Marxist Takeover in the U.S. Leads to the Self-destruction of a Superpower

Two months have passed since the inauguration of Joe Biden and his Neo-Marxist regime. Eight tedious weeks during which the destructive work of the radical left materialized at a breathtaking rate.

The senile fraud in the White House, pushed by his progressive handlers, presented us with a prime example of miserable politics - fanatically pursuing ideological utopias at the cost of devastating results for the country and its people.

As far as the big media outlets are concerned, nothing has changed. The media continues to report selectively, desperately trying to coverup the radical baloney and conveying a sham reality that obscures the substantial nature of what is happening.

With a host of executive orders (EO), the Biden Regime destroyed President Trump's achievements in just a few weeks. The southern border is in shambles, border wall construction halted, and illegals are flooding across the border because Mr. Biden promised to change his predecessor's policies upon entering office. The cancellation of the Keystone XL-pipeline generated colossal economic damage all around. The reinstitution of the Obama-years' foreign affairs policies caused the immediate deterioration of the U.S.' relations with Russia and China. 

A new arms race and cold war scenario are intensifying. The cultural decline accelerated with executive orders to accept biological transgender males in women's sports, sex-change surgeries taxpayer-funded in the armed forces. The list could go on.  

Appalling as the machinations of the deceitful and rotten left are the conduct of the complacent right in this country. I see no signs of counterrevolution, either in politics or in society. The convenience of the corrupt existence in the capital prompts even most Republicans to come to terms with the realities - electoral fraud, a senile usurper in the White House, the damage done by Marxists over the past two months. A handful of courageous senators and congressional representatives, out front of the pack brave Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are trying to prevent the worst.

The Republicans look to the mid-term elections in 2022, where the cards for Congress could be reshuffled, and majority ratios changed. However, this is likely to remain a futile hope. House Rule 1, ironically referred to as the "For the People Act 2021," was passed in the House of Representatives in early March. This piece of legislation comprises 791 pages and is nothing but a shameless attempt of the Democratic Party to prolong their reign for the next hundred years – if the nation will even survive the current term of these vile dilettantes.

The law institutionalizes measures for election manipulation and fraud. No voter ID and illegals will be allowed to vote. The voting age is lowered to 16 years, and automatic voter registration follows any contact with government authorities. In short, everything and more that has turned the last election into an operation of voter fraud on a scale no open democratic society in Western civilization's history has ever seen will become legalized. Biden has already said he will sign it. It is currently being debated in the Senate, but it looks as if Republicans will not prevent this law from being passed.

We are going through a prime example of miserable politics that features governing without regard for the people's will. While fanatically pursuing ideological utopias, the regime in charge is ignoring and willingly accepting devastating results for the country and its people. If the past two months and the current state of politics in the United States of America cannot serve as a deterrent illustration of lousy governance, nothing will. 

The modern-day Jacobins, intoxicated with the poison of wokeness, identity politics, politically correct progressivism, and globalist dreams, are bent on destroying the transcendent foundation of our civilization. For now, they appear to be successful, and the victory will be theirs unless, in the least, a long-overdue moral-intellectual counterrevolution takes place.  Yet, the hopes for such are slim. The central pillars of composing the moral and spiritual fabric of a societal collective of people – media, institutes of learning, culture, and arts – for the prevailing part are in the hands of a corrupt and ill-educated elite.

They convey and protect a sham reality that obscures the substantial nature of what is happening and, even more, what is at stake in civilizational terms. To an increasing degree, concerned citizens have to look at speeches, interviews, and press conferences in person, visit alternative media on the internet, and, above all and as I have mentioned previously, apply critical judgment and healthy intuition to get to the bottom of the facts and attain the truth.

And they, we all, have to speak up to change the atmosphere of cultural and moral depravity.

Charlie Hebdo, a Beheaded Teacher and the Abuse of Free Speech

Could we possibly imagine a serious ethical and moral concept that would justify the killing of a person who, under the title of artistic creativity or political freedom of expression, albeit degrading to specific individuals or groups of people, expressed his conviction? Of course not. The cruel beheading of the teacher must be condemned. There are causal explanations, but there is no excuse.

However, the outrageous act that led to the teacher's death must not conceal the fact that the teacher has done wrong. Instead of using the blasphemous Muslim Muhammad cartoons of Charlie Hebdo as an example for the violation and abuse of the freedom of expression, he used them to justify and exemplify free speech, thereby triggering a misguided radical commit a political-religiously motivated murder.

The reactions to the French teacher's beheading by an Islamic fanatic prove once again, with a few exceptions, how inadequately educated even the "educated" people are among us and to what extent they lack the capacity for critical thinking.

It should be every educator's task to convey that freedom of expression is not absolute and, therefore, not unlimited. As in all other areas of human activity, free speech must be limited by the demands for the responsible exercise of human freedom. Elsewhere https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/03/the-crisis-of-morality.html I have outlined the connection between freedom and responsibility and have indeed made clear that both are only two sides of the same coin. We cannot think of freedom without responsibility, and responsibility is null and void if someone is not free to act. The liberty of man is thus about responsible freedom. Irresponsible freedom – arbitrariness, that is, to do what one will, manifesting itself in unrestricted ego-centrism – gives only the illusion of freedom. Whoever is a prisoner of his impulses and indifferent selfishness is not free; instead, he is taken hostage by his own morally deficient personality. 

 

From my essay on the Crisis of Morality: "True human freedom is finite freedom, limited by the conditions of social coexistence and the legitimate aspirations of all other individuals. We must not mistake freedom as independence from everything, but rather has to be considered as a choice to something."

From this quotation, it becomes clear that our responsibility as human beings extends to all other human beings and living organisms in every social and political context, as they acquire relevance regarding our actions. The boundary between our freedom and the freedom of every other person, expressed in a formal and universally applicable way, is what we commonly refer to as justice. 

 

Injustice is, therefore, the extension of one's freedom beyond the bounds of justice into the realm of the freedom of another, preventing them from making use of their choice. If we meet the demands of justice by our own will, we exercise ethical and moral righteousness. This declaration also lays down the legislature's enduring task to determine at any time and any place the legitimate claims for freedom of everyone in relevant existential contexts and to lay them down as statutes of law. The application of justice is dynamic since it must consider the development of human coexistence and the respective contexts, but the idea of justice is timeless and immutable. This truth also explains why positive legislation that loses sight of this normative principle can embody wrong - as has happened so often in history. 

 

Consequently, it becomes clear how completely irresponsible and thus (morally) unjustified any form of blasphemy is, since it affects the religious practitioner in his legitimate claim to freedom, without any justification for this interference. Even if a legal stipulation (either immoral or ill-conceived) would allow and thus lawfully condone blasphemy; it is never ethically justified to mock or ridicule other people's faith. Provoking Muslims by making fun of their Prophet Muhammad is just about as out of place as provoking Christians by mocking Jesus Christ in works of satire and art. In Paris, Charlie Hebdo was misguided and irresponsible when he taunted Islam's religious figures in his satirical magazine, as was Ms. Pamela Geller in her cartoon contest "Draw Muhammad" in Garland, Texas. In both cases, the agitators hid behind misinterpretations of the principle of free expression, whether in a misguided understanding of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution or in neglect of the moral-philosophical ideal that dictates responsible action.

Genuinely free and entirely responsible people have long understood that responsible behavior is never merely exhausted by complying with the law. They comprehended that the legal provision lays down, first and foremost, the conditions that someone does not have to suffer, while moral responsibility determines what we must do and how we should act.

 

 

The United States of America – Is a Hegemon Devouring Itself?

Half a year before last fall's presidential elections, I argued (see my blog essay "U.S. Presidential Elections and the Future of the West" https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2016/04/2016-us-presidential-election-and.html) that the fate of this country and the entire Western civilization will depend on its outcome. By denying Hillary Clinton the presidency, we must prevent a third term of Obama's Marxist-Globalist policies. The result was one I had predicted and hoped for; Trump won. In a follow-up essay, I explained how the U.S. and the world were supposed to get a respite from the insanity of previous years. 

But a look at Washington D.C. some eight months into Mr. Trump's presidency makes one wonder about wasted chances and failures to implement urgently needed policy promises. It appears that President Trump's pragmatic instincts succumbed to neoconservative imposition from within the White House as well as the Senate and the Congress.

 

Instead of vetoing it and signaling decisive course correction, a seemingly helpless Trump signed a sanctions bill on Russia and had himself bullied by the mainstream media into moral relativism and the absurdity of designating (fascist) right-wing violence worse than (equally fascist) left-wing violence. He disregarded the Virginia governor and Charlottesville mayor's lawlessness, both of whom intentionally and purposefully let a demonstration turn violent by ordering police forces to stand down. 

While fortunately proclaiming the end of nation-building and democracy export, Mr. Trump caved to the pressure for a troop surge in Afghanistan and the continuation of U.S. presence there. 

 

The malice of Never-Trumpers and the hateful obstructionism of Democrats and neoconservative Republicans appear to force Trump to continue the past two decades' terrible policy failures. He seems, at least partially, to abandon the promises he ran on in his presidential campaign. 

 

Given my political philosophy expertise and my participation in educational efforts in Eastern and Southeastern Europe after the end of the Cold War, I have tried to get in touch with the Trump administration since campaign times, particularly since its inauguration. But, alas, to no avail. I admit that I felt the need to do something about Washington's overbearing strategic blunder that has caused so much damage to global affairs. And I was sure that only President Trump gave hope to overcome and defeat the previous administration's wrong ways (after Rand Paul as the best suited among the Republican establishment candidates had dropped out). 

 

As repeatedly addressed in my blog essays, I sensed the lack of philosophical depth in U.S. politics. I had observed the mistakes ill-educated and ideologically disoriented politicians and advisors, liberals as well as neocons, had perpetrated time and again, and from whose apparent failures they refused to learn. I witnessed how the establishment of a post-Cold War New World Order started as an initially well-intended and seemingly meaningful project. In 1991, the transatlantic alliance instituted close relations with Russia in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council/NACC (later on named Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council/EAPC). The creation of NATO/Partnership for Peace (PfP) in 1994 intended to expand the alliance's reach to meet the new challenges Out-of-Area in close cooperation with Russia. 

I shared the initial enthusiasm for building a new stable and just world order by providing educational input in multiple undertakings within the PfP framework. Sadly, those good relations soon became perverted by nothing else than Washington's geostrategic arrogance and hubris.

Propaganda from both sides aside, relations began to sour due to aggressive power projection and the increasing neglect and alienation of Russia's and other global players' strategic and economic interests by the U.S. and its European and NATO allies. Of course, this carelessness happened in combination with the old strategic ploy for vindicating one's unjust policies by reversing actual cause-effect relations. As so often before in history, it resulted in the grounding of U.S. foreign affairs and national security policies on intentional misconceptions and outright lies. While the U.S. pushed NATO closer to Russia's borders and engaged in ever-bolder imperialism, it blamed Russia precisely for what it was doing itself. 

 

Two cases may exemplify this reversal of facts and the blaming of an alleged and yet never existing so-called "Russian aggression" and Mr. Putin's dream of reinstating the boundaries of the "Old Soviet Empire." In the summer of 2008, after Georgia invaded South Ossetia, a tiny province that had won its independence in the 1990s, and Georgian artillery had killed Russian peacekeepers, the Russian army entered and chased the Georgians back into their own country. Since then, Russia has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, very much to the chagrin of the U.S. and the U.N.  

The aggressor was not Vladimir Putin but Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili, a megalomaniac and now stateless sociopath who had been brought to power in 2004 by one of the US-engineered color-coded revolutions, at the time under Bush II. By annexing those two provinces, Georgia as an ally to the West would have enlarged its national territory and moved NATO-friendly terrain closer to Russian borders, despite a tendency in those provinces that broke from Georgia in the early 1990ies for ethnic and other reasons, to instead ally with Russia. The same applied to Transnistria and Moldova, both of which show interested in joining the Russian Federation. Thus, the question arises, astutely asked by Pat Buchanan, why in a time of peoples' self-determination, the U.S. (and the transatlantic community for that matter) support every ethnic group or fledgling republic that secedes from Russia, but considers any ethnic group or little state moving toward Russia a threat, a traitor, and insinuates it could only take place because of Russian imperialism? The only viable answers are:

 

• A paranoid and untenable Russophobia endures in Washington.
• A misconceived strategic design for a post-Cold War global setting dominates national security circles.
• An astounding lack of any sound political philosophy of international relations abounds among Washington's elites who to this day impose their unreasonable concepts on the White House and the U.S. State Department. 

 

 The distorted narrative on foreign affairs and Russia's role is kept alive by the paranoid Washington elites at all costs. It became tangible in early August this year when the honorable Vice-president Pence, speaking in Montenegro, the tiny nation in the Balkans that had just become the newest member of NATO. He repeated the apparent national security lies about Russia vis-à-vis Georgia. As was to expect, he also replicated the falsehoods about Ukraine to justify the offensive deployment of forces and missiles to Poland and the Czech Republic, and other Eastern European Nations. In Ukraine, President Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which had ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia. He bloodlessly seized the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow's Black Sea fleet was present by Treaty. The West alienates Russia and Putin now over a reaction it could have easily foreseen, had it only pursued just and wise policies that acknowledge the existential interests of other global players. I commented on all this in more detail in several earlier blog entries ('Russophobia - Achilles' Heel of US-Russia Relations of February 17, 2017, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2017/02/us-russia-relations-russo-phobia.html and 'Ukraine - Another Failure of Western Interventionism' of February 22, 2015, https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2015/02/another-failure-of-western.html).

 

Not Russia, but the U.S. has become the primary threat to world peace and global stability through aggressive policies of indifferent power projection that neglected legitimate geopolitical and geostrategic claims of other international players. Over the last two decades, the old buffers of the Soviet Union toward the West, most of all Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and not to forget the Baltic States, have all become full-fledged NATO members; with only minor diplomatic resistance from Russia and clearly no intent to invade those countries or reinstate the boundaries of the old Soviet bloc. It is of strategic importance for Russia and a core consideration for her national interest to keep Ukraine, an important geopolitical region that it designated the 'Near Abroad' somehow in a militarily neutral state. 

 

But the foreign relations experts in Washington do not rest contented with all the strategic blunder on the ground and in military terms. They pair their misguided policies with economic foolishness by way of economic warfare through sanction regimes that impact not only the U.S. but allies and partners in Europe and beyond as well. Just ignorant politicians could jubilee over the significant disruption of Russia's economy, the Ruble's inflation, and working "trade barriers." What they forget or perhaps willfully put on the line is the fact that the European Union is, by far, Russia's leading trade partner and accounts for about fifty percent of all Russian exports and imports and seventy-five percent of all foreign investments in Russia. From whatever angle, it sure comes at too high a price to prop Russia as an artificial enemy for one's own failed imperialism and as the scapegoat for a presidential election's unsuccessful outcome. After all, the presidential candidate herself as secretary of state had caused the blunder in cooperation with the presidential predecessor. 

The opposite of what the strategic calculus of Washington wanted to achieve is happening – not only is the global standing of the U.S. diminishing, but the hegemonic superpower harms itself in various policy fields. Putin increasingly writes off the U.S. and the West and enters into a Russian-Chinese strategic alliance. And if Washington continues to ignore and alienate Russia, the European Union and individual European countries will have to weigh their commitment to the North-Atlantic Alliance against their own economic and security interests. The latter process is what has commenced in Europe right now. It is relatively easy to comprehend that if Washington is not coming to its senses, a continuation of this policy will drive a wedge into transatlantic relations. 

 

Will President Trump be able to stand up against all these war-mongering and Russia-hating Democrats, Neoconservative Senators and Congressmen, Brass-Officer advisors, and Military-Industrial lobbyists? Will he bring home the troops from Afghanistan and Syria and end the aggressive posture of U.S. and NATO forces in eastern and southeastern Europe and the Baltic Region? After all, he was elected to complete the conglomerate of provocative, aggressive, and, indeed, unethical policies the United States has pursued in recent years.  

 

Not forget we must that the appalling course of U.S. foreign affairs policy of late runs parallel to the deterioration of internal politics in the United States. The civil war over ideas and convictions – a real culture war – is in full swing and seems to intensify day by day. Relentlessly dishonest and Trump-hating news outlets push it, above all CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, and, the most abysmal and painfully foolish of all, MSNBC. The degree of disinformation and corruption is mind-boggling in its unreasonableness and almost inconceivable in its blatant immorality. The Washington swamp is real. It is so bad that certain commentators even identify an ongoing silent coup to oust Trump by the joint conspiracy of mainstream media, deep-state exponents, liberal politicians, and radical left-wing interest groups. The latter, who organize protests wherever Trump appears and carry out counter-demonstrations with the explicit aim to instigate violence, which they blame on Trump, are funded by billionaires like George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg. 

 

The pigheadedness of never-Trumpers and all those politicians, pundits, and commentators who were so wrong about Trump never being able to win the presidency seems boundless. These people give precedence to their stubbornness and political and ideological inertia over the nation's best interest. Insight into one's wrongs and judgment errors, learning from mistakes and wising up, and notions like critical self-reflection no longer count or even exist in certain people's consciousness. Instead, they are doubling down on stances that experience has proven wrong. Unprecedented obstructionism not only from the opposition party but from the GOP's ranks – the most despicable example provided by the traitor senator John McCain on the repeal vote on the Affordable Care Act – dominate the domestic political landscape. 

 

 A look into U.S. politics, not even a year into Trump's presidency, reminds one of a young and fledgling republic in some Third World region of the globe. In the previous blog essay entitled 'A Sick Republic' of July 5, 2017 (https://edwinseditorial.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-sick-republic-yeah-dude-im-talking.html), I outlined the parameters of this profoundly flawed political system and the unmatched decay of intellectual and moral political standards in the U.S., which continues to push the nation toward more violence and outright civil war. 

 

Who or what could remedy this state of affairs of division and hatred in the United States society that goes far beyond any acceptable measure a functioning republic could withstand in the long run? How can we overcome this mental tyranny of the left that denounces everybody and everything running counter to their views? How can we break the vicious collaboration of forces on the political left to remove Trump from office, even at the cost of throwing this country into mayhem and internal violent conflict? The only answer I can come up with is "success." 

 

 To improve relations and defeat obstructionism, President Trump and his allies in Senate and Congress will have to be successful in pulling off a significant tax reform for businesses and working citizens. Furthermore, they will have to push through a decisive modification of the healthcare system, in both cases with immediate and tangible results that can no longer be hidden from the public, not even by hostile news media outlets. A new paradigm in foreign and security affairs is overdue. It should feature pragmatic strategic prudence and restraint rather than globalist adventurism. The U.S. has to disentangle from the continued involvement in the Middle East and Southeast Asia and bring troops home. It should abandon regime change interventionism and come to a new understanding in US-Russia relations. These steps should enable the nation to recover and find political and social stability. 

 

The United States finds itself at a crucial crossroads at this point. The significance of the moment goes far beyond saving Mr. Trump's presidency and marks a juncture that determines the future not only of this nation but the future direction of Western civilization as a whole. 

 

Let's make no mistake. The election of Donald Trump to become the 45th President of the U.S. came at a point of existential significance as to the future course of our civilizational development. It is the defining moment of decision between, on the one hand, liberal-Marxist globalism in conjunction with cultural decadence and the rise of moral relativism in ever more secularized social milieus; and in contrast, on the other hand, the furtherance of orderly (international) relations among sovereign nations with western countries grounding their pluralism in traditional morality and a minimal nucleus of their Christian heritage. 

 

It is clear before the power of our reasoning that both opposing sides in this ongoing culture war over principles and values cannot claim the same amount of validity for how they envisage our Western-style democracies' future path. Opposing concepts in all kinds of social and political realms – immigration, the rule of law, gender and race relations, education, economics, international affairs, etc. - cannot be equally meaningful. The course of social and political 'progressivism' that we have witnessed in recent years is either the right one for a prosperous future or a pernicious concept that destroys our societies and our civilization in its entirety. Yet, who could honestly believe, considering the evidence of societal mayhem, confusion, and polarization regarding open border globalism in recent years, that cultural progressivism is the right way as we advance? 

 

It might be wise for the left to end their demonization of conservative politics and specifically of President Trump, and give the man and his program a chance to succeed. But for this to happen would require the mainstream media to stop its one-sided anti-Trump crusade and bethink their exact principal role as an unbiased and objective interface for information and dialogue between people and government. 

Furthermore, perhaps even more importantly, it will take the ceasing of obstructionist efforts from certain Republicans in Congress. Full support of Mr. Trump's by his party, whose representatives have to set aside personal vanities and sanctimonious reservations, and a constructive political opposition that recovers at least some minimal sense of fairness decency, appear to be immediate requirements for success. 

 

The period of trial and error and political and social experimentation with the radical ideas of the left, domestically and internationally, has to end. It is high time that the Washington elites and stakeholders come to their senses, intellectually and morally, and refocus on this country's common good, which is so closely related to the entire western hemisphere's well-being.

The Crisis of Morality

If society turns immanent - I use the term immanence in the Kantian epistemological tradition of everything that remains within the boundaries of possible experience - and loses its transcendent basis, its particular religious-metaphysical reference, it will perish. Western civilization has profoundly gone down this path in recent decades, and restorative measures have been mostly ineffective. Yet, every culture arises from its religious foundation, derives its cohesive strength from it, and perennially regenerates itself through it. The common denominator for any civilization has got to be transcendent. Everything immanent, above all also science, is prone to opposing and conflicting interpretation, which is why anything immanent cannot serve as a constant unifier. The paradox of this truth lies in the fact that precisely the faculty unable to fathom the transcendent, namely human reason, comes to acknowledge the necessity of the transcendent.

In sacred terms, the transcendent manifests itself in religion; in secular terms, the transcendent manifests itself in morality. As religion serves as the horizon of meaning and represents common and uniting values, morality – and by no means economy – is the underpinning category of immanent life routine.

As civilization as a whole disintegrates when it loses its religious foundation, so do social and political life fail if morality subsides. We can ultimately lead every crisis of politics back to a moral crisis or, more precisely, to the fact that the fading of morality has not been detected or reacted to in time.

Morality constitutes the crisis of responsibility, as only the moral human being binds itself to act responsibly because of an inner and voluntary disposition to do so. Whether one excels in the economy, is an educator, contributes to the safety of the society by way of constabulary or military service, or works as a politician on bettering the social conditions of his constituency – the quality of their achievements depends on their morality, which is their commitment to act responsibly.
 
The notion of freedom inextricably links the categories of morality and responsibility. Only if the human being is free to decide between alternatives to act can he take on responsibility for his actions and be held accountable for his doing (or not doing). Not being able to withdraw from this responsibility constitutes the intrinsic moral quality of being human.

Human freedom is about responsible freedom. Irresponsible freedom, epitomizing in unconstrained egocentrism, is mere arbitrariness and no freedom at all. True human freedom is finite freedom, limited by the conditions of social coexistence and all other individuals' legitimate aspirations. Liberty must not be mistaken as independence from everything, but instead has to be considered as a choice to something.

Inappropriate use of freedom equals irresponsibility, which equals immorality. The absence of a personal and inner disposition to act righteously necessitates the enforcement of correct behavior from the outside. While morality cannot be imposed from the outside but rather springs from an intimate and inner urge to "ought" righteously, legality comes with law enforcement. Indeed, we cannot even imagine human statutory law without its intricate linkage to the ability to be carried through by force.

Suppose we put these considerations into a political context. In that case, we find throughout history and the modern world governmental systems that allow for freedom and individual responsibility, and those collectivist forms of government that don't. Thus the futility of the debate about capitalism versus socialism as socialism is a collectivist form of government, whereas capitalism is a form of economy. While the relatively closed and collectivistic socialist societies typically embrace the economic concept of a planned market economy, free and open democratic societies usually feature free-market economies as the typical characteristic of capitalism.

Capitalism can only exist in a political environment that allows for responsibility – for there are freedom and morality – and can only survive if the proponents of this system are generally prone and willing to use that freedom by acting morally. Thus, capitalism's problem is not the lack of legal regulations, but rather the irresponsibility – in other words: the immorality and human immaturity – of its proponents. The one who cannot impose boundaries upon himself in a self-legislating manner needs to get the proper behavior forced upon from the outside. Inappropriate, dishonest, and illegal behavior is even possible under existing laws and regulations. The political system of open and democratic societies, and the economic system of capitalism can function in the end only if the inner moral disposition, the outlined sense of responsibility, can be instilled and realized. This ideational concept is empirically sound in general terms.  On Wall Street, the one who derives his incentives to act mostly from greed and the idea of personal enrichment proves his moral immaturity to the same extent as the guy from Main Street, who buys himself a home on a loan that he can't afford. Both have not understood the meaning and import of free society and its ensuing stakes for the individual.

The price of freedom is the responsibility, and those who are unwilling to pay this price, do not deserve freedom. They must not wonder why they are subjugated continuously to regulations, legal impositions, and governmental encroachment.

Although the subject of further consideration, it becomes quite clear that only through appropriate socialization and education processes can the desired attitude on life be achieved. All those national and international comparisons on high school and college levels of knowledge and education regarding mathematical, technological, and language skills are vain, as long as the instruction does not result in independent judgmental abilities. And the quality to acknowledge the significance and indispensability of responsibility as the existential manifestation of freedom in any social context.