S P R I N G 2012
T HE M ORALITY OF D EMOCRATIC C APITALISM \how0to0help0the0poor| Ryan T. Anderson Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism, by Peter Wehner and Arthur Brooks, AEI Press 2010. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, by Martha Nussbaum, Harvard University Press 2011. From Prophecy to Charity: How to Help the Poor, by Lawrence Mead, AEI Press 2011.
M
arket economies, free enterprise, and private prop‐ erty are important, and so their defense is also important. But as important as these ideas and institutions are, they aren’t enough for a complete account of the rights and duties in the economic sphere of our lives. Nevertheless, many conservatives seem intent on downplaying social justice. For too long, those on the right have ne‐ glected to advance moral cases for free enterprise. The consequences are apparent everywhere you look in politics and the public square, particularly among younger Americans who perhaps have little memory of the negative effects of alternative approaches, and profes‐ sors with little interest in filling them in on the historical truth. But the problem cannot be ignored without ramifications. Consider just one measure, a poll released by GlobeScan in 2011—it found that public support in America for the proposition that “the free market economy is the best economic system for the future” had dropped 73