"I, Pencil": American enterprise and job creation

Playing the envy card

If 'creating jobs' is Job No. 1, lay off the rhetoric | Marvin Olasky

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Illustration by Krieg Barrie

President Barack Obama's rhetoric shows that politically liberal
Christians differ from politically conservative ones not only in policy
proposals but in the understanding of human nature that leads to those
proposals.

Let's think the best of our president. Let's suggest that his frequent
vilification of corporate presidents flying around on private jets--he
attacked them six times in a June 29 press conference--is more than a
political appeal to class envy.

Let's say he thinks private jet tax breaks are unfair because he is
philosophically committed to equality. Since President Obama has
emphasized that "creating jobs" is Job No. 1 for him, let's think the
best of him and assume he believes that taking away special treatment
for corporate presidents will help the unemployed get back to work.

If those assumptions are correct, we should treat the White House
occupant not with paranoia but with pity. He's showing a lack of both
business experience and biblical understanding. He and other liberals
are showing that they don't understand original sin.

People without business experience might think entrepreneurship is
easy. President Obama should at least scan "I, Pencil: My Family Tree,"
an essay written by Leonard Read in 1958. Read explains what it takes to
make even a simple writing tool: Its components include cedar, lacquer,
graphite, ferrule, pumice, wax, and glue--and huge numbers of people
must be at work before the final product emerges.

Read more at World Magazine

Then read the original I, Pencil - and have your children read it too to see why capitalism brings out the best in individuals:

I, Pencil


By Leonard E. Read



I am a lead pencil--the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.



Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that's all I do.



You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery --more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, "We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders."



I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me--no, that's too much to ask of anyone--if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because--well, because I am seemingly so simple.



Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.



Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye--there's some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.


Innumerable Antecedents


Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.



My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!



The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.



Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill's power!



Read more - including Introduction and printable PDF - at Foundation for Economic Education

Whether you are homeschooling or delegating your children's education to public or private school, you need to take charge of this area of their education, as free enterprise has been shrouded in doubt and blame by Marxist elites and others who would undo our American heritage.



Teaching our children to think for themselves means exposing them to those values, ideas, and intellectual constructs which the Left has been trying to bury for decades. Many thanks to Marvin Olasky for highlighting this classic. Please read his article and the original "I, Pencil." And keep spreading the good news of American exceptionalism. Vote only for those who believe in it and do not apologize for who we are.