First, Make the Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Ready for the battle in November?

You probably think I’m talking about the election. No, I’m talking about the battlearound your Thanksgiving table. The dinner conversation will turn to politics andthe economy, and it will be your job to stick up for capitalism and free markets.

You’ll say something intelligent about how it was never markets that causedall the pain in this country over the past four years, but rather the growinggovernment and corporate cronies who gamed the system. Maybe you’ll throw insome facts about how realfree enterprise rewards entrepreneurs–the only truejob creators–and how current leaders are actively hurting them with needlessregulation and punitive, uncertain taxation. For color, you might throw in the factthat the U.S. corporate tax rate is now the highest in the OECD countries.

And then your liberal sister-in-law will stare at you. “You want to cut taxes formillionaires while working families lose their homes.” she’ll say. “I saw a little girlliving in her car yesterday. That’s what free enterprise looks like.”

Guess what? You just lost the argument. It doesn’t matter that you had factsand all she had was a lame platitude and an anecdote. Everybody at the table isinstantly on your sister-in-law’s side, and they can’t figure out how you turned outto be such a heartless guy.

What just happened?

The answer is that she captured the brain circuitry of everyone around the tableby countering your material argument with a moral one. There is a growing bodyof research on this subject by scholars such as social psychologist JonathanHaidt at the University of Virginia. Haidt’s research shows that when people areconfronted with an emotionally evocative situation, they make a lightening-fastmoral judgment. You are unlikely to persuade them based on logic and data thattheir initial moral judgment was wrong.

You can complain all you want that liberals are soft-headed and have lousyarguments. But that won’t change the way people are wired. If you want to winthe argument, you have one choice, and only one: You have to make your ownmoral case for free enterprise, right from the beginning. No data, no appealsto stats from the Congressional Budget Office. You can bring that stuff in later.When you first open your mouth, it better be to say what’s written on your heartabout the country you love and the system that makes us strong and free.

If you need proof that the pure material case for capitalism is losing, just lookaround. Our national debt is larger than our national income. And the share ofnational income spent by governments at all levels is at a peacetime high of 36percent, and is projected by the government to hit 50% by 2038. That’s whatlosing the argument looks like.

Making the moral case is incredibly hard to do–not because we don’t believethe free enterprise is morally superior to big government–but because we havebecome so good at making the case that capitalism creates material prosperity.Furthermore, many conservatives today–especially young conservatives–arereluctant to talk about morals. The word itself harkens back to the “culture wars”of the 1990s over God, gays, and obscene art.

So what should you tell your sister-in-law? Try this one out.

“I want to help that girl in the car,” you say. “But I know that the government ismaking sure she has no future.

“I believe in a true social safety net to help the poorest Americans–which isexactly what we don’t have today. Our current system is mostly a lavish welfaresetup for corporate cronies, people with bailouts and tax loopholes, and middleclass seniors who take more out of the system than they ever put into it. It’sintolerable, and it’s wrecking our economy.

“And you know who will be left out in the cold when our country goes broke? Thatlittle girl. When Social Security and Medicare go bankrupt and America faces aGreek-style debt crisis–which sooner or later it will if we don’t act–the ones leftwithout services won’t be me, President Obama, or any of us at this Thanksgivingtable. It will be the poor who lose their safety net. And it will be our fault.”

Or try this: “I want to help the little girl, and the poor all around the world as well.Since 1970, the world’s worst poverty–living on $1 a day or less–has fallen by80%! Why? Was it the United Nations, U.S. foreign aid, or the World Bank thatachieved this? Of course not. It was globalization, trade, and entrepreneurship.Welfare can lift up the poor a few at a time. Free enterprise is the only systemthat will lift them up by the billions, which is why every Good Samaritan mustsupport it, at home and all around the globe.”

You probably can come up with even better answers than mine. But justremember this: Free enterprise isn’t an economic alternative. It’s a moralimperative. It’s the means by which we can achieve our God-given right to whatour Founders called “the pursuit of happiness.” Only free enterprise allows us tofind our own happiness by leading the lives we wish to live. Only free enterpriseserves the goal of true, merit-based fairness. Only free enterprise really allows usto help the poor in massive numbers.

We have to reclaim the moral high ground from the statists, and explain why freeenterprise is the only truly fair, moral, and virtuous economic system. We areright for material reasons, and more importantly, we are right for moral reasons.We have to make that case first.

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author ofthe book, “The Road to Freedom: How to Win the Fight for Free Enterprise,”released on May 8 by Basic Books.

Headline photo courtesy of American Enterprise Institute.