A LETTER TO A SOCIALIST FRIEND

I am stunned but welcome the opportunity for a dialogue. Your opinions (rambling thoughts) are precisely what Horowitz says the left is all about. Reduced to its simplest expression it is "blame America first for everything domestic or foreign." His basic premise is that the far left hates capitalism and since America is capitalistic, it hates America. Once having taken this position it is very easy for the left to ally itself with our enemies which it has done. I truly believe the left wants us to lose in Iraq as we did in Vietnam.

The entire world does not want to come here because it's an awful place. They wish to come here for freedom and opportunity and so they can realize the American dream through capitalism.

I disagree with you about the war in Iraq. I think it was and is a smashing success. Of course, that depends on how you define success and what you think we were trying to accomplish.

It started with 9/11. We didn't fly airplanes into their buildings. They flew them into ours. We went after the terrorists in Afghanistan where they were concentrated under the protection of the Taliban. We did a fair job but the struggle continues as we speak. The military victory was followed by a police action which is ongoing. This was a success. There is a democratic government in a place that is friendly toward us and we seriously disrupted the terrorists to say the least.

We then went to Iraq where we went through their military like a dose of salts but were left with a population sprinkled with what are now referred to as insurgents by the left. Iraq drew terrorists from all over the world like a magnet who joined in the fight. Even so, order has been preserved and we have been free of terrorist attacks at home. I firmly believe that it is far preferable to have them fighting over there instead of here. I think it would be the height of folly to come back and pull the covers over our heads and wait for them to come after us. If you believe what they say, which I do, that is their intention.

I believe it was the right thing to do then and it is the right thing to do now. I firmly believe that Kerrie, Gore, Clinton, and many other leading Democrats who said they thought so and then changed their minds did so because they saw a way for it to work to their political advantage.

I'm just a couple of years older than you are but I remember the losses we suffered in the Second World War and I am aware of enormous losses sustained in the Civil War and World War I. Of course, we had heavy losses in other wars as well. By comparison, our losses in Iraq are like a walk in the park.

By the way, the left has done a fair job of selling the idea that Bush just decided he wanted a war and invaded Iraq. Nothing could be further from the truth. All you have to do is read what leading Democrats were saying at the time to know that it is and was not "Bush’s war."

What we have done in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq is fought a political war. Identifying terrorists one by one and taking them out in an effort to avoid collateral damage is no different than trying to catch criminals anywhere else. We have crime in the United States and murder in the United States. I suspect the murder rate in Washington, DC is higher than it is in Iraq. The police are not able to eliminate murder in the US any more than we are able to eliminate terrorists in Iraq.

If we really want to pacify the country we need to, "romanize" it. We would then be, I suppose, as bad as Saddam Hussein was.

We are a kind and gentle nation and people. The beliefs of Christians and Muslims are starkly different when it comes to gentleness and kindness as opposed to violence and cruelty. They openly avow that they will kill us.

As far as America being imperialistic is concerned the facts do not support that conclusion. Following World War II we rebuilt all of Europe, in particularly Germany, and rebuilt Japan. We also helped rebuild the rest of the war-torn world. Not only that, but we let the Communist Chinese takeover the mainland of China without even much of a protest. In Afghanistan and Iraq we are not occupiers by any stretch of the imagination. What we are doing is helping the Afghans and Iraqis establish a democratic government and takeover the task of maintaining order so that we can leave. That does not mean that we can leave anytime in the near future. As I understand it we still have troops in Japan and Germany and in various other places in the world.

Of course we want oil. America runs on oil. So do many other countries and there is a steady demand for oil from China and India as well as Japan. It's a world market and we are world traders.

It's very easy to work up animosity toward those who have succeeded. That is true whether it is financially or otherwise. I offer as an example the law firms that have come under attack (in fact trial lawyers in general) because of the large fees earned in various types of litigation, particularly, class actions. A large part of the outright hatred of people for lawyers can be directly attributed to that.

Mexicans will do almost anything to get to this country just to get a job and one, I might add, that does not pay very well. There is a reason for this. The economy of this country is burgeoning. Some of us make more than others. I'm sorry to say that I'm toward the bottom of the pile.

Capitalism is the answer to prosperity and freedom. I commend you to Milton Friedman, our Nobel Prize winner in economics who recently died. It may also be worth considering that the earliest settlements in this country tried socialism and they starved. I you have the time and inclination I will send you a copy of the contemporaneous first-hand accounts of the settlement at Jamestown and the Plymouth plantation. They tried socialism and a great many of them starved to death. They abandoned it in favor of private ownership and what we now describe as capitalism and flourished. The account of the Jamestown settlement can be found at page 15 in volume 1 of the Bicentennial Edition of the Annals of America. The account of the Plymouth plantation and what happened there by its governor, William Bradford, can be found at page 65 of the same volume. All of it is an interesting but the portion that describes the failure of the, "common condition" which was the practice of feeding everyone out of a common storehouse and what happened is found at page 72 and 73. He also describes what happened when they abandoned that system. That short passage completely discredits socialism. These were our earliest experiences. I think we learned from them but we have now forgotten their lessons.

I would also recommend The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith who realized and explained how wealth is created by individuals acting independently in their own interests. The profit motive is literally what makes the world go around. Some of us are better at it than others. That does not mean that it is the only worthwhile pursuit of mankind. It is not. However, it is the economic model that works. China has figured this out even though it is communistic and has created a roaring economic powerhouse that is likely to roll over us. I expect China to do exactly what Japan did only on a scale many many times larger.

Finally, my friend, and you are my friend, and I welcome the opportunity to engage in this dialogue, if you look at a map of the Middle East you will see that we have stuck a dagger in the heart of Islam in Iraq and it is writhing in agony trying to pull it out. That at least keeps it from flying airplanes into our buildings.

A couple of things I would add by way of a post script and that is Wal-Mart and supermarkets. They are both modern marvels. They are both the product of capitalism. They both provide a magnificent service to the consumers of this country. I cannot believe the quality of the goods that I can buy at Wal-Mart nor the low price of those goods nor can I get over the fact that you can go to the supermarket at any time of the year and buy almost any fresh fruit or vegetable you desire. We import fresh fruits and vegetables from all the world, get them on our supermarket shelves and into our kitchens while they are still fresh. We do so efficiently and cheaply. The reason this is possible is because there are literally millions of people making a profit in this type of commerce. This is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations at work.

I do not want to destroy our economic engine in the vain hope that we can create something better when the alternative has failed everywhere it has been tried; not just in the United States but in Russia and Cuba and elsewhere. You should visit with my Russian friends sometime and hear what it's like in Russia.

I worked my way through college and law school as a painter. I grew up in the business. My father was a painting contractor and I was almost invariably the best man on the crew after I left home but I was not paid accordingly. I got paid union scale along with everyone else. However, when people got laid off, I did not. The reason was very simple. I was, as they say, a good hand. On the other hand, two black men came to work at the University of California on the paint crew and told the foreman that they did not have to work and he could not do anything about it. They were right. The foreman, who was my friend, quit. These two men ignored what they were told to do and did whatever they chose. What they chose to do was not work.