David Simpson On Virtue And Capitalism

Does Capitalism Breed Freedom?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “Obviously they’re just trying to note the idea that capitalism breeds freedom and socialism breeds slavery.  I would argue that’s probably false, too.  Capitalism, let’s just talk about what it is.  First of all, let’s define the term.  Capitalism is based on the idea that all things are capital.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

David Simpson:  Conversion is not going from being a slut to being a new virgin, a born-again virgin.  It’s not going from being immodestly dressed to wearing Victorian habits or something.  It’s rather just saying there’s something wrong in what I’m doing and just turn a step in the right direction.  You’re a little bit of a peculiarity because your reversion has been so monumental.  The shift has been rather drastic.  Some people can do that.  Some people can jump from one way all the way to the other side of the chasm.  I think most people just need to feel comforted in knowing that it’s not a matter of making some drastic change.  It’s a matter of just making a small course correction.  Each time, God gives you more grace to find your way back to the right way of living.  By the way, Chesterton maintains that it’s much more fun and much more happy to live in that life where the rules are known and you live within them than it is to live where there are no rules and we’re all chasing –

Mike:  That’s right.  The example of the kids on the island that don’t have any dogma.  They are free, there’s a giant wall.  They’re on a small island.  It’s at the top of a precipice.  It’s a plateau basically, and it’s elevated 100 feet above the sea.  There are rocks below and an angry sea.  They can play freely and they’re not worried.  When the wall falls, all they see is the cliff and the perils below.  They’re so mortified by –

Simpson:  The wall coming down is the idea that now I’m free.  There’s nothing restricting me.  You go to the edge of that cliff and go: I don’t want this.  This scares the dog out of me.

Mike:  The wall is dogma.  The wall is the dogma that keeps you from going over the cliff.  That’s his point, that you can have the wall there, it can be an invisible wall.  Thomas Fleming, who is the founder of the Rockford Institute and publisher of Chronicles Magazine wrote once upon a time – and the great Charles Murray, one of the best writers of the last half of the 20^th century, in his book about withholding your consent, he quoted Fleming.

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He said: Mike, I’m going to leave you with a sentence.  I can’t take credit for writing it, I wish I could, but I can’t.  I’ve got to give it to Thomas Fleming.  It is: What we should practice is obedience to the unenforceable.  I used to say this all the time on this show.

What is obedience to the unenforceable?  Obedience to the unenforceable is that you know there is a set of rules.  You may still be learning the rules.  You know there’s a set of rules you’re supposed to operate by.  There’s no one standing there telling you that you should but you do it anyway.  You’ve obeyed what is not enforceable, like a rule against scandalizing someone, for example, talking ill of someone.  There’s no real rule against it unless you legally cause libel.  There is a holy rule about it.  You shouldn’t bear false witness, etc.  It’s obedience to the unenforceable.  I think some people may have come around to conforming their mind to that reality, that we need a rule.  We need to know what the unenforceable is.  One of the ways we can learn that is through the study of philosophy.  If you were to collect and put together all one and a half years’ worth of Wisdom Wednesdays, you would already be on your way to knowing what is unenforceable.

Simpson:  I was going to say, by the way, as an aside, if you decide to tune in tonight – we go 6-7 every Wednesday night for the philosophy course, is that correct?

Mike:  That’s right.

Simpson:  If you’re a newbie and you just pop in there tonight, I will promise you you might be a little befuddled.  Your head might start swimming.  My brother came in and sat in on a session one time when Mike and I were doing it.  He goes: Wow, it’s very deep.  It’s really not.  It’s quite simple and plain and very practical.  If you’re just jumping into it for the first time, it might kind of scare you off.  I will say this, Mike has a lot of these available on the Mike Church Show website where you can go back and listen to a few.  If you just jump in tonight and don’t want to go back and do any back study, just stick with it for a few weeks and over time your mind will adjust to where we are in the conversation.  Philosophy is like that.  It’s like an eternal conversation that’s been going on.  We try to tap into it to understand it better.

Mike:  Recently we had an intern in here and we were looking for things for her to do.  She took eleven taped recordings of our chat with Brother Andre Marie and converted them to mp3s.  She fixed the audio levels, put the tags in them, and loaded them into the player.  If you go to MikeChurch.com – they’re free.  They’re not protected.  Anyone can listen to them.  VeritasRadioNetwork.com, they’re free.  They’re all there.  You don’t have to pay to listen to them.  There’s about 25, almost 30 of them now.  We’ll hit one year in April that we started this.  That’s just an example.  David and I both encourage you to become Founders Pass members.  Go to MikeChurch.com/Join.  You can subscribe by the month or by the year to the Founders Pass.  That will grant you access to all of the content, including two 20-episode-long archives of this show now.  Of course, every day we archive all four segments.  We have now 11 or 12 episodes of My Story of America, Reverse Deception, ten episodes of ReConquest.  There are six episodes of The Flow with Kurt Wallace.  We’re at ten episodes of The Constitution Hour with Kevin Gutzman.

Simpson:  Ten episodes of mine.

Mike:  Ten episodes of the True Money show with David Simpson.  I’m leaving someone out.  We’ve got a lot of episodes.

Simpson:  Mark Kreslins.

Mike:  The Mark Kreslins Show.  We’re going to have to archive his 20 episodes and move them offsite to make room for new stuff.  My point is, there’s a lot to listen to.  You don’t get that kind of on-demand service anywhere else.  The stream is live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  If you’re listening to this and you’re not a member, you have no intention of going to the Founders Tradin’ Post and purchasing a book or t-shirt or cigar or becoming a remnant number or any of that stuff –

Simpson:  Somebody has to take this Grace Digital Radio off my hands, too.

Mike:  If you sign up for a Founders Pass, monthly or yearly, you’re entered into the drawing to get the first Grace Digital, MONDO radio that we’re going to give away.

Simpson:  Awesome radio.

Mike:  All of that can be found at MikeChurch.com and VeritasRadioNetwork.com.  We’re developing it to be your radio home, including an online community with forums.  You’ll be able to hang out there.  Our advertisers all have their own pages there, etc., etc.  Please consider supporting us.  If you’re listening for free, become a member.  Or you can donate to the crowdfunding page in the Founders Tradin’ Post at MikeChurch.com.

Here’s a headline.  I did a little bit on this yesterday.  I thought I would save it for Wisdom Wednesday.  What’s wrong with that headline?  I’ll show it to the audience, “Capitalism Is Freedom; Socialism Is Slavery.”

Simpson:  If we actually had – if you put an equal sign where the word “is” is, why would we have two words if they’re the same word.  That would be my first objection right there.

Mike:  Capitalism = freedom; socialism = slavery.

Simpson:  Obviously they’re just trying to note the idea that capitalism breeds freedom and socialism breeds slavery.  I would argue that’s probably false, too.  Capitalism, let’s just talk about what it is.  First of all, let’s define the term.  Capitalism is based on the idea that all things are capital.  Remember, isms can typically be defined more by what they exclude than what they include.

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Mike:  What are they the opposite of?

Simpson:  Pretty much.  Capitalism says there’s nothing but capital, that all things are capital.  That’s a very short definition.  I’m sure I’m going to have some economists calling up disputing my claim.  I think if we hashed it out he would know where I’m coming from.  What happens in capitalism is people started being used as resources.  That’s why we have departments now called human resources.  They used to be called employment offices; now they’re human resources.  I’m not a resource; I’m a human being.  Capitalism actually can just as easily lead to slavery as socialism can.

Mike:  Socialism is slavery.

Simpson:  Socialism, what does that exclude?  It excludes the idea of individuality, that somehow or another everything is a social issue, everything is a collective issue.  There is no right to the individual.  You play sometimes the librarian who’s defunct now –

Mike:  From The Twilight Zone.  You’re an anachronism.

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Simpson:  You can’t have any individuality.  You can’t want books anymore.  You can’t want to think on your own.  Joint the collective.  Stop thinking for yourself.  Socialism, yes, does indeed lead to slavery because it denies the individual rights.

Mike:  Doesn’t capitalism, making everything capital, doesn’t that lead to the acquisition of material things?

Simpson:  It ends up in the same end.  I’ve heard it said that capitalism and socialism are two sides of one coin.  They were both founded by men of different – basically both were communists is what I’ve heard.  I’d have to go track the story down.  They were both trying to figure out how you enslave the world.  One of them chose a capitalistic method and one of them chose a socialistic method.  I’ll track that story down and give it to you maybe next Wisdom Wednesday.

Mike:  This is written by John Hawkins.  This is yesterday at TownHall.com.  This is not old news.  I talked briefly about this.  I didn’t do this, but I talked to Brother Andre about it when we did Modern Wrong World Made Right.  We talked about the German philosophers and how they screwed the world up.  As Brother was telling the story, Schopenhauer and Kant did a really good job of screwing up the planet.

End Mike Church Show Transcript