DENNIS CLAYSON | Posted: Sunday, January 13, 2008 12:00 am
John Edwards is running for president again, and is doing quite well.
It is unfortunate that so many of our fellow citizens support him.
Here's why.
Edwards is basically running on the old liberal myths of the evils of capitalism and a beatific vision of the government. The oil barons and the railroad men in their expensive suits and diamond tie tacks, stand with their expensive leather shoes on the necks of starving, but virtuous widows.
We may not have noticed, but evidently it is still 1880 with just a dash of the 1930's thrown in.
Edwards, as Saint George, will ride in on his white horse, destroying these devils in pseudo-Christian wrath with his charismatic power, the help of the trial lawyers, and a very, very large government.
Logically, he can either do this, which means that the threat was not as large or real as he maintains, or he can't do anything about any of this, which means that his campaign is bogus.
Here is a quote from his Web site: "It's time for us to rise up and take on the corporate greed that is taking over our democracy so we can leave a better America to our children."
First note what he manages to put into one sentence: "corporate greed,"
"democracy," "a better America," and the old Democratic standby, the "children."
Let's inspect the first buzz word - greed.
Joseph Epstein once said that if you disagree with someone on the right, you are likely to be considered by the right, to be wrong, and maybe even foolish, but if you disagree with someone on the left, then you will be considered selfish, insensitive, and perhaps even evil.
What I am going to say next is not evil. It just happens to be the truth.
First of all, in a Clinton-type parsing, we need to recognize that "greed" has a strange definition among the left. As the economist Thomas Sowell notes, if a person freely chooses an occupation that offers something the public wants and is willing to pay for, that is "greed."
If the public is forced to pay for it whether they want it or not, then that is "public service."
Capitalists are "greedy." Governments, which can't seem to get enough money and are willing to take money from all and every source even if it means promoting vices like war and gambling, are simply being virtuous.
If, as Sowell reminds us, prices vary so much from place to place and from circumstance to circumstance, how do we attribute that to greed?
Ah, you could say that people are greedy when they can get away with it.
In other words, sometimes people have a choice and they won't go along with the greed-induced prices, but on occasion they may be forced to buy something, and that is when greed comes into play.
Think about what was just said. To say that prices are set by greed implies that sellers can set prices by what Sowell calls "an act of will." If this were true, no company would ever go bankrupt.
Prices are not set by "an act of will." They are set in a free market by competition, and by supply and demand. The only time greed is possible is when buyers have lost their freedom.
When is that most likely to occur?
Yes, that could happen if a business gains monopolistic control, but how could a company do this without powerful friends in government? Buyers could also lose freedom because a powerful government, or the fear of lawsuits, takes it away from them.
In fact, the very solution advocated by politicians like Edwards will increase governmental control and decrease the power of a free market, which makes "greed" more, not less, likely.
On Edward's website is the following promise: "Personally committed to the cause of poverty, Edwards has outlined an ambitious agenda to eliminate poverty within a generation."
I thought the Great Society programs eliminated poverty - just kidding, but that is the problem, isn't it?
Any liberal program that Edwards advances will make poverty worse. It will freeze the poor into their poverty, and it will spend much of the wealth of the nation to maintain that stasis.
I can understand someone choosing to vote for Obama, and if I stretch my imagination and credulity to the limit, even for Hillary - but Edwards?