The supposed spat, or non-spat, between Donald Trump and Pope Francis over the legitimacy of the U.S. border got most of the press attention, but as our IBD editorial noted, the really galling element of his talk was in his condemnation of capitalism.
You know, that place the Mexicans want to run to, not from, even if illegally.
Because yes, the U.S. is the global ground zero of capitalism, and not because its people are bigger "slave-drivers," as the Pope put it in his statements on the nature of capitalism.
Fact is, U.S. Americans are quite a bit kinder in their charity and in fact more generous than anyone else in admitting newcomers -- one million new immigrants each year at last count.
So the slave-driver charge doesn't exactly hold water out in the world's hotbed of capitalism. How could Pope Francis get it so wrong?
Maybe it has something to do with which Peruvian he listens to. I'm not kidding. The best and the worst ideas from the South American continent seem to come from that country, and there's evidence that the Pope hears only one side of the Peruvian coin. To wit, his "cordial" meetings with one Gustavo Gutierrez, S.J., known as the founder of liberation theology, an unholy mash-up of Marxism, guerrilla gun-fighting and Catholicism. For a long time, the Church frowned on the idiocy. But since Pope Francis took the papal throne, he's apparently made the idea welcome again and met with Gutierrez more than once, reportedly on cordial terms.
The Peruvian he's ignoring is the one who has the real answers to poverty on every continent -- and he got that answer by carefully studying the history of capitalism as it is practiced in the United States, digging through dusty county clerk offices and file cabinets full of old property records.
Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto (no, not the conquistador explorer he shares a name with!) found that the reason why capitalism -- and all the prosperity it brings -- flourishes in the U.S. is because of its freedom. And that freedom has a very specific invisible architecture. De Soto's groundbreaking 2000 book, "The Mystery Of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs In The West And Fails Everywhere Else," is a masterly study of the difference between the prosperous U.S. and the un-prosperous third world, both of which claim to be capitalist.
Mexico's version of capitalism is little more than cronyism (ever notice how the same dozen oligarchs make the Forbes billionaires list year after year?). The U.S. brand of capitalism is premised on rule of law and, very specifically, property rights. As Mexico doesn't have all of that, the result is that many of its citizens seek to move north because that's where the freedom -- and the money -- is.
De Soto has written a fine new essay on this very phenomenon explicitly to show the Pope that capitalism isn't the problem, rule of law is the problem, and in particular, rule of law as it pertains to property rights. Mexico continues to have a very deficient system, which he argues is the reason why so many of its nationals are heading north.
Maybe if the Pope would listen to that Peruvian instead of the failed socialist Peruvian he currently consorts with, he would finally understand why poverty persists in Mexico and what it takes to end poverty in the hemisphere.
If he is serious about that, of course.
