Why Is Capitalism Better Than Communism?

A comparison between the merits of capitalism and free enterprise and those of communism is ongoing in America and has grown more persistent after Zohran Mamdani, a self-identified socialist, was elected to lead New York City as its next mayor. Paul Atkins, Chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) spoke on this topic at the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning. Jarrett Stepman reported on the speech – “Revitalizing American Markets” – in his article published at The Daily Signal. 

[Paraphrasing Atkins,] As America turns 250 years old, it’s important to remember that freedom, not top-down communism, created our prosperity….

“In seven months, [the American] story will reach a rare milestone when our Republic marks its 250^th year,” he said, noting that the creation of the U.S. was a special moment because the Founding Father’s stood for the idea that rights were “neither permissions to be earned nor privileges to be revoked.”

The attitudes of the Founders were shaped in part by what came before them in the Old World and the New World, Atkins said. The SEC chairman said that before the U.S. was a nation, it was an “investment.”

“The first English settlements in this hemisphere were financed through joint-stock enterprises that allowed people to pool together and share in the risk and the reward of a very uncertain venture,” he said.

He said that New York, once named “New Amsterdam,” also began as an investment project, foreshadowing its future as the major center of global finance.

Atkins noted that a long English legacy of restrained government power, the preservation of property rights, and predictable rules rather than “royal whim” allowed for market and human flourishing. The Founding Fathers inherited that worldview, he said, then “forged a more perfect union.”

The SEC chairman pointed to Alexander Hamilton … as a man who understood that “markets, structured properly, can unleash the might of American dynamism as no monarch or government ministry possibly could.”

It was the commercial nature of the American people, Atkins sad, quoting Hamilton in Federalist 11, that so greatly defines the country and creates an “inexhaustible mine of national wealth.”

Atkins said freedom and dynamism produced remarkable prosperity for the American people. In the 20^th century, other regimes tried to create a top-down model of growth, he said, but these proved disastrous in comparison to the free system of the United States.

“The Soviet and communist system of central planning, coercion, mass murder, seizing private property, and suppressing private enterprise, for example, collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions,” Atkins said. “While the American approach empowered its citizens to innovate, to invest, and to build wealth within predictable and enforceable frameworks.

The message from this larger set of historical examples is clear, Atkins said.

“Across this long sweep of innovation, a pattern emerges with clarity: The great leaps of American life were always produced by a willingness to tolerate and accept risks within a system that rewards those who take those risks,” he said. “Our prosperity is no accident of history – nor is our primacy assured in the future. The 20^th century was a triumph of economic freedom over doctrines that sought to constrain it.”

Atkins warned that “principles do not preserve themselves.” He said that freedom is not a “relic” that we inherit, but a responsibility we must assume. In recent years, “our regulatory frameworks have veered from the founding ideals that helped the United States to once stand without peer as the world’s destination for public companies,” the SEC chairman said….

“One of my priorities as chairman is to reform the SEC’s disclosure rules with two goals in mind,” he said. “First, the SEC must root its disclosure requirement in the concept of financial materiality. Second, these requirements must scale with a company’s size and maturity.”

With these changes, Atkins said he could set the SEC on a better path to fulfilling its original mission as a benign steward of financial markets.

“So as America’s 250^th anniversary approaches, the question before us is not whether our entrepreneurs have the capacity to reinvigorate our capital markets, but whether we, as regulators, have the will,” he concluded. “In this new day at the SEC, and under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, I am pleased to report that we do.”

What Should Be Done with All the Immigrants, Both Legal and Illegal?

According to a new report authored by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher F. Rufo and published at City Journal, Democrats in Minnesota oversaw millions of taxpayer dollars in fraud. The authors reported that much of the fraud was allegedly perpetrated by members of the Somali community in Minnesota, which is “sizeable.” 

Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots.

In many cases, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota’s sizeable Somali community. Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.”

Jarrett Stepman at The Daily Signal noted that the report by Thorpe and Rufo “set off a firestorm” as it brought the “outrageous scandal” into a “national conversation.” After quoting the above paragraph about Minnesota drowning in debt, Stepman explained as follows. 

The piece highlighted truly titanic fraud schemes involving various state welfare programs, including “Feeding Our Future,” a program that received hundreds of millions of dollars annually and was ultimately “being used to fund lavish lifestyles, purchase luxury vehicles, and buy real estate in the United States, Turkey, and Kenya.” …

Rufo was accused of being anti-immigrant and racist. Many on social media accused him of exaggerating the problem. But then The New York Times published a follow-up basically confirming that Minnesota’s social services were essentially eviscerated by Somali fraudsters under Walz’s watch.

There was a very important line in this piece provided by Ahmed Samatar, a professor at Macalester College. Samatar said, according to the Times, that “Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread.”

This sort of gets to the heart of why immigration policies have been so out of whack and destructive in Western countries for a generation, producing the current justified backlash.

It should be no surprise that in concentrated Somali communities, like the ones that exist in Minnesota, similar scams have taken place. One doesn’t need to be wholly against immigration to understand that. After all, Thomas Jefferson warned in his famed “Notes on the State of Virginia” about taking in too many people from “absolute monarchies” who will bring with them “the principles of the governments they leave imbibed in their early youth.”

“These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children,” Jefferson wrote. “In proportion to their numbers, they will share with us in legislation. Our laws and institutions must therefore be guarded with jealous attention; and in order to preserve them, we must incorporate our immigrants into the body of our people.”

He recommended essentially slowing our roll bringing in people form such places. That’s prudence, not nativism.

Former President Joe Biden was either senile or complicit, and Democrat governors – particularly Walz -- are either complicit or stupid in the way that they encouraged and orchestrated illegal immigration into the United States. All Americans should be grateful for President Donald Trump’s plan for the United States to permanently pause all immigration from Third World countries and discontinue all federal benefits and subsidies for noncitizens.

Trump encouraged all illegal immigrants to self-deport themselves back to their home countries and said that the United States would consider denaturalizing migrants who are not a “net asset” to the United States. Since he must act within constitutional law, Trump may not be able to accomplish all that he desires, but just stopping the influx of migrants into the United States should be helpful. 

  

Who Is Steve Lipscomb?

My VIP for this week is Steve Lipscomb – son, father, husband, Marine, man of faith, coal miner, and hero. Early in November, disaster struck when “Lipscomb and his crew encountered an unknown pocket of water when a ‘sudden and substantial’ flood sent millions of gallons into the Rolling Thunder Mine” [Kanawha County, West Virginia]. Lipscomb became a hero when he made sure that every member of his crew evacuated safely even though rising water in the shaft made it impossible for him – the last man -- to get out. 

After five days of round-the-clock, hazardous search efforts, a two-man crew found Lipscomb’s body in the mine at 7:37 a.m. Nov. 13.

Gov. Patric Morrisey (R-W.V.) announced his death outside the Rolling Thunder Mine. “This is really a very sad day in West Virginia,” Morrisey said. Lipscomb was the fifth coal miner to die this year in West Virginia….

Lipscomb’s tragic death marked the 29^th fatality in the mining industry this year, according to Coal Zoom, a mining trade organization with the Mine Safety and Health Administration, which details mining fatalities, nearly half of which are due to equipment failures. By state, West Virginia has the most mining fatalities this year at five.

Morrisey issued all flags flown at half-staff, not just for Lipscomb but for all five of the West Virginia coal miners who lost their lives on the job in 2025: Steven Fields, Billy Stalker, Eric Bartram, Joey Mitchell and Lipscomb.

Mitchell died last week in the Mettiki Mine in Grant County, marking the second mining fatality in November….

The history of coal in West Virginia dates back to the 1800s. Government and family records indicate that settlers of what was then Virginia (West Virginia seceded during the Civil War and became its own state) resided in a region rich in abundant reserves of bituminous coal. In fact, of the state’s 55 counties, only two do not have coal seams. It wasn’t until the railroads arrived that coal, previously used only for heat and fuel, became the backbone of a booming commercial industry in the 1880s….

 

Why Is Religious Freedom Critical for Restoring and Repairing America?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is religious liberty and its importance to all people. Religious freedom says that all people have the right to worship who and/or what they choose.

In their article published at The Daily Signal, Jason Chahyadl and Jordan Lorence claim that “Defending religious liberty for all is a timely political issue that can help restore and repair the severed tapestry of American political life.” Their reason is that “A comprehensive defense of religious liberty fosters civic virtues such as charity, restraint, and a willingness to accommodate differing viewpoints.” They also claim that these civic virtues are the foundation on which the “survival of our constitutional order depends.” 

The authors are not the only ones with the above belief. They note that Yuval Levin, in his book “American Covenant,” “discusses how the polity of republicanism requires a type of citizen for its sustainment.” So what is that type of person? The type of “citizen needed to preserve a republican system of government” has “traits like selflessness, restraint, and accommodation.”

Abraham Lincoln shared a similar thought in his second inaugural address: “With malice toward none. With charity for all.”

James Madison wrote in Federalist 51 a statement that is now famous, and the authors paraphrase the statement: “The reason why we need checks on governmental power is because men are not angels, neither are they naturally inclined to pursue such a status.”

Citizens that succumb to selfishness and the desire to dominate political opponents will find it near impossible to properly function in a system of ordered representation and the checks, balances, and compromises necessary for diverse peoples to live together.

The Founders also recognized both the necessity and rarity of civic virtues….

At the same time, the Founders acknowledged that the law is a teacher and can shape the character of its constituents. That recognition motivated the Founders to draft a constitution that could channel human fallibility toward a system of government that promotes liberty and justice for all through the structure of federalism, separation of powers, and protection of individual rights.

Among other virtue-encouraging constitutional provisions, few, if any, are more prominent than the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. Protecting our first freedom of religious liberty, the free exercise clause is also a pedagogical instrument for promoting the anthropology of republicanism. For religious citizens, it clarifies that firmly held beliefs and civic accommodation are not mutually exclusive, thus promoting both forbearance and religious formation. One can believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ provide the only way for forgiveness of sins against God and restoration to fellowship with the Father, while still permitting those who disagree, such as Jews, Muslims, and others, to freely worship in their own ways, or to believe nothing at all.

Our constitutional system allows Americans of different religious backgrounds to accommodate each other while, at the same time, strengthening their own religious beliefs, convictions, and practices….

The free exercise clause provides wide latitude for Americans to hold and exercise religious beliefs. Subsequent statutes like the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act reinforce this constitutional provision….

Moreover, the free exercise clause and its statutory descendants invaluably protect an individual’s right of conscience and decisions to live out general religious convictions that emanate from the conscience….

The protection of religious liberty necessarily extends to the protection of the individual conscience, or “inner voice,” and beliefs about ultimate questions. The basis for protecting the conscience is the biblical concept that all people are created in the Imago Dei and are thus entitled to liberty in exercising their reason when considering life’s biggest questions.

This is why the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom also affects areligious Americans. Even though they do not subscribe to any religion, areligious people also make decisions based on their conscience and contemplate deep questions about reality and human purpose. Were it not for the free exercise clause, the government would be able to mandate a specific religious viewpoint, and by extension, interfere in the inner conscience and place the intellectual freedom of all Americans at risk.

When the government tries to dictate to citizens what to think, that threatens the whole constellation of constitutional liberties. If the government was allowed to control citizens’ thoughts, there is no defense against a snowballing infringement of external constitutional rights, like the right to bear arms, receive a trial by jury, or by protected from cruel and unusual punishment. That is why the First Amendment is first among equals….

It is with gratitude that we reflect on the Founders’ decision to amplify this message by way of enshrining religious liberty with the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.

Did the Testators Seal Their Testimonies with Their Blood?

My Come Follow Me studies for this week took me to Doctrine and Covenants 135-136 in a lesson titled “He ‘Has Sealed His Mission and His Works with His Own Blood.’” 

The afternoon of June 27, 1844, found Joseph and Hyrum Smith in jail once again, accompanied by John Taylor and Willard Richards. They believed they were innocent of any crime, but they submitted to arrest, hoping to keep the Saints in Nauvoo safe. This wasn’t the first time that enemies of the Church had put the Prophet Joseph in prison, but this time he seemed to know that he would not return alive. He and his friends tried to comfort each other by reading from the Book of Mormon and singing hymns. Then gunshots were heard, and within a few minutes the mortal lives of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum had come to an end.

And yet it was not the end of the divine cause they had embraced. And it was not the end of the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. There was more work to do and more revelation that would guide the Church forward. The end of the Prophet’s life was not the end of the work of God.

Some principles taught in this scripture block are (1) Joseph and Hyrum Smith sealed their testimonies with their blood (Doctrine and Covenants 135; 136:37-39; (2) Joseph Smith was a prophet and witness of Jesus Christ (Doctrine and Covenants 135:3); and (3) I can help accomplish the Lord’s will as I follow His counsel (Doctrine and Covenants 136). This essay will discuss principle #1 about sealing testimonies.

Doctrine and Covenants 135 was published three months after the assassinations of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. There could have been several reasons for its publication, such as a way to comfort the Latter-day Saints after losing their Prophet and Patriarch, a way to help the Saints make sense of the tragedy, or simply a way to document the experience.

A good question to ask is, “Why would God allow His Prophet to be killed?” This question was clearly answered in Doctrine and Covenants 136:37-39.

37 Therefore, marvel not at these things, for ye are not yet pure; ye can not yet bear my glory; but ye shall behold it if ye are faithful in keeping all my words that I have given you, from the days of Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Jesus and his apostles, and from Jesus and his apostles to Joseph Smith, whom I did call upon by mine angels, my ministering servants, and by mine own voice out of the heavens, to bring forth my work;

38 Which foundation he did lay, and was faithful; and I took him to myself.

39 Many have marveled because of his death; but it was needful that he should seal his testimony with his blood, that he might be honored and the wicked might be condemned.

What Is the Answer to Declining Interest in Marriage?

Individuals and families are happier with healthy marriages, and happy families strengthen their communities, states, and nations. Yet, marriage is in decline, and no one knows for sure how to blame. An article authored by Maria Baer and Brad Wilcox and published at the Deseret News discusses what is behind the decline. 

A recent Pew poll shows that the share of girls who are seniors in high school and are most likely to “choose to get married” some day declined from 83% in 1993 to 61% in 2023. During the same years, the share of young men who hope to marry remained around 75%. The Pew poll is not the only poll showing such findings.

Other polls show similar findings. The Survey Center on American Life recently found that a majority of single women (55%) think that single women are happier than married women (they’re really not – more on that in a moment) whereas a majority (68%) of single men take the opposite view.

There is no debating that women’s confidence in and devotion to marriage is falling. But there is robust debate about whether that’s a bad thing, and what’s causing it. Theories about young women’s declining interest in wedlock typically fall into two camps. The problem is either 1) the boys, or 2) the (feminist) girls.

Proponents in the first camp, usually feminists, suggest women still value marriage; they just can’t find enough marriageable men. Writing for The New York Times in 2023, Anna Louie Sussman said the “state of men today” is too dispiriting for women: too many men are drug-addled, unemployed or underemployed, socially inept and emotionally unavailable. Women who take this view make much of the fact that men are attending and graduating from college at lower rates than women, that they are not working as much as they used to, that many are addicted to porn, and that they often seem unable or unwilling to “engage in a conversation and maintain a normal human relationship.”

This camp will point to the fact that marriage rates amidst the upper-middle class (including liberals!) haven’t fallen as precipitously as other groups. See, they’ll say, women haven’t been brainwashed by the HBO show “Sex and the City” and the #Girlboxx era – they still want to get married! There are just not enough good men left.

This camp has a point. It’s true that too many men are floundering on many fronts – from education to employment – and that a kind of “male malaise” has made a growing number of young men unappealing to the opposite sex.

But there is an undeniable ideological dimension to falling marriage rates, too. Data show marriage has lost its appeal primarily for women on the left, who are much less likely than conservative women to marry and have children, as a new Institute for Family Studies report shows. Liberal women are also much less likely to desire marriage and children than their conservative peers. Another recent poll from NBC News found that liberal Gen Z women rate “being married” and “having children” as among their lowest priorities for a successful life, far below a fulfilling job, financial security and emotional health.

Many feminists no doubt see women’s increasing wariness toward marriage as a welcome sign of enlightenment: they shouldn’t value marriage, they say, because it’s not good for them. In their view, married women are on the losing end of a losing bargain, saddled with the lion’s share of domestic duties and the crushing “mental load” of raising a family while reaping 80 cents on their husband’s dollar for whatever professional work they do manage to achieve….

This theory carries weight too. There is no doubt that marriage can be hard at times, and modern American marriage is hard in particular ways. The 50/50 split is a myth. Women bear a bigger burden at home than do men. It’s hard to afford life on one salary, and it’s nearly impossible to be a working mother and to feel like you’re filling any of your roles as well as you’d like.

But hard doesn’t necessarily mean unhappy. Our research at the Institute for Family Studies routinely reveals that the women in America who are forging the most meaningful and happy lives are married mothers. In fact, married mothers are nearly twice as likely to be “very happy” with their lives as their single, childless peers.

And while marriage rates increasingly fall along ideological lines, female happiness doesn’t: the newest data show that married liberal women with children are now a staggering 30 percentage points more likely to say they are “very happy” or “pretty happy” than liberal women who are single and childless. What’s even more striking is the trend among prime-aged women 25 to 55: happiness among single, childless liberal women has plummeted since “the Great Awokening” of the last decade while it remains high for their peers who have managed to marry and have a family. The tragic irony is that the very group of women who are most likely to think marriage and family are an obstacle to happiness – women on the left – are less happy than their peers on the right in part because they are less likely to be married with children.

The authors question why people are not getting married if marriage and family are truly good for women. Has the feminist movement brainwashed women, or are there no marriageable men? The authors say that there is a common enemy that is overlooked by both theories: Big Tech.

It is not just people cheating online, men playing too many video games, dating apps that catfish. Spending time watching other people do things online pushes “both men and women away from marriage.” Such activity makes men less marriageable, particularly to “liberal women who spend the most time online, to see the point of marriage in the first place.” The internet also makes porn more accessible for men.

Young men’s failure to thrive is one of the tragic consequences of a digital revolution that has distracted them with dopamine hits from socializing, dating, doing well in school and holding down a full-time job.

But the internet also presents problems to women, especially on the left. There’s divorce porn, for instance, where feminist heroines “create whisper networks” of women triumphantly leaving their families and where seemingly every movie, show, book and podcast that brands itself as “celebrating women” do it in the same way: by selling a picture of unencumbered womanhood. It’s also the place where divorced single moms from Brooklyn propagate the message that “Married heterosexual motherhood in America … is a game no one wins.” Messaging like this is poisoning too many young women’s views regarding marriage.

The nature and content of digital offerings are degrading men’s marriageability and women’s, especially liberal women’s, interest in putting a ring on it. Neither sex is developing the capacity to embrace self-sacrifice or long-suffering commitment, precisely the virtues which marriage requires. They’re also what makes marriage so life-giving, character building and personally gratifying. Psychologists have long documented this paradox: deep, lasting happiness is much more strongly tied to meaning than it is to pleasure. The internet calls the kind of virtues that sustain love and marriage “toxic.” The happiness research calls it “the answer.” …

  

When Will Liberals Learn?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the national security need to know who is entering the United States and why they are coming. On Wednesday, an Afghan national is alleged to have shot two National Guardsmen near the White House. He entered the United States in 2021 following the fall of Afghanistan. The troops are part of the surge sent to Washington, D.C. in August to fight the crime problem.

According to the FBI, the two guardsmen are in separate hospitals and are in critical condition.

The shooter is in custody in a hospital and is in severe condition. Carlos Garcia reported the following at the Blaze: 

Multiple law enforcement sources said the suspect was identified as 29-year-old …. He also reportedly entered the U.S. on a Biden administration program called Operation Allies Welcome after the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Law enforcement sources told NBC News that he used a handgun in the attack….

Dept. of War Sec. Pete Hegseth said that 500 additional National Guard troops were going to be sent to D.C. in light of the shooting.

“This will only stiffen our resolve to ensure that we make Washington, D.C., safe and beautiful. The drop in crime has been historic. The increase in safety and security has bene historic,” Hegseth said to reporters in the Dominican Republic.

“But if criminals want to conduct things like this, violence against America’s best, we will never back down,” he added. “President Trump will never back down. That’s why the American people elected him.”

Even though a foreign national shot two guardsmen, liberals are blaming Trump. After opposing Trump’s deployment of National Guard units to Washington, D.C. and other cities and claiming that the President is overreaching his authority, they are now blaming Trump for putting the guardsmen “in harm’s way.” 

There were reports that the guardsmen had died from their injuries. Then the FBI said that they had not died. At the time of this writing, there is conflicting information. At any rate, they were shot in the service of America and protection of all Americans; even those people who do not appreciate their service.