Isn’t there anything more American than pie? Especially apple pie, yes. I saw a few things yesterday that brought my mind to pie. First was the BHO video of fifteen mentions of pie, which I first saw on The Anchoress. I was at work, though, and so I couldn’t watch the video at the time, but when I finally saw it, I was a tad underwhelmed. He was talking about pie in the literal sense: sweet potato pie, no less. So I felt like a fool for having left the following comment at her post, not because the content was wrong, but because it was wrongfully placed:

Miss Elizabeth, I couldn’t watch the video here at work, but I do want to weigh in on a certain concept. Setting aside the alliterative euphony around the phrase “piece of the pie,” the imagery seems to be a stock favorite for Democrats because it encapsulates, in a monosyllabic word, their world view of a zero-sum economy. There is but one pie, we are all hungry, and there is only so much of it to go around.

This isn’t quite the image of American economics that I have learned over the past few years. It’s a powerful image, excellent for manipulating voters, and oh so patently false. At least on my end.

Later on in the comments someone linked to a post discussing the myth of the zero-sum pie. Here’s a good excerpt:

Nevermind the fact that the Obamas don’t practice what they preach – giving 1% of their income to charity from 2000 to 2004 and nudging to 4.7 and 6.1 in 2005 and 2006 (source). What concerns me is that Mrs. Obama’s talk about forcing a redistribution of the pie betrays an ignorance of some simple economic principles about wealth and poverty – and the more her kinds of ideas are allowed to flourish, the harder it will be for the poor to rise out of poverty.

It reminded me of an essay I read a while back that basically cemented my Conservatism. It’s from Bill Whittle’s Trinity, a lengthy treatise on what makes America great, and here’s an excellent passage on the concept of wealth:

Where you stand on the political spectrum, what you think of rich and poor people, and what you think about rich and poor nations and how they should act in the world, comes down, in my mind, to one single issue, and one only: Can wealth be created, or can it only be redistributed?

If you believe, as I do, that wealth can be manufactured out of thin air, then there is no limit to the amount of wealth you can amass. And since you are creating it out of thin air, there is no moral onus on making money — you work hard to create it and have stolen from no one. There is an expression for this: you earned it.

Indeed, since charity depends on excess wealth, excess capacity, the more you make for yourself the better off everyone else is. You can even throw charity out the window if you are so hard-hearted; the fact remains that you will spend that money to get the things you want, and the more you have the more you can spend. That money goes to other people. This interchange is called —the economy,—and rich societies are rich because they understand in their bones the centerpiece of Capitalist thinking: Wealth can be created from thin air by human ingenuity and hard work.

Later on in Whittle’s essay he offers as example how a creative writing talent, producing a screenplay, creates wealth. This brings us, then to I, Pencil by Leonard Read:

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn’t know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation’s mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental “master-minding.”

So, after I’ve taken all of you on a Wild And Wonderful Tour of Capitalism and Conservatism, I’d like to bring you all back to the “Conservative” persecution of Governor Sarah Palin. David Brooks, Christopher Buckley (rebutted by Roger Kimball), Kathleen Parker (rebutted by KLo), and James Joyner all might think that Gov. Palin is literally an ignoramus, but it begs the question: if you want to fetishize intellectualism, you can refer to its fruits and hopefully think twice: deconstructionism, critical theory, and, dareisay, socialism.

Conservatism isn’t that hard to understand, or support. Read some Hayek, read some Burke, refer to some Reagan, and then take solace in the fact that most of the economic ills that have befallen us are a result more with trying to perfect a system—one that is inherently flawed but works—by using something more intellectually complex. A liar ties himself into more complex knots trying to prop up a lie; an honest man stands firm on the truth of his words and actions. The same goes for the lie of the welfare state and Socialism in general. If you don’t believe me, since I Am Not An Economist, you can at least refer to the words of French President Sarkozy, (though I must admit, I don’t think he is one, either).

All this, because, to directly quote KLo: In case you were wondering who the redistributionist candidate is. If his gang of speech-suppressing goons, voter-registration-fraud committing lackeys in ACORN, his domestic terrorist sponsor, his racist pastor, his campaign manager is cut from Saul Alinsky’s cloth… if none of these people are reason for you to not vote for BHO because, well, this is just a matter of “guilt by association,” then at least his idea on redistributing wealth should be judged as a matter of the policy that he wants to sell to us as a bill of goods.

I’ve found him lacking based on his character and his political records. This is just icing on the bitter cake he wants to serve us all.