Americans still prefer capitalism, but by a smaller margin

Rasmussen put out a report today stating that only 53% of Americans prefer capitalism, compared to 20% preferring socialism and 27% that didn’t know. Even though the head-to-head numbers indicate that almost 2-to-1 Americans prefer the capitalist system, the fact still remains that just over half of those polled are willing to stand up for the economic system that’s served us well for the last 200 or so years, although an earlier poll showed 70% support for the “free market.”

The partisan divide in the polling is a bit startling (or maybe not that startling if you really think about it). Republicans prefer capitalism 11-to-1, but Democrats are split 39%-30% with capitalism having a slight edge in those who had a preference.

HotAir takes a closer look at the divide among adults under 30, who preferred capitalism by only 4 points, 37% to 33%, with 30% undecided. Unsurprisingly, those over 30 have much stronger support for capitalism than their younger and more inexperienced counterparts.

Though some of this could be due to the fact that the poll didn’t define the terms “capitalism” and “socialism”, a lot of the blame lies in a useless educational system that has falsely defined capitalists as greedy money-hungry thieves and socialism as an altruistic system where everybody wins. I guarantee you that a large majority of the younger respondents know very little to nothing about very basic aspects of economic theory. I fall in the under-30 crowd myself, but I don’t share in my demographic’s myopic naivete of “let’s all get along and have someone else pay for it” mentality. Once you begin working and start paying more and more taxes, you begin to pay more attention to government attempts to spread it around to others. I’m embarassed when I hear people struggling to name the vice president, and frustrated when these same folks want to scrap our economic system for something they think will be easier.

And that’s really what it comes down to. People want socialism not because it’s more fair, but because it makes things easier for them. If someone else is helping you pay your bills, or paying them completely, then how cool is that, right? The response is that we cannot be our brother’s keeper, and it isn’t the responsibility of the state to care of the needs of everyone. But on a more fundamental level, without the struggle to improve your situation and to fulfill your dreams, life becomes a meaningless slog. We should have a safety net and we should always strive to be a land of equal opportunity, but we must realize that we cannot ever be a land of equal outcomes.

Detroit has 200,000 extra voters

This kind of story just makes you shake your head. (Heads up from RedState) From an article in the Detroit Free Press, Detroit has nearly 200,000 more registered voters than it has people over 18. Basically, Detroit reports a total of about 630,000 registered voters, but the actual number of real voters is estimated to be around 420,000. The cause for the massive bloat on the voter rolls is a federal law saying that election officials must wait two federal election cycles before purging names from the list.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to consider the massive potential for voter fraud that 200,000 unused voter registrations engenders. I understand the massive pressure and bureaucracy that election officials must go through, so I don’t place the blame squarely on them. Rather, in our admirable goal of making voting more accessible, it’s almost as if we have made our most important civic duty too easy, as gaming the system seems to be a rather simple matter if you have the right plan.

World’s oldest temple being excavated in Turkey

Gobekli Tepe

It’s not a super new story, but I wanted to bring it to your attention because I think it’s rather interesting. (Heads up from the Anchoress) The world’s oldest temple is currently being excavated in Turkey.Carbon dating places it at over 11,000 years old, and it’s known as Gobekli Tepe. The site is so interesting because it’s so old, predating writing, pottery, settled civilizations – it’s 7,000 years older than both Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Some have even speculated that Gobekli Tepe, in a location that would have been lush at the time, may be the location Biblically referred to as the Garden of Eden. I’m not too sure about that, but regardless the site is mesmerizing to contemplate.

Archaeology and the illumination of our past has always intrigued me. We know so little about our distant past that historians can really only make educated guesses as to what civilization as such was like. The people who lived back then might have had a much more limited understanding of science, mathematics, law, etc., but in a very fundamental sense, in terms of their fears, their desires, their hopes, their dreams, they were very much like you and me. We ought to always be mindful that our own civilization, as preoccupied as we are in the present, stands upon the shoulders of those people who eked out a living over these long millenia, and it’s fascinating to think that we owe our very existence to these mysterious people from so long ago.