Our capitalist system is flexible but fragile, and could be shattered like an egg by one well-placed, well-timed act of terrorism; on the other hand, the U.S Army could conceivably survive the destruction of the United States itself.
Excellent point.
I'm not making claims of overwhelming excellence for "capitalism," either. A free-market system does, however, have intrinsically a much greater economic potential, productive of generally greater prosperity, than a command system. Obviously, as the Popes mention, material prosperity is not the end of our existence, and to imagine that it is causes us great harm.
You are correct. Please note, I’m not advocating “military socialism”, either — as a U.S. Navy veteran, I’ve eaten one too many bland mess-deck meals to be in favor of that sort of thing! I believe in small, private enterprise; in fact, back on the ship of that name I often used to wonder what would happen if the crew had permission to operate private business aboard ship, or if the ship were owned by shareholding sailor-owners, and permitted to hire itself out to the highest-bidding nation.
I think we’re more or less on the same page here, and I appreciate your thoughtful commentary.