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Calmeyer’s Legacy is a legacy of Law used for its best permitted qualities of furthering and protecting the human race, and resistance to the use of Law in its most inhuman interpretations. So Calmeyer was ultimately fighting inhuman Law.
Capitalism requires mutual respect for value given, it does not respond well to tyranny. Capitalism requires a cohesive system of laws, and even sometimes regulation, to function smoothly. But most of all, it requires trade under reasonably peaceful conditions, and the maintenance of some enforcement of honor and ethics in respect of legal contracts. In other words, capitalism requires a civilized culture of rules, but a flexible culture that can sustain and protect the creation of purchasing power (wealth), maintain individual creativity, respect enjoyment of goods and services, and all this not just by an elite class. Capitalism does not require democracy, but democracy helps to enable a larger swath of the public to participate on a more equal basis. Capitalism on the other hand thrives on individual creativity and initiative, which is large eliminated in Communism, where differences that may lead to special performance and success are “the nails that are hammered down.”
The Judeo-Christian Culture of Life is a foundation for valuing individual life, valuing and allowing property, and valuing individual contribution. These are essential foundations for thriving value creation, wealth creation, and ultimately capitalism. Yes, commerce was vibrant at times throughout the ages, with specialized merchant classes (including Jews) that were essentially free to engage in trade
With trade came the financing of trade, putting up working capital and collecting for transactions over time. Successful and smooth trade eventually requires “derivatives” in addition to hard cash, in the forms of loans, letters of credit, and other instruments and debt obligations that constitute money but are not hard currency. That in turn created a need for rates of return on such instruments funded by the sources of capital, whether individuals or institutions representing hard money. But Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures were all perceived at one point as barring usury interest. Today usury or charging interest of any kind is still not permissible under Sharia.
Even Christianity for the first 1700 years essentially forbade usury, or charging of interest on money-lending, which was considered un-biblical because a rate of return was being garnered from a non-physical asset such as a loan. Christianity, however, was from the very beginning pleased to let Jewish financiers charge interest, maintain their own perceived purity, and let the Jews bear the criticism of not being as moral as Christians. Christianity graduated from this attitude and joined and competed with Jews in banking/financing after the French Revolution, but Muslims have not changed, though there are Sharia workarounds as well as the time tested technique of using others to perform the duties of collecting rates of return from various fees and interest-like charges.
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