Democracy! Capitalism!! Freedom!!! God Bless America!!!!
These four proclamations are like sacred incantations in our American vocabulary. They’re indelibly stuck in our American psyche and we faithfully repeat them (especially during political campaigns, which seem never ending), as holy American mantras.
But, assertive pronouncements, even with passionate devout fervor, give no guarantee to their faithful application.
As to “Democracy,” votes can still be bought and sold, or worse, ignorantly and blindly misled. The masses are always vulnerable to being duped and naively misdirected, often shamelessly seeing nothing beyond their own self-interest, which is easily pandered to by shrewd and unscrupulous politicians.
As to “Capitalism,” it is a far from perfect economic system; indeed, many, many people suffer from its unchecked and unregulated excess, to say the least.
As to “Freedom,” we now act as if freedom is a kind of absolute personal right, giving us license to do whatever, whenever, however, we feel like—with the one qualifier: “so long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else”—as if we are all islands unto ourselves with no interconnectedness in consequence and effect (notwithstanding the well-known chaos theory principle called the “Butterfly Effect”).
And, as to “God Bless America!” we evoke this as if we have the right of God’s favor upon us, as if God must be on our side. What presumption!
God demands humility, mercy, justice, and truth from His people. God demands personal integrity, as well as economic and social justice for His people. He does not bless greed, or the abuse of wealth, power and status, or injustice, or a rebellious, wayward, and self-indulgent people. As a nation, we conveniently seem to forget this while we cry out “God Bless America!”
In short, along with the privileges of freedom, democracy, and capitalism come the responsibilities of self-control and the ability for self-restraint, the limiting of self-indulgence for example, with respect to our freedom. Or along with our enjoyment of a capitalistic economic system comes the responsibility for the systemic care of the poor, the sick, the weak and the needy.
Truth be told, the quality of a system—democratic, capitalistic, economic, political, social, or otherwise—is no better than the people applying it. If the people within the system are greedy, selfish, and self-indulgent, having no larger vision than that of their own self-interest, the system will fail, even if it happens to be the best system around.
Systems are not corrupt, people are. The weakness of any and all systems is in the humans who function within it. A system’s greatest weakness is Human Nature and human character, not the system itself.
Hence, in actuality, certain values and principles that undergird other economic systems, such as socialism and communism, for example, might actually be worth applying to our own capitalistic system (modified of course)—so as to make our own particular form of capitalism more equitable, more functionally fair and just. But those words “Socialism” and “Communism” are taboo, as if the evil of those systems were inherent in the system rather than in the corruptness of the people that function within them.
We tend to treat our Capitalistic and Democratic systems as if they were a religion—something to be believed in, by faith, without question or doubt. Likewise so we treat their opposing systems, Socialism and Communism, as if they are of the devil, heretical, evil, and anathema. What we probably really need, in terms of a good economic policy, is an economic system that applies the best working values and principles from all sources, be it capitalist, socialist, or communist, so as to ensure that the most people have the best opportunity to make a fair and just living off our limited lands, shrinking resources, and modest means.
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