Happy New Year

 Happy New Year

QUORA: ‘What three points do communists and fascists disagree on?’

 QUORA: ‘What three points do communists and fascists disagree on?’

I posted this answer:

1. Communism is international socialism: It seeks a worldwide homogenous system. Fascism is national socialism: It seeks to tailor its system to the customs and traditions of individual nations.

2. Communism allows no private property or private enterprise. Fascism allows a superficial veneer of both. But it is only a veneer of privatization, as all economic forces, as Mussolini put it, must be “coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.”

3. Communism is by definition strictly egalitarian—”from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Fascism is less so, or not at all so. 

These differences are superficial, though. What’s more important, because more fundamental, is what they have in common. There are 4 fundamental commonalities:

1. Statism (central control of all aspects of society)

2. Collectivism (the supremacy of some group, be it the race, the proletariat, society as a whole, et al, in whose name the state operates) 

3. Mysticism (the quasi-religious belief in a higher group or national consciousness in whose will the state is the embodiment.)

4. A common enemy — Enlightenment liberalism and its consequences; individualism, constitutionally limited individual rights-protecting government, and Capitalism.

So, in practice, communism and fascism have meaningful differences.

But fundamentally, on the philosophical level—which is the level that counts most—communism and fascism can be thought of as fraternal twins. Never mind that, in today’s scrambled jargon, communism is considered “far Left” and fascism “far Right.” In truth, the only social system that is the antipode of both is Capitalism.

Related answers:

Why do people find communism so terrifying as an idea?

Why do fascism and communism often go hand in hand when they are philosophically polar opposites?

Is it possible to be both a Communist and a Fascist?

Related Reading:

QUORA *: ‘Why do people find communism so terrifying as an idea?’

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

What is Capitalism?—Ayn Rand

Nazism, Communism, Atheism, and the Enlightenment

QUORA: ‘Is fascism a form of capitalism?’

We Need a Deeper Understanding of Socialism

A is A, and Socialism by any Other Name...

Christmas the Secular, Christmas the American

Is it appropriate for non-Christian Americans to celebrate Christmas? Many do, and why not? I’m an atheist—or, more precisely, a person of reason—and I have no problem celebrating Christmas, even though it has no religious significance for me.

Christmas is obviously a religious holiday for many, signifying the birth of the Christian icon Jesus Christ. But as an American holiday, Christmas is and, by our own Constitution, a secular holiday. That makes it a holiday for everyone. Therefore, people are free to celebrate Christmas according to any meaning they choose.

Why do I say that? Two reasons—one moral, one Constitutional.

I am indebted to philosopher Ayn Rand for showing that, philosophically, in America, Christmas can’t be strictly a Christian holiday. In answer to the question of whether it is appropriate for an atheist to celebrate Christmas, Rand observed:

Yes, of course. A national holiday, in this country, cannot have an exclusively religious meaning. The secular meaning of the Christmas holiday is wider than the tenets of any particular religion: it is good will toward men—a frame of mind which is not the exclusive property… of the Christian religion.

This makes perfect sense. Neither Christianity nor any particular religion can have an exclusive claim on morality. “Good will toward men” is not a monopoly of Christianity. Rand’s reference to the National Holiday aspect of Christmas points to another important reason why Christmas in America cannot be the exclusive domain of Christianity, or of religion more generally.

Here, I am also indebted to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. As the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." In 1870, Congress made Christmas a national legal holiday. This means that anyone who claims, as one NJ letter-to-the-editor wrote, that Without Jesus Christ you can't have Christmas, that person is repudiating the U.S. Constitution. A national religious holiday in a secular nation founded on the principle of separation of church and state (freedom of religion and conscience) is a logical impossibility. Since to have a secular government means to have one that is neutral with regards to the fundamental conscientious beliefs of all of its citizens, an American national holiday by definition cannot be religious.

In fact, what we today call Christmas originally didn't have any connection to Jesus at all, writes Onkar Ghate in U.S.News & World Report:

Before Christians co-opted the holiday in the fourth century (there is no reason to believe Jesus was born in December), it was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, of the days beginning to grow longer. The Northern European tradition of bringing evergreens indoors, for instance, was a reminder that life and production were soon to return to the now frozen earth.

The Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice with the holiday Saturnalia. In Northern Europe, the holiday was called Yule.

Indeed, as philosopher Leonard Peikoff observes over at Capitalism Magazine, the leading secular Christmas symbol - Santa Claus - actually contradicts some standard Christian tenets:

Santa Claus is a thoroughly American invention. ... In 1822, an American named Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem about a visit from St. Nick. It was Moore (and a few other New Yorkers) who invented St. Nick's physical appearance and personality, came up with the idea that Santa travels on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, comes down the chimney, stuffs toys in the kids' stockings, then goes back to the North Pole.

...Santa implicitly rejected the whole Christian ethics. He did not denounce the rich and demand that they give everything to the poor; on the contrary, he gave gifts to rich and poor children alike. Nor is Santa a champion of Christian mercy or unconditional love. On the contrary, he is for justice -- Santa gives only to good children, not to bad ones.

When Congress declared Christmas a National Holiday, in 1870, Christmas ceased being a strictly religious observance and became a secular holiday. A legal religious holiday in a nation dedicated to freedom of religion and conscience is a contradiction. (The Founders used the terms “religion” and conscience” interchangeably. They understood religious freedom to include the freedom not to believe in or practice any religion—in effect, not just freedom of religion, but freedom from religion as well; i.e. separation of religion and state.) Being a national legal holiday, Christmas can have non-religious, non-Christian meaning just as validly as a Christian meaning. It’s a matter of individual preference. Otherwise, what’s the point of freedom of conscience?

So, regardless of your personal beliefs, go ahead and enjoy Christmas on your own terms.

On that note, let me extend to everyone a hearty wish for a joyous, safe, and thoroughly non-contradictory…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Related Reading:

How the Welfare State Stole Christmas, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Don't Need Christ to Celebrate Christmas

Why Christmas Should be More Commercial—Leonard Peikoff

The Real Meaning of Christmas: What Would Jesus Teach Today?

A ‘War on Christmas?’ No: A War on non-Christians

QUORA: 'How do capitalists defend inheritance? Isn't inheritance unfair?'

 QUORA: “How do capitalists defend inheritance? Isn't inheritance unfair?”

This is one of the easiest QUORA questions I’ve answered. Here is my answer:

“Property rights” is the right of use and disposal. As Investopedia defines it:

Property rights give the owner or right holder the ability to do with the property what they choose. That includes holding on to it, selling or renting it out for profit, or transferring it to another party.

My emphasis. Assuming your estate is property legitimately earned and legitimately acquired by you, it is your right to transfer it as you choose, upon your death, according to the instructions in your will. It’s as simple as that.

Here’s a question for you: If it is unfair for someone of your choice to inherit your property, then on what basis can you claim it is fair for someone not of your choosing to receive it?

Related Reading:

Is Inheritance anti-Capitalist and anti-Merit?

Does Inherited Money Ruin Lives?

Inheritance Taxes, Inequality, and the Economy

The Inherent Corruption of Public Sector Unionization

In a NJ Spotlight News op-ed, Tammy Murphy’s candidacy exposes nepotism, business as usual in NJ, Marc Gaswirth writes about the nepotism of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s wife running for NJ senator. Though the main focus of the article is Tammy Murphy’s obvious connection to her governor husband, another item caught my attention:

[The New Jersey Governor is] bestowed with constitutionally enormous power and influence, [so Phil Murphy] will continue to drive the state’s education agenda during his remaining time in office, and that means, if the past is a predictor of future behavior, the NJEA’s [New Jersey Education Association, or teachers union} agenda.  

Gov. Murphy has been the most pro-teachers’ union governor in New Jersey history. Since 2018, he and a compliant legislature have approved several major union legislative initiatives by largely bypassing and usurping the local collective bargaining process.

The very idea of a “pro-teachers’ union governor” points to the fundamental corruption of public sector unions. Since the government is their employer, the power of these unions draws directly from the coercive, law-making powers of the state. By being able to form political organizations, these unions can work to elect friendly politicians that will work for them, rather than the broader public that the duty of elected officials demands. This is unlawful, since federal law forbids government employees from using the gun-power of the government to advance their own interests at the expense of the public these political leaders are supposed to represent. Furthermore, public employees represent the public, so there is a huge conflict of interest when they organize to negotiate against the public. The teachers union gets to “negotiate,” not with a representative of the public, but with its own political crony. In effect, the negotiating table features the teachers union and Gov. Phil Murphy on one side, and nobody on the side of the broader public. That is the very definition of corruption.

Contrast Murphy with our last governor. I sorely miss Governor Chris Christie. He was the rare NJ governor who actually represented the broader tax-paying, student-supplying public in dealing with the teachers unions.

I speak as a union member myself, the plumbers union, a private-sector trade union. But my union, being private, is completely different in kind from the public unions. It’s not that the teachers union, and all public sector unions, engage in some corrupt activity that can be weeded out. The truth is, they are inherently, systemically, irredeemably corrupt. At the very least, public sector unions should immediately be legally banned from all political activity, be it fundraising, political donations, campaigning, candidate or issue endorsements and promotions, running PACs, or whatever. Ultimately, public sector unions are unconstitutional and should be outlawed. 

Related Reading:

School Choice is About Freedom, not "Union-Busting"

Is Governor Christie Winning NJ's Public School War?

Abusive Teachers Union Power Results from Government School Monopoly

Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions by Philip K. Howard

Why Government Unions—Unlike Trade Unions—Corrupt Democracy by Phillip K. Howard for Time

The Liberal Case Against Public Unions by Phillip K. Howard for The Daily Beast

Several specific provisions of the Constitution safeguard against the delegation of sovereign powers. Article II grants “executive power” to the president, and numerous cases have held that Congress lacks authority to remove the president’s ability to hold inferior officers accountable. Article IV provides that “the United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The purpose of this “Guarantee Clause,” Madison explained, was to require a linkage between voters and the people making governing decisions, thus preventing the ceding of powers to nobles or other “favored class.”

QUORA: ‘How does capitalism lead to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?’

 QUORA: ‘How does capitalism lead to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?’

I posted this answer:

It doesn’t. Capitalism leads to the opposite result — the spread of incredible wealth to “the masses.” Just travel through any commercial district. They are teeming with outlets full of goods, geared toward the average consumer. Who buys them? The “many.” Just look at your own life. It’s full of stuff produced by people you’ll never meet or will ever meet. Just look at the people around you. Same result.

Capitalism liberates the common man to voluntarily produce, trade, and gain wealth by protecting individual rights. This bannishes force from human relationships by the government protecting us from criminals, fraudsters, and foreign threats. It also protects us from the government becoming the criminal through a proper constitution that limits government power. The result is that wealth by force, fraud, or theft is banned, leaving only wealth by productive work and voluntary trade as the only option. Under Capitalism, wealth is gained by producing something that others value enough to pay you for. A person’s level of income and wealth is thus determined by how much value for how many people he produces. The greatest fortunes are earned by the people who produce the greatest value for the greatest number. But these fortunes of “the few” are held primarily in the form of monetary assets, such as stock, bonds, and savings. The actual wealth—the stuff—is held by consumers.

The Capitalist ideal, which today only exists in a form very diluted by statism, nonetheless led to The Great Enrichment—the explosive rise in the standards of living of the general populations of countries that adopted a decent amount of Capitalist individual liberty, such as rule of law and property rights. When you observe the world objectively, you’ll notice that the wealth spread throughout society in even semi-Capitalist nations dwarfs the combined Capitalist fortunes earned through the building of giant entrepreneurial enterprises like John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, Bill Gates’s Microsoft, Steve Job’s Apple, or Jeff Bazos’s Amazon. Who owns and consumes most of the cars, homes, computers, food, movie tickets, televisions, dishwashers, smart phones, gasoline, and other mass consumer goods? Well, the mass of ordinary people, not the few.

Far from leading to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few, Capitalism is actually the greatest wealth sharing social system -- in fact, the only peaceful wealth sharing system. All other systems are based on cronyism and theft that fosters fortunes by corruption and robbery taken from the many by wealthy aristocrats. Capitalism fosters only fortunes by work and trade—fortunes that raised the living standards of the people as they grew. If you favor ordinary citizens being able to accumulate wealth, then Capitalism is your social system.

Related Reading:

All Earned Wealth, No Matter How Big the Fortune, is Deserved Whether ‘Needed’ or Not

The "Hoarding" By the Rich Fosters Widespread Prosperity

"Trickle-Down Economics": Anti-Capitalists' Insulting Portrayal of the "Common Man"

QUORA *: 'How is capitalism good despite the fact that it creates higher and lower classes?'

QUORA: 'How is becoming a billionaire even possible, chronologically?'

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The Democrats’ Anti-Free Speech Bill HR-1—the ‘For the People Act’—is Still a Threat

HR-1, the so-called “For the People Act,” passed the House in 2019 and was debated in the Senate, but failed to pass. Pegged as a “voting rights bill” by its Democratic Party sponsors, it was re-introduced in the Congress in 2021, but still failed to pass.

I’m really distressed that the focus is, from what I can see, almost exclusively on the voter law portion of the bill, while the really dangerous elements of the bill are slipping in almost without notice. I sent this letter to the New Jersey Star-Ledger in 2019, which was never published:

To the Editor,

HR-1 [S-1 in the Senate version] is hyped as a “Voting Rights Act.” But beneath that slogan are provisions that threaten more fundamental rights to freedom of speech, association, conscience, privacy, and petition. Respectively, HR-1 severely restricts independent political spending, the means of free speech, by groups of individuals like corporations, unions, and Super Pacs, violating free speech and association rights; provides for “public” funding of elections, violating freedom of conscience by forcing the taxpayer to fund politicians’ campaigns without their consent and/or even if the politician’s policies violate the taxpayers conscientious beliefs; force disclosure of contributions to political action organizations, which violates the donors’ privacy rights by outlawing the confidentiality of donors; sharply increases requirements on lobbying, making it much harder for private citizens to peaceably assemble to petition the government.

Taken together, HR-1 is a broad-based rollback of the First Amendment. It violates the very inalienable rights which gives substance, meaning, and effectiveness to elections, and substantially reduces the ability of voters to hold their elected political leaders accountable. The “Voting Rights Act”—officially labeled, with a straight face, the “For the People Act”—is an insult to actual people who take their actual right to vote seriously.

Sincerely,

Michael A. LaFerrara

Though unpublished, the letter is still relevant because the Democrats are ready to push it through the first chance they get. 

For more on HR-1, see these posts:

HR-1 is An Assault on Free Speech, Property Rights, Freedom of Conscience, and Privacy

Democracy Doesn’t ‘Win’ When Free Speech is Suppressed, Voting Rights or No Voting Rights.

QUORA: “Is the For the People Act of 2021 (HR. 1) constitutional or not?

Statistical Disparities Don’t Prove Discrimination in Voter ID Laws

Related Reading:

Why Free Speech and Spending on Speech are Inextricably Linked

The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech--by Kimberley Strassel

Making Private Donations Anonymously is a Right

Citizens United and the Battle for Free Speech, by Steve Simpson

‘Dark Money’ is Free Speech. Protect It

Campaign Finance—Voluntary Contributions vs. Public Funding: Which is ‘Dirty?’

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

 QUORA *: ‘If the primary purpose of capitalism is simply to make more capital, why would anyone oppose the people choosing (democratically) to distribute it fairly?’

I posted this answer:

The primary “purpose” of capitalism is to leave people free to pursue their own purposes by banning force from human relationships. The government’s job is to protect every individual’s rights to freely work and trade with others, to earn and keep property, to freedom of expression, conscience, and association, to basic principles of justice such as the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, etc, and to remove from society those who violate others’ rights; that is, commit force or fraud against them. 

Importantly, while the government’s job is to make rights-protecting laws to shield the people from criminal aggression, capitalism also embodies a constitution that protects the people from government aggression by subordinating government officials to the same rights-protecting laws that they impose on private citizens. Capitalism also subordinates society as a whole to the rights-protecting laws by restricting the authority of the popular vote so people’s “capital” (their earned property) cannot be democratically seized and “distributed fairly,” and so people’s freedom cannot otherwise be restricted by regulation.   

The most concise statement of the essence of capitalism can be found in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which holds that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men. . .” America’s Founding Fathers didn’t set out to create more capital. They set out to liberate the “common man”--ultimately, all men and women. Unlike other social systems, which are imposed from the top down, capitalism** emerges naturally when people are left free based on the principle that rights precede government--rights being understood as sanctioning the individual’s social freedom of action to pursue his own flourishing, not an automatic claim on goods or services that others must be forced to provide. 

The true nature of capitalism is buried under mountains of misconceptions and misrepresentations. The question above is an example of that. Fortunately, there are good educational resources available to balance the intellectual scales against the gross falsehoods. I recommend Andrew Bernstein's books, The Capitalist Manifesto: The Historic, Economic and Philosophic Case for Laissez-Faire and Capitalism Unbound: The Incontestable Moral Case for Individual Rights. 

** [The term “capitalism” doesn’t fully capture the reality of the free social system, in my view. I prefer Americanism to describe the unity of intellectual, political, and economic freedom based on individual rights that is the essence of laissez-faire capitalism.] 

Related Reading:

The Dollar and the Gun—Harry Binswanger

Why Capitalism Needs a Moral Sanction

Democratic Socialism: The Rise of the Pigs

Democratic Socialism: If the Pigs Take Over

Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society