No, even though we took the phrase straight from yesterday’s
Washington Post, they weren’t
referring to Rick Santorum’s departure from this life, but his reentry into
political life. It seems that Santorum
has been contemplating running for the presidency (of the United States) in
2016. He’s been keeping it low key,
describing his position for 2016 as being “in a better place” than in 2012.
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| Another man from PA...You lookin' at me? |
That being the case, and since we don’t see anyone, Democrat
or Republican who has anything better, we thought we’d give the man from
Pennsylvania a few tips, freely given, and no doubt worth every cent. Of course, that does beg the question as to
whether Santorum himself has anything, but everyone has to start out somewhere.
We resisted saying “Demolican or Repubocrat.” It suggests construction workers engaged in
tearing down buildings going repeatedly to bars.
That’s an unfair stereotype.
It implies, one, that blue-collar workers hang out in bars all the
time. Two, it implies that there are
jobs.
Frankly, if someone, blue-collar or white-collar, has a job,
he or she has better things to do than go to a bar, like work and family. If unemployed, it’s a waste of money, and
there are better ways to spend one’s time . . . like looking for work or taking
care of the family. And these days, jobs
just can’t, uh, handle the job.
There’s the crux of the matter, and how, if Santorum can (as
the Washington Post put it) appeal to
“blue-collar workers who are being left behind in the economy.” (Snide comment alert: Right.
Blue-collar workers are the only ones “left behind” . . . according to
the white-collar workers at the Post
who have jobs . . . that haven’t been replaced by a computer program. Yet.)
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| The other Abe; Not Shinzo. |
Seriously, there are a number of things wrong with
that. We’ll focus on only one, however,
because it’s connected with an idea that is the one thing that could put
Santorum so far out front that even old Abe (Lincoln, not Shinzo . . . okay,
Shinzo, too) couldn’t catch up.
Ironically, it’s an idea that Lincoln would have bought into — and did,
in part, with signs that he was thinking of going the whole way before A
Soldier of the Confederacy Acting on His Own Initiative decided to kill him for
the dastardly crime of ending chattel slavery.
Aside to Santorum: Watch out if you buy in. There may be equally avid defenders of wage
slavery and the status quo, or who
are Just Plain Nuts out there.
Bringing in wage slavery helps us segue into what Santorum
can offer as a New Vision for America: a Capital Homestead Act. Get away from the “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” mantra,
and the growing dependence of people on the State.
If Santorum is serious about the desire to “stand up and
fight for [average Americans],” he should concentrate on getting power back
into their the hands. He should fight to
restore the dream of a free and sovereign people who control the State, not a
subservient mélange of wage serfs and welfare slaves who cower and kowtow to
anyone with lots of money and a slick line of gab, and vote anybody into office
who promises them a bigger share of someone else’s pie.
And that means capital ownership. As another great American statesman said,
“Power naturally and necessarily follows property.” That was Daniel Webster, speaking to the Massachusetts
Constitutional Convention of 1820 on the issue of extending the franchise to
adult white males who did not meet a property qualification. He and Benjamin Watkins Leigh of Virginia
properly feared for the foundation of the civil order if people without
property used their political power to take over the property of others.
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| Pro-American, Pro Pontifice |
If that’s not enough, what about what Pope Leo XIII said? —
“We have seen that this great labor question cannot be
solved save by assuming as a principle that private ownership must be held
sacred and inviolable. The law, therefore, should favor ownership, and its
policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners.” (Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, § 46.)
Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 Homestead Act was (arguably) the
greatest and most democratic economic initiative in history. It ushered in what just might have been one of
the most rapid periods of economic growth ever.
There were only three problems. One,
the Homestead Act applied only to landed capital, not commercial or industrial
capital. Once the land was gone, so was
the opportunity for ownership.
Two, financing
for development depended on a small and diminishing accumulation of past
savings. The policy of deflating the
paper currency to restore parity with gold after the inflation during the Civil
War ensured that farmers and small businessmen would be starved for
credit. The rich and powerful commercial
interests could create money at will by issuing bills of exchange, and also
received government subsidies. Neither was
available to the “less interesting” small farmer and business owner.
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| Ownership, you say? Fire up that peace pipe. |
Three, the
indigenous inhabitants, whether you call them “Native Americans” or “Injuns,”
might be said, by a long stretch of the imagination, to have had some sort of
claim to land they had occupied for a few thousand years. Perhaps.
Maybe. (Did we forget to push the
“Sarcasm Alert” button?)
The third problem is actually distantly related to the
second. The belief that you can only
finance new capital formation out of past savings, and that you only gain if
somebody else loses, are errors, as Mortimer J. Adler said in a different context: “Looked at one way, the two
mistakes represent opposite extremes.
Looked at another way, they represent opposite faces of the same
error.” (Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes. New York:
Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985, 90.)
We’ll
talk about how Santorum can overcome these problems and present a vision of
hope and positive change to the people of America and the world . . . and have
a cakewalk into the White House in 2016 on Monday.
