By Connie Bryan 12/15/08
Capitalism: 200 Years Later
In a lecture entitled “The Constitution: 200 Years Later” given to Heritage Society members on Oct. 7, 1987, Heritage Society Trustee William E. Simon stated that freedom means responsibility. He said, “True freedom is not mere absence of restraint. True freedom is not a license to do as we please. The success of the Constitution, the success of America and the American Dream hinge directly on our willingness to couple freedom with a sense of moral responsibility…responsibility to our family, responsibility to our community, responsibility to our country.” I’d like to apply this to supporting Walmart/Home Depot and other large monopolistic big box corporate chains that need to be limited, just like it is critical to limit government to prevent its possible tyranny. We overlook the following truth at our peril as Americans: Super corporations can be much more tyrannical than government! Therefore it is not anti-capitalism to suggest they be limited or ‘regulated’. Such a necessary common sense economic policy is not ‘socialism’, but merely protecting free enterprise for all, and the spirit of all of our anti-trust legislation. Don’t forget that the Constitution was all about empowering the individual to achieve wealth through free enterprise and unrestricted commerce…it was not about empowering monopoly factions in business. A monopoly faction in business (i.e.Walmart) is just as dangerous to capitalism as state control of business. And right now the alarm bells are screaming in our communities that this fire must be put out. The American Dream that Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith championed is being destroyed by unconstitutiional monopolistic corporate big box chains that profit at the expense of free enterprise for the common man, at the expense of good paying jobs for the common man, by taking jobs away from hardworking Americans and outsourcing them to third world countries, avoiding taxes as well by moving their manufacturing operations off U.S. soil, and then being allowed to sell the cheap foreign made goods here without an appropriate tariff being levied against such unfair, not to mention grossly unpatriotic market practices. I recently posted a singles ad on Craigslist, and included in my criteria for a date someone who understands it is unAmerican to shop at Walmart. Take a look now at the CL ad, after which I’ve included some very unexpected nasty responses:
“Hi, my name is Connie, looking to meet some new friends here in Sacramento. I’m a comedian, former radio personality from Florida, and currently a comedy traffic school instructor. I really enjoy the outdoors, riding bikes and especially playing tennis, poker and really good coffee! I don’t like the bar scene. I’m interested in making some Moderate to Liberal-minded (as in POLITICAL leaning) friends who lead a healthy, non-religious lifestyle, and possibly finding a relationship with the right person.
The things I’m definitely not looking for: Religious ‘bible-thumpers’, cigarette smokers, people who drink a lot or use illegal drugs, Rush Limbaugh/Bill O’Reilly fans, and anyone who shops at Walmart,Home Depot,etc…that is sooo unAmerican and destroying small business and true free enterprise in our communities, so much so that I have to list it as a pre-requisite with anyone I would date, lol. Now that I’ve probably ruled out most of the field, thanks for reading my post and if you are one of the few who actually can still respond, please send a pic as I’ve included mine here:)”
Some Angry Responses:
Quoting rick j <richardjacobson007@comcast.net>:
Question: Why is a 44 year old loser, comedy traffic, school
instructor, missplaced secular Floridian bitch with a face like a
lesbo-butch who hates God and Walmart trying to hook up on CL?
Answer: TOO FUCKING POOR ( IN SO MANY WAYS) TO FIND ONE ON A PAY
SITE LIKE MATCH.COM,ETC………..LOL
CONNIE BRYAN………….GET THE FUCK OUT OF DODGE AND GO BACK
WHERE YOU CAME FROM.
AND WHAT THE HELL YOU GOT AGAINST THE LIKES OF BILL O’REILLY OR RUSH
LIMBAUGH? JEALOUS PERHAPS OF THEIR INTELLECT AND CAPACITY TO MAKE
ONE-HUNDRED MILLION OR MORE YEARLY?
they make more squeezing off a loaf in the shitter than you will
make strumming your banjo on the street corner in a fucking
lifetime. ….lol??????
My response:
Hi, thanks for the response I guess, although it was unnecessarily
adversarial and attacking. But I don’t mind responding anyway…I hope you will take the time to read this as I read your message…
Capitalism and free enterprise are things we need to preserve and
protect. What Walmart, Home Depot and other big box chains are doing is destroying free enterprise for small and midsize and even large businesses(still small compared to Walmart).
This is in violation of the intent of antitrust legislation designed to protect entrepreneur Americans from giant monopolies who would destroy them. Just because you can ‘save a few bucks’ by shopping at your local Walmart, does not make up for the severe cost to your community businesses who need your support and charge a little more. The way that Walmart accomplishes this undercutting is due to the NAFTA outsourcing of manufacturing to China, and not paying their employees a fair wage or benefits, now the target of thousands of labor suits because of that fact. I’ll pay a little more to support local merchants. I don’t want to support NAFTA policies. They are extremely unAmerican.
Lastly, just like we need to keep government limited, America needs to realize in order to protect true free enterprise from becoming a
dinosaur concept, we must also limit what i call monopolistic
‘corporatism’, not unlike a lot of what has been going on with Wall
Street, Enron, etc, and their fraudulent credit derivitive swaps and
dishonest bookkeeping.
What I am proposing is a bi-partisan concern that has growing support from all the well known parties, not just one or two. Walmart is not what capitalism was intended to be, it is destroying what our founding fathers intended, for the individual to have opportunity to achieve the American Dream, and for fair market competition. If we don’t wake up to this problem, we will soon wake up to a day in America where there is no middle class, only the super rich and the very poor, where you and your kids have no opportunity to own your own business because you can’t compete with the maybe 10 or less huge corporations that own everything. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to work for those guys, do you? I want to have individual entrepreneur freedom, which is one of the HUGE reasons our forefathers revolted and created America, for that very freedom. That freedom is being destroyed because of Big Box NAFTA practice in the U.S.
Best Wishes,
Connie Bryan
Their response…
Good answer!
I owe you one big apology. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I was taking out my pent up anger on some person on the internet who is totally innocent and not deserving of such animosity (misdirected) and frustration at the mess I see in so much of life these days.
You actually are not bad looking at all by the way. You are just fine!
You raise good points. I don’t know where it all will end. I do shop there because it is close to me and the people there are very nice. They are all poor though I can tell.
Best wishes,
rj
Quoting IBRCFLYIN1@aol.com:
> You are without a doubt clueless. You say you are for free enterprise yet
> you want government to regulate “fairness”. You don’t even
> understand that it
> was government who promoted and required this banking mess and the
> “fraudulent” credit derivative swaps to the benefit of their
> partisan cronies. You
> believe government will do the right thing, I believe they are
> corrupt and the
> problem and cannot be trusted. Have you ever heard of a successful
> government program that came in under budget and on time?
Connie:
I don’t disagree with you IBR, I know there has been government complicity in the corporate corruption, just saying that doesn’t excuse the corporations derivative schemes and monopoly business plans. This issue is very nuanced, wouldn’t you agree?
I’m simply trying to cut to the chase about the end result from people not realizing the cost to their community small businesses when they shop at Office Depot (they kill the print shops) Home Depot (They kill the hardware stores and smaller lumber suppliers, lawn mower shops, plant nurseries, etc, etc.) not to mention Walmart which is the worst and destroys almost all others. What you may have forgot that I said is that we are seeing something new that our forefathers did not foresee…with the rise of the big box chains and their monopoly tactics, we now see that to protect capitalism as it was meant for all of us to have opportunity, we need to not only limit government as our forefathers correctly stated, but also limit excess monopolistic corporations which I call ‘Corporatism’. It is destroying healthy capitalism.
But you are correct that government, both parties, have been equally to blame for greedily supporting NAFTA and outsourcing, which has taken a deadly toll on not only jobs, but also retail small business and service contractors. Clueless would be someone who doesn’t see that ‘free enterprise’ and the American Dream is being destroyed by ‘free trade’ without some protectionism, antitrust violations and monopoly corporations who are more and more very unAmerican in every way, including where they move their factories and how many jobs they destroy, replacing them with 7 dollar an hour door greeter positions.
Connie Bryan
@ IBRCFLYIN1@aol.com I’m not sure if you have a clear understanding of the point Connie is articulating. Of course government has many flaws but dont let that elude you from the big picture. Just look at NAFTA and CAFTA these or prime examples of needing more government regulations on big organizations. What if there was no FDA, which is a government based organization. Without a FDA large food and pharmaceutical organizations would not be liable when there products put human welfare at risk. Free trade allowed many U.S. jobs to go to Mexico and other countries, yes the government allowed it but private companies lobbied for it. If a CEO has a large scale company thats U.S. based and he gets the opportunity to ship it overseas he’s going to jump at it. By shipping his company out of the U.S. he can avoid U.S. government regulations like minimum wage, over time, workmans comp, and the possibility of “UNIONS”. If NAFTA and CAFTA had the regulations that former president Bill Clinton had in mind its a great chance that the U.S. may have kept many of those jobs here. Bear Sterns sold many bad loans on purpose and then bet against them so lets not act like the private sector is perfect, why do you think these companies lobby for deregulation, its not to help the middle class my friend believe that. You think the chairman of any of these big companies care about the welfare of us, to them its all about the bottom line. These people are mega rich they dont think like the average U.S citizen making less than 200k a year, to them its just business. So if you think less government is needed you should speak in more detail and less rhetoric. Millions of Americans are out of work due to the government not pushing for more regulation for organizations that ship jobs to China and elsewhere. As far as these huge mega organizations like Wal-Mart, they should have more regulations cause they kill small business.If you think a mom and pops store can survive next to a Wal-Mart, your crazy. Without government regulation we become like London, your either rich or poor, no in between and the middle class is gone.