A Worldview
In America’s 250th anniversary year, Hollywood shows signs it might be making good movies again. Most believe Young Washington and The Odyssey are fun, meaningful, and even family-oriented movies (given today’s extremely low PG and R standards).
What comes to mind when you see the name Washington or Odysseus? You think of specific heroes with mythical connotations and their associated stories, peoples, and nations. You think of whole histories. In hindsight, such lives presented manifest destinies, offering archetypes for the journey of life itself. These persons—real or mythical—formed whole civilizations.
Washington means something like a man from a specific place in England (“Wassa”). So, President Washington and his remarkable life provide all the meaning. What about the names Jesus, Christ, and Odysseus? Like Joshua, Jesus means “God saves”; Christ means “the anointed one” (The Messiah); and Odysseus, perhaps, “the one who incurs [Poseidon’s] wrath.”
Well, “I’ll say,” having read the book and seen the movie. Now we’re getting somewhere.
Did the names come before the stories or the stories before the names? No matter. The point is that one name or one word can convey a story and even an entire worldview. Philosophers say human beings cannot think or speak at all without story or imagined being and action.
Capitalism
The names Odysseus, Christ, and Marx suggest the primary worldview trajectory of the West from paganism to monotheism to naturalism. Likely, Marx has Roman (Marcus and Mars, the god of war), Jewish (Mordechai), and Christian (St. Mark) origins. Granted, it pains me to place Karl Marx in the same category as the other two, but Marxism still has a perplexing influence, given its total bankruptcy as good theory.
What does the word capitalism mean to you? Does it have a positive or negative ring? Why? The word has countless definitions, but a simple one most Americans would understand might be “the political-economic system, based upon free exchange, private ownership, and competition, that most efficiently supplies goods and services to meet human needs.”
While it doesn’t offer religious salvation or guarantee human happiness, “capitalism” has no peer if the goal is excellent economic results. Capitalism has been supremely successful far beyond anyone’s expectations, including Adam Smith. Given all the evidence offered globally over the last 250 years, there’s no question whatsoever that it’s the only system that offers mankind maximum prosperity and justice, while helping feed the poor, provide for families and the elderly, and minimize social violence and war.
It isn’t perfect, but no system will ever be because it’s a human system. People aren’t perfect, and what we do never will be. Systems and laws are only as good as the people who operate within them, and goodness is a function of worldview.
If you don’t understand the unparalleled value of capitalism—that it’s really our only option if the goal is flourishing and success—you are either uneducated, not being honest with yourself, or suffering from any number of conditions: envy, selfishness, greed, laziness, power mongering, elitism, identity politics, postmodernism, or other worse conditions quite possibly on the road to genuine evil. In general, American schools today do not teach the truth about capitalism.
The ultimate ends of socialism and communism are decline, dependence, slavery, and, if not reversed, murder. State-planned economies always fail in peaceful competition with free nations.
Worldview War
Clearly, with the recent rise of democratic socialism and Islamic socialism, America has become deadlocked in a worldview war influencing every area of politics. Academics and journalists who formerly sought to end “culture wars” increasingly see compromise as unlikely given the incompatibility of the Classical Judeo-Christian (CJC) and Marxist worldviews. The same would be true of Christianity and orthodox Islam. Already in this century, mass Muslim European immigration has proven this true, and the situation there should be a warning to Americans.
The words capitalist and socialist surfaced in the early 1800s (“isms” came slightly later) during the early stages of the Industrial Revolutions in Europe and America. Marx is famous for adopting and flipping Hegel’s Christian-inspired, spiritual, historical narrative. He adopted the terms capitalism and socialism to create a materialist, conflict-driven, and dialectical narrative that made capitalism the bad guy who would ultimately lose.
He was, is, and always will be completely wrong about that. All national attempts to build socialism or communism have failed, unless they reversed course and moved back in the direction of “capitalism.” Marx’s inevitable stages of history are nothing of the sort.
Since the emergence of global capitalism, the percentage of people around the world who live in extreme poverty has fallen from 90% to less than 10% today, while the world’s population has more than doubled. No one predicted this, and it is an economic miracle. Similarly, since 1800, wealth has increased per capita for everyone exponentially, while the quality and length of life have improved even more. The least wealthy today live better than the divine-right kings and queens of old. Capitalism means the people determine what is offered, not the state.
In honor of America’s 250th birthday, I’ve done some binge reading since July 4 about America and capitalism and finished the books shown in the picture here.
We reviewed The Triumph of Economic Freedom several weeks ago, and I also highly recommend Rainer Zitelmann’s In Defense of Capitalism: Debunking the Myths (2023). Of course, again, capitalism is not a flawless system, and it’s always adjusting and changing.
At the very bottom here, I also sample the recent flurry of short articles on the subject. As was true 100 or 200 years ago, many of capitalism’s flaws are quite fixable at the political, private, macro, and micro levels. However, the People of the United States of America would be totally insane to move away from what the rest of the world has been trying to emulate, including China since Deng Xiaoping. (See America Against America in the picture, written by one of China’s leading CCP ideologues.)
In fact, America’s so attractive it seems everyone wants to move here.
New Narrative, Words, and Terminology Needed
There are dozens of reasons beyond the scope of this post why democratic socialism (a term intended to soften the word socialism) has gained popularity since the fall of the Soviet Union (the “End of History”) and since China turned to increased private property and more freely operating businesses. It’s also astounding how sympathy has developed for Islam (especially, in opposition to our crucial strategic and worldview ally, Israel) since September 11, 2001.
James Freeman’s Wall Street Journal article (August 7, 2026), entitled ‘Abolish Capitalism. Viva Free Enterprise!’ (at the top of the appendix below), drives home the point that many find the word capitalism offensive. He notes that Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman didn’t like it, and he advocates for using the phrase free enterprise. He notes that Marx adopted and made the term famous to smear Western free economics with false absolute priorities, including money, capital, and profits. Freeman’s WSJ commentators readily agree.
In his book In Defense of Capitalism, Zitelmann presents the results of several fascinating global surveys showing that using the word capitalism in survey questions decreases ratings of free enterprise by over 50%, even among respondents who like capitalism. I’ve noted this significant problem since 1976, when I first read Trotsky carefully, and have written about it many times in these pages and elsewhere.
In addition, several of our Praxis Circle Contributors have noted the problem as well. For example, Michael Novak (see the video at top) used the phrase democratic capitalism to soften the word (which John Paul II also used in favoring capitalism over socialism in the 1991 encyclical, Centesimus Annus), and Deirdre McCloskey has proposed her own word: “innovism.”
These are admirable, logical, and effective ways to approach the problem, though, in my opinion, not quite comprehensive enough on a worldview basis to compete with Marx. I think the venerable early Catholic monks who renamed time into A.D. and B.C. were more on the right track. We need to keep designating time that way and expand their thinking.
Zitelmann also shows in his terrific book, with detailed account, how evil and inhumane true socialism and communism become in virtually every case. These true stories will be shocking to those not familiar with Marxism’s history. The reason true Marxism always becomes murderous? Since it doesn’t work and people hate it, the government severely represses them to stay in power (if they don’t starve first, that is).
Given the “scientific materialist” philosophy these regimes operate from, there’s no problem at the end of the day there: people are just matter, no different than dirt.
In Defense of Capitalism also notes from well-designed surveys how socialists and communists are much more inclined to see a world filled with conspiracy (both before and after “the revolution”). No doubt, this bent uses violence and murder to accomplish the revolution in the first place and then, afterwards, to eliminate the state opposition in perpetuity.
In any case, capitalism is not about capital; it is about serving human needs, doing it best when operating within a framework of orthodox Judeo-Christian morality, duties, rights, laws, political systems, and freedom. Such is American history.
Socialism: A Fake Political Religion
In classical socialism, the state uses its power to plan political and economic activity through a significant reduction or elimination of private property, as well as individual and group freedom. Given what we know today, this is always stupid. Our distinguished Praxis Circle Contributor Frank Hill recently quoted President Reagan: “Socialism only works in two places: Heaven, where they don’t need it, and Hell, where they already have it.”
As Zitelmann explains in a concluding chapter, socialism is a secular religion with no success after 200 years of trying. It’s a pure utopian fantasy that has never worked and always ends up in the long run with despotism and death. Socialists hope the people won’t notice, and they are experts at fog. Well over 20 countries have failed in attempting socialism, and Venezuela offers the latest and nearest template of decline, misery, and totalitarianism. These sad experiments offer no new models any country can adopt with any certainty. They only confirm failure.
Again, countries like England, Sweden, and China that have tried socialism and are still around to talk about it because they reversed course to a significant degree. All thriving countries need a large, dominant, and expanding private sector centered on family, preferably based on Judeo-Christian values. Is this not what we should expect from the truth? Prosperity isn’t planned; it’s released.
Each Scandinavian country mischaracterized as socialist has a small, relatively homogeneous population and, most importantly, a thriving private sector that supports its government welfare programs. The trends have been toward a smaller government sector, not larger.
America is quite different as a large and pluralistic nation. America has always featured free enterprise while resting on Christianity’s foundational values and functioning under the rule of law, not the rule of men, without aristocracy and formal social classes. Most Americans detest elitism and the idea of social classes. “Welfare” reform since World War I has eliminated stark poverty and need, and today it offers citizens support throughout life. Whether the system is working, has become corrupt, or can be designed more effectively are separate issues.
Today, however, a full-court press is needed to avoid catching the socialism disease that has nearly destroyed so many once great European countries and others around the world. Sadly, socialists are taking over the Democratic Party in alliance with Muslims, though party officials are trying to deny it.
Connecting Christianity to Politics
In contrast to America, Europe experienced the dark shadows of Marxism beginning in the 1840s. In response, the Christian Democratic Party formed in the late 1800s. While supporting labor, the Roman Catholic Church challenged the spread of socialist dogma in its early stage magisterium. Then, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the USSR actively fomented world revolution across the European continent well after the end of World War I. As a result, Christian Democracy surged again.
In sum, for at least 150 years, European Christians following their worldview created political programs attaching their religion to the fight against socialism, fascism, and communism spreading across the European continent.
A similar sense of urgency never developed during the same time in America, in part because we didn’t perceive the same threats or class differences. Most importantly, “capitalism” with a Christian underpinning was working well for the people, and they knew it. On balance, they saw the truth clearly and highly valued their Christian freedom and heritage.
The same conditions do not apply today, and the situation is much more serious, if not yet desperate. Christian morality and virtue dominated America until the early 1960s. We have declined significantly in moral fiber since then.
While Christianity is not primarily about politics, I believe Christianity provides the primary and perhaps only effective offense and backstop for America and the West. Hoping that a neutral or naked public square—predominantly filled with human secularism, philosophical principles, law, the Constitution, therapy, human goodwill, or other universal naturalisms—will prevent further national and civilizational decline is severely misguided. Today, an intense desire to overturn America for the thrill of power manipulation, destruction, and sport infects even some in the halls of Congress who are sworn to protect it. We are paying a significant number of DC politicians quite well to destroy us.
And yet, we know so much more about God and the way the world works best than we did 200, 100, or even 50 years ago. We’ve lost ground not only because America’s enemies are succeeding in a long march into our institutions, but also because Christians are still relying on the same, now tired narratives and words, when the playing field has changed significantly. Still in the American majority (when including cultural Christians), Christians have lost control of words like liberal, conservative, progressive, democracy, secularism, public, private, goodness, capitalism, and fascism—words that Christians either invented or had a primary hand in promoting or opposing.
Capitalism is all at once the most liberal, conservative, and progressive economic engine. Indeed, it defines progress, and goodness requires a worldview. It grew out of a centuries-long and intense focus on the Bible.
Fundamentalist Islam and Marxism have joined forces as “enemies of the enemy” now in a full-court press to bring America down. Reason alone isn’t enough to stop this without stronger attachments to truth, love, feelings, compassion, as well as the courage only a higher power supporting belief in the same can provide.
Furthermore, we ordinary American Christians are having a hard time relying on Mainline, Catholic (under the last two popes), and traditional evangelical Protestant voices (who do regularly get heavily involved in politics) to speak for us.
We need better words and an updated worldview narrative to describe CJC. We need to be able to explain quickly, in few words but with abundant meaning and reference, how the Bible and the history of Christian civilization point to “Americanism” (the Creed), or even a “Christianism,” to attract those who either attach only to ideology or are weak in faith. After all, though perhaps following a political religion, our socialist and communist opponents who exclude God are relying solely on ideology.
In Europe, it’s clear to anyone attacking Christian Democratic politics that one is also attacking the Christian religion. Muslims are extremely clear on this point with their attachment to Sharia law. While it’s not for every American Christian, Christian Democracy “with American characteristics” is an option that should be there and could fit within a larger political party. Lastly, attempting narrative improvement is a worthy endeavor if for no other reason than practicing creative thinking; in other words, thinking forward outside the box.
It could be a mouthful, but, in any case, we need a tighter, yet broader consensus. America is a democratic republic due to centuries of Christian social evolution. Perhaps a Christian Democratic Republican (CDR) Party—or another submovement within the GOP—could emerge, along with an increasingly likely influx of center-right Democratic Party members who mutiny (as Ronald Reagan once did) that becomes more of a big tent CDR Party?
The one aspect of political ideology that most Republicans, whether Judeo-Christian or libertarian, can agree is “Madisonianism”: a belief in the goodness of Madison’s and the other Founders’ vision for the Constitution.
Madison and others made a close call to keep the word “God” out of the Constitution to give it a purely secular underpinning, even though some state constitutions did mention God. Well, that was fine when almost everyone was Christian, and Protestant at that. But this is not the case now, and I think many citizens are searching today for more effective, peaceful ways (like the CDR idea) to connect their religion with their politics. We haven’t found the answers yet. Lastly, the GOP needs to get better at creating a “big tent,” too.
Who knows where this will go? But a new consensus needs to start soon to build upon and recover from the necessary, or at least unavoidable, Trump years. Like him or detest him, President Trump might be the most unlikely politician in American history to have started the process of offensive-defense from the ground up outside America’s elitist halls of institutional culture.
Creastruction
What’s in a name?
Capitalism to a Marxist is an epoch in which cultural, social, political, and economic relations to “the means of production” define all of life and history. This nexus produces inherent contradictions that will lead to its destruction. It’s an era where money is more important than people, and the rich exploit the rest, while degrading the world, to their selfish, greedy, and unjust advantage. Sure, it’s an economic system, too, but that’s only one piece of a much larger worldview puzzle.
America needs an equally succinct and profound answer.
In contrast to Marx, Christ took down an empire, radically altered humanity, and redirected the world for all time when the stone rolled away, and He walked out of the tomb. St. Paul speaks of the New Creation that Christ’s revelation ushered in. It pulled back the veil of this world to reveal our future all the way to the end times and the spiritual world beyond. Via Christ, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, after a long fall, brought the option of salvation to His created imago Dei and re-enchanted Creation itself.
We have not lost this inheritance. On the contrary, America has embraced and is fulfilling it.
Under Christ’s guidance, CJC evolved beyond pagan Rome into the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment, and Christian modernity. We will continue to change and build Christ’s house in this world until the end time. He demands 100% from each of us; therefore, all religion, culture, social relations, politics, and economics are captured for His common good. While we are managing a building process—not an ism—whose goal is love and that changes the world, our goals, purposes, and meaning have not changed in 2,000 years. They don’t need reimagining because the Truth never changes; it simply unfolds.
Praxis Circle is dedicated to interviewing and creating content with an eye toward new worldviews and narratives that can bring human beings with differing worldviews together. Our alternative to capitalism is what we call Creastruction. Extreme debates between those with a Christian worldview over issues like tariffs or post-liberalism can be distracting and unhelpful. There is a broad Christian orthodoxy across the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox traditions that Christians are applying well at the grassroots level to society—certainly in America.
No, we don’t worship religion or ideology or the future, but the Truth revealed to us by the Grace of God in past and current space and time. It informs and guides our future. We, as human beings, are no better today than we were 2,000 years ago, but we are a whole lot wiser about how to apply Christ’s word to achieve Christ’s goals. Yes, it’s a journey and, at times, a war.
So, what’s in a name?
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2: 9 – 11)
Resurrected Jesus Exiting the Tomb, The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Recent Articles Commenting on Capitalism:
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/abolish-capitalism-viva-free-enterprise-4cad7776
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/late-capitalism-is-nonsense-ddd762a9
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/socialism-is-hereand-its-serious-2b3fc422
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/socialists-may-prove-surprisingly-strong-in-november-e25ade15
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/democratic-socialism-is-no-tea-party-52937f87
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/economics-drive-populism-and-socialism-8369a2b8
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/why-the-welfare-debate-went-silent-41fb2a18
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/how-to-cure-what-ails-american-capitalism-52d97161
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/socialism-is-the-wrong-answer-but-the-questions-are-real-53bb3f65
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/a-brief-history-of-wealth-creation-32bd917a
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/jd-vance-fixes-capitalism-dd1e20a6
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/milton-friedman-was-right-faeb46c6
https://www.morningbrew.com/stories/survey-americans-losing-faith-in-capitalism
https://www.commonplace.org/p/the-economics-of-vice
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/twelve-glaring-realities-of-marxist-socialism-6068509
https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/08/adam-smiths-warning-for-americas-new-socialists/
