ran 3.4 miles
In yesterday’s post I reflected on Ronal Reagan’s farewell address to America at the end of his presidency. He had highlighted a legacy of fighting Communism and warned those in 1989, as well as, future generations of how threatening Communism is to the strengths of a free nation.
Today, through mere coincidence, I came across an interesting and clear analogy for the relationship between Communism and Free Enterprise in a book I was reading, which falls along the same lines of what Ronald Reagan was expressing in his farewell address. It was the last thing I would have expected to find in Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Panda’s Thumb”, a comparative analysis on the theory of evolution, which is very well-written in words anyone can understand---but, here it is, all of a sudden Gould began pointing out how important it was for men and women of varying industries and sciences to have the ability to “Construct fruitful analogies between varying fields”.
Gould posited that Darwin’s theory of natural selection (survival of the fittest) could easily be compared to Adam Smith’s laissez faire economics, which theorizes that, “If you want an ordered economy providing maximal benefits to all, then let individuals compete and struggle for their own advantages. The result, after appropriate sorting and elimination of the inefficient, will be a stable and harmonious polity.” Just like the theory of natural selection, order surfaces naturally from the struggle among individuals, not from predetermined principles or unrealistic economic planning.
Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart encapsulated this idea when he said, “The most effective plan for advancing a people…is by allowing every man, as long as he observes the rules of justice, to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and his capital into the freest competition with those of his fellow citizens. Every system of policy which endeavors…to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than would naturally go to it…is, in reality, subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote.”
Regardless of where you stand on the theory of evolution, I find it hard to believe anyone can deny the God-given process of natural selection or the concept of the survival of the fittest. In the Animal Kingdom the price of not surviving is far more severe, but in America the price of failure is only to stand back up on your feet and to try again, making individuals stronger. This comparison between two completely different fields of study is very impressive. I’d venture to say that through Free Enterprise America’s fundamental policies and beliefs were designed to mimic the nature of the world we live in and that anything with the slightest undertone of Communism is definitively unnatural (Obamacare).
1,732.4 miles to go.
In yesterday’s post I reflected on Ronal Reagan’s farewell address to America at the end of his presidency. He had highlighted a legacy of fighting Communism and warned those in 1989, as well as, future generations of how threatening Communism is to the strengths of a free nation.
Today, through mere coincidence, I came across an interesting and clear analogy for the relationship between Communism and Free Enterprise in a book I was reading, which falls along the same lines of what Ronald Reagan was expressing in his farewell address. It was the last thing I would have expected to find in Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Panda’s Thumb”, a comparative analysis on the theory of evolution, which is very well-written in words anyone can understand---but, here it is, all of a sudden Gould began pointing out how important it was for men and women of varying industries and sciences to have the ability to “Construct fruitful analogies between varying fields”.
Gould posited that Darwin’s theory of natural selection (survival of the fittest) could easily be compared to Adam Smith’s laissez faire economics, which theorizes that, “If you want an ordered economy providing maximal benefits to all, then let individuals compete and struggle for their own advantages. The result, after appropriate sorting and elimination of the inefficient, will be a stable and harmonious polity.” Just like the theory of natural selection, order surfaces naturally from the struggle among individuals, not from predetermined principles or unrealistic economic planning.
Scottish philosopher Dugald Stewart encapsulated this idea when he said, “The most effective plan for advancing a people…is by allowing every man, as long as he observes the rules of justice, to pursue his own interest in his own way, and to bring both his industry and his capital into the freest competition with those of his fellow citizens. Every system of policy which endeavors…to draw towards a particular species of industry a greater share of the capital of the society than would naturally go to it…is, in reality, subversive of the great purpose which it means to promote.”
Regardless of where you stand on the theory of evolution, I find it hard to believe anyone can deny the God-given process of natural selection or the concept of the survival of the fittest. In the Animal Kingdom the price of not surviving is far more severe, but in America the price of failure is only to stand back up on your feet and to try again, making individuals stronger. This comparison between two completely different fields of study is very impressive. I’d venture to say that through Free Enterprise America’s fundamental policies and beliefs were designed to mimic the nature of the world we live in and that anything with the slightest undertone of Communism is definitively unnatural (Obamacare).
1,732.4 miles to go.
