3 Things 8-21-26

 Thing One

The Right — and Responsibility — to Speak Your Mind

As Americans, we have the right to speak freely. Everybody knows that.  But I think we have something more than a right to speak when the occasion warrants it. Sometimes we have a responsibility to do it.

There are times when being a good citizen requires us to follow the dictates of our conscience and say what we actually believe — even when we know what we're about to say will be unpopular, politically incorrect or unwelcome to the people listening.

And, just as importantly, there are times when conscience requires us to refuse to say something we don't believe.  That's harder than it sounds.

Most of us like to think of ourselves as independent thinkers. But human beings have an enormous desire to fit in. We want the approval of our friends, coworkers, families and communities. Today we can add our political tribes and social-media circles to that list. So sometimes we remain silent not because we've changed our minds, but because speaking honestly has become uncomfortable.  I think that's a mistake.

A free society depends on more than laws protecting free speech. It depends on people who are actually willing to exercise that freedom.  Few examples make that point more powerfully than the story of Cuban poet, writer and human-rights activist Armando Valladares.

Valladares spent 22 years in Cuban prisons after refusing to publicly declare his support for Fidel Castro. In 2016, he received the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's Canterbury Medal. In his remarks, he explained why something as seemingly insignificant as refusing to say a few words mattered so much:

"When I was 23 years old I did a very small thing. I refused to say a few words, 'I'm with Fidel.' First I refused the sign on my desk that said as much, and after years of torture and watching so many fellow fighters die, either in body or in spirit, I persisted in my refusal to say the few words the regime demanded of me.

My story is proof that a seemingly small act of defiance can mean everything to the enemies of freedom. They did not keep me in jail for 22 years because my refusal to say three words meant nothing. They kept me there that long because it meant everything. For me to say those words would have been spiritual suicide. And though my body was in prison and abused, my soul was free and flourished. My jailers took everything from me, but they could not hijack my conscience.

Even when we have nothing, each person and only that person possesses the keys to his or her own conscience, his or her own sacred castle. In that respect, each of us, though we may not have an earthly castle or even a house, each of us is richer than a king or queen.

For many of you, particularly the young people, it may seem I come from another time and from a remote place. Young friends, you may not be taken away at gunpoint, as I was for staying true to my conscience, but there are many other ways to take you away and to imprison your body and your mind. There are many ways you can be silenced.

I warn you: Just as there is a short distance between the U.S. and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what we believe and what we do. And sometimes this is not done at gunpoint but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one silencing at a time. Beware young friends. Never compromise. Never allow the government—or anyone else—to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do."

— Armando Valladares, remarks upon receiving the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's Canterbury Medal, New York City, May 12, 2016.

Obviously, the consequences most Americans face for expressing an unpopular opinion are nothing remotely comparable to what Valladares endured. That's an important distinction.

But the underlying principle is still worth thinking about.

Freedom of conscience isn't particularly valuable if we're only willing to exercise it when everybody around us agrees.

And free speech isn't terribly useful if we're only willing to say things that are already popular.

The First Amendment gives Americans extraordinary protection against government interference with speech. But maintaining a culture of free expression requires something the Constitution can't mandate: citizens willing to listen to people they disagree with and citizens willing to speak honestly when they believe something needs to be said.

That doesn't mean you should blurt out every thought that enters your head.  It also doesn't mean you should go around deliberately offending people.  And it certainly doesn't mean that your freedom of speech protects you from criticism or disagreement.  It means something much simpler:  Think for yourself.

Listen to arguments you disagree with. Consider new information. Be willing to change your mind when the evidence warrants it. But don't pretend to believe something simply because saying otherwise might make you unpopular.After all, we can't change anything if we can't change our minds.  And we're unlikely to change our minds if we're unwilling to hear ideas that challenge what we already believe.

Some of the most important ideas in history began as unpopular ideas. Somebody had to be willing to say them first.  So when you have something thoughtful to say, say it.And when your conscience tells you that you shouldn't say something you don't believe, don't say it.  You may be wrong. The other person may be right. That's precisely why we need the conversation.

Free speech is our constitutional right. A willingness to exercise it thoughtfully is part of our responsibility as citizens.

Thing Two  

Socialism, Ten Years Later

About ten years ago, a very good friend of mine wrote a piece about socialism and the direction he thought American politics was heading.

I recently came across it again, and it struck me how much the political conversation around socialism has changed in those ten years.

At the time, Bernie Sanders was making an unexpectedly strong run for the Democratic presidential nomination while openly describing himself as a democratic socialist.

Today, socialism isn't some obscure idea sitting on the fringes of American politics. The Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA, describes itself as the largest socialist organization in the United States. Democratic socialists have been elected to Congress, state legislatures and local governments. So I thought it was worth revisiting the subject.

First, we should probably establish what we're talking about.

The word socialism gets thrown around far too casually in American politics. Social Security isn't socialism. Medicare isn't socialism. Public schools aren't socialism. A government program isn't automatically socialist simply because tax dollars pay for it. Socialism involves something much more fundamental: ownership and control of the productive economy. And that's what makes the Democratic Socialists of America particularly useful in this discussion. We don't have to speculate about what they mean by democratic socialism versus capitalism. They tell us. DSA says plainly: “We must replace it with democratic socialism.”

Its current program calls for public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries, while its constitution describes a society based on popular control of resources and production and economic planning.

That's a very different proposition from arguing over tax rates or whether Medicare should cover another service.

And that's where thinking people should part company with them.

Transferring substantially more economic power from millions of private owners, entrepreneurs, investors and consumers to government and political institutions is not likely to make us freer, more prosperous or more productive. There is evidence in the world today and throughout history that supports that argument.

So the real issue is who gets to decide. It's true that capitalism isn't perfect. Companies can become too powerful. Markets can become concentrated. Businesses sometimes mistreat workers. People cheat. Monopolies develop. Consumers make bad decisions. Investors make bad decisions. That's why we have laws, courts, regulations and antitrust enforcement.

But pointing out the imperfections of capitalism doesn't make socialism the default solution. At least in a market economy, economic decision-making is spread among millions of people. Consumers decide what they want to buy. Entrepreneurs decide which businesses they want to start. Investors decide where they're willing to risk their money. Workers decide where they're willing to work. Companies decide what they're willing to produce.

Those decisions can be messy. They can also be wrong. But they're decentralized. When government assumes greater ownership or control of the economy, those decisions don't disappear. We simply change who gets to make them. And there is no reason to assume that politicians and government bureaucracies will be less self-interested, less susceptible to corruption or better at allocating resources than everybody else. Human nature won't change simply because the economic system does.

In fact, there's an important difference. When a private company repeatedly makes bad decisions, eventually it can go broke. Government doesn't operate under quite the same discipline.

And that brings us to another part of this debate: the promise of “free” things. Free college, free health care, free child care and free housing all sound good. But government can't actually make any of those things free. Doctors, teachers and construction workers still have to be paid. Hospitals and universities still have to be built and maintained. Government can decide that the person receiving something doesn't pay for it directly, but the cost doesn't disappear. It gets transferred to taxpayers, businesses, future taxpayers through borrowing, or some combination of the three.

That doesn't mean government shouldn't provide services or help people who need it. Of course it should. The legitimate debate is over what government should provide, how much it should provide and who should pay for it. Calling something free just avoids the most important part of that conversation.

And that conversation becomes even more important when we're already running enormous deficits. The federal government is projected to run a deficit of roughly $1.9 trillion in 2026, while federal debt held by the public is now roughly equal to the size of the entire U.S. economy and projected to continue growing.

That's not simply a Democratic problem either. Republicans have demonstrated repeatedly that they're capable of spending money the government doesn't have. This isn't a red-team-versus-blue-team issue. It's arithmetic. If we're going to promise substantially more government benefits, somebody should have to explain what they cost, who pays for them and what tradeoffs will be required. “We'll tax the rich” isn't a complete fiscal policy. Eventually the numbers matter.

The same reality applies to competition. Politicians can change the terms of competition through tariffs, subsidies and other policies, and sometimes there are legitimate reasons for doing that. But they can't make competition disappear. The rest of the world isn't going to stop trying to build better products more efficiently because we'd prefer they didn't. Our standard of living ultimately depends on our ability to compete, which means productivity, education, innovation, investment and entrepreneurship still matter. We shouldn't be preparing Americans to hide from competition. We should be preparing them to win it.

None of this means government doesn't have an important role. It clearly does. We need national defense, roads, courts, education, reasonable regulation and a safety net for people who need help. There are legitimate arguments about the proper size of government and exactly where those lines should be drawn.

But there's a big difference between saying markets need rules and saying government should increasingly replace markets.

There's a difference between regulating private enterprise and having government own major industries. And there's a difference between providing a safety net and convincing people that prosperity can simply be legislated into existence. It can't.  

Before wealth can be redistributed, somebody has to create it. Before government can provide goods and services, somebody has to produce them. And before government can spend money, it ultimately has to tax it, borrow it or create it.

That's why we should be much more comfortable with an economic system that encourages people to build, invent, invest, work and compete — while maintaining a reasonable safety net — than one that continually transfers more economic power to political institutions.

The Democratic Socialists of America are absolutely entitled to make their case. And I think we should listen carefully to what they're actually proposing rather than simply reacting to the word socialism.  Then we should ask the question that really matters:

Would putting substantially more of our economy under political control actually produce a freer, more prosperous and more innovative society?

Thing Three

Just A Thought  

 “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” - Lewis B. Smedes