgits that can be categorized and made mathematically equal. There is no creativity. People are cogs in a machine who are predictable. Everything is neat. Entrepreneurs give socialist social engineers headaches. Gilder says, "entrepreneurship overthrows establishments rather than undergirds them, the entrepreneurial tycoons mostly begin as rebels and outsiders. Often they live in out-of-the-way place-- like Bentonville, Arkansas; Omaha, Nebraska; or Mission Hills, Kansas (or Israel and Korea) -- mentioned in New York, if at all, as the punch lines of comedy routines."

Socialists know the price of everything, but they don't know the value of anything. They don't know how to create wealth for all, just for the few. Gilder says, "The means of production of entrepreneurs are not land, labor, or capital, but minds and hearts .... The wealth of America is not an inventory of goods; it is an organic, living entity, a fragile pulsing fabric of ideas, expectations, loyalties, moral commitments, visions. To vivisect it for redistribution would eventually kill it."

"This process of wealth creation is offensive to levelers and planners because it yields mountains of new wealth in ways that could not possibly be planned. But unpredictability is fundamental to free human enterprise. It defies every econometric model and socialist scheme. It makes no sense to most professors, who attain their positions by the systematic acquisition of credentials pleasing to the establishment above them. By definition, innovation cannot be planned. Leading entrepreneurs...did not ascend a hierarchy; they created a new one. They did not climb to the top of anything. They were pushed to the top by their own success. They did not capture the pinnacle; they became it."

"This process creates wealth. But to maintain and increase it is nearly as difficult. A pot of honey attracts flies as well as bears. Bureaucrats, politicians, bishops, raiders, robbers, revolutionaries, short-sellers, managers, business writers, and missionaries all think they could invest money better than its owners. Owners are besieged on all sides by aspiring spenders -- debauchers of wealth and purveyors of poverty in the name of charity, idealism, envy, or social change."

"The single most important question for the future of America is how we treat our entrepreneurs. If we smear, harass, overtax, and overregulate them, our liberal politicians will be shocked and horrified to discover how swiftly the physical tokens of the means of production collapse into so much corroded wire, eroding concrete, scrap metal, and jungle rot. They will be amazed how quickly the wealth of America flees to other countries."

"Even the prospects of the poor in the United States and around the world above all depend on the treatment of the rich. If the rich are immobilized by socialism, the poor will suffer everywhere. High tax rates and oppressive regulations do not keep anyone from being rich. They prevent poor people from getting rich. But if the rich are respected and allowed to risk their wealth -- and new rebels are allowed to rise up and challenge them -- America will continue to be the land where the last regularly become the first by serving others." Gilder says the UC is one those great surprises to the elite in New York and within the beltway of Washington D.C. Gilder sees the salvation of America is in the entrepreneur -- the creative geniuses that pop up from nowhere. Gilder includes the UC in his list of those who will bring "renewal" to America. He writes: "The idea that America might find renewal from a melange of movements of evangelical women, wetbacks, Dartmouth Review militants, South Asian engineers, Bible thumpers, boat people, Moonies, Mormons, Cuban refugees, fundamentalist college deans, Amway soap pushers, science wonks, creationists, Korean fruit peddlers, acned computer freaks, and other unstylish folk seems incomprehensible to many observers who do not understand that an open capitalist society is always saved by the last among its citizens perpetually becoming the first." I love George Gilder. I also love my enemies the socialists. But I sure don't want to be around them. I would rather read and be around George Gilder and those who believe in capitalism such as the Republican Party and Libertarian Party instead of being around the Democratic Party and Socialist Party.

Libertarianism

It is exciting to read the truth. One book that helped me was John Hosper's Libertarianism. I wish I could go into all the arguments he gives. It is clearly written and touches on so many topics in this debate. Skip the chapters on national defense. That's where Satan gets them. Some books have lists of books. David Bergland has a list in his book Libertarianism in One Lesson. A bookstore that focuses exclusively on Libertarian thought has a catalog they will send you of hundreds of books: Laissez Faire Books, 942 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, (800) 326-0996. The longest running libertarian magazine is Reason. You might want to check out the Libertarian Party Headquarters, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute -- all in Washington D.C. I wish I could introduce you to more authors, but this book is just introductory thoughts.

Richard Lewis, the editor of the UNews, wrote an article once praising a book, The Economy in Mind by Warren Brookes. He said, "This book will be of great interest to those who are developing Unification Thought. One of the purposes of Unification Thought is a critique and counter-proposal to Marxist philosophy. However, although Marxism has a well developed economic theory, there is a conspicuous lack of one in Unification Thought. Economy in Mind fits nicely into that gap and should prove a great help in the development of our philosophic system.'" George Gilder writes the foreward to the book.

Warren Brookes asked Milton Friedman why people have little or no appreciation of America's successful free-market system: "I asked Nobelist economist Milton Friedman why most American students still graduate from high schools not only with low performance but with such a socialist perspective .... His answer was characteristically clear: 'Because they are products of a socialist system. How can you expect such a system to inculcate the values of enterprise and competition, when it is based on monopoly state ownership?'"

Religion stands up to big brother

There is even a Christian libertarian movement. Insight magazine on June 7, 1993 had an article called "Religion Stands Up to Big Brother" that said Rev. Robert Sirico formed the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty that is "challenging the intellectual consensus long held in religious circles that socialism is morally superior to capitalism." The article said, "These libertarians abhor drug use and pornography, but believe the government shouldn't regulate such social ills, and their laissez-faire views extend to economics and foreign affairs." As usual the truth is mixed with lies. They are right to campaign for legalization of drugs, but they are wrong in being isolationist. Mother took a stand against distributing condoms in schools. We must make a stand on every issue from capital punishment to abortion to ERA.

The Mentality of Anti-Capitalists

Ludwig von Mises (pronounced meeces) is one of the giant intellectuals for freedom along with Milton Friedman and Hayek. He explains the mentality of socialists in books such as The Mentality of Anti-Capitalists. In his book Theory and History he writes: "Similar motives prompt those who advocate socialism and interventionism for moral and religious reasons. They consider it supererogatory to examine the economic problems involved, and they try to shift the discussion of the pros and cons of the market economy from the field of economic analysis to what they call a higher sphere. They reject capitalism as an unfair system and advocate either socialism or interventionism as being in accord with their moral or religious principles. It is vile, they say, to look upon human affairs from the point of view of productivity, profits and a materialistic concern about wealth and a plentiful supply of material goods. Man ought to strive after justice, not wealth."

He says, "The only fault they find with the tenets of the Marxian socialists and the secular parties of interventionism is their commitment to atheism and secularism.... The truth is that those fighting capitalism as a system contrary to the principles of morals and religion have uncritically and lightheartedly adopted all the economic teachings of the socialists and communists."

Murray Rothbard is what is called an anarcho-capitalist. I disagree with him that there should be no government, but total laissez-faire capitalism. Even the ideal world will have government, but I agree with him on how magnificent the unfettered market place is. Ayn Rand and others explain how critics of capitalism don't see that if there was faults it was usually because capitalists go to socialist centralized power of the state to get favors and then disrupt the economy. If America had continued in the 20th century the limited government of the 19th we would be a much more productive country and much more inspirational to the world. Friedman explains that America is more socialistic than capitalistic because government takes half our income.

Rothbard says, "One of the most common charges leveled against the free market (even by many of its friends) is that it reflects and encourages unbridled 'selfish materialism.' Even if the free market -- unhampered capitalism -- best furthers man's 'material' ends, critics argue, it distracts man from higher ideals. It leads man away from spiritual or intellectual values and atrophies any spirit of altruism .... Many critics complain the free market, in casting aside inefficient entrepreneurs or in other decisions, proves itself an 'impersonal monster.' The free-market economy, they charge, is the 'rule of the jungle,' where 'survival of the fittest' is the law. Libertarians who advocate a free market are therefore called 'Social Darwinists' who wish to exterminate the weak for the benefit of the strong." Rothbard goes into a rebuttal of these accusations. I haven't time to go into all the arguments.

The essence of true human relationships is to create an environment where people are free to choose and to grow as they see fit. A world of true love is a voluntary world, not a world where people use force to make them do right. It is a world of the pen, not the sword. It is a world of persuasion, not coercion. Governments are instruments of force and should only use that force against those who initiate force. It is right, contrary to the belief of the Libertarian Party, that the U.S. used force against Hitler in WWII and against Kim Il Sung in the Korean War who initiated violence to bring their version of order to the world. But it was wrong of the U.S. government to enact laws and use force against those who drank alcohol in the 1920's. Friedman explains that the"Noble Experiment" of Prohibition only made matters worse. Libertarians are correct on their analysis of domestic policy in America. To correct what we perceive as evil, we must use persuasion. Cigarettes kill far more than cocaine, and it is wrong to ban either one. Socialist do-gooders like politicians use force to make people do what they think is right. Milton Friedman and some conservatives like Bill Buckley see that the Republican Party is wrong to advocate economic rights but not civil rights.

Ayn Rand is right when she wrote in For the New Intellectual: "The world crisis of today is a moral crisis -- and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American Revolution."

Rothbard writes, "It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization." The Libertarian Party rightly puts in its constitution that government should leave religion alone and specifically condemns the sick socialist practice of deprogramming. They don't write this because they necessarily love so called cults; they write it because they believe deeply in freedom.

Jim Lewis was the vice-presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 1984. In his book, Liberty Reclaimed, he teaches that America must give up its tendency to turn to government force to punish noncoercive people and groups regardless of whether they are businessmen or churches who are simply offering their services voluntarily. America, he says, must go to a "new level of tolerance for others. Our nation is made up of many diverse groups, nationalities, customs and lifestyles. For centuries the political process has been used by some groups to harass, imprison, and even murder other groups. It has been used by Catholics against Protestants, by Protestants against Catholics, by one nationality against another. It has been used to eradicate customs, languages, and beliefs. (The UC is sensitive to the Japanese domination by force of Korea for 40 years.) And as tolerance was destroyed so was freedom because the two are intimately linked together. A free society must be a tolerant society because intolerance leads to crusades which need big government."

"As crucial as tolerance is to freedom, it is still very difficult for many of us. Sometimes we watch someone get wrapped up in a religious cult and lose his individuality. We may want to grab him by the arm and drag him off somewhere until we can get him thinking straight again. But if we respect that person's right to make decisions we can only try to persuade him. Or perhaps we see a friend gorging himself on pastry and candy. We know he is gaining an incredible amount of weight. We know that it affects his heart and can ultimately kill him, but still we have no right to forcibly wire his mouth shut or lock him up while we feed him health foods. Instead, we must limit our actions to noncoercive means. Or perhaps a dear friend has started taking drugs which we feel will be destructive to him or he becomes an alcoholic. Do we have a moral right to call in the State and have him incarcerated 'for his own good?' No! All we can morally do is try to help him while respecting his right to be wrong.... This respect for the right to commit moral errors is the core of any philosophy of liberty."

Am I making myself clear? If we side with those who ban drugs, then we endanger the messiah. Because Satan will make people fear the messiah more than drugs. The messiah is looked at as a germ in Satan's world. People want to eradicate him for the good of all. They killed Jesus. God has worked for 400 years to teach people to be tolerant and learn from the mistake of killing Jesus. Tolerance can flourish only in capitalism, not socialism. That is why Father is giving billions to the Washington Times and the Republican Party and the economic libertarian, F.A. Hayek. Let's sell Mary Pride's books on anti-feminism and her homeshooling resource books at WFWP meetings instead of Boslooper. That's what Father would want if he knew what poison Boslooper wrote and what Godly things Mary Pride writes. We must help those to fight such incredibly dedicated anti-capitalists as John Kenneth Galbraith and Ralph Nader. Let's fight the good fight -- not help the enemy.

Ben Rogge in Can Capitalism Survive says, "The modern liberal is usually inconsistent in that he defends man's noneconomic freedoms, but is often indifferent to his economic freedom. The modern conservative is often inconsistent in that he defends man's economic freedom but is indifferent to his noneconomic freedoms." I love Milton Friedman. He is obviously Jewish and has the warmest smile and personality. Years ago he started me on my road to understanding the real meaning of freedom. His book Free to Choose was a best-seller. What really knocked me off my chair was his 10-part video series of the same title I watched on PBS. It is beautifully done. If it is in your library, please watch it. When I was going to college at the University of Nebraska in 1965, Father came to Lincoln and blessed holy ground. I was searching desperately for truth. If there had been an ad in the classified of the student paper saying there was a 16mm film (there were no videos then) at the library that would explain the meaning of life I would have gone to see it and accepted its teachings just as I got excited about Milton Friedman's teachings when I saw him. I have changed my life around from living a feminist lifestyle where my wife worked to God's way of life where she doesn't just because I read a book. We don't only have to witness face-to-face. We need to have books and videos and tapes in all the libraries and put an ad in every classified in every newspaper directing people to a clear Principle. In the 1970's I put Father's Day of Hope speech book in the downtown branch of the library in Lincoln, Nebraska.. This was before books were checked our electronically. In the cover was the names written of those who checked out the book. Several years later I went to see if it was still there. There must have been 20 names. One name was to a minister in a small town 100 miles away who had apparently been searching for it.

America must not become digested by this culture that hates capitalism. It must see through the illogic and misuse of idealistic words. It must discern Satan's tactic to manipulate the emotions by using words that religious people feel emotional about to trick them. For example, one person wrote that "liberation theologians" believe that "Capitalism fosters individualism, competition, materialism, and greed. Socialism offers an alternative set of values, which stress the virtues of participation, community, equality and sacrifice." This sounds good, but it is false. People should not listen to such people as the famous theologian, Paul Tillich, who said, "Any serious Christian must be a socialist." Listen to religious leaders such as Zig Ziglar and Norman Vincent Peale. Dr. Peale is the writer of one of the best-selling books of all time, The Power of Positive Thinking. He said once, "Put God to work for you and maximize your potential in our divinely ordered capitalist system." Amen. God blessed America, not with wealth, but with capitalism that unleashed the energies of the average person so they could go on to invent airplanes and come out of a log cabin and become the president to fight and end slavery.

The attack on capitalism is relentless. Most capitalists don't read a lot. They are too busy serving their customers. Socialists dominate the media, the government, and the universities. They are constantly writing and speaking their hatred of capitalists -- from your neighbor who has a pizza restaurant to the billionaire who started out with one store and now has them everywhere, called Dominos. They especially hate the billionaire because he flies in a helicopter and bought a professional sports team in Detroit. This is greed to them. He should have spent his money on the poor. Nobel prize winner Paul Samuelson teaches that Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman shows "the hollowness of a life spent in commerce." Zig Ziglar teaches the truth about selling. Socialists will see Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times as showing the alienation of the worker. Robert Heilbroner's In the Name of Profit presents stories of large corporations being cruel and irresponsible and ruled by moral cripples who have sold their souls and conscience. They are shown as cynical and callous. General Motors is seen as deliberately building unsafe school buses and a drug company that made the drug thalidomide that caused a few women to have deformed babies. The moral is that Big Business needs to be regulated.

Milton Friedman is critical of capitalists who run to Washington D.C. to get politicians to use force to prevent competition. Businessmen in cahoots with politicians throw a wrench in the invisible hand of the free market and give capitalism a bad name. In Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise the author writes,"If a detailed, factual study were made of all those instances in the history of American industry which have been used by the statists as an indictment of free enterprise and as an argument in favor of a government-controlled economy, it would be found that the actions blamed on businessmen were caused, necessitated, and made possible only by government intervention in business. The evils, popularity ascribed to big industrialists, were not the result of an unregulated industry, but of government power over industry. The villain in the picture was not the businessman, but the legislator, not free enterprise, but government controls."

One of the most influential socialists in America who has fought Milton Friedman is Michael Harrington. In one of Friedman's videos on Free to Choose we see the two of them debating for a few minutes. Harrington is ridiculous, and Friedman is the essence of heart and mind. But sadly, Harrington's view prevails on college campuses. I pray our universities will teach the second generation to not be fooled by socialists and see the lies of Harrington and not believe in him. Harrington said once, "Capitalism ... is outrageously unjust; it requires a continuing maldistribution of wealth in order to exist ... We live in the twilight of an epoch ... I am absolutely convinced that we are moving toward some kind of planned economy." Not if I can help it. Socialism is so bad that lately some long-time socialists like Heilbroner I quoted earlier are having to admit that capitalism has won. How different can you get when you compare North and South Korea. South Korea does not have a laissez-faire capitalist society, but it has far more free enterprise than North Korea, and so it is booming. The Mormon church is booming. It respects its members such as Marriott and Covey. It loves capitalism.

Ayn Rand is disgusted that business, small and big, has to apologize for existing. It is also disgusting that stay-at-home mothers have to apologize. We must teach the world to praise right values. One person wrote, "Capitalism requires not defense but celebration. Its achievement in creating high and rising living standards for the masses without sacrificing personal liberty speaks for itself. Only the deaf will not hear and the blind will not see."

"Its achievement prevails over its defects. Yet its critics continue decade after decade to be preoccupied if not obsessed with its defects. Even those who acknowledge its achievement continue to urge the alternative of socialism without reason or demonstration from world experience to suppose it could equal and surpass capitalism."

Thomas Jefferson said, "I am not a friend to a very energetic government." Government today is so "energetic" it threw the messiah in jail because he put money into a bank. Logic is the last thing socialists use. One liberal wrote an article against capitalism in a newspaper article I read once. He opposed the idea of some government official of trying to privatize a "part of the interstate highway." The writer said if businessmen ran the highways there would be "toll gates...and potholes." He says, "No, thanks. I'll get my greed and incompetence from rascals we can throw out of office every once in a while." He went on to say how big things especially have to done by big government, such as the post office and public schools. This is the prevailing view. It Satan's lie.

Walt Disney vs. Uncle Sam

I hope the UC will not get sucked into this argument of a mixed economy where there is a mixture of capitalism and socialism. The welfare state is not the third way. The ideal world needs the world to be 99% privately owned. I imagine the ideal world to be like a global Disney World -- a world where private enterprise makes sure no one gets hurt and families can always have fun. The Disney corporation has been around for a long time. They have transported millions of people year after year throughout their magic kingdoms, and no one dies or gets injured. You feel safe because you are safe. They built their transportation system privately with billions of dollars obtained voluntarily. This is capitalism. Who is in charge of the roads you drive on? Socialist centralized government monopoly. Did they get there money voluntarily? A staggering 50,000 people die horrible deaths every year for decades and millions more are injured and crippled. Do you know anybody who has been hurt or had property damaged on public roads? Who hasn't? How many people do you think would die every year if all roads were owned and managed privately by capitalists? Of course, it would be less than the grotesque number of 50,000 a year. If any business killed that many people they would be shut down, and it's owners would be imprisoned for life. Disney is big business. So what? The president of the company is a millionaire. So what? Are public roads a monopoly? Yes. And yet the passionate fear of socialists is that somehow evil capitalists like Walt Disney will rule with monopolies and hurt us. All socialist theories can be, and have been, crushed by Hayek and others, but most people just don't know about libertarian thought or just can't get it when they hear it. People hear the Principle and often can't understand it.

If I didn't fight and just went off and became a businessman and lived happily with my traditional values, the ideal world will come. Eventually, everyone will see the truth. My conscience doesn't let me do this. I'm a fanatic to help people see the wonderful truth that has set me free of ignorance. I want my kids and future descendants to live in the ideal world just as soon as possible. Nations have to change their economics so wealth can come and children can be fed. Everything I write about are laws of the universe. I have been hurt by teachings that told my wife to work, and that I did not have the final say in my home. I died inside and didn't know why. Now I feel like a man who can have big dreams and teach my boys to become no limit men. I've learned from Tocqueville what happened to me. He uses the word democracy in the next quote but substitute the word capitalism instead: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." John Stuart Mill in On Liberty said, "A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes -- will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished."

The debate between capitalists and socialists has been around for thousands of years. Plato was for socialism. And Aristotle was for private property. Aristotle criticized Plato. Aristotle said in his book, Politics, "what should be our arrangements about property: should the citizens of the perfect state have their possessions in common or not?" Aristotle says Plato is wrong and "there is always difficulty in men living together and having all human relations in common, but especially in their having common property." He explains how men love things they own: "how immeasurably greater is the pleasure, when a man feels a thing to be his own; for surely the love of self is a feeling implanted by nature and not given in vain, although selfishness is rightly censured; this, however, is not the mere love of self, but the love of self in excess, like the miser's love of money; for all, or almost all, men love money and other such objects in measure." And "For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it .... everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfil." In modern day language Milton Friedman says in Free to Choose,"When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition." In the former USSR farming was collectivized and people would have starved if it wasn't for their little plots of ground that produced a tremendous amount of food as compared to the vast acres of public land. Meanwhile in America only 3% of the population are farmers and there is so much produce the social engineers in Washington D.C. pay farmers not to grow as much as they could. Aristotle explains that without having property a person cannot show kindness to others: "And further, there is the greatest pleasure in doing a kindness or service to friends and guests or companions, which can only be rendered when a man has private property. These advantages are lost by excessive unification of the state."

Government is coersion, not persuasion

P.J. O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores writes, "The federal government of the United States of America takes away between a fifth and a quarter of all our money every year. That is eight times the Islamic zakat, the almsgiving required of believers by the Koran; it is double the tithe of the medieval church and twice the royal tribute that the prophet Samuel warned the Israelites against when they wanted to anoint a ruler."

"All tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head. Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay your taxes, you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine, you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot."

In "Why I Believe What I Believe" he writes, "When those who are against conservative policies don't have sufficient opposition arguments, they call the love of freedom selfish. Of course it is -- in the sense that breathing's selfish."

"Charity is one of the great responsibilities of freedom .... But that responsibility must proceed from the bottom up, from the individual outward, never from the top down .... You have to take care of yourself to the best of your ability to do so. Your family has to take care of you. Friends have to take care of your family. Neighbors have to take care of those friends. And a community has to take care of its neighbors. Government, with its power of coercion, red tape and inevitable unfamiliarity with the specifics of the case, is a last and desperate resort."

"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity. And no virtue in advocating it."

"When government...becomes the principal source of aid and assistance in our society, it is proof that we're jerks, since we've decided that politicians are wiser, kinder and more honest than we are and that they, not we, should control the dispensation of eleemosynary goods and services."

Some people are beginning to take a look again at why it was so much better a century ago in so many areas of life. Covey is one of those. His best-sellers are simply a rehash of Victorian culture in modern language. People are hungry for it. One of the Victorian virtues he emphasizes is the principle that if you feed a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, you feed him for life.

It is a sacred duty of religious people, especially women, to help the poor as women did in the 19th century. Sisters have so much to do that they can't possibly find time to go out and make money. Women's nature is more homey and intimate and personal. There are so many hurting people in Sister's own neighborhoods.

Johnson's War on Poverty

President Johnson tried to inspire the nation with his "War on Poverty" and ended up making things much worse after wasting billions of tax payers money. Johnson lost the war on poverty because he didn't believe in grass roots. He thought he was better than the average person. He was arrogant. He demoralized the nation and our young men in the military fighting in Vietnam because he couldn't articulate why we were there. Leadership's job is to motivate people to win. To do that they have to understand the laws of success. Johnson didn't have a clue. Usually government doesn't.

The Tragedy of American Compassion

Some say a laissez-faire economy would create so much wealth that there would be no poverty. It would certainly help, but until there is a perfect world women will be needed to help the needy. A recent book that teaches we must return to the Victorian example is Marvin Olasky. In The Tragedy of American Compassion he writes that people have run out of ideas on how to help the poor. Nothing has worked. He says, "The answer is sitting on pages of old magazines and reports deep in the stacks of the Library of Congress. Americans in urban areas a century ago faced many of the problems we face today, and they came up with truly compassionate solutions." He says we must not look down our noses at the Victorians with "smug rejection or neglect of pre-twentieth century moral understandings." He says, "The good news is that the impasse can be resolved. Many lives can be saved if we recapture the vision that changed lives up to a century ago, when our concept of compassion was not so corrupt. In one sense, we have thought ourselves into this social disaster -- and we can think ourselves out of it. The key to the future, as always, is understanding the past. This book, by laying out the history, attempts to suggest a new form for the debate over poverty and a new way out of the impasse." I'm doing the same thing in this book. The Andelins are teaching Victorian virtues.

Charles Murray wrote in his preface to Olasky's book, "Why was the underclass so much smaller then, at a time when poverty was so much closer to real destitution than 'poverty' as we know it today? Within the welter of candidate explanations is Marvin Olasky's central truth: Human needs were answered by other human beings, not by bureaucracies, and the response to those needs was not compartmentalized. People didn't used to be so foolish as to think that providing food would cure anything except hunger, nor so shallow as to think that physical hunger was more important than the other hungers, nor so blind as to ignore the interaction between the way that one helps and the effects of that help on the human spirit and human behavior. The Tragedy of American Compassion is the recounting of an American history that today's Americans never learned."

Olasky writes, "When the New Deal came alone, it seemed that perfection was within our grasp if we simply used government to do more efficiently what private institutions had been doing all along. We were wrong in that belief, but we are equally wrong in thinking that because government cannot do the job, nobody can. What is required is no more complicated, and no less revolutionary, than recognizing first, that the energy and effective compassion that went into solving the problems of the needy in 1900, deployed in the context of today's national wealth, can work wonders; and secondly, that such energy and such compassion cannot be mobilized in a modern welfare state. The modern welfare state must be dismantled." What a great challenge we have before us to do that. Let's begin by having our sisters start volunteering their time to give compassion intimately and for our brothers to dismantle government welfare and abolish socialism forever.

In Marvin Olasky's Renewing American Compassion, Newt Gingrich writes in the Foreward: "Marvin Olasky unlocked for me the key of how to replace the welfare state. His earlier Tragedy of American Compassion was one of the most extraordinary books written in our generation. In it, he went back and looked at 350 years in which Americans dealt with poverty, tragedy, and addiction with much greater success than the current welfare state has done." Gingrich says Olasky "even discusses the provocative notion of completely doing away with the federal safety net."

Olasky writes, "a headline in the June 4, 1995, New York Times: 'Gingrich's Vision of Welfare Ignores Reality, Charities Say.' The story mirrored what became in 1995 the conventional way of dealing with the unconventional goal of replacing the welfare system over the next generation with one based in private, church and community involvement. Impossible ... inconceivable ... preposterous ... ignores reality. With words of that sort, ideas that could renew a nearly dead system of compassion were shunted away." Gingrich and anyone who proposes to even reduce the size of government entitlement programs is accused of being mean.

'When the Pilgrims came to the New World in 1620, they saw before them 'a hideous and desolate wilderness,' in the words of William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony. The colonial era of American history was a time of journeying into the wilderness and turning that wilderness into neighborhood. Good neighbors not only worked hard and cared for their families but also exercised compassion. Individuals and churches cared for widows, orphans, and others who had suffered destitution by disaster or were unable to help themselves."

"The early understanding of compassion is different from what has prevailed in recent American history, however. Most settlers read their King James Bibles, where the word 'compassion' appears forty-two times, usually as the translation of words coming from the Hebrew root rachum (womb) or the Greek root splanchnon (bowels of yearning). The linguistic connection underscores the close personal relationship that the person who offers compassion has with the recipient. Our predecessors knew that suffering with means not just sympathy but sympathy that is active and often painful, like giving birth."

"American churchgoers through the mid-nineteenth century also were taught that Biblical compassion was more the culmination of a process than an isolated noun. Repeatedly, in Judges and other books, the Bible says that only when the Israelites had repented their sins did God, as a rule, show compassion .... Our predecessors did not worship a sugar daddy god."

"This understanding of compassion as covenantal -- requiring action by both parties -- was critical in keeping the principle of suffering with from becoming esteem for suffering. The goal of all suffering was personal change. Those who refused to change did not deserve to be the beneficiaries of others' suffering. They might have to be left to themselves until their own suffering became so great that they gave up their false pride."

"The colonial understanding that compassion should be challenging, personal, and spiritual provides insight into what early American philanthropies such as the Scots' Charitable Society (established in 1684) meant when they 'opened the bowells of our compassion' to widows but ruled that 'no prophane or diselut person, or openly scandalous shall have any part or portione herein.' Sermons for several hundred years equated compassion with personal involvement that demanded firm standards of conduct among recipients of aid." Olasky goes into detail of how charitable organizations didn't just give handouts but required some effort on the part of the needy. I'll give a few examples out of the many he gives. The minister Charles Chauncey told members of the Society for Encouraging Industry and Employing the Poor to restrain "the Distribution of their Charity; not being allowed to dispense it promiscuously...distinquishing properly between those needy People who are able, and those who are unable, to employ themselves in Labour."

Some people, of course, became poor through circumstances beyond their control. They received personal care, often in neighbors' homes. The emphasis on suffering with meant that orphans during colonial times normally were adopted into families." He goes into great detail mentioning many organizations and how they were sensitive to each person. Tocqueville observed this and said that "Americans 'display general compassion' through personal interaction, unlike the European pattern by which the 'state almost exclusively undertakes to supply bread to the hungry, assistance and shelter to the sick, work to the idle, and to act as the sole reliever of all kinds of misery.' This difference, Tocqueville surmised, was due in part to the presence of small communities and strong religious ideas."

"Americans understood that large-scale aid programs could not be discerning in that way and therefore intrinsically lacked compassion. An 1844 McGuffey's Reader ridiculed a 'Mr. Fantom' who had 'noble zeal for the millions' but 'little compassion for the units.'...Personal involvement became the hallmark of nineteenth-century compassion."

Olasky shows how the turning point came in the 1920s. One example he gives is a quote from a speech by a man pioneering government welfare who believed volunteers were not as good as what would be called professionals. He said that while volunteers had endeavored"to ameliorate evil social conditions, to lighten the burdens of poverty, to reduce the volume of ignorance, combat the ravages of disease and otherwise labor diligently to assuage the flood of human sorrow and wretchedness," social workers and their allies would be"social engineers" capable of creating"a divine order on earth as it is in heaven .... Simply making the earth a place that will be humanely endurable." Government: 1 Church: 0.

. One person taught that men's spirits die if they don't have property: "No one, when men have all things in common, will no longer set an example of liberality or do any liberal action; for liberality consists in the use which is made of property." He says "legislation" sounds good but it does harm: "Such legislation may have a specious appearance of benevolence; men readily listen to it, and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially" when they are told all the evils that "arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, are due to a very different cause -- the wickedness of human nature. Indeed, we see that there is much more quarreling among those who have all things in common, though there are not many of them when compared with the vast numbers who have private property."

Plymouth Plantation -- socialism to capitalism

Capitalism produces harmony as well as bread. Socialism produces disharmony and no bread. Socialism kills the spirit and eventually kills the body if gone long enough. Starvation is a fact of life in socialism. It was the brutal fact of life at the Plymouth Plantation until Bradford decided Plato was wrong, and Aristotle was right. In his classic book, Of Plymouth Plantation, he writes how they had tried to live by the philosophy of Christian Socialism where everybody shared everything so nobody would be unequal. He writes, "So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end...This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content." He is talking about himself as the Governor and how much his life improved because there were fewer problems by giving up socialism. Bradford said people "went willingly into the field...which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression."

Bradford was wise enough to change and try something new. He writes, "The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort."

Adam Smith said that each person is unique, and God works through that person in a free market to provide a service society needs. It "encourages every man to apply himself to a particular occupation, and to cultivate and bring to perfection whatever talent or genius he may possess for that particular species of business." This decision can only be made between him and God. Socialist planners cannot possibly keep up with everyone's individuality.

Adam Smith explains that those socialist elites who would try to "direct private people" on how to spend their money with schemes of national economic plans are "dangerous." He says, "What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."

Smith hated government officials by calling each of them who interfered in the market place an "insidious and warty animal called the statesman and politician." Smith says they are also hypocrites too because it always happens that leaders who want to guide the spending habits of others -- judging everyone from capitalists to housewives as spendthrift, often themselves live in luxury at the taxpayers expense and can't balance their own budgets and spend people's hard earned money that they earned honestly, less wisely than the average person would. He writes: "It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves, always, and without exception, the greatest spendthrifts in society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own expense does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will."

The only way for the average person to overcome the brainwashing of those who push for socialism is to clearly understand the principles of wealth and to see that capitalism and decentralization of power is spiritual. George Roche, the president of Hillsdale College, a college that teaches the free market, wrote, "A society unwilling to place its faith in the dignity and capability of free men is a society doomed to the mismanagement of 'little men playing god.' These little men of course fail completely to realize that contrast and individual difference are the foundation of all genuine creativity. A situation in which an individual is left free to dispose of his property and order his affairs as he sees fit is an ideal, both for human productivity and for human freedom. Such institutions of the private sector as private property constitute an indispensable support of personal liberty. Viewed in such a light, private property becomes truly spiritual, valued less for its material complexion than for its underlying spiritual value. The Biblical injunction, 'seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you,' is a suggestion of how important are the underlying values, and how they serve as an absolute prerequisite for the creative capacities which are unleashed when our spiritual values and our emphasis upon individual freedom are in proper order. If we would be materially prosperous, let us begin by being spiritually healthy, by allowing a productive form of social organization, a truly free market and free society premised upon the dignity of the individual."

"While it is true that freedom 'works' and that it is the only system consonant with a high degree of material prosperity, it is the underlying why it works, the spiritually correct condition of individual freedom which releases those creative energies, to which we owe our primary allegiance."

To be a socialist is to be unspiritual. He says, "modern man's insistence upon collective solutions is understandable, since he has divorced himself from the spiritual values which give meaning to him as an individual personality."

If the U.S. government was like voluntary churches which had to use only persuasion to get people to send them money, how much would they get? One recent candidate for president campaigned on the theme of a 17% flat tax. If leaders were really God centered they would have taxes as totally voluntary as well as the military. No draft. No forcing anyone to give money or to fight. Do you think people voluntarily would send in 50% of their earnings to local, state and federal governments which still leaves a deficit and no payment on the debt? Would they voluntarily send in 17%? Of course not. Most people would send some money, perhaps 10%, and tell their representatives to apply that to our military, local police and courts. America would have a laissez-faire economy immediately. We must trust people so much that even though they are fallen it is best to leave them alone instead of having a few elites, who intimidate people by saying they are superior, run their lives. Making taxes voluntary would unleash creativity and wealth we could never even imagine.

I know it sounds strange that to be public and selfless, you must be private and in love with yourself as God's unique channel to serve. It doesn't make sense that if you leave people alone wealth comes. But it happens. Grass roots works miracles. What would America be like today if government hadn't taken trillions of dollars and tried to emasculate entrepreneurs? It would be so much more truthful, beautiful and good. Smith is considered the father of modern economics and the father of free enterprise. His classic book, The Wealth of Nations, was printed in 1776. God was behind it. It is interesting to me that his name is Adam. From him we get our first written classic for the economic system of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. His last name, Smith, symbolizes the average man who will prosper in a capitalist economy. The historian, Thomas Buckle, was so excited he went a little overboard, but he is right in seeing the incredible breakthrough that Smith brought. He said that Smith "discovered the laws which regulate the creation and diffusion of wealth" and his book "is certainly the most valuable contribution ever made by a single man towards establishing the principles on which government should be based .... This solitary Scotsman has, by the publication of one single work, contributed more toward the happiness of man than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has presented an authentic account."

Smith has many disciples and admirers. Milton Friedman likes to wear a tie with faces of Adam Smith on it. But many others do not like him. Years ago I was watching a televised debate between the Republican candidates for the presidency. John Anderson, a congressman, after listening to several of his competitors, blurted out in disgust that they were all advocating the teachings of Adam Smith, and these are his exact words, "who lived 200 years ago." It is intellectually bankrupt to say this. Truth is truth.

The key to understanding the debate between capitalism and socialism is to understand the word "equality." Feminists fight for the Equal Rights Amendment which would only bring an equality of misery for women. Liberals fight to be social engineers who want to be Robin Hoods which kills the goose that lays the golden egg and brings on equality of poverty for the masses. Religious socialists fight to control others with fear of excommunication and eternal punishment.

Socialism is equalilty of misery

Winston Churchill said the only equality socialism gives is the equality of "misery." He tells those in power to "Set the people free": "I do not believe in the power of the state to plan and enforce. No matter how numerous are the committees they set up or the ever-growing hordes of officials they employ or the severity of the punishments they inflict or threaten, they can't approach the high level of internal economic production achieved under free enterprise."

"Personal initiative, competitive selection, the profit motive, corrected by failure and the infinite processes of good housekeeping and personal ingenuity, these constitute the life of a free society. It is this vital creative impulse that I deeply fear the doctrines and policies of the socialist government have destroyed."

"Nothing that they can plan and order and rush around enforcing will take its place. They have broken the mainspring, and until we get a new one, the watch will not go. Set the people free -- get out of the way and let them make the best of themselves.

"I am sure that this policy of equalizing misery and organizing scarcity instead of allowing diligence, self-interest and ingenuity to produce abundance has only to be prolonged to kill this British island stone dead."

Bottom-up

President Reagan said it well in a speech: "We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity, and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down.

"Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, prosperous, progressive and free. Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development. The societies which have achieved the most spectacular, broad-based economic progress in the shortest period of time are not the most tightly controlled, nor necessarily the biggest in size, or the wealthiest in natural resources. No, what unites them all is their willingness to believe in the magic of the market place."

"Everyday life confirms the fundamentally human and democratic ideal that individual effort deserves economic reward. Nothing is more crushing to the spirit of working people and to the vision of development itself than the absence of reward for honest toil and legitimate risk. So let me speak plainly: we cannot have prosperity and successful development without economic freedom. Nor can we preserve our personal and political freedoms without economic freedom."

"Governments that set out to regiment their people with the stated objective of providing security and liberty have ended up losing both. Those which put freedom as the first priority also find they have also provided security and economic progress."

It is time to restore the value of power coming from the ground up as our Founding Father's knew so well. Charles Murray writes In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government that Jefferson spoke the truth in his inaugural address about limited, minimal power at the top when he said, "a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." Murray says, "I am asking that we take more seriously the proposition that Jefferson's was a vision suitable not only for a struggling agricultural nation at the outset of the nineteenth century but also for a wealthy, postindustrial nation at the close of the twentieth."

Churchpeople, Socialism, and Capitalism

In an article in the journal Freeman Reverend Doctor John K. Williams wrote an article called "Churchpeople, Socialism, and Capitalism" saying, "In 1915 Karl Barth, one of the theological giants of the twentieth century, asserted that a 'true Christian must be a socialist.' Barth's thinking on this issue did not change: in 1951, for example, he wrote that capitalism 'not only allows, but demands in principle, that men make a mere instrument, a means to their own ends, of other men and their work..' In 1919 Paul Tillich, another revered twentieth century theologian, called upon Christians 'to enter into the socialist movement in order to pave the way for a future union of Christianity and the socialist social order'; near the end of his life, when asked by a student whether he still supported socialism, Tillich reported that he did, insisting that socialism 'is the only possible economic system from the Christian point of view.' Reinhold Niebuhr, probably the most influential Protestant theologian in the United States of America for many decades, insisted in 1931 that he espoused the revolutionary socialism of Marx rather than the reformist, evolutionary socialism of the early Christian socialists. He denounced Christians who did not regard Marxist 'class struggle' as a 'fact of history' as either naive or willfully perverse."

He goes on to defend capitalism against socialism. I find it interesting that he says capitalism can operate under authoritarian governments such as monarchies as well as democratic governments. In fact the first group of thinkers that advocated free enterprise economics also argued for monarchy: "not all people who have defended the view that market forces can allocate scarce resources so that people's wants are least inadequately met, have even defended the free society. The Physiocrats who preceded Adam Smith and who coined the motto, 'Laissez-faire, laissez-passer' ('Let things alone, let things pass') advocated absolute monarchy: such a form of government, they argued, would be consolidated and made more stable if the monarch recognized the inexorable laws which govern economic affairs, did not intervene in the market, and thereby allowed wealth to be created and his people to enjoy prosperity."

Passionate enthusiasm for capitalism

What I like about Gilder is that he is passionate about capitalism. Socialists from Marx to Michael Harrington have a burning intensity in preaching socialism. The Democratic Party often is emotional. Democrats speak out with a cry of moral outrage in denouncing capitalism. They really care about their crusade for big government. Republicans point to their opponents and call them "bleeding heart liberals." They think Bill and Hillary Clinton are only faking their emotions. They are not. Both Bill and Hillary have written books. And they mean every word of it. They are tricky like Satan and fool people, but their genuine emotion touches more hearts of the people than the Republicans. That is why they are usually in power. Capitalists appeal to reason and logic. But it seems cold to most people. We must defend capitalism not only by constantly refining and clarifying terms like "liberty," and "equality" to show how intellectually bankrupt and dangerous liberals are, but we must argue our case with feeling. We don't have to be theatrical, but we need to show genuine outrage for how socialism has hurt people. At the same time we need to be classier than socialist/feminists and show patience instead of anger at the naive insanity of those who inspire envy and teach that coercion and theft are needed to bring about 'social justice.' Those of us who fight for liberty must do so with joy and infectious enthusiasm as well as logic.

We must become salespeople for freedom and inspire mankind to join this crusade for our vision of an ideal world that is run by limited government and Libertarian economics. If we are going to be successful at proselytizing for free enterprise we need to match head and heart. Somehow we must make economics exciting. We have to show the idealism and love that exists in physical things and that business is spiritual. Countless people found that to be spiritual was to be celibate monks who baked bread in quiet and prayed for hours in a monastery away from the noisy and messy outside world. The MFT is mixture of this in which a member is isolated from being close to the outside world but yet walking around in it. The true spiritual training and the true spiritual life is Tribal Messiah and Home Church. It is thinking globally and acting locally. It is being personal and serving the customer. Father is elevating Christianity by ending monasteries. He is ending celibacy. He is teaching that everyone to be truly spiritual will have a family. There are, of course, some people not ready now for marriage and some who are ready for marriage, but not for having children. We should respect them and not push those who may never be ready for marriage on earth to marry or push those who can handle marriage but not children to have children. I know people in both categories. But it is proper for the rest of us to push ourselves to grow by getting married and having children. I strongly urge those blessed couples who want to be parents but cannot conceive for physical reasons to work round the clock to get a good income, good credit and good references so they can spend the thousands of dollars needed to adopt a child. I was listening to a Christian program recently about Josh MacDowell who has a ministry to help orphans in Russia (He sends a free packet of info. Write to him in Dallas, Texas). He says he charges one-third of what most agencies charge to place Russian children in American homes. Why doesn't our church offer this to members? There will never be enough blessed couples who will volunteer to give up a child. And besides, we should have large families.

Quality service

Father constantly tells us to be superior to the outside world. I interpret this to mean that we do better financially than the national average. And we should do it in less hours so we can devote some time to witnessing and Father's campaigns. Father wants us to be successful. He said in 1994 Father gave an example of how to do good business: "One reason our fish distribution center has been so successful is that it stays open until midnight to obtain what the customer wants. If we do not have the stock, we ask Washington to send a supply. The restaurants trust us now. The only way to secure markets is through service." This is what all the motivational and sales trainers are teaching today. Quality service. It's a competition of service, not greed that wins customers. Notice also that Father says there is only one way to make money. It is to provide service. He doesn't say it is socialism. He says it is capitalism. He is for competition. He says in the paragraph next to the one just quoted, "Do we want to be out-done by others or win the competition? Of course, we want to win. To do so, we have to work harder and with greater concentration and confidence. If outside people work eight hours, we have to work nine or ten hours." One of the premier business trainers, Brian Tracy, says that to be successful financially we must be workaholics. I would like to add that we can be much more efficient if we live as trinities and follow some of the other principles I've written about such as being debt-free.

Early Christian Socialism

The Bible briefly says that one group of Christians in the infancy of Christianity lived a socialist lifestyle. Acts 4:32 says, "Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common .... There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold .... and it was distributed to each as any had need." It goes on to tell the story of a couple who lied and kept some of their property. Peter found out and asked them why they lied. They were so overcome that we read they both "immediately fell down and died." The reaction of the rest of the group to this was "great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things."

Its been two thousand years since this happened. How many Christians do you know who live like this? There are a few little communities around the world living communally and sharing everything with no one owning anything but a toothbrush.

UC members published the best anti-communist book ever written named the CAUSA Manual. It speaks strongly for free enterprise, private property and limited government:"In the past, it has appeared to many thinkers that centralized planning would do away with economic ills and be more efficient than a free-market based economy. The dismal failures of the socialist economic experiments of this century have now shown this to be false." Throughout this book I show how insane this century has been to abandon the free-market economy of the Founding Fathers and of the Victorians. They continue"Highly centralized and planned economies do not work. They thwart human nature and are wasteful of resources rather than efficient."

"Socialist systems abrogate the rights of private property, exert state controls and deny individual free choice. In doing so, they directly oppose three basic aspects of human nature: (1) the desire to better oneself, (2) creativity, and (3) the drive to achieve. Because they oppose these basic human traits, they are sure to fail." And fail they have.

They go on to say that there must be"proper balance between central coordination and individual freedom." We have to hold"fast to three basic principles: the sacred dignity of the person, the social nature of human life, and the obligation to assign social decisions to the level of authority best suited to take action."

They say that it must be local:"In the free market system, the state is strictly limited. One of the clearest limitations on the state is the principle of private property."

The genius of the Founding Fathers was to trust limited government even though they did not trust the masses. They gave up power. We can never thank them enough. Feminists hate them and in classrooms all over America teachers stand in front of class and sneer at those dead White men when they should learn from them instead of thinking they have nothing to learn from them. Madison said the object of the constitution was to"set ambition against ambition." They decentralized power. Lesser men came after them and kept increasing government until today it dominates every aspect of our life and reached its peak of regulation by throwing the Messiah in jail and letting deprogrammers free during an administration that said it was working to get"government of our back."

I agree that the focus of the UC is on the family. I think the number one focus should be not only on the family but three or four families living under the same roof and eating together. But politics is also very important and how we organize ourselves in the fallen world and in the ideal world will have a big impact on the quality of life in our families. Laissez-faire capitalism is good for fallen man and restored man. Religious people should side with libertarian economists and take the flak of being called "radical." The so-called centrist view of mixed government is really dangerous radicalism that creates an economy that makes it very difficult for families to earn money rationally and safely. It is so difficult to earn money under big government that it takes almost all of one's energy. Satan has got everyone running ragged in his socialist economies. He's taken the fun and joy and creativity out of work for most people. And he has pushed women into the workplace that creates a downward vicious cycle that feeds on itself and plunges everyone down to the pit. The only hope I see of getting people to understand true economics is get this message on video. I'm only one person. I don't have a trinity of other men. It will be years before my sons are old enough to be married and have careers and able to help me. If you are inspired by this book, please help get the message out. My goal is to condense this book into a series of videos that clearly explain the laws of the universe such as laissez-faire capitalism and expose Satan's lies of socialism. He makes bad things look so good. We have a great task before us. The greatest in human history. There is a reason to get up excited in the morning. We can save lives. But if we are alone it is easy to give up and get depressed and not run this marathon race. But we have to. The Clintons are excited about big government that Hillary calls a village so she can trick everyone (unconsciously) to create her socialist dream world. The Clintons are attractive. Satan is the ruler of this world. He is damn good at what he does. We have to be better.

The first step is to get Milton Friedman's video series into every library and advertize it world wide.

The title of this chapter is Prosperity. We can only prosper if we decentalize power. One of the best statements on this and one of my all time favorite quotes is by our old friend, G.K. Chesterton.

Drunkenness of Responsibility

G.K. Chesterton said it beautifully: "Despotism, and attempts at despotism, are a kind of disease of public spirit. They represent, as it were, the drunkenness of responsibility. It is when men begin to grow desperate in their love for the people, when they are overwhelmed with the difficulties and blunders of humanity, that they fall back upon a wild desire to manage everything themselves. Their faith in themselves is only a disillusionment with mankind. They are in that most dreadful position, dreadful alike in personal and public affairs -- the position of the man who has lost faith and not lost love. This belief that all would go right if we could only get the strings into our own hands is a fallacy almost without exception, but nobody can justly say that it is not public-spirited. The sin and sorrow of despotism is not that it does not love men, but that it loves them too much and trusts them too little. Therefore from age to age in history arise these great despotic dreamers, whether they be Royalists or Imperialists or even Socialists, who have at root this idea, that the world would into rest if it went their way and forswore altogether the right of going its own way. When a man begins to think that the grass will not grow at night unless he lies awake to watch it, he generally ends either in an asylum or on the throne of an emperor."

Pledge

I promise to teach as many people as I can about the wonders of limited government and laissez-faire capitalism. Socialism must be fought with every ounce of our energy. This means I must be bold and courageous to stand up to those who turn to coercive government or voluntary communes to organize mankind. That means I must have the guts to stand up in a peaceful way to my own country and church that now disparages libertarian economics. The ideal world will be absolutely voluntary, and I look forward to a beautiful, prosperous world where every person can fulfill their creativity in a pure free-enterprise economy.

 Signed ____________________________________________


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