Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

With Harry Potter mania raging all about us the days now that book seven in the blockbuster series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has been released, Robert Bidinotto points up his December 2006 essay in The New Individualist, titled "An Open Letter to J.K. Rowling."

What does an article addressed to the Harry Potter author have to do with Republican and conservative politics? Everything, actually. Bidinotto's letter to Rowling explains free-market economics - and its rewards - in simple terms that even a grade-schooler reading Harry Potter can understand.

Because of your love for creative writing—because you aspired to cast your most cherished dreams, hopes, and fantasies on paper—because of the tenacity, determination, diligence, and care with which you nurtured that love—and because that love has brought joy and inspiration to millions—we, your grateful readers, choose to repay you in the only way we can: by buying your remarkable stories.

 

For us, Ms. Rowling, this is a fair trade. Actually, for any one of us, it is an incredible bargain. Just think: for only a few dollars (okay, pounds), each of us reaps the extraordinary benefits from years of your own personal investment: an investment of devotion, tears, concentration, fears, frustration, research, imagination, intelligence, and sheer hard work.

 

In exchange for the decade that you’ve spent at your desk, feeling chained and drained as you fought for the perfect word, we trade merely a few hours of our earnings. And, for that small price, we buy a ticket to the world that you created, and to which only you could transport us.

 

Ms. Rowling, unlike politicians and other thieves, you did not put a gun to our heads and order us to surrender our money to you. No, we give it up willingly, happily—knowing that what we gain from you is much, much greater than what little we pay in exchange.

 

The marketplace is but a barometer of human wants, reflecting the values of innumerable people. And it rewards creators like you only to the extent that your work satisfies their needs, values, and wants.

 

So, if the marketplace’s verdict is that J.K. Rowling has satisfied the needs, values, and wants of millions of paying customers—and if it therefore rewards you for sharing with us Harry Potter and his world—then you should regard every dollar you’ve earned as a token of honor, appreciation, and vindication.

 

Ms. Rowling, I want you to know this: you are morally entitled to every single penny of your earnings.

Read the whole thing. 

If only the American Left - the Democratic Party - would agree that people are morally entitled to their own earnings, rather than viewing your earnings as what you are allowed to keep after the state takes its rightful share.

We'd all be better off.

It's just too bad that Democratic Party greed is one evil that Harry Potter can't defeat.