Stimulus A Clash Of Faith - Road to the Middle Class

The “stimulus” bill that President Obama is signing today is an act of faith. Ever since the late 19th century a large group of the western elite has believed that capitalism is inherently unstable, and can only succeed if minutely regulated by large-minded people like themselves. We generally call these people liberals or progressives.

Against this movement is another group and another belief system, one that we call the conservative movement. It believes that by and large, if framed by appropriate laws, the free market economy can run itself subject to the fluctuations of the business cycle, and that the interventions of large-minded people usually make things worse.

In the Reagan-Bush era conservatives believe that we made the point pretty clearly that a regime of stable regulation of business, a sensible and simple tax regime, and a level playing field is the best approach to political economy.

But our liberal friends hated every moment of this period. Because their faith says that you need people like them to help the helpless. If you don’t have minute regulation of the workplace, they say, people will be brutally exploited. If you don’t give targeted groups a helping hand then these traditionally marginalized groups will never succeed in reaching the mainstream of American life.

Arguments like this don’t get settled over the dinner table. They are fundamental arguments of faith, and only the clearest and most brutal experience will ever change minds.

In my view the present “stimulus” bill is the Last Hurrah of the interventionist faith. After the Obama era is over, there will be a lot fewer people that believe in government intervention to fix the economy.

The argument against the liberal faith has been developed by many people over the years, most notably by F.A. Hayek, who argued that the “man in Whitehall” or Washington just could not know enough to regulate an economy. It has been most powerfully made by the disastrous economic record of socialism and communism (and in a short while by the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela).

But our liberal friends can’t bring themselves to abandon their faith in their own ability to create a better world through detailed and comprehensive government administrative programs. And so we are going to have to descend into the pit before we will get to junk their whole cruel, corrupt, wasteful, unjust, and deluded welfare state.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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