Pro Commerce

First shot or white flag?

I’ve been thinking about how to bridge the great American divide that confronts us.

I propose that we win the core argument.  We create a Library for the Trump Revolution; subtitled The Thinking and thinkers behind the Revolution.

The Left has neither thinkers nor meaningful ideas on their side much like the Democrat South in the last civil war. By hoisting a flag of intellectual superiority we win the argument.  Over time our intellectual dominance will win over a significant part of the opposition.

Such a library shall consist of video interviews, Prager U. courses, a large syllabus and a set of podcasts.  Much as I would like to call it ‘Hear from the Deplorables’ the real theme is clear language and superior arguments.

A short list of our faculty would be:  Thomas Sowell, Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Steyn, Ann Coulter, Shelby Steele, Heather MacDonald, Daniel Pipes, Bruno Macaes and a dozen others.

Money is trivial for this idea.  Superior execution is important.

Barons of the Civil War

It is my thesis that the nouveau ultra riche in America are a source of ongoing  innovation. They reinvest in the technology that made them rich.

Since I didn’t know the origins of many men who made their fortunes during the Civil War, I was happy to read a recent book by Jeffry Wert on the subject.

Special thanks to Ed Squibb who purified chloroform and ether that was heavily used in the War and the purifying techniques that built his long lived company.

Same with Gail Borden who gave us condensed milk in a durable metal can and a company that lasted into our lifetime.  The War soldiers thank him too. They also thank Philip Armour for similar work in pork and other meat.

John Deere vastly increased agricultural output with his special plow and all the innovations he added to it. This was concurrent with Cyrus McCormick.

The vast growth of shipping both by water and rail gave us Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Collis Huntington and his partners Leland Stanford and Mark Hopkins (and Charles Crocker).

This is also the source of the great Weyerhaeuser lumber fortune.  I gave a talk to the 110 descendents of this wealth back in the 1970’s.

In each case, the innovations that these men created for the Northern Army as their powerful client generated the bases for many fortunes and a number of corporations that survived a century.  

There were more and many were successful innovators whose names did not survive as corporate names.  Wert covers them well.