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Will the Entrepreneur Rise?

By on July 19, 2012 in Capitalism, Politics

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” So said the nihilistic president this week in a speech denouncing capitalism. Contrary to what Barack Obama says, an enterprise is not something “you’ve got”. It is something you’ve made and it is something you own. Though Obama’s comments are getting attention, the problem is not just with what Obama said, though what he said is bad enough. It’s in the way he said it. America’s anti-capitalist president speaks with a flip, curt, clipped, cynical style that underscores his nihilism: as I wrote in my “Obama, the Nothing Man” post, he stands for nothing. In a short sentence, he snidely dismissed the best efforts of millions of Americans who over years and decades – in countless investments, pitches, sketches, meetings and mistakes and restarts – work to achieve an enterprise of their own.

At least Mitt Romney, a private equity businessman who unlike Obama has a career of making money in a private business, called out Obama’s assault and defended the businessman: “Barack Obama’s attempt to denigrate and diminish the achievement of the individual diminishes us all.” Romney, who created ObamaCare’s predecessor and is not a principled advocate for capitalism, also said: “The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn’t build McDonald’s, that Bill Gates didn’t build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn’t build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it’s wrong.” Even better, according to a newspaper Web site report, Romney asked everyone in the audience who started or ran a business to stand up, which many in the room did.

May all the U.S. artists, contractors, CEOs, business owners and producers stand – and speak – up against Obama’s assault on capitalism this November. If Romney continues to communicate even a general defense of individual rights, the president’s attack on people who create, produce and make money may backfire on Obama’s own campaign strategy to make Mitt Romney seem clueless about real middle class people and their values. The truth is that, whatever Romney’s flaws, it is Obama who is pompously out of touch like a malevolent emperor who has contempt for his subjects. May every entrepreneur of every type rise to reject the Obama administration this fall and articulate the case for the right to pursue his own happiness, including the right to make money.

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The Death of Capitalism

By on October 6, 2011 in Capitalism, Culture, News

The response to the death of Steve Jobs is overwhelming; as I indicated in yesterday’s post, there’s an outpouring of admiration, affection, and love for the all-American capitalist. But there’s also what Ayn Rand called the hatred of the good for being good and the contrast echoes today’s stark cultural schism. As if we needed more evidence that America is dying and desperately in need of resuscitation, the Christians known for anti-gay protests of American soldiers’ funerals announced on Twitter that its members plan to picket Steve Jobs’s funeral (this from Yahoo!’s Lookout). The Baptist church wrote: “He had a huge platform; gave God no glory & taught sin.” The Tweet was posted from an iPhone.

On one hand, it’s merely another example of where faith meets force. But the opponents of capitalism are dead serious; they aim to occupy the United States of America in every sense, taking it by force, fueled by faith in fill-in-the-blank, from the religion of Judeo-Christianity or Islam to the religion of environmentalism, welfare-statism, and some form of egalitarianism, such as multiculturalism or feminism. The faith-based forces are merging, as Objectivist academic dean Onkar Ghate observed some time ago, and we see this today, from the cancellation of NBC’s Playboy Club, vilified by feminists and religionists alike, to the outright hatred of Steve Jobs.

Don’t expect the press to report on this ominous rise of what propels fascist power. As I observed when I denounced nihilist Jon Stewart, a puny-minded cretin taken more seriously among dominant intellectuals than any single journalist, the media are complicit in this arguably historic shift toward virulent, explicit anti-capitalism that results in totalitarianism. Today, journalists, such as Digital Media Fellow Jeff Sonderman at the Poynter Institute, post pieces mocking Steve Jobs in the context of his death. They’re a disgrace to the profession, but they have influence; I’ve seen Objectivists sharing and posting pieces that undermine, mock, and attack titans of industry, including Mr. Jobs.

In a particularly telling contrast in the city where Apple is based, Cupertino, California, the man suspected of opening fire at a quarry, killing three co-workers and injuring six, Shareef Allman, had become upset during a company meeting, left the meeting and returned with guns to start killing people. Various reports indicate that the churchgoing man of faith, who had been convicted of numerous crimes, was upset that his shift had changed. This beast represents man at his worst; the ultimate death worshipper, who turns to faith and force as against reason as a way of dealing with life’s problems. Steve Jobs was man at his best; the ultimate life worshipper, who follows reason, not faith or force. His life was dedicated to solving life’s problems, to rational self-interest and the pursuit of happiness. Each man must choose either one philosophy or the other, that which hastens death or that which promotes life. As Objectivism demonstrates, every choice is ultimately reducible to this essential choice: life or death.

Certainly, now is the time to remember the incredible achievement which was the life of Steve Jobs (and I’ve included a statement from his family below). But it must be said that the death of Steve Jobs signals the death of capitalism. Not necessarily the inevitable death, which may be spared by individuals uniting to follow reason, individual rights and living in accordance with reality, but its spiritual death. The pursuit of knowledge, which requires reason, is at the core of Apple’s success and the art of Steve Jobs’ remarkable life. At the core of today’s destroyers, a mindless herd that obeys intellectuals, goosesteps toward takeover of Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge, and is led by the almighty Obama, is nothing; the center of those posting jokes about Steve Jobs, stalking our streets, cities, and companies, is hollow. Life has been drained from them year by year in soulless, government-controlled bureaucracies and institutions breeding contempt, envy, and the worship of death. They have lost the will to live and are like body snatchers who seek only to destroy that which is living. Zombies stimulate them and give a jolt to their death-tracked lives (if you can call it life). Steve Jobs was a giant who towered over them. Now that he’s gone, they’re going in for the kill to see to it that one never rises again. To do that, they must kill what made Steve Jobs possible, capitalism. The destroyers are making progress. They are acting fast and taking over. And, from Mecca and Teheran to Wall Street, Los Angeles, and Boston, and Cupertino, they are everywhere.

Steve Jobs fought for his life. I say to those who admire him: So should you.

Statement from the family of Steve Jobs:

“Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.

In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories.

We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.”

Why I Like Apple’s Logo

By on August 23, 2011 in Business, Capitalism, Culture, Visual Arts

As we near the end of what’s left of capitalist America, with impending monetary collapse caused by government-controlled economics, Apple’s logo—a symbol of the greedy and passionate pursuit of knowledge—remains America’s most powerful symbol of capitalism.

To me (and it is just me because the designer denies it), the logo represents the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. Whether it’s intended or not, the apple with a bite taken out of it is a visual reference to the idea that wanting to gain knowledge of the world around us—and acting on the desire—causes man’s fall from grace. The apple, and the company’s remarkable and historic success since Steve Jobs created Apple in California with his partners in 1976, suggests an inversion of the story from the book of Genesis. The iconic logo means the opposite of the Bible’s tale of forbidden fruit; it means that ignorance is not bliss and that wanting to gain knowledge is good, not evil—that, contrary to the notion of original sin, man is not inherently evil—that man is not inherently anything but human—and, as an image for a big business that makes money by trading in the single most unregulated industry left on earth, that one should, as an old Spanish proverb puts it: “take what you want and pay for it.”

This presumes the freedom to choose and to me it represents the American spirit of capitalism. As we descend into an economic death spiral caused not by capitalism but by its opposite, welfare statism, I’m going to look at Apple’s logo as a simple, noble symbol of the quest for knowledge and remind myself that the good is still possible—and that Apple, for now, is proof of it.

Homeless in America

By on August 7, 2011 in Capitalism, Culture

I heard a homeless man interviewed on the radio this morning. He was asked how he wanted to be treated by strangers. He simply said that he wanted people to say hello. “We’re people,” he said. “Not ghosts.”

Today in America we do not have capitalism; ours is a seriously government-controlled economy and nation, with government-controlled and dictated results and consequences, real and dangerous, with uncertain and volatile implications. These are dark times and, though many homeless are criminally insane and should be avoided for safety reasons, I agree with the wise words I heard on the radio.

So, when I see a homeless person, one we used to call a bum, I will try to remember that America is an unsteady welfare state, that it has been for decades, and that, against harsh and impossible obstacles imposed by the United States government, the bum may be desperately trying not to become a ghost.

Pittsburgh Steelers and the Steelmark

By on January 30, 2011 in Business, Capitalism, Sports

Pittsburgh SteelersThough I no longer follow professional or college sports, which I think is often as thoroughly bankrupt or corrupt as American culture, next week’s Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers conjures the heyday of the National Football League (NFL). I remember reading about admirable players such as Johnny Unitas and the Packers’ Bart Starr, both valued for their intelligence and integrity, during my youth, watching the Packers play in those brutal Wisconsin winters and feeling the Packers fan pride during visits to America’s Dairyland. Of course, being from Pittsburgh, I always cheered for the Steelers (and Panthers, Penguins, and Pirates). I used to wait outside hotel lobbies for a sight of the Steelers when they came to play near my town, and I remember Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and Lynn Swann as kind athletes who graciously signed autographs and answered my countless questions. Andy Russell, Jack Lambert, Mel Blount, John Stallworth, Frenchy Fuqua, Roy Gerela, Jack Ham, Rocky Bleier, I met nearly all of those Steelers of the 1970s. Mean Joe Greene seemed just like he did on the Coke commercial. They were my heroes.

One of my first heroes was the original Pittsburgh Steeler, Andrew Carnegie. He created U.S. Steel, whose diamond-shaped design is emblazoned on the helmets of the Pittsburgh Steelers, America’s only major football team with a capitalist logo, when he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901. The Steelers’ diamond-shaped logo, composed of three hypocycloids, is known as the Steelmark. Cleveland, Ohio-based Republic Steel suggested that the Steelers use the logo, an industrial trademark by then, on their helmets in 1962.

According to the Steelers’ history of the symbol, the logo was intended to convey that steel lightens your work, brightens your leisure and widens your world and that steel is important in our daily lives. During the 1970s, the logo’s meaning was extended to include the three materials used to produce steel: yellow for coal, orange for ore and blue for steel scrap. Appropriate to an American symbol of productiveness that would not be possible without property rights, the Steelers had to seek and gain permission from the American Iron and Steel Institute to change the word “Steel” to “Steelers”. The Steelmark was created by U.S. Steel (now known as USX Corp), the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, in a deal which made Andrew Carnegie the world’s richest man. The Steelmark, a symbol of mankind’s most productive period in history, is one of America’s last iconic images (Ford Motor Company’s signature logo also comes to mind) of capitalism, the nearly bygone era.