RUST COMMENTARY: CAPITALISM GOES FAR BEYOND MERE SYSTEM OF ECONOMICS

The Gettysburg Address runs about 200 words. The Declaration of Independence runs about 1,300 words. The Holy Bible runs about 773,000 words. But our federal income tax codes runs about seven million words and is growing longer every year.

(ital)Capitalism works better than any of us can conceive. It is also the only truly moral system of exchange. It encourages individuals to devote their energies and impulses freely to peaceful pursuits, to the satisfaction of others' wants and needs, and to constructive action for the welfare of all. The basis of capitalism is not greed. You don't see misers creating Wal-Marts and Microsofts.

Think about it for a moment. Capitalism is truly miraculous. What other system enables us to cooperate with millions of other ordinary people -- whom we will never meet but to whom we will gladly provide goods and services -- in an incredible, complex web of commercial transactions? And what other system perpetuates itself, working every day, year in, year out, with no single hand guiding it?

Capitalism is a moral system if only because it is based on trust. When we turn on a light, we assume there will be electricity. When we drive into a service station, we assume there will be fuel. When we walk into a restaurant, we assume there will be food. If we were to make a list of all the basic things that capitalism provides - things that we take for granted -- it would fill an encyclopedia.(endital)

Three years have passed since I wrote those words in a September 1993 issue of Hillsdale College's speech digest, Imprimis, called "Three Cheers for Capitalism." I still firmly believe in them, but the vast majority of liberals - and, sadly, many conservatives - persist in viewing capitalism as merely an economic system, forgetting, as Warren Brookes wrote in The Economy in Mind (1982), that economics is a metaphysical rather than a mathematical science, "in which intangible spiritual values and attitudes are at least as important as physical assets and morals more fundamental than the money supply." He concluded that "a national economy, like an individual business or a specific product, is the sum of the spiritual and mental qualities of its people, and its output of value will be only as strong as the values of society."

Flat tax advocates like myself are often criticized for focusing too much on "dollars and cents" issues instead of on moral issues. But as the philosopher and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson said 150 years ago: "A dollar is not value, but representative of value, and, at last, of moral value." More recently, scholars like former education secretary Bill Bennett and Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman have pointed out that every time you take a dollar out of one person's pocket and put it into another's, you are making a moral decision. -- Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, Forbes magazine, as quoted in Imprimis.

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From the time I studied "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism" by Michael Novak, I first realized that the moral basis and results of capitalism have seldom been taught or discussed during my school years or my later economic readings.

However, more and more people are realizing that economics is intertwined with morality in a free Judeo-Christian society and that the liberal separation of church and state being accepted by too many is not that of the founders of this country and the writers of the Declaration of Independence.

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The late Cape Girardeau attorney, RUSH LIMBAUGH JR., wrote a scholarly, inspirational speech entitled "What Happened to the Signers of the Declaration of Independence." It was recently shared with the 500,000-plus subscribers of his son, Rush Limbaugh, in his monthly newsletter.

I'm sure it's been done, but Sunday I was thinking of how a similar speech could be given about the mostly martyred disciples of JESUS CHRIST who carried his message to the citizens of the country that had just crucified him.

They had become more than followers ... but believers.

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Put it on your calendar now and get there early (the recent SEMO University orchestra and choral concert was a near sellout). It's the PADUCAH SYMPHONY performing with the SEMO and community choral groups Dec. 20 at 8 p.m. at Academic Hall.

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THINK GLOBALLY ... REACT PAROCHIALLY, or it's good for the world but not in my back yard. IT COSTS WHAT?

Gov. MEL CARNAHAN, Congressman Dick Gephardt, St. Louis Mayor Bosley, and other Missouri Democratic party leaders who have led the charge for "clean air" and labeled those who support reasonably clean air at realistic costs as being for dirty air and polluted streams ... are now asking for federal government extensions for unrealistic compliance goals and levels in St. Louis and Kansas City -- levels that would restrict power lawn mowers and other fuel-fired engines.

We're now starting to reap the results of our government intervention and costs in many different areas of life, bared under the umbrella of doing good.

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EPA TIGHTENS CHOKER: Although it has taken many years for some cities to comply with current Environmental Protection Agency air pollution standards -- and a few still have not made it -- the EPA wants to improve even stricter rules that even the agency admits will cost the country billions of dollars every year. White House officials are currently reviewing the proposal before its planned official announcement.

Industry groups say the new regulations are unnecessary and will cost American businesses large amounts of money. They point to the report of the EPA's own scientific advisory panel on the issue, which gave an unenthusiastic endorsement to the new regulations. If the new standards are imposed, congressional Republicans are likely to try to overturn them through legislative action later this year. -- Human Events

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INS About-Face

In the months before the election, the Immigration and Naturalization Service violated its own rules and rushed through a million new citizens without doing criminal background checks. Republicans charged that murderers, rapists and convicted felons were allowed full citizenship rights as a result, and suspected that the purpose of the rule change was to register more Democratic voters. As usual, the Clinton administration denied everything, but yesterday INS stopped the program, conceding it was flawed. Too late, of course, to prevent the damage which has already been done. Has anyone in this administration ever heard the word "shameless"? -- Washington Update

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Angel Tree? Yes!

That's the joyous response of more than 10,000 churches (including a number in Cape) each year providing Christmas to hundreds of thousands of prisoners' children. This year even more prisoner-parents have asked that their children receive gifts.

Church volunteers contact families for their children's "gift wishes," buy Christmas gifts -- just what each child asked for, if possible, and deliver the gifts in the prisoner-parent's name. Children also receive an age-appropriate booklet that gives the Gospel message. And after the Christmas season, church volunteers seek out opportunities to continue to minister to the families year-around.

"Thank you for going to the store for my dad. My mom just started a new job and she hasn't gotten paid much money yet, so you made our Christmas very happy. I liked the book you sent about Jesus." -- Angel Tree child.

"This is a very hard time for me because of how much my actions hurt the ones I love." -- Prisoner-mother.

Angel Tree is a ministry of Prison Fellowship -- whose mission is to exhort, assist, and equip the church in its ministry to prisoners, ex-prisoners, victims and their families, and in its advancement of biblical standards of justice.

~Gary Rust is the president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.