PRESTOPUNDIT -- "An intense brain-buzz, guaranteed" -- 2blowhards

To Mr. Novak liberty is a moral precept of mutual respect. It finds vital dignity in the individual person everywhere. The author finds common roots in the Bible, the Torah and the Koran. So he sees a core philosophical unity among Christians, Jews and Muslims. He also sees "a gold-and-scarlet thread" woven in the entire fabric of human history, a thread signifying the basic liberty and dignity of each person ..

Life and liberty thrive all the more so in Mr. Novak's idea of "democratic capitalism," by which he means that capitalism and democracy are intertwined, up from common soil. He reminds us of other economic basics: that lunch never comes free and that one man's gain does not involve another man's loss. And he knows that trade is based on mutual gain and on creating wealth out of otherwise dormant resources. Mr. Novak applauds the realism of economist Thomas Sowell for noting the coexistence of the iron law of scarcity and man's desire to want more than there is, which create a situation that requires that man master division of labor and engage in trade and in social cooperation .. And he hails Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises who predicted the implosion of socialism in the Soviet Union for its lack of "economic calculation" and price-clearing markets. No surprise then that Mr. Novak maintains that "capitalism qua capitalism is the organization of an economic system around the human mind, around invention, discovery, and the sort of enterprise that creates new things that never before existed."