Peggy Noonan, Socialist?

I love Peggy. Let's make that clear from the start. I think she is warm, wise and tries very hard to have a feel for us peasants. She's also a good weathervane for the cutlure. Dig this. In that essay, she says the tax reform bill was a good thing, but now corporations need to do what government would have done anyway.

I end with this. This bill gives American big business more than a boatload of money, it offers a historic opportunity—a timely and perhaps final one.

Big corporations can take the gift of the tax cut (and the continuance of the carried interest loophole, that scandal) and do superficial, pleasing public relations sort of things, while really focusing on buying back stock and upping shareholder profits.

And they’ll do this if they’re stupid, and craven.

Or they could set themselves to saving the system that made them, and helping the country that made their lives possible.

They can in some new way see themselves as citizens—as members of America, as people with a stake in this nation, a responsibility for it. They can broaden, invest, hire, expand and start the kinds of projects that take the breath away. They can literally get young men and women out of the house, into the workplace, learning something. They can change and save lives. This would be costly. Spend.

Um, Peg? Corporations are not formed to save systems. They are formed to offer goods and services that customers want and in so doing, generate wealth. That's it. Yes, philanthropy and civic-mindedess are good things, but that's not the mission of corporations, it's a byproduct.

Cities and states woo businesses becase they want the jobs, the growth and the wealth that comes along with them. It's a tacit admission of reality - someone has to make a profit if you want jobs. Peg goes on.

One of our two political parties is being swept by a young and rising new left that is fiercely progressive and on fire for socialism. It may well in coming decades sweep the CEOs and their corporations away if they cannot rouse themselves to present economic freedom as an ultimate and democratic good.

This may be the last opportunity for business leaders to do what hasn’t been done in a generation, and that is defend the reputation of capitalism.

Um, no. Capitalism is a fact, it's how the world works. Like biology, it's out of favor right now, but that doesn't make it any less of a fact. The resurgence in the popularity of socialism isn't caused by businesses doing what businesses have always done, it's caused by the current fads of the intellectuals.

CNBC had a couple of tweets after the passage of the tax bill where they highlighted companies who were giving bonuses, increasing pay rates and promising investment. The replies were illuminating. Lefty hatred of business wasn't bought off by the corporations doing good things. Prog after prog replied with scorn and fury. So much for defending reputations.

I don't want the businesses in my city, state or nation to worry about getting lazy 20-somethings out of their parents' basements, either. I want them to make money so they stick around and hire people. The lazy slobs can figure out how to get to work on their own. That's how the world works.

Here we see a typical, greedy CEO, rushing to bury his ill-gotten gains, squeezed from the workers, in his back yard.