• Arthur C. Brooks, The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future, New York : Basic Books, 2010, 172 pages, $23.95.
Arthur C. Brooks’ The Battle is the best of three recent books I have read in an attempt to understand the Wall Street crash. (I reviewed Roger Lowenstein’s The End of Wall Street in the June issue of Carolina Journal and Ian Bremmer’s The End of the Free Market in July.)
As president of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Brooks has access to current research data about how Americans view a variety of subjects from conservatism to happiness. He also has the latest information on the Wall Street financial crisis. Brooks presents this data in a readable, non-boring format.
As for the Wall Street crisis, Brooks says, “Congress sparked the fire that burned down our financial system” through its control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Government officials “do not understand the crisis and do not know how to fix it,” he states.
He also sets the record straight on aspects of the financial crisis that have been reported badly in the mainstream media. For example, nine of 10 homeowners who were under water, or had negative equity, after the housing market collapsed remained in their homes and continued to pay their mortgages. They did not walk away from their houses, as media reports suggested.
Brooks sees the battle as “a new culture war” — a conflict between American free enterprise and European-style statism. “These compelling visions are not reconcilable: We must choose,” states Brooks.
He then uses data to show that Americans prefer free enterprise. Even with politicians and media types badmouthing large corporations, Brooks cites poll after poll showing that Americans prefer a free market to statism. His data also show that Americans distrust government and still would rather work for private companies than government.
The key numbers for Brooks are 70 and 30. He provides statistical evidence showing that 70 percent of Americans support conservative ideals and that they also support free market principles. However, the remaining 30 percent are leftist liberals. He places President Obama in this category, along with Hollywood, journalists, academics, and much of Washington. “They are the intellectual upper class: those in the top 5 percent of the population in income,” Brooks says.
Brooks takes apart the arguments that the 30 percent have presented to argue that Americans prefer statism. He lists four factors — creativity, meaning, optimism, and control — that provide personal fulfillment for the 70 percent majority. Materialism and money do not motivate the majority as much as the fulfillment that comes from “earned success,” what Brooks calls “the creation of value in our lives and the lives of others.”
“In a country like the United States where people are above the level of subsistence,” Brooks writes, “a poor man who believes he has successfully created something of value will be much better off than a rich man who has not earned his success.”
Brooks states that, “The blatant attempt to impose 30 percent values on a 70 percent nation has resulted in a predictable phenomenon: backlash,” which started with the tea party movement.
At just 128 pages, not including the notes or index, the book is a short, easy read, and the reader will not get lost in a maze of acronyms.
After finishing The Battle, I agree with Newt Gingrich’s assessment in the forward of the book. “Every American concerned about their country’s future and worried about the radicalism of the Obama-Pelosi-Reed machine should read The Battle. It is the ammunition with which to save our country and change our history for the better.”