In looking at the statistics for Religious Groups in the US, I discovered that there were 2,721,000 Buddhists, 4,657,000 Muslims, 5,290,000 Jews, 16,439,603 Southern Baptists, and 67,259,768 Roman Catholics; I also discovered that all of those mentioned were all committed to the sanctity of Capitalism and without exception all ‘lost their ass’ in the stock market, the last couple two weeks. Capitalism is indeed a fickle God.
Personally, I believe in capitalism and believe it should be a fundamental human right, and that every citizen should be allowed to profit financially from his or her own creativeness and industry. (Therefore this essay is copyrighted and cannot be copied or reproduced without the expressed permission of the author). Admittedly though, I have no investments in the stock market; I am old and poor and therefore I do not invest in stocks nor do I even buy green bananas. When I ‘go’, I am taking it with me!
Having said that about capitalism, I must quickly rush to the defense of President George Washington and say that I do not believe he was a Communist or Socialist simply because he was one of the founders of the American socialized institution, the United States Postal Service, and he supported the American socialized public schools, by virtue of providing for them in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Personally, I greatly admire, respect, and support George Washington, the United States Postal Service, and public schools in America.
The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to . . . promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” I love those words. In my own mind, there is no sanctity in ‘capitalism’ or ‘socialism’; for me however, the U.S. Constitution is sacred.
When our Constitutional forefathers established the United States Postal Service, they had a purpose and I am, as an American, in total agreement with them. In the democratic Republic of America, the founding leadership believed that communications was simply ‘too important to the citizens’, to trust communication to private companies.
Even as a child, I trusted my governmental United States Postal Service to delivered the letter I wrote to the addressed recipient, intact and secure, and my American Government was trustworthy (at least more trustworthy that F. W. Woolworth, Incorporated).
After studying and researching American History, I have concluded that George Washington, Tom Jefferson, and Ben Franklin were not ignorant dummies; I decided that they were pretty darn smart and I am a beneficiary of their intelligence and leadership. I totally disagree with today’s politicians who want to privatize the United States Postal Service, or Social Security, or oppose national Universal Health Care for Americans..
Now that I am old and no longer set the alarm for six o’clock in the morning five days a week, I have come to the conclusion that I am over-educated. When I meet new friends, I never use the title doctor in providing them with my name; I am a little embarrassed. However, in retrospect I am always aware that were it not for America’s ‘socialized’ public schools, as the son of a poor Wabash Railroad Blacksmith’s Helper with less than an eighth grade education, I would never have had the opportunities to get the education that I received. I also thank my father for encouraging me to get all the education that I could, so that I could rise above spending my life as a Blacksmith’s Helper (certainly, I believe that there is nothing wrong with being a Blacksmith’s helper, however).
Private schools have their purpose in the American democratic Republic. Their purpose is to educate those students who choose or whose parent’s choose for them to be indoctrinated and educated in a parochial and not a democratic setting. Public Schools are required to be democratic in operation and educating of the masses. American public schools are a democratic socialized institution.
Now, I am a child of the Depression (I was born in 1930) and I have been a student and teacher of American History. From this background and experience, I could not avoid learning about economics and capitalism. Therefore, I was a witness to the establishment of regulations, primarily by President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats, put on banking and businesses for the purpose of guaranteeing the American people that the Great Depression could ‘never happen again’; those regulations were fiercely opposed by the Republican Party and other ‘pure’ capitalists at that time and still are today. To the opponents of regulation on banks and businesses, regulation was blasphemous to the sanctity of capitalism; ‘pure’ capitalist advocates never seemed to realize that economic stability was actually the result of regulation.
The Republican Party has never accepted regulation in the economic sector as a ‘positive good’. Therefore at their first opportunity after winning a majority in Congress, the Republican Party began wholesale deregulation. The Republican Party believed that if a little deregulation was good (and profitable), total deregulation was the ultimate (and the most profitable).
When the Great American Economic Collapse of 2008, occurred, Republicans were shocked, surprised, and they ‘lost their ass’ in the market; personally, I smugly ‘told them so’ and was unfortunate (a person is never fortunate to be poor) enough not to have investments in the stock market.
What I have seen so far in the aftermath of this collapse of ‘American Capitalism’ has been truly bizarre. I witnessed a video yesterday of Bill O’Reilly of Fox News angrily blaming Rep. Barney Frank, Democratic Chair of the House committee on banking, for this 2008 economic chaos in America; yet, Frank has over the years consistently opposed the deregulation that is responsible for the economic chaos. Since Democrats became a majority in the House of Representatives a little over a year ago, Frank has been trying against Republican opposition to get regulation through committee unsuccessfully. The Americans public would appear to be definitely uninformed , confused, and they forgot their history lesson.
America is facing another Great Depression and economic disaster; capitalism is a fickle God!