“Many have argued that capitalism does not offer a satisfactory moral message. But that is like saying that calculus does not contain carbohydrates, amino acids, or other essential nutrients. Everything fails by irrelevant standards.” -Thomas Sowell

I hate to be the bearer of reality (formerly known as “bad news”) but when the president of the United States proposes a budget so large that $17 billion in cuts would only account for .04% of it, your country is in trouble. This means that the same inept band of former trial lawyers and community organizers in Washington, the ones who couldn't run Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae anywhere but directly in to the ground and oversaw staggering financial losses even in the management of the Congressional dining hall, will now have upwards of $3.4 trillion to “reshape America” with. For one year, $3.4 trillion.

Gentlemen, start your slush funds.

We find ourselves in a tough spot right now, no doubt. The problems didn't start yesterday and they're not going away tomorrow. The situation and its resolution are complex and complicated, but at the very heart of the answer to the question “How did we get here?” is this: a misplaced distrust and disdain for capitalism.

For 60 years the assault on free enterprise and the private sector of our economy has grown exponentially. By and large, the attacks on capitalism, whether through legislation in Congress, lectures in the classroom, or not-so-subtly-embedded messages on your television screen, haven't relented since the end of World War II.

One of the biggest misconceptions being peddled today is that capitalism was the root cause of our recent economic meltdown. This ridiculous premise falsely presumes that genuine capitalism has actually been in place the past half century; let alone previous 8 years during George W. Bush's time in office. Someone who spouts such historically inaccurate gobbledygook assumes that it is “no big deal” that we have a media, academia, and entertainment industry (all fueled and funded by free market capitalism, mind you) that has done everything in its power to undermine and mis-characterize capitalism in the minds of millions of Americans.

Intellectually, free enterprise's public deterioration has unmistakably come from the Left. There's really little point in debating this fact. One can call him or herself a “modern liberal” and still claim some allegiance to free market capitalism, but it's a lonely island they'll have deserted themselves on. Liberalism, embodied by the modern Democrat Party, is fundamentally a statist, collectivist movement. In other words: anti-capitalist.

However, in practice, in the halls of political power, and although Democrats are more inclined to statism and consistent in their bigger-government tendencies, both parties share the blame for abusing capitalism and grabbing powers that, constitutionally speaking, do not belong to them.

Of course this is always done with “good intentions“, or in the name of “justice” or “fairness”, but the predictable result is always the same: higher taxes, more spending, increased control for the federal government, and less liberty (and income) for private, law-abiding citizens.

Speaking of those John and Jane Q. Taxpayer's out there, they too have a part to play in the death of capitalism. Whether by ignorance or willful, active participation, each voter has contributed in some way to the corrosion of free enterprise, which has led us to the financial crisis we find ourselves in today. Two of the more egregious categories of voters in my mind include the die-in-the-wool anti-capitalist liberal, and the apathetically uninvolved Republican who only shows up, or any interest in the candidates, every 4 years.

Those in the first group who proudly vote for “more-of-everything-but-freedom” politicians on the Left do so in large part because of their own personal perspective on the “social issues” that they often mock conservative Republicans on the Right for being actively involved in. Welfare, on-demand abortion, Sarah Palin's belief that the Creator actually created the earth, and the like get this first group of committed liberals out of bed on election morning with a federally-subsidized spring in their step. They're dead wrong, mind you, but there's little hope of convincing them otherwise.

These Left-of-Left-of-Center people proudly boast a devotion to a worldview and political ideology that is literally unsustainable without the birthrates of the religious conservatives they despise, and fiscally untenable without the productivity of the entrepreneurial capitalists they attempt to inhibit. Nice.

Then there are the millions of Republican voters who cast party-line ballots on the other side of the political aisle come election time and then promptly (and mentally) check out of the process for another 4 years. They sit by and watch as the GOP spends like inebriated liberal sailors, but because they hear terms like “pro-choice” and “family values” they're willing to irresponsibly sell themselves and their children's children down the economic river.

I couldn't be more fed up with this “I'm so passionate about politics that I fail to monitor the primary, Constitutionally-appointed tasks my representatives are supposed to do” type of Republican voter. Placing an “I didn't vote for Chairman MAObama” bumper-sticker on your car isn't enough. We're better than this, and it takes some physical and intellectual elbow-grease to initiate “real change” by staying actively informed and involved.

This includes teaching and instructing future generations the values you deem worthy of your precious vote. If your son, daughter, brother, sister, nephew, niece or grand kid doesn't learn about conservatism and capitalism from you, they won't learn it at all. Teachers and friends at high school and college are indoctrinating the children of wishy-washy traditional Americans with secular-progressive liberalism.

The litmus test for gauging your credibility as a “real” conservative (or libertarian) should no longer simply be if you say you like capitalism at dinner parties and barbeques, but how many young people in your life know for a fact that you like it, and can themselves explain it to others because you've taught them the tenets of free market enterprise.

Now there are obviously many different groups that make up our electorate, and some people fall in to multiple ones among them. But honestly, if you aren't on the side of freer markets, if you don't crave more economic liberty, if you don't desire “self-reliance and civic duty” ceasing to be deemed as mutually exclusive traits of a good citizen, then you aren't in-line with the purpose and intent of this great nation and its visionary Founders.

It's a tough and bitter pill to swallow to hear this, I know. Especially in these politically correct, “truth is relative”, emotions-driven times. But it's no less true that someone opposed to economic liberty (in word or deed) is opposed to America's original meaning just because we happen to live in a day and age where we'd all rather be nice than right.

People incorrectly assume that the right to vote is the most important thing in a free society. It obviously does matter, but what is more important than your ability to earn a living? What speaks more directly to what it means to be truly free than the degree to which you are able to provide for yourself and your family?

Perhaps this familial aspect to the inherent value of economic liberty is why in overwhelming numbers more married people identify themselves as conservative and younger, single adults tend to be more liberal. It is harder, although not impossible, for a young single person to appreciate the paradoxical satisfaction that comes from being burdened with the responsibility of providing for others, and meeting that challenge by the sweat of your own brow (instead of a tax-credit from your neighbor).

Freedom to young people my age typically means the ability to “do whatever I want.” Freedom for those with others dependent upon them quickly becomes what G.K. Chesterton described as “the ability to do what I should.”

If you have to come to government for what you otherwise could provide and sacrifice for on your own, you aren't really free. You are now dependent on that government, and the only way to get more of what you need is to vote for the politician who promises to give more and more of it away. This is known in some circles as “socialism”. (See: Europe)

Political freedom only matters if you don't need politicians to survive.

(Part II coming Friday)