Decades before the 1929 stock market crash and Great Depression, a Baptist minister named Russell Conwell began to deliver a lecture to groups of impoverished and dejected individuals around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and ultimately, the entire country.  The lecture came to be known as “Acres of Diamonds”, and Conwell went on to turn his nightly mission meetings into Temple University.  He also went on to deliver that lecture over 6,000 times.

Fast forwarding a century to our own Great Recession and its corresponding groups of newly impoverished and dejected folk, one wonders what Conwell might have said to the ones who have come to participate in, or sympathize with, the Occupy Wall Street movement.   We need only to look to his “Acres of Diamonds” text to find out.

Equal parts inspiring, engaging and witty, and almost disturbingly prophetic, the lecture derives its name from its opening tale of “an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed”, who is lured into a search for diamonds in far away lands.   After spending his fortune in vain and coming up diamondless, he takes his own life.   As the story continues, we learn that if he had only dug in his own original backyard, he would have encountered acres of the precious stones, and achieved all of the riches he lost his life seeking.

But with the hopes of inspiring his audience out of their poverty-stricken ways, Conwell goes on to say  “I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor.”   And he follows that up with:

I think the best thing for me to do is to illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at least, to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because of the lies that are told about them. The lies that are told about Mr. Rockefeller because he has two hundred million dollars — so many believe them; yet how false is the representation of that man to the world. How little we can tell what is true nowadays when newspapers try to sell their papers entirely on some sensation!

Much of Conwell’s eleven thousand plus words revolve around the relationships between society’s rich and its poor.  As the self-described “99 percenters” rail against the supposed injustices heaped upon them by the infinitely fortunate 1%, Conwell’s talk is chock full of wisdom that transcends the ages.   In fact, as we shall see, it is almost eery how currently applicable entire sections of the prose are.

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Let’s talk about “fair share.”   President Obama certainly wants to.   He’s “all in” on the notion that “the rich” don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes in this country.  Indeed, he’s wagering his re-election on the bet that a majority of voters will agree with him.  When the tyranny of the majority succeeds, Obama will win, too.

As parents, one of our most important tasks is to know when to say “no” to our children.  We all recognize a “brat” when we see one — a child who’s never been told “no”, and whines and complains until he or she gets his or her way.  ”Shame on his parents!”, or perhaps that’s not politically correct to say anymore.  But bratty children grow up to be bratty voters, too.

Unfortunately our political system often rewards the political equivalent of the irresponsible parent.   Using Other People’s Money, irresponsible politicians promise the world, and the bratty voters like it.  Once elected, these politicians do their best to deliver the goods.   It’s alright, they say, because of their interpretation of the General Welfare and Commerce clauses of the Constitution.  Others beg to differ…

Sadly, under such a system, no amount of revenue to the government is ever enough, because human wants are themselves unlimited.  Therefore, those with a lot of assets, with “a lot” being defined by the politics of envy, become natural targets for the boundless benevolence of these irresponsible people – voters and politicians alike.

At least one prominent media figure is finally on to the correct way to put a lid on this ruinous line of “fair share” reasoning.  Most recently, it was Stuart Varney.

On his September 20th show, Mr. Varney put a simple question to a Democratic strategist, Mary Anne Marsh, in the context of discussing Obama’s plan to raise taxes on the wealthy.   To paraphrase:

“What is the maximum percentage of income that someone should pay in taxes?”

It’s an arresting question, for several reasons.

 

 
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Did anyone really think that this Congress was capable of a real solution to the debt and deficit crisis?  Certainly Standard & Poors didn’t think so.  As the Cato Institute noted in a picture’s-worth-a-couple-trillion-dollars fashion, the long-term effect of this deal on the nation’s debt accumulation trajectory will be negligible.  And when ideological non-soulmates Keith Olbermann and Judge Andrew Napolitano both suspect that a key component of the bill, the so-called “Super Committee”, might be unconstitutional, you know we’re in uncharted waters.

Congress shoots... and misses

Maybe now the folks that were never politically involved, but have been suddenly active via the Tea Party, will wake up and realize it boils down to having the right elected officials in place when the votes are being cast and counted.   In the long term, that’s not a bad thing.

It’s interesting to watch what happens when a person is presented with a free-market solution to what has come to be seen as a problem for government to solve.  The problem might be health insurance, retirement planning, labor agreements, or nearly anything that people decide “they should do something about”, with the “they” being the government.   A lot of feedback I’ve received on my last several columns has a common theme: that the free-market sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t produce equal outcomes, and because of man’s moral imperfections, it’s idealistic to rely on the free-market to promote those outcomes.

I stand accused of being an an Idealistic Capitalist, to which I plead guilty.

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Greedy, capitalistic corporations.   They caused the financial crisis and are destroying the American Dream.   They’re preventing the curing of diseases.  They’re endangering our environment and our national security. They’re even making our kids fat.

Or so too many people think, nearly enough for a voting majority that would fulfill de Tocqueville’s prophesy:

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” — Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Fortunately, to back safely and permanently away from the edge of the cliff, we need only allow for true capitalism to thrive and to replace the crony capitalism that so many people confuse it with. Crony capitalism feeds on greed.   True capitalism and truly free markets, defeat it.

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When reading Paul Krugman’s latest New York Times column, “Medicare Saves Money“, it’s hard to fathom who the bigger fool is – Krugman, his employer, or the readers that keep supporting this junk.   It’s also hard to fathom a more complete demonstration of faulty reasoning.  All this from a Nobel Prize winner no less, and one calling out someone else’s supposedly bad idea, an idea according to Krugman “that’s so bad, so wrongheaded, that you’re almost grateful.”

Professor Krugman, I’m grateful to you.

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What’s it going to take for government to get serious about our financial condition and long-term economic health? New legislation, authored by politicians with a different view of what government can and can not do, and what it should and should not do.

Enter, Jeff Flake.     Continue reading at Forbes Opinions…

Amidst all the noise from unions, Progressives and The Left about “workers’ rights”, a political-judo opportunity has been laid bare:  What about the right to NOT join a union?   Those seeking to get to the heart of the matter in one single question should don their jūdōgi and practice this one single move:

“Do you support workers’ rights, specifically, the right to not  join a union?”

If I were a union boss, I’d have no counter-move to that.  What could I say?

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Can addressing the educational needs of the soul be achieved in a society that insists on perpetually misinterpreting our Constitution’s “Establishment Clause”, such that “separation of church and state” is the rule of the day? Is a strict separation of church and state even healthy to the respective parts?

These were the questions I posed to Joseph Pagnozzi, co-founder and President of The Montfort Academy, at the end of the first installment of my interview with him several weeks ago.

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On April 13th, President Obama proposed his budget, one based on the progressive fallacy that our current level of government spending today is correct.  And because we have a deficit, we require more revenue to make up the difference.   So goes the thinking of a President who knows no boundaries as to what government can and should do.

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