So, unless you’re one of the innumerable idiotic college freshman who just read The Fountainhead for the first time and suddenly feel the need to tell every single person you meet about this new “Objectivism” you’ve just discovered and how you now plan to give your life for no man, and to ask no man to give his life for you, I think the last week makes it pretty hard to believe that completely unregulated capitalism is any more of a raging success than communism was. Like anyone who didn’t study philosophy just for the tail, I tend to think the best answer lies in the middle, in moderation. Should we be bailing out Wall Street? My populist sensibility tells me no; my common sense tells me that maybe creating another Depression just to make a point isn’t the best idea either.

The thing is, I think that all the major crises facing us now are facets of the same problem: the economy’s gone to shit because for almost 30 of the last 40 years, people have been ruling this country who believe that if you’re poor, if you’re struggling, it’s because you’re an idiot, or irresponsible, or unwilling to work hard. Also, incredibly, these same people believe that businesses should be able to pay their workers whatever they feel like paying them without regard to whether or not said pay amounts to what we in the compassion-based community refer to as “a living wage;” that is, enough money to have the neccesities of life and not to have to choose between, say, food and medicine or shoes for their children.

I’m voting for Barack Obama because he believes that the people who are the backbone of this country, the root of its greatness, are the hardworking people in the lower and middle classes. These are the people who show up for work every single day, often at shitty-ass, soul-sucking jobs, or even more remarkably, at jobs they love but that will never make them wealthy. People who were born rich and privileged (say, George W. Bush and John McCain) do not understand these people, because they’ve never really had to work hard for anything they’ve ever gotten. Barack Obama does understand them. And he has a plan that will put them first.