from Playing the Music of Capitalism by William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal

Few today would deny the market’s success in literally producing the goods. For some, however, this is a paradox. It’s a paradox because, in this way of thinking, socialism has the higher ideals but fails in practice, while capitalism succeeds in practice even though it is based on greed.

Mr. Brooks believes these critics are limited by materialistic assumptions about wealth and its production. Capitalism, he insists, succeeds not because it is based on greed, but because the freedom to trade and do business with others is in harmony with our God-given nature. So he has no patience for those who fear the moral argument.

It comes down to this: In the capitalist view, poor people aren’t liabilities to be managed by government; they are human beings with untapped potential. Mr. Brooks makes that argument over and over and wherever he can, whether on a panel with President Obama at Georgetown University, a conference with Archbishop of Canterbury in London, or on home ground at AEI with his friend the Dalai Lama.

HKO

It remains an irony that the progressives can not get beyond the materialistic perception of capitalism.

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