Dem says it’s wrong to celebrate Christmas if unemployment benefits not extended

Dem says it’s wrong to celebrate Christmas if unemployment benefits not extended. On Thursday’s magnificent installment of "Hardball" on MSNBC (which is barely watched by anyone…except the hardest of hardcore libs), Congressman Jim McDermott was on with Chris Matthews, making the case about unemployment benefits extension, when he brought Christianity into the mix. According to McDermott, it’s "simply wrong" to celebrate Christmas and some of its themes like caring about the poor…if Americans do not support extending unemployment benefits. This week was a particularly insane week on "Hardball," as earlier in the week, Democrat senator Sherrod Brown blasphemed that unemployment benefits create jobs! Clearly, "Hardball" is becoming the clearing house of low-rated, cable "news" shows where wild Democrats appear to use twisted logic to make the case for unemployment benefits extension.

Thank you for your thoughtful and most interesting response. A few comments for now:

the consequences of individual bad choices are self-correcting.

This is the absolute key to why only the free market works with as much efficiency as human nature allows. The bad aspects of human nature -- the tendency to cheat, steal, be lazy, greedy, etc. -- will be present in ANY system. A business may cheat one way, a socialized medicine clinic cheats another way, but the end result for the enterprise, and the individuals using it, is the same.

The big difference is that only the free market incentivizes good behavior and the positive traits of human nature.

If a for-profit business abuses its customers too much, it goes out of business. Individual stakeholders lose. If a socialized service provider abuses its "customers" to the same extent, it keeps right on going or becomes the subject of (essentially meaningless) government "reform."

This, as you said, is because only the market is self-correcting.

During a time of monarchs I suppose the appeal of Marxism had a basis. The divide between the haves and the have-nots, the masses, was wide and there was no logical and honest way for the have-nots to improve their positions.

This underlies the point made by the German economist who wrote this excellent article, Obama's Misguided Policies: America Has Become Too European.

The author argues that Europeans are more suited to accept socialism, essentially because, as you note, it was way better than what they had lived with throughout their history.

But we, Americans, are the only people on earth who have ALWAYS been free. We have never been under a king, tyrant or dictator! (At our founding, the cry was "We have no king but Jesus!").

Straubhaar writes:

In Europe, the state is the result of centuries of struggle by relatively homogeneous societies and it has always played a major role in European societies. Therefore, a broad majority of the population supports economic policies based on government intervention, especially in difficult times. And Germany's current successes in dealing with the crisis suggest that the Europeans are probably right in their approach. The German economy will probably grow more this year than the American one. In Europe, government-prescribed medicine goes down well.

But what is good for Europe and Germany does not automatically work for the US. The settlers of the New World rejected everything, which included throwing out anything with a semblance of state authority. They fled Europe to find freedom. The sole shared goal of the settlers was to obtain individual freedom and live independently, which included the freedom to say what they wanted, believe what they wanted and write what they wanted. The state was seen as a way to facilitate this goal. The state should not interfere in people's lives, aside from securing freedom, peace and security. Economic prosperity was seen as the responsibility of the individual.

Finally, on your point of the association between Christianity and the free market (and, indeed, freedom), I recently read a marvelous little book from the early 20th century called An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching, by George O'Brien (free for Kindle). It focuses on how the Church's teaching on the value of work and private property and juxtaposes that to the popular calls for Socialism to "fix" the excesses of the Industrial Revolution.

Exactly.

On a related note, an open and free society often appears more evil, more greedy, corrupt, and selfish — this contributes to our vulnerability to appeals for the government to “do something.”

Never a good idea.

The terrorists, for example, claim to be motivated, in part, by the fact that America culture is “evil.” To the extent our culture is “evil,” it’s not because our culture is open and free, but because, like all human beings, we share in the nature that, left to its own devices, tends toward evil.

In an open and free society, the nature of the human condition may be more apparent. But it is not more evil in the quantitative sense.

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