Regarding Mikhail Romanov’s letter to the editor in the Dec. 3 issue of The Eagle:
While Romanov’s rebuttal is at times moving, I am rather astonished at the logic he has presented in his attack on capitalism.
Evictions and foreclosures - hunger, even - have proven to be widely devastating consequences of the recession. I am equally angered by these outcomes. Like a student who must regretfully cope with the consequences of caffeine overdose and all-nighters, our country is likely coping with the consequences of many overdoses and injections of credit by Federal Reserve and government loaning policies since 2001. It seems that the dreams of politicians to make ‘failure not an option’ within the past decade have only thrust us into an emotional panic in which the obvious solution is to increase government intervention in our so called “free market.” But we can all understand - a student who is not allowed to “crash” after so much artificial caffeine stimulation can only go so long before more serious medical consequences ensue. The more we pretend that our economy can continue to be artificially propped up, the more we delay a more serious and tragic financial crisis.
But beyond policy discussions on the recession, Romanov’s query launches a moral attack on capitalism. Calling it “brutality,” his natural assumption is that we the workers have been violently oppressed by greedy businessmen. Indeed, who knew that repression of workers and customers was a sound business tactic? Who knew that respect for the right to life, liberty and property amounts to a murderous philosophy? It is easy to throw around accusations and generalize hatred to certain ideas, yet I cannot help but ask this speaker if the scores of millions of innocent, faceless lives mercilessly tortured and buried in history in numerous states not limited to the former USSR, China, Cambodia and North Korea, all for the sake of fraternal equality and triumphant workers’ power, was not a more appropriate depiction of “brutality”?
Irena Schneider President, AU Students for Liberty CAS/SIS
