I'm not surprised you had to first locate a Pepperdine Business Department economist to dredge up that load of self-serving bullshit.

First, what is capitalism? Capitalism didn't even have a name until it was defined by Marxists. Prior to that, there was just the marketplace, the agora, which was theoretically described by Adam Smith but has been instinctively familiar to all men since Ug traded Gorp a radish for a dead fish. It is socialism which is new and defined by 19th century economics, prior to that the idea of government taking the role of the merchant would have been unthinkable, if not impossible. It simply would not have occurred to anyone. There have been merchant classes and primitive capitalism in all the great civilizations of history, Egyptian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Indus Valley. Only the Andean and Central American cultures may have been organized differently, and we don't even know that for sure. But I digress, my purpose is not to defend socialism or attack capitalism, but to send this pompous turd packing straight to hell where he belongs.

"...the laws of logic; the concept of causality and, consequently, of a universe ruled by natural laws intelligible to man; on these foundations, the whole known corpus of the laws of mathematics and science..."

that is indeed the legacy of the Ionian mind and the pre-Socratic philosophers, as I have pointed out here only recently in another post. But that is precisely what Plato struggled against, with all his drivel about essences and shadows in caves and government by philosopher-kings supported by Spartanized warrior elites. Don't take my word for it, ask Aristotle what he thought about Plato.

As for the rest of Reisman's ponderous claptrap, he has simply assembled everything he claims to find virtuous in human history and neatly wrapped it up in his own convenient view of the past so he can give credit for it to his co-religionists. No, I don't disagree with the value of any of those things he tediously catalogues for our edification, as I will no doubt be accused of by his defenders, what really pisses me off is he dares to implicitly claim his fellow partisans to have been the sole inventors, guarantors and defenders of those virtues. Where does he get off? The balls of these people! Who the hell do they think they are? And of course, if you don't swallow their dreck unquestioningly, you are a barbarian and a villain. And no doubt, a collectivist. Ooooooooooooooooh.

Of course, after hitting the right powdered wig and three-cornered hat buttons:

"...among them the right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness...",

(You will note he has had to edit the grand prose of Jefferson to insert what really concerns him.) He then adds all those other things the neocons have invented and graciously provided to us in their infinite largesse,

"...the need for limited government and for the individual's freedom from the state; on this entire preceding foundation, the validity of capitalism, with its unprecedented and continuing economic development in terms of division of labor, technological progress, capital accumulation and rising living standards...".

Someone should remind the good Doktor that John Hancock was a revolutionary, not a fucking insurance company.

Finally he wraps it up with a call to enlist the arts and literature to help him propagate these corporate virtues to the unwashed masses. He even has the audacity to dictate what kind of music we should listen to. Not just the program, the rhetoric as well. Doubleplussgoodspeak and rightthink up the wazoo.

C'mon TB, you don't have to be a communist to see the "when did you stop beating your wife" aspect of this Pepperdine partisan propaganda obscenity. Read this piece of crap again, carefully. If it doesn't piss you off with its patronizing lecturing tone, then you have truly lost the human capacity for outrage.