Despite its many successes, Israel has been hindered by a deep-seated belief that the state is responsible for managing the economy. Among intellectuals, academics, and policymakers, the idea that a nation’s economic progress results from a culture imbued with the spirit of capitalism, and not from government intervention, is almost heretical. Amnon Lord writes:

[I]n a lecture in Jerusalem, [American] presidential candidate Mitt Romney said [in 2012] that he attributes Israeli economic success to a “strong culture.” “I come here to this city and I see the accomplishments of people of this nation,” he said. “I see the power of culture and other things.” Romney compared the Israeli economy to the Palestinian one in terms of GNP: “You see such dramatic and prominent differences in economic vitality.” Later he said in a more philosophical tone: “if you can learn something from the history of the economy in the world, this is the lesson: culture is what makes the difference.”

The pseudo-intellectual outrage that erupted in the wake of Romney’s statements is a test case in how a profound truth turns into a distortion at the hands of those who support leaving power in the hands of the state and fraudulent “social justice.” As if a statement on how culture can help the economy promotes the idea of “cultural superiority”—with racial superiority not far off, of course. This is one of the methods used by supporters of socialism nowadays to suppress any serious discussion of the profound questions of economic reform.

Reviewing Stranger Than Fiction, a new history of the 20th-century novel, Joseph Epstein draws attention to what’s missing:

A novelist and short-story writer who gets no mention whatsoever in Stranger Than Fiction is Isaac Bashevis Singer. When from time to time I am asked who among the writers of the past half century is likely to be read 50 years from now, Singer’s is the first name that comes to mind. His novels and stories can be sexy, but sex, unlike in many of the novels of Norman Mailer, William Styron, or Philip Roth, is never chiefly about sex. His stories are about that much larger subject, the argument of human beings with God. What Willa Cather and Isaac Bashevis Singer have that too few of the other novelists discussed in Stranger Than Fiction possess are central, important, great subjects.