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Thread ID: 4430 | Posts: 8 | Started: 2003-01-12
2003-01-12 04:21 | User Profile
"Capitalism Should Be Conservative Goal" More Neocon Nonsense
"Capitalism Should Be Conservative Goal" By Darrel Mulloy
"If the "conservatives" do not stand for capitalism, they stand for and are nothing; they have no goal, no direction, no political principles, no social ideals, no intellectual values, no leadership to offer anyone." Ayn Rand
The quote from Ayn Rand is from her book, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, and hits the nail pretty much on the head. Americans have been known as capitalists for decades, although capitalism in its true form has never been practiced in this nation, or in any other nation either. While it started to look some years back that we might have been on the way toward a capitalist ideology, the train got derailed. The derailment was caused by the Sherman Anti Trust Act of 1890. That act defined, or rather failed to define what was a monopoly.
url: [url=http://www.sierratimes.com/03/01/10/mulloy.htm]http://www.sierratimes.com/03/01/10/mulloy.htm[/url]
2003-01-12 13:02 | User Profile
By Gen. Butler USMC, TWICE winner of the CMH.
Note his references to capitalists (bankers) and oil men.
Smedley Butler on Interventionism
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.
War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of
people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the
expense of the masses.
I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight.
The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes
overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two
things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other
reason is simply a racket.
There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out
enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss"
Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-
three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the
Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that
period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the
Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military
profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended
animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba
a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen
Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name
before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see
to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I
could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I
operated on three continents.
2003-01-13 02:32 | User Profile
I am the son of a man who built his own business. And I know that free-enterprise is superior to socialism in creating and maintaining wealth.
But 'capitalism' is not an unalloyed good. Fed by plunder or currency manipulation, it can lose balance. In addition, wealth seems to be a poison in large amounts, like any necessary element. It seems to depress the number of children a society produces.
Any honest conservative should read 'The Law of Civilization and Decay' by Brooks Adams. He notes the way the Roman race was destroyed by capitalism, through competition with lower-wage economies in Egypt and Syria.
His book is easily read and worth it.
2003-01-13 05:53 | User Profile
Conservatives and even Ayn Rand never liked to make distinctions.
There's market capitalism and there's finance capitalism. There's closed-border markets and there's open-border markets. The rules for each of these is different from the others, and if you don't define and decide which one you want you end up with the muck that decorates the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal.
2003-01-14 04:41 | User Profile
From "revolutionary conservative?"
Conservatism is not the ideology of capitalism
It should also be clear that conservatism is not a synonym for the ideology of capitalism. The conservative has a healthy distrust of capitalism, and especially of its tendency to usurp the place of other institutions in society. It tends to elevate itself and its merely economic considerations to primacy of place within a community. This entails not only an implicit denial of a transcendent order, but also an explicit denial of the diversity of human existence (a denial shared by present-day "multiculturalism," which, far from affirming the distinctiveness of cultures, denies to any culture the authority to conserve its distinctiveness); the priority of prescription over abstract design (as can be seen in the "anarcho-capitalists" and in many libertarians); and the dangerousness of innovation (of which capitalism has been a main force in recent history).
Conservatives do to some extent defend capitalism, since they defend the rights of property, the affirmation of which is part of capitalism. Private property, the institutions by which each person has effective ownership and control of the means of providing for himself and for his family and friends, allows each person to be to some extent or other independent of others and responsible for himself. But they tend to defend capitalism as the lesser evil, recognizing at the same time that there are other aspects to society that are only imperfectly grasped (if not missed entirely) in economic terms and that have priority over merely economic considerations. This is the case with the institutions of private property, which conservatives defend primarily for other than economic reasons. If economic concerns were all there is--if life were nothing more than a matter of getting and spending--then economic arrangements which made it possible to get and spend as much as one can at the cost of dependence upon others and irresponsibility to oneself should be preferable (and the present state of affairs suggests that many do find it preferable). The conservative recognizes the political and cultural dangers of such dependence and irresponsibility. He defends private property primarily as a bulwark against these dangers, and not merely because it is economically efficient.
url: [url=http://www.suba.com/~rcarrier/revcon.html]http://www.suba.com/~rcarrier/revcon.html[/url]
2003-01-14 16:47 | User Profile
To me, capitalism is simply property rights extended to business. With my business, I sell what I want, hire who I want, set prices to what I want, and serve who I want. Free Trade, Prime Interest rate, open boarders, and war have nothing to to with capitalism.
NaBaron, it isn't so much prosparity that depresses the number of children born. So-called Affirmative Action for women isn't to counter any discrimination, real or imagined, passed or present, it's to encourage women to work to feed the beast rather than stay at home and have children. "Affirmative Action" is a tool of genocide.
Modern birth control, the high cost of living that forces some women to work, the high cost of having children (if you don't want to live on welfare), abortion, "Affirmative Action" against whites that make it harder for men to earn a living wage for his family, and other factors of modern America lead to a dangerously low birthrate among whites.
2003-01-14 18:46 | User Profile
How's this for a definition of capitalism: "liberalism applied to economics."
And all you Catholics remember what the man said:
"[the Catholic Church is] the most formidable combination that ever was formed against the ââ¬Â¦liberty, reason and happiness of mankind"-- Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, bk. 5, Ch.1, part 3, art.3).
bb
2003-01-21 00:46 | User Profile
Ed Toner
Gen. Butler USMC was and is most Right about the "capitalists (bankers) and oil men."
Buster,
Yes, Great Post! How's this for a definition of capitalism: "liberalism applied to economics."