Capitalism Defeats Socialism...Barely!

"They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die …” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” Alexis de Tocqueville

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill


Rasmussen reports that only 53% of Americans say capitalism is better than socialism. Not really a shocker, is it?

1 How many Americans have ever taken a class in macroeconomics?

2 How many of the people polled even know what capitalism is … or, for that matter, socialism?

3 How many of the 47% receive local, state or federal income either as an employee or as a recipient of aid?

Capitalism frees you to utilize your gifts, talents, skills, wisdom and will power in the pursuit of happiness. It also frees everyone else to do the same … and therein is the rub for many, many people. How so? Because I must compete with others in the “arena of achievement,” (Tom Peters) and sometimes others win.

When I fail to achieve what I wanted, I can seek to sharpen my skills or maybe even change the arena within which I wish to compete. I can also say, “It isn’t fair that she bested me, isn’t fair that he was more skilled, leaving me with less-than what I want.” And, in my mind, being it isn’t possible your skills were superior to mine, “You obviously cheated, lied and manipulated your way around me. We must have more government involvement in the market place.”

In his book, The Anti-Capitalist Mentality, Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises (1881-1973) wrote:

“The suffering from frustrated ambition is peculiar to people living in a society of equality under the law. It is not caused by equality under the law, but by the fact that in a society of equality under the law the inequality of men with regard to intellectual abilities, will power and application becomes visible. The gulf between what a man is and achieves and what he thinks of his own abilities and achievements is pitilessly revealed. Daydreams of a 'fair' world which would treat him according to his ‘real worth’ are the refuge of all those plagued by a lack of self-knowledge.” (p.15)

People raised in a culture of entitlement, seeing wealth as their birthright, aren’t too keen on competition, especially if it is on an even playing field.

Young men and women who attended schools where, for years and years, there was no competition allowed on the field of sports or in the classroom for grades, have little familiarity with dealing with—Cue voice of Jim McKay—“the thrill of victory … and the agony of defeat.” “Isn’t everyone supposed to win?”

And what happens when such people hear about their neighbor’s wealth? Being they refuse to look within and acknowledge their present real value in the market place, they want to do away with equality under the law and require equality of rewards, with the government deciding what is and is not “equality.”

Capitalism asserts and defends individual rights, most especially the right of private property. Socialism asserts and defends the rights of the masses—the collective over against the individual—with the State “administering the means of production and distribution of goods.” (Merriam-Webster)

Capitalism sets people free to “work out your own salvation.” Socialism asserts the State as Savior.

Capitalism leaves my “happiness” up to me. Socialism places my happiness in the hands of the State.

Choosing Capitalism is the choice for freedom. Choosing Socialism is the choice for tyranny.

Sheesh … you’d think the choice is a no-brainer.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009

Enya: How Can I Keep From Singing?

My life goes on in endless song
Above earths lamentations,
I hear the real, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

John Williams, Itzhak Perlman: Schindler's List

One of the more powerfully moving true stories ever to be filmed ... and the music is equal to the story.

Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) starts a factory and, seeing what is happening to Jews during the Holocaust, begins hiring them and doing everything in his power to save them. Neeson won the Oscar for his performance: one of the few times that most everyone said, "Of course!" rather than, "I never even heard of the movie.") It also won 6 other Oscars, including Best Picture.

"Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."

One of my favorite Perlman anecdotes is when he wheels up to a ticket counter at an airport and the agent kept speaking to his assistant. Frustrated, Perlman blurts out, "I am crippled, not deaf!"

Colonel V Doner: Friend

This was taken during our meetings this
past December in Costa Rica at
Vista del Valle

Lobby of The Houstonian

This is the lobby of the Hermitage Hotel
taken with my spiffy iPhone

I spent last weekend in Nashville with Colonel Doner. Last month we connected in Houston. Anyone who knows Colonel knows that great food, libations and hilarity abounded.

Colonel is an amazing man: masterful CEO of Children’s Hunger Relief Fund, Uber fundraiser, author, bon vivant. Two of the things that I most admire about him are his insatiable hunger to grow as a human, and the depth of his love for others.

I have never met another person who is more intellectually inquisitive than Colonel. No matter where we travel, he has a suitcase filled with books on history, economics, philosophy, psychology, theology and science. He is no dilettante, however. His pursuit is always about seeking wisdom and understanding that will serve him on his Quest to know God and to become the man he was created to become.

Most intellectuals I know live in their heads, rarely having deep, meaningful relationships. I have known Colonel for over 20 years and can honestly say no one could have a better friend than him. For me, he is the consummate example of God’s command to love others as you love yourself. I wonder if the reason God winks at how much he loves himself is because he bestows this same great love on others!

No one has stuck with me through more disasters and debacles. As many of these were self-induced, I cannot even begin to explain how deeply grateful I am for his friendship. While he can kick ass faster and with more force than anyone I have ever known—other than my father, that is—he just as quickly and forcefully offers his care and support. Throwing friends either off of the bus or under the bus is not in his DNA.

Actually, one of the only things that will keep you at arm’s distance from Colonel is a lack of self- awareness. He doesn’t mind your character flaws and such, just as long as you are aware of them and are seeking to better yourself. If you try to make your excrement smell like roses, you won’t get too far with him.

The older I become, the more deeply I am aware of how valuable our friends are. At my age, it is extremely difficult to make new friends. People’s lives are already filled with children, grandchildren, work and many other friends. Add my extreme introversion to the mix and, man-o-man, am I grateful for the friends I do have.

Don’t take your friends for granted.

Don’t allow familiarity to breed a laziness that allows the relationship to gradually degenerate into "distant acquaintances."

Cherish your friends. Invest in them.

Be the sort of friend you wish to have in your life.

And pray that God gifts you with a “Colonel”(if he already hasn’t): a friend who believes the best, ever hopes for your best, and readily endures the strangeness, foibles, and the idiosyncrasies that make you the unique individual that you are.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009

Atlas Mugged

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute. Ayn Rand


I first heard of Ayn (pronounced Eye-n, thank-you very much) Rand my senior year of High School. There was a Randian Club of young Objectivists (the name of Rand’s philosophy) that would meet in the cafeteria before school and argue with all-comers on such things as the Virtue of Selfishness. While I was clueless as to who Rand was, I always thoroughly enjoyed watching these guys thrash the mindless whining of our future politicians who would blather on and on about how we existed solely for the sake of others.

The following year I had some time to kill during winter break at college, so picked up her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. (1957) I read the entire book in a week … all 1,000+ pages. When my fellow Christians saw what I was reading they went ballistic, which, given my warped personality, only inspired me to go out and purchase all of her books.

“She is an atheist.” I didn’t hear any of you getting all hot and bothered when I was carrying around Thus Spoke Zarathustra, last term.

“She is a proponent of greed!” No. She believes in rational self-interest. Big difference.

These and many other memories like them came flooding back to my mind the last few weeks, as I have run across article after article on the merits and demerits of Rand’s ideas, all within the context of the present day political-economic crisis’. Her book sales are skyrocketing and Angelina Jolie is slated to play Dagny Taggart, Rand’s heroine in Atlas. Somebody pass the popcorn!

Anyway—

The central story is about what happens when “men of the mind” refuse to continue contributing their talents, skills, genius, art, inventions, expertise—their selves—on the sacrificial altar of looters and politicians who have never produced a single thing in their entire lives.

When Dagny calls a press conference to tell the world she will no longer work for the family Railway business, Rand describes the reporters who came to cover the story as young men

[W]ho had been trained to think that their job consisted of concealing from the world the nature of its events. It was their daily duty to serve as audience for some public figure who made utterances about the public good, in phrases carefully chosen to convey no meaning.

Sound familiar?

When politicians come to Dagny’s successor and brother, James Taggart, to complain about the price of a railway ticket:

“Well consider the unions’ side of it … Maybe you can’t afford to give them a raise, but how can they afford to exist when the cost of living has shot sky-high? They’ve got to eat, don’t they? That comes first, railroad or no railroad.” Mr. Weatherby’s tone had a kind of placid righteousness, as if he were reciting a formula required to convey another meaning, clear to all of them.

“And then consider the public. The rates you’re charging were established at a time when everybody was making money. But the way things are now, the cost of transportation has become a burden nobody can afford. People are screaming about it all over the country.”

When Health Care is nationalized, a Shrugging Doctor Hendricks says,

I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago. Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kinds of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun.

When Francisco d’Anconia explains his particular form of Shrugging (he purposefully ran his copper mines into the ground) to a group of looters in his office who were complaining about the lack of copper production, he notes:

I don’t know why you should call my behavior rotten. I thought you would recognize it as an honest effort to practice what the whole world is preaching. Doesn’t everyone believe that it is evil to be selfish? I was totally selfless in regard to the San Sebastian project. Isn’t it evil to pursue a personal interest? I had no personal interest in it whatsoever. Isn’t it evil to work for profit? I did not work for profit—I took a loss. Doesn’t everyone agree that the purpose and justification of an industrial enterprise are not production, but the livelihood of its employees? The San Sebastian Mines were the most eminently successful venture in industrial history: they produced no copper, but they provided a livelihood for thousands of men who could not have achieved, in a lifetime, the equivalent of what they got for one for one day’s work, which they could not do. Isn’t it generally agreed that an owner is a parasite and an exploiter, that it is the employees that who do all the work and make the product possible? I did not exploit anyone. I did not burden the San Sebastian Mines with my useless presence. I left them in the hands of the men who count. I did not pass judgment on the value of that property. I turned it over to a mining specialist. He was not a very good specialist, but he needed the job very badly. Isn’t it generally conceded that when you hire a man to do a job, it his need that counts, not his ability? Doesn’t everyone believe that in order to get the goods, all you have to do is need them? I have carried every moral precept of our age. I expected gratitude and a citation of honor. I do not see why I am being damned.


As an atheist, Rand is not even remotely friendly or respectful of Christianity, or any other religion for that matter. Some of her criticism is due to ignorance, some to the abuses she grew up witnessing in the Orthodox Church, as a child in Russia. For example, when she has Francisco blast the Christian notion that “money is the root of all evil,” she kind’a missed the fact that Paul wrote about the LOVE of money, not money per say. I have no doubt that she would agree that money is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Yes, she really could have used an editor. Yes, John Galt’s speech at the end of the book (took him three hours to give it … took me a full day to wade through it) was the worst kind of soapbox preachiness imaginable. And, o my, yes-squared, many of her followers and disciples are as weird as any cult members I have ever met. However, the prescience of the story is off the charts spot-on, for the times in which we live.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009

Facts or Truth?

I am finally getting some of my books out of storage and into my apartment. It’s like a reunion with old friends. On the shelves are Tennyson, Carlyle, and Malory, Lewis, Kreeft and Kierkegaard … novels, biographies, economics, philosophy, business, psychology, Letters/Diaries/Journals, art and history.

I have given away well over a thousand books over the last few years, thinning out my library so that the only books that remain are those that have meaning to me and touched me in some way, and a few reference books.

For me, reading is part of my Quest, and the quest has never been solely about facts.

I want to meet people, encountering them in their words.

I am looking for a window to open into a wider world or even another world.

I am looking for truth and Truth: for personal insight and insight into the Eternal.

Sometimes a book has only one sentence that speaks to me with a living voice, but that one sentence is worth more than the cost of the book. Other times, the book opens up a new world of thought, feeling and vision that is so life-altering that from then on, when I see it on the shelf, I am instantly immersed in that world. But sometimes the book is filled to overflowing with facts, details and minutia about God or Life or Relationships or Business or whatever, and, for the life of me, I could not find truth or Truth.

No doubt that, at times anyway, I didn’t find the truth because my heart wasn’t ready or willing to grasp it. However, just as often, all the author had was facts, so that was all he could offer his readers.

George MacDonald (1824-1925) makes this point about facts v truth when he draws a distinction between facts about a flower or a painting and the truth of the flower or painting. (CS Lewis’ George MacDonald: An Anthology.)

The truth of the flower is, not the facts about it, be they correct as ideal science itself, but the shining, glowing, gladdening, patient thing throned on its stalk.

It is easy to confuse having the facts with possessing the truth. A Botanist, for example, may have all the facts about a particular orchid. However, this doesn’t mean she possesses the truth of that orchid. And what is the truth of an orchid? The idea of that orchid in God’s mind.

Botany is the process whereby the orchid becomes the flower that it is. The process is the facts. The flower is the truth. And what do you think the Creator thinks when we allow the beauty of the orchid to be obscured by facts about the orchid?

Think of a favorite painting. Brush strokes, paint and canvas are the facts. The truth of the painting is the idea in the painters mind.

If the facts of a thing are helping you develop a greater appreciation for the truth of a thing, then, by all means, keep after the facts. But if the facts are distracting you from the thing itself, get back to the truth of it, for a while. In other words, if you are dying of thirst while digging into the facts of how oxygen combined with hydrogen creates water, then stop studying and start drinking.

Your Assignment:
How may this distinction between facts and truth apply to your perspective on the people you know, including yourself?

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009

Asserting Your Right to Exist

I recently worked with a client who had struck a self-made brick wall that was standing in the way of his upward mobility. His 360 Feedback told him that most everyone under, around and over him saw him as being timid. His direct manager, he told me, was constantly telling him that he needed to be more assertive.

As he was a huge John Wayne fan, I reminded him of Duke’s line when playing J.B. Brooks in The Shootist (1976)

I won’t be wronged. I won’t be insulted. I won’t be laid a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.

The question I asked him to consider was this: Where did that sentiment come from? What was it that birthed such a Code of Conduct? The following week he called me and, without even saying “Hello,” blurted out, “Self respect.”

J.B. did not withhold from others the respect he demanded for himself.

He did not withhold from himself the respect that he gave everyone else.

The Right to Exist
I know a man who apologizes for everything. He is always saying, “Sorry … I am sorry … Sorry about that.” When I questioned him about this, he said he was sorry. Most of us know people like this: people who behave as if they were invisible, people whose every mood and gesture proclaims, I am Sorry for Being Here, Sorry for Taking up Space and Oxygen. Which gets to the core of the problem, here: Timid and insecure people aren’t quite sure that they have a right to Be There, a right to Be Anywhere, a right to Exist.

Do you remember Bill Cosby’s line about how his angry dad once told him, “I brought you into the world; I can take you out”? Hilarious line. However, how many children came up believing that their “right” to exist was predicated on daddy’s approval or meeting mommy’s every expectation? As they grew older, they gave this same authority over their right to exist to teachers, bosses, spouses, and ministers.

Assertive people believe that they have a right to exist In fact, they believe that their existence comes with certain inalienable rights such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Subsequently, they choose their own path, follow their own conscience, and pursue happiness as they think best. Believing as they do, they accept the right and responsibility for developing their own beliefs, their own values, and their own ideals.

Read this out loud: “I need no one’s permission to exist. I need no one’s permission to think and believe as I choose. I need no one’s permission to be happy. I am responsible for my life: not him, not her, not them, not it.” What did you experience as you read those words? An affirming “Yes” or was there an underlying doubt? Did you find yourself knowing it was true, hoping it was true or fearing it was true?

By the way, when you see someone asserting him or herself in a belligerent or obnoxious manner, the odds are that their behavior erupted out of fear and insecurity, not out of a desire to honor their beliefs and values.

Self-assertion begins with self-awareness. Outwardly living and honoring your beliefs, values, and ideals require that you actually know what these are. If you don’t know, if you haven’t spent time studying, thinking, reflecting and, then, deciding what your existence is based on, what it stands for, then exactly what is it that you are honoring? I cannot assert myself if I do not know my self.

There are, of course, people who have clearly defined beliefs and such but somehow never publicly honor them or appropriately stand up for them when it counts. (I won’t be insulted.) You have to wonder, in these cases, how much of what they believe is authentic and heart-believed and how much is just so much intellectualizing.

As I honor my beliefs, values, and ideals in my words and actions, my self-respect increases, which, in turn, fuels my assertiveness. Contrarily, if I dishonor what I believe or allow others to do the same, my self-respect diminishes, which, in turn, curtails my ability to assert myself in seeking to honor what I know I have dishonored.

It is a constant struggle to keep your individuality from being snuffed out by the herd. Some people want to own you, and others want to use you by having you think their thoughts through your brain. Then there are those that are oblivious to your existence and, consequently, are utterly ignorant and indifferent toward the fact that they are about to trample on you and all that you hold dear. Whatever the case, drawing boundaries, maintaining your beliefs and values, and asserting your true self are a large part of the foundation for health and success in life.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2009