Speaking to the Republican Party Convention, Mitt Romney said, "A free world is a more peaceful world." He provided no explanation. In fact, there is a lot of evidence to support his assertion.

Where there is scant freedom, there is also abundant violence and rampant governmental corruption. Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, consistently trail in the global rankings of freedom by Freedom House, of perceived corruption by Transparency International, and in the Global Peace Index published by the Vision of Humanity organization.

Mr. Romney has failed to provide how he will promote greater freedom across the world, while Condoleezza Rice, speaking to the Convention in Tampa, ridiculed the Obama Administration for failing to provide leadership. In fact, President Obama and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton have taken a courageous stand in supporting civil society campaigners in very difficult, autocratic countries, to the anger of the host governments.

Indeed, there was no mention in prominent speeches at the Republican Convention of the Arab Spring -- a seminal event that inspired public protests in dozens of countries. Tens of thousands of Tunisians and Egyptians started it, overcoming their fears of vicious state security forces, to denounce their illegitimate governments. Their courage has given anti-corruption, pro-democracy campaigns unprecedented momentum in many parts of the world.

Supporting this momentum is vital. When it comes to backing civil society's ability to speak truth to power, the Obama administration has displayed vital leadership. The president set the tone and the strategy early in his administration when on a visit to Moscow in July 2009, he attended a high-profile meeting of civil society leaders.

Typical of the leadership, for example, was a meeting with international civil society groups that Secretary Clinton had in Krakow, Poland in mid-2010, where she stressed, "For the United States supporting civil society groups is a critical part of our work to advance democracy." And, on the same overseas trip a few days later in Yerevan, Armenia, she told another group of civil society activists that, "Democracy requires not just elections, but open dialogue, a free exchange of ideas, government transparency and accountability, and above all, an empowered citizenry, who constantly work together to make their country fairer, juster, healthier and freer."

The rising energy behind many civil society campaigns for justice and personal freedom owe an enormous amount to the efforts of rising numbers of activists, investigative journalists, public prosecutors and swelling ranks of academics in dozens of countries. They have been raising public awareness of corruption, building networks to pool research and ideas, and exploiting the full potential of social media, to encourage protest and reform. U.S. support for those leading campaigns for democracy and against corruption is important.

Too often we fail to fully recognize the courage of those on the front lines. In 2000, as the Vice Chairman of Transparency International, the global anti-corruption non-governmental organization, I had the honor to present our annual integrity award to investigative reporter Lasantha Wickrematunge of Sri Lanka. On Jan. 8, 2009, he was gunned down when driving to work. He was 52. His last article, penned the day before his death, was titled, "And Then They Came For Me."

Lasantha had consistently investigated and reported on government corruption. His friend, J.C. Weilamuna, who has faced kidnapping, death threats and office bombings, heads Transparency International, Sir Lanka. He knows the dangers, yet he and his team of colleagues persevere convinced that their efforts will secure rising public support and contribute to both freedom and peace in his country.

I believe that in a rising number of countries today we are at a tipping point where bribe-takers and bribe-payers have ever fewer places to hide, where the prospects of sustainable reforms to curb corruption are improving significantly, and where the skeptics can now be sent packing. Yes, huge challenges remain and none are greater than sustaining civil society movements in many countries, from Russia to Egypt, where democracy and personal freedom are under serious threat; and in countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Venezuela, where activists are under daily threat.

The Obama administration has understood how important it is for the U.S. to support civil society, despite risks to government relationships. At stake is the prospect -- now more real in many countries than ever before -- of reducing barriers to freedom and creating less violent societies. Mr. Romney was right to connect freedom and peace; now he needs to show that he will follow the Obama example, if elected, and boldly support civil society led movements for freedom and against corruption.

The Truth-o-Meter says: Pants on Fire! | Rick Santorum repeats Romney claim that Obama is ending work requirement in welfare

When Congress passed landmark welfare reform legislation in 1996, Rick Santorum, then a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, voted for the bill. Now Santorum is lending his voice to Mitt Romney’s campaign message that President Barack Obama has gutted that reform and done away with rules from the 1996 law that require welfare recipients to eventually get a job. "This summer he showed us once again he believes in government handouts and dependency by waiving the work requirement for welfare," Santorum said Tuesday in a speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. "I ...

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Matthew Continetti, Weekly Standard
‘America is more than just a place,” Paul Ryan told the Norfolk, Virginia, crowd during his first speech as Mitt Romney’s running mate. “It’s an idea. It’s the only country founded on an idea. Our rights come from nature and God, not government.” The audience roared at this mention of natural rights. Ryan uses similar language in almost every stump speech. He wins applause every time.Mitt Romney’s selection of Ryan was significant for many reasons, but here is one that hasn’t been much commented on: It...

Yuval Levin, National Review
In its continuing effort to advise Democrats on how to best deceive the public, the New York Times commissioned polls in three swing states "” Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin "” over the past week and tested a Medicare message for the president. They asked voters this question:Which of these two descriptions comes closer to your view of what Medicare should look like for people who are now under 55 who would be eligible for Medicare coverage in about ten years? Medicare should continue as it is today, with the government providing seniors with health...

Monica Potts, American Prospect

In a joint op-ed in the New York Times, filmmakers Michael Moore and Oliver Stone hailed WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange and said he is being persecuted by the United States.

Assange has been holed up in the embassy since June, when he took sanctuary there to avoid extradition to Sweden. He is wanted in that country to face arrest and questioning over allegations of sexual assault, but has said he thinks he could be transfered to the United States, where he could stand trial for leaking classified information through WikiLeaks. Last week, he was formally granted political asylum by Ecuador, but the British government refused to recognize it and warned that he would not be given safe passage to leave the country. The UK also dangled the possibility that it could forcibly enter the Ecuadorean embassy to arrest him.

On Sunday, Assange appeared on the balcony of the embassy and said that he was the victim of an American "witch hunt."

In the op-ed, which was posted Monday night, Moore and Stone — both of whom have declared their support for Assange in the past — cheered Ecuador's decision to grant Assange asylum.

"Ecuador has acted in accordance with important principles of international human rights," they wrote. "Indeed, nothing could demonstrate the appropriateness of Ecuador’s action more than the British government’s threat to violate a sacrosanct principle of diplomatic relations and invade the embassy to arrest Mr. Assange."

Speaking about the rape allegations, the directors said that "Swedish authorities have traveled to other countries to conduct interrogations when needed, and the WikiLeaks founder has made clear his willingness to be questioned in London." They also noted Ecuador's willingness to let Assange go to Sweden if it received a pledge that he would not then be sent to the US. Ecuador's foreign minister has said he fears Assange could get the death penalty if he were sent to America, though Sweden has laws banning extradition in such circumstances. It is not clear what designs the US has on Assange, but the Sydney Morning Herald has published documents showing Australian officials in Washington saying that "the US investigation into possible criminal conduct by Mr Assange has been ongoing for more than a year."

A lawyer for the women who have accused Assange of sexually assaulting them called the notion that he would be sent to America "absurd," saying that he needs to "face justice" in Sweden.

But Stone and Moore rejected that argument in their op-ed, saying that it seemed clear that the UK and Sweden intended to get Assange to the US.

"If Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, the consequences will reverberate for years around the world," they wrote. "Mr. Assange is not an American citizen, and none of his actions have taken place on American soil. If the United States can prosecute a journalist in these circumstances, the governments of Russia or China could, by the same logic, demand that foreign reporters anywhere on earth be extradited for violating their laws. The setting of such a precedent should deeply concern everyone, admirers of WikiLeaks or not."

At a Friday campaign rally in Glen Allen, Va., Rep. Paul Ryan took on the Obama administration for imposing laws and taxes that he said cripple America’s small businesses.

“We should not have a government that stands in the way, that erects barriers to small business,” said Ryan, the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee. “What is the president doing?” he asked the crowd. “More regulations, more uncertainty, more borrowing, more spending, more taxing."

Small business success has been a hot topic this election cycle, with candidates from both sides attempting to woo owners and highlight their records for voters. Still, small business optimism fell in July for the second straight month, according to a survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Separate research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that business owners continue to struggle to get loans.

Ryan also took the opportunity to criticize the president for his now infamous “you didn’t build that” remarks, which have led to accusations by the Romney campaign that Obama doesn’t think entrepreneurs build their businesses.

Ryan said his running mate “is living proof that if you have a small business, you built that small business."

But Ryan’s own stance on small business may soon be called into question by the opposition, the Los Angeles Times noted. Ryan voted against the Small Business Jobs Act in 2010, which implemented tax cuts and a lending fund for small businesses. Most Republicans opposed the bill, but the NFIB, which tends to be right-leaning, praised the legislation.

For more on Ryan’s stance on small business, check out the Washington Post’s analysis of the Wisconsin congressman’s record.

Mitt Romney would like you to know that he thinks poor people are con artists who don't want to work, and he is intent on protecting you, the taxpayer, from underwriting their depraved lifestyle.

In a Romney administration, the social safety net would be reduced to a few basics: dumpster-diving at mealtime, pavement-dwelling at sleep time and prayer in the event of illness.

These are the unavoidable takeaways from the fact-free campaign commercial Romney aired last week that accused President Barack Obama of a devious plan to undermine the Clinton-era welfare reform. Clinton famously imposed time limits on welfare benefits while requiring that recipients work. Now, according to the Romney ad, Obama is quietly plotting to "gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements."

It takes no Marshall McCluhan to decipher the core point of Romney's commercial. He is dividing the nation into two camps: hard-working people who earn their own way over here, in the cul-de-sac and on the fairways, where he is seeking votes; and deviants who leech off taxpayers in those scary neighborhoods over there, where Obama serves as enabler-in-chief.

Romney underscored that point aggressively with his choice of running mate, Paul Ryan, who has built his political brand through a shrill determination to demolish government programs.

This is election-time porn for mean-spirited Republicans, a play on demeaning stereotypes of poor people favored by those who view poverty not as an economic condition but as a moral failing. The ad's subtext invites viewers to imagine welfare recipients reveling in drug-infused orgies paid for by taxpayers while Obama hands out the refreshments, presumably to ensure continued dependence on God-hating, entrepreneur-crushing Big Government. (And if white male voters, who are the heart of Romney's base, happen to imagine those welfare recipients as black, bonus points.)

Put aside for the moment the demonstrable falsity of the accusation that Obama wants to strip work requirements from welfare, something that has been amply debunked elsewhere. The key thing to grasp is how eager Romney seems to be to define himself as a man who sees the poor not as people who need a hand, but as lazy cheats.

Romney has been roasted for his proclivity for verbal gaffes that make him seen callous, yet his electoral strategy seems to be connecting with people prone to shout "Get a job!" at the guy in the wheelchair begging for nickels.

Whatever he really believes -- whether he is the cold-hearted hater of poor people he plays in the campaign, or is more like the moderate pragmatist he was as governor of Massachusetts -- Romney would enter the White House beholden to those who buy into the views he is espousing on the stump. That would shape his policies, hastening the further dismantling of an already tragically deficient safety net.

The Romney crowd is fond of wielding the class warfare label to fend off calls for wealthy Americans to pay a fair share of taxes. The new campaign commercial underscores the real class warfare the Republican machine has been waging for decades against the most vulnerable Americans.

Welfare presents a useful diversionary tactic in this battle. Here is a marginal form of wealth distribution that Romney can decry -- a supposedly wasteful transfer of taxpayer money to poor people -- while deflecting attention from the massive bottom-up wealth distribution Republicans have engineered via trillions of dollars in fiscally reckless tax cuts.

Between 2001 and 2011, the tax cuts delivered by George W. Bush and continued under Obama have cost roughly $2.8 trillion. That is about 17 times the roughly $165 billion that has been spent on the primary federal grant that funds welfare.

The worst part of Romney's campaign stagecraft is how he is holding up the Clinton welfare reform as an achievement when it is in fact a national disgrace. The reform was supposed to transition poor people from dependence on government handouts to a reliance on paychecks. Yet since its passage in 1996, the employment rate among working-age women with a high school degree but no college has dropped from 54 percent to 46 percent.

The reform ended cash assistance for anyone poor enough to qualify, turning welfare into a grant delivered to the states, which got to decide how to run it -- or not run it, as it were. This is the crux of what Ryan, Romney's vice presidential nominee, has proposed we do to Medicaid, the health care program for the poor.

Welfare reform manages to register as a policy success, mostly because it has slashed the number of people on welfare rolls. By that logic, we ought to stop handing out food stamps and then cite the fact that no one is receiving benefits as reason to celebrate a victory over hunger.

Before welfare reform, about two-thirds of poor American families with children were receiving cash assistance, according to an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. By 2010, only about one-fourth of such families were getting any help.

This massive shift might be okay if at the same time huge numbers of former welfare recipients were landing decent jobs. But that wasn't happening in sufficient numbers even when the economy was expanding. When the Great Recession came, work requirements became a cruel joke.

Not coincidentally, between 1996 and 2010, the number of poor families with children grew from 6.2 million to 7.3 million.

The work requirements that Romney now falsely accuses Obama of trying to undo have become the primary grounds on which many states justify cutting single mothers from welfare rolls so they can use federal welfare money for other purposes. Many states demand that recipients attend resume-writing programs in order to keep their checks. Single mothers are generally not excused for missing class even when they lack child care or transportation. Clinton promised that subsidized child care and transportation programs would accompany welfare reform, but his words have proven hollow.

I saw the consequences this year in Georgia, where I met a 17-year-old mother who was selling her body to feed her infant daughter, having tried and failed to get welfare as she sought to go to college. The same story is playing out with the same tragic effect in nearly every state, from California to Ohio to New York.

The old form of welfare was rife with problems. It was far from a curative for poverty. The reformed version is a hoax. To celebrate it, you either have to be ignorant of its consequences or inured to them.

Or you have to be a Republican candidate for president who thinks the path to the White House leads through the gated community, where he sells visions of an America in which the poor are disdained as parasites.

The Truth-o-Meter says: Pants on Fire! | Mitt Romney says Barack Obama’s plan for welfare reform: "They just send you your check."

Forget, for a moment, tax cuts and the fiscal cliff. Mitt Romney wants to talk about welfare. A Romney ad opens with a picture of President Bill Clinton signing the 1996 landmark welfare reform act, which shifted the program from indefinite government assistance to one based on steering people toward employment and self-reliance. The words "unprecedented success" flash on the screen. Clinton and a bipartisan Congress, a narrator says, "helped end welfare as we know it by requiring work for welfare." A leather-gloved laborer wipes sweat from his forehead.
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Philip Howard, Atlantic
Behavior that would seem grotesque to most Americans doesn't raise an eyebrow inside the Beltway. Only radical change can fix the problem. A deviant subculture is defined by sociologist Anthony Giddens as one "whose members have values which differ substantially from those of the majority in a society."American government is a deviant subculture. Its leaders stand on soapboxes and polarize the public by pointing fingers while secretly doing the bidding of special interests. Many public employees plod through life with their noses in rule books, indifferent to the actual needs...

In 2010, the federal government took the hundreds of billions of dollars it received in corporate, income and property taxes from each state and respent that money — and then some — on programs in each state. A review of federal data indicates that some states, considering their size and the taxes they paid, received a disproportionate amount of funding relative to the amount they put in each year.

Philip Klein, DC Examiner
In arguing for more government spending and higher taxes, Democrats have been advancing two competing arguments about America's expenditures on infrastructure.One was invoked by President Obama last month when he told small business owners, "Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." In other words, government spending on infrastructure facilitates individual success.

Irwin Stelzer, Weekly Std
So President Obama has abandoned his claim that America has been headed in the wrong direction for 30 years and decided to run on Bill Clinton's record. Well, Mr. President, the voters know Bill Clinton, and they know that you are no Bill Clinton.Bill Clinton took the Democratic party to the center; you have taken it back to the left.Bill Clinton declared the end of big government; you have expanded the portion of national income claimed by the government and extended its reach into areas in which it has never before assumed a role.

Comparisons of the United States to other major democratic countries show clearly that Americans are far less likely to vote than citizens in other countries. This is problematic, since one major symptom of a poorly functioning democracy is when a large percentage of citizens chooses to not vote.

So what are the factors influencing voting turnout that may be causing Americans to be less likely to vote? There are many. For example: demographics (older citizens are more likely to vote), convenience of voting, absence of trust in government, the degree of partisanship among the population, lack of general interest in politics and a failure of faith in the true effect of voting. In this blog, I am focusing on convenience of voting.

Many Americans are unaware of the fact that their system of voting is far less convenient than that found in other major democracies. In the United States, in all but one state, voters must go through a separate registration process before voting, and the vast majority of states do not allow Election Day registration. This two-step process -- register, then vote -- is more complicated than the process in many other countries and discourages some Americans from voting. In Austria, Germany, France and Belgium, voter lists are generated from larger population databases or by other government agencies, thus simplifying the voting process. For example, Germans who are eighteen or older on voting day automatically receive a notification card before any election in which they are eligible to vote. In Canada, the income tax returns are used for voter registration. In the United Kingdom, every residence receives a notice of those registered within the household, and additional voters can be registered by mail.

These countries are enabling the voting process. They are leveraging readily accessible, government-tracked information to make it easier for citizens to vote. It is not surprising to know that those countries all have far higher voter turnout rates than the United States. While these countries are busy simplifying the process of voting, it is rather conspicuous that many American states are even more busy developing new hurdles for voters, adding requirements such as government issued photo identification to their state's (already more complicated) two-step process.

Defenders of these added barriers to voting insist that these measures are designed to head off voter fraud and ensure the integrity of the voting process. Critics point out that voter fraud is generally very low, that these barriers are a modern "poll tax" that will disproportionately impact the poor and minorities, and that systematic, electronic fraud, like the cleaning of the voter rolls in Florida's 2000 election, is a far greater risk than individual identity fraud. Those critics cite Pennsylvania's House of Representatives legislative leader Mike Turzai's quote that "voter ID . . . is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania" as evidence that the added requirements are specifically meant to disenfranchise voters who are more likely to be Democratic.

While our political parties are battling back and forth about how to raise or to not raise the barriers to voting, few people are talking about how the government can facilitate the voting process. We can learn from other countries how to leverage government-run databases to create voter lists and simplify the process of voting to one-step. We can learn how to have a population that is more engaged in its government. We can learn from other countries how to enable, rather than disable voting.

This article is based on excerpts from the recently released book The Measure of a Nation: How to Regain America's Competitive Edge and Boost Our Global Standing

A key goal in 'Measure of a Nation' is to compare the United States to other wealthy countries, with the idea being to identify which countries are performing the best in each area of interest: health, safety, democracy, education and equality. In each of those areas, the countries that are performing the best are examined to determine which best practices might be applied here in America.

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The Truth-o-Meter says: False | Putting Mitt Romney's attacks on 'You didn't build that' to the Truth-O-Meter

For nearly two weeks, the Romney and Obama campaign have been arguing about whether President Barack Obama insulted entrepreneurs. The argument started with comments Obama made about the intersection of business and government during a July 17, 2012 campaign appearance. Romney, in comments at public events and in several ads, has argued that the remarks show a general disdain for business. The Republican National Committee and the National Federation of Independent Business are among the groups have released their own videos and statements echoing Romney that the ...

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In one of his most direct statements on gun control since his election, President Barack Obama Wednesday called for a "common sense" approach to assault rifle sales in light of Friday's mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., saying no "mentally unbalanced individual" should be able to get their hands on such weapons.

"I, like most Americans, believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual the right to bear arms," Obama told the National Urban League convention in New Orleans. "I think we recognize the traditions of gun ownership that passed on from generation to generation. That hunting and shooting are part of a cherished national heritage."

Obama continued: "But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals. That they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities. I believe the majority of gun owners would agree we should do everything possible to prevent criminals and fugitives from purchasing weapons, and we should check someone's criminal record before they can check out a gun seller."

The president called for new restrictions barring mentally unstable people from purchasing weapons.

"These steps shouldn't be controversial," Obama said. "They should be common sense."

Police investigating the Aurora shooting said they believe James Holmes legally purchased four guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition used to kill 12 people, including an AR-15 assault rifle with a 100-round magazine.

Obama pledged to work with lawmakers from both parties to reduce violence "at every level." He noted that government can't repair everything that plays into a killer's actions.

"We must also understand that when a child opens fire on other children, there's a hole in his heart that no government can fill," Obama said.

Obama has avoided the gun debate in recent years, despite his past gun control advocacy. HuffPost's Sam Stein reported on the transformation earlier this week:

As Obama embarked on his presidential campaign in 2008, the pressures of a Democratic primary required him to appeal to voters who valued stronger gun control laws. That became complicated following his "cling to guns" statement at a private fundraiser in Pennsylvania and as he distanced himself from 1996 questionnaire in which he called for banning "the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns" (his campaign would claim an aide erroneously answered the question).

But as that primary turned into a general election, he didn't drop the issue. In fact, he gave it a memorable mention at his highest-profile address.

"The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals," Obama declared at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

For all the talk of unassailable logic of certain gun policies, however, the Obama presidency has seen virtually no corresponding legislative action. Part of that was because of a jam-packed legislative plate.

LONDON -- Scotland's government has announced plans to legalize same-sex marriages.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said Wednesday that legislation permitting the marriages would soon be introduced.

The measure has backing from the major Scottish political parties. It follows a public consultation on the issue.

When enacted, Scotland could become the first part of the UK to allow same-sex marriages.

The UK government has conducted a public consultation on legalizing same-sex marriages, and it has the backing of Prime Minister David Cameron. But UK officials are waiting for the results of the public consultation before taking further steps.

Abby Rapoport, American Prospect
On Friday, two counties in Southern states requested that the Supreme Court reconsider a key element of the Voting Rights Act. Both Kinston, North Carolina and Shelby County, Alabama hope the Court will find that Section 5 of the Act—the one that requires states and counties with a history of voter suppression to get permission from the feds before implementing changes to election law—is unconstitutional. The government has previously justified Section 5 under the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote and prohibits discrimination based on race. The...

Conservatives have had a field day over Obama's comments in Roanoke, Virginia, where the president said:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Obama's defenders say the conservative interpretation is uncharitable because Obama meant that entrepreneurs "didn't build" the social infrastructure they need, not that they did not create their own businesses.

The nitpicking is off the mark. Consider Elizabeth Warren's words, which many commentators think Obama was echoing:

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

The implication is clear: The state protects business interests so taxpayers have a partial claim on the wealth produced.

Putting aside the mundane -- roads, police, firefighters -- there is a deeper truth. Many businesses do not merely benefit from state intervention, but would sink without it. Big business's dependence on government has only increased as government has grown.

Yet liberals like Obama and Warren rarely confront the corporate interests that most rely upon Washington's redistribution of wealth to the powerful and socialization of risk. They love taking credit for subsidizing American businesses, but never address (or admit any responsibility for) the full reality of the corporate state. Perhaps they don't want the inequality they decry traced back to them.

In the nineteenth century, monopolists and politicians pushed for privilege and corporate welfare. They especially wanted subsidies financed through high tariffs for corporations to build canals, waterways, and railways. Henry Clay called this program the "American System" -- words Obama fittingly used in his controversial quote. Clay's agenda finally won out in the Civil War era, particularly through the Morrill Tariff and the Pacific Railroad Acts.

The 1800s saw two types of capitalists, described by Burt Folsom, professor of history at Hillsdale College, columnist and historian at the Foundation for Economic Education, as "political entrepreneurs" and "market entrepreneurs." The former, like steamship pioneer Robert Fulton and railroad mogul Henry Villard, relied on monopoly grants, subsidies, and privileged loans. Government support created perverse incentives, such as the reckless and failed railway construction by the politically favored Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads. Market entrepreneurs, in contrast, were unassisted, even opposed, by government. James Hill built a more efficient, durable, and cheaper railway in the Pacific Northwest, buying land peacefully from American Indians rather than seizing it.

Folsom explains in The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America that before antitrust and other regulations, businessmen like John D. Rockefeller became fabulously wealthy through competitively serving the masses. With a 90 percent market share, Rockefeller drove the price of oil down from 58 to eight cents per gallon.

Radical competitiveness prevented monopoly. One day's winners quickly lost to new competition. So big business interests sought regulation to secure economic stability. Gabriel Kolko wrote in his highly influential book on the Progressive era, The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900-1916:

Despite the large number of mergers, and the growth in the absolute size of many corporations, the dominant tendency in the American economy at the beginning of [the 20th] century was toward growing competition. Competition was unacceptable to many key business and financial interests... Ironically, contrary to the consensus of many historians, it was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it.

Corporate leaders rallied for regulation in railroads, banking, trusts, consumption goods, and more. Kolko demonstrates beyond question that top progressive politicians like Teddy Roosevelt allied with the biggest business interests to advance their agenda.

The tendency of the corporate elite toward "managerial liberalism" was further explicated in James Weinstein's important book, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State: 1900-1918. The conscious effort of big business to favor progressive reform even pervaded seemingly egalitarian functions of the welfare state. For example, as Weinstein notes, in 1911 "no state had an effective [employee] compensation law, yet by 1920 every state but six in the South had one... This sweeping achievement was made possible by the concerted activity of the National Civic Federation, with the strong support of its big business affiliates." Corporate giants had every reason to extend the reach of government into the economy.

The early New Deal featured more of the same. President Franklin Roosevelt courted big business and forced mergers through the National Recovery Administration designed by General Electric president, Gerard Swope. The oil industry, represented by the Independent Petroleum Association, agitated for regulation of its sector, as did the steel, coal, and textile industries, all fearing competition. Business interests favored "both the general trade-regulating machinery of the NRA and the more specific legislative programs designed to deal with particular conditions," as Butler Shaffer shows in his book, In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918-1938. FDR moreover joined forces with big business to create the permanent military-industrial complex that still survives.

So it is today. A thousand policies prop up the rich -- licensing laws, regressive taxes, outright giveaways, farm aid, military spending contracts, absurd patent and copyright laws, secured higher education loans, banking regulations and credit expansions.

"Liberal" politicians have long advanced their own power while serving the very monopolists they claim to oppose. They thus claim a stake in wealth creation, rationalize higher taxes, and yet veil their close relationships with the economic power elite.

No wonder that Obama is mandating purchases from the health insurance industry, that he has worked so hard to please military contractors, Big Ag and the auto industry, that corporate profits have risen as unemployment has remained dismally high, that Goldman-Sachs and other firms have poured money on his presidential campaigns, that Obama and Bush have cozied up to many of the same characters passing through the Wall Street/White House revolving door. Today's America has a mixture of honest wealth and political privilege. Obama's agenda favors the latter by expanding government power.

The liberals and big business created the corporate state together. Business couldn't do it alone. "Somebody else made that happen," to quote the president.

Obama's detractors should demand a separation of business and state. Let businesses rise or fall without subsidy, as much as possible. Unfortunately, a move in this direction is unlikely. Politicians and their beloved fat cats gain too much from their current arrangement.

As Ramadan sets in, Muslims in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, are fighting for the right to celebrate as faithful Muslims.

Yesterday, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a request for a temporary restraining order on behalf of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. Becket's brief requested that the Islamic Center be permitted to use its newly built mosque in time for Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic calendar, during which Muslims fast each day from dawn till sunset. Within a few hours of filing the brief, the judge granted the restraining order -- good news for Murfreesboro Muslims, who commence their Ramadan observations on Thursday.

The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has been part of the Murfreesboro community for over 30 years. In 2010, the Islamic Center began building a new mosque to accommodate its growing congregation. Its efforts were met with a hostile reception by a small group of local residents, who filed suit in Rutherford County Chancery Court seeking a temporary restraining order to halt construction of the new mosque. Among other things, the suit made the baseless claim that the county's zoning law denied plaintiffs due process by failing "to provide a hearing to examine the multiple uses of the ICM site and the risk of actions promoting Jihad and terrorism."

But in a novel twist, the plaintiffs also made the claim that Islam, the world's second largest religion, is in fact, not a religion, and thus undeserving of First Amendment religious freedom protections.

The argument went like this: because Islam is not a religion but a political ideology and the mosque would be used for political not religious assembly, the mosque is not subject to the same zoning treatment as churches.

The move against the mosque is part of the larger anti-sharia movement in the state and across the nation, with a prominent leader of the movement, Frank Gaffney, introduced as an "Islam expert" at trial. The anti-sharia and anti-mosque protests culminated in numerous acts of anti-Muslim animus during the course of the mosque construction. For example, a large construction vehicle at the construction site was intentionally set on fire. There was even a bomb threat, which resulted in a federal indictment.

So the Muslim community found itself, on the eve of its most holy religious period, a collection of so-called political jihadis facing a violent and politically-oriented attack.

As a Muslim and Catholic, we stand together in denouncing the hostility towards this Muslim community and the effort to turn our court system into an accomplice. And while there is well-grounded concern in this nation about national security threats posed by terrorism, decades-old faithful communities seeking to celebrate their religious holidays in peace are the wrong target.

But most importantly, seeking to undermine the religious rights of a group through dirty hat tricks is something that should be cause for concern for all people of faith. Because when any group, be it private citizens or our own government, succeeds in redrawing the lines as to what constitutes a religion or religious activity for political motives, religious freedom in this nation regresses for all.

This was at root in the landmark Supreme Court case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC in which a small Lutheran Church in Michigan clung to its right to hire and fire employees based on core religious tenets, despite the governments' argument that a religious group should be treated no differently in employment matters than any other group. This would be a dramatic change to the posture of church state relations, essentially placing the government in the role of appointing and terminating ministers, and the argument was swiftly labeled as "amazing" and "shocking" by both wings of the highest Court.

It is also the issue at stake in the national struggle over the HHS mandate which in less than two weeks will begin requiring certain religious employers to violate their consciences and provide services in their healthcare plans which they find gravely immoral, simply because they are, by the government's standards, not religious enough.

The Murfreesboro mosque case exemplifies how the winds can blow when one group who cares little for the religious freedom of another takes action.

As a Muslim and a Catholic, we stood together behind Hosanna-Tabor and the essential role the ministerial exception plays in our legal system. We stood together against the HHS mandate, despite the narrative that opposition to the mandate constituted a "war on women." And we stand together now. Because no religion is an island. When the rights of one faith are abridged, the rights of all faiths are threatened. All faiths have the right to worship God in freedom and in peace, and with dignity.

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
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