Thanks to Stephen L. Hall for today’s post!
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“The business of America is business.” – President Calvin Coolidge. My favorite parsimonious president succinctly summarized the foundational principles and history of our nation in these six simple words. The Virginia colony was established by England in a desperate effort to compete with Spain to bring new world wealth back home. Upon their failure to discover gold or silver in their colonies on the east coast of North America, the colonists turned to farming, particularly new crops they could export to Europe for profit.
In other colonies, founded upon religious liberty for Protestants, their fabled work ethic led them to bring with them the proto-capitalism and commercial culture in developing the northern colonies. The nation pushed west driven by the potential for individual citizens to attain profits and wealth, the very concept of a frontier was the lure of financial advancement.
The history of the nation America is not one of conquest, rapine, and pillage; rather it is a history of commercial, agricultural, and industrial development of an essentially empty continent. The business of growth and development was from time to time interrupted by conflicts and war. For other nations, business supports their army and their government. For America, government and the military exist to support the business of development.
Calvin Coolidge recognized this truth of the American experiment, and confronted the perils of debt, spending, and expansive government.
So the question which leaps to my mind, and I presume first occurs to everyone else, is why then was business advertising the very first type of speech to be denied the full protection of the First Amendment? Valentine v. Crestensen, 316 U.S. 52 (1942).
Why would such a decision come down during a far leftist administration like Franklin D. Roosevelt’s? Obviously, this is not a coincidence.
What are leftist most upset about recently? The Citizens United case. Citizens United stands for the proposition that commercial enterprises, particularly corporations, are protected by the First Amendment in the exercise of the company’s Freedom of Speech. So commercial speech is not protected, but political speech even by a commercial entity is. Why would this offend leftist, after all, they were the very ones who said that political speech was more valuable than commercial speech.
A recent post regarding “Civil Rights Laws” might have brought to the reader’s’ attention that the only people subjected to these laws are businesses, specifically employers and landlords. We do not apply the forced association of civil rights to people’s social life; you are not forced to marry people of society’s choosing, or root for your local rugby team in the name of fairness. It is only business where we voluntarily accept such government coercion.
Simply look at all of the sources of the anti-capitalist laws and regulations. The overwhelming quantity of regulations are to control and constrain businesses. Antitrust laws keep businesses from being too successful. Agencies like the EPA, FCC, FDA, NLRB, HUD, and the SEC among many others are created just to reign in and control the looming threats posed by business.
Virtually the entire industry of education has been nationalized. Education, once private, is now synonymous with public, the government. The government borrows millions to give to students in their attempts to control those parts of the education system not entirely nationalized.
Social Security, for many people, has even nationalized retirement. Maximum hour, minimum wage laws at the national level because they were struck down as unconstitutional on the state level. Now they are demanding a doubling of the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Medicare and Medicaid have partially nationalized the health care industry. Obamacare attempts to control and nationalize part of the medical insurance industry, with a stated aim toward moving to a single-payer, or nationalized, health care system.
Leftist political movements are motivated towards the rich, the Occupy movements attack and vilify the 1%ers in their fictitious words. The left pushed union movements to control and regulate employers and employment itself.
In order to even operate a business you must beg permission from the government in the form of a business license. Permission to exist and earn a living.
Nearly everything the left in this country does is an attack on economic liberty, on business, commerce, wealth, production, and services. Without economic liberty, there can be no political liberty.
It is theorized that dragons are such a fearsome mythological creature because the dragon attacks the livestock, lays waste to fields and homes, and destroys the very wealth and prosperity of the society. It does not merely steal, it destroys. How is the relentless attack of leftists different in that it attacks the very sustenance and resources of those who would oppose them?
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, . . . .” – Declaration of Independence. Virtually the left’s entire focus is to attack business, in every form, in every issue, it is businesses who are the target of leftist vitriol. Business is the enemy of those who would destroy America.
Commercial speech is as valuable as political speech, perhaps more valuable. Every intrusion of the state upon your commercial life is an attack on your very liberty. People only attack what they fear or what they hate; and wealth cannot be hated, ergo it is feared. Business produces liberty, sustains a free people, ennobles the human spirit, and knits together the very fabric of society. The business of America is business.
