As we enter 2009 in tumult and worry, it occurred to me that we are all lucky enough to bear witness to either something horrible, or something fantastic – depending on your political point of view. We are seeing the birth of the most painful “stimulus” package ever conceived. We get to watch as a new President, carrying the hopes and dreams of millions, sinks or swims with one of the largest political gambles any President has ever had the displeasure to make. And possibly, just possibly, we are watching a new kind of lost decade – one that the democrats are arrogantly marching right into.
The stimulus package is a new kind of beast. It hasn't been tried on this scale in the United States. And by most estimates, the 800+ billion dollars that will go into the economy shortly is only the first installment of what appears to be a new kind of pay-as-you-go plan. As I write this, I've received word that between the Senate, The Federal Reserve and The Treasury, a mind boggling 3 trillion dollars will be poured into the economy in an attempt to “prime the pump” of our struggling financial situation. It's all been pieced together with minds toward expanding government, especially pork spending and government bureaucracy.
Our leadership is under the impression that by pursuing more of what caused our problems, on a larger and broader scale, our problems – namely, government intervention in the economy and massive credit bubbles - will naturally go away. So far, however, not a single politician or economist has made a clearly logical case as to how “stimulating” more government, or a larger credit binge, could be successful pursuits in correcting the problems caused by earlier intervention and credit binges. It makes me think of a good analogy. Can you cure obesity by using forced feeding as your remedy? If you're overweight, the correct action is to reverse course, not gobble down more in the hope you will get skinny again.
But what our good President, shouldering arguably the second largest economic burden in history is doing, is walking head-long into the easy-breezy whisperings of the Keynesians. These are the people who still believe that multi-trillion dollar, multi-national economies can be controlled with the flick of a few tiny switches. They are the people I refer to as “today's keepers of tomorrow's mistakes.” They refuse to take their heads out of their economic sand traps and take a good, solid look at reality. And that, I believe, will be their downfall. The new President is in a rather impossible situation. If he and his democrat followers succeed, they will have passed on a legacy to future generations that will most surely be detested. They will have crated at least two generations that will feel they are slaves to the mistakes of their forefathers. And if they fail, they will take today's economy down with them; and other economies, in other parts of the world, are sure to follow. The spending street they are running madly down right now ends in a solid concrete wall. The only difference is how long it takes the democrats to get there. Either this year, or several years hence. Either way, the dems are going to lose a great deal of political clout. As the song goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
But there are people like me, watching from the sidelines, who spend nights in front of the television squirming and twisting with extraordinary discomfort. We think the government has become absurd. We think the economy has become absurd. And most of all, we can't believe how single-minded and ignorant our politicians have become. More intervention is not the answer. More economic freedom is what we need now more than ever. Regulation and intervention is the way to stifle economies, not resuscitate them.
So the arrogance and impossibility the dems find themselves stuck in right now makes people like myself squirm and smile. I know that one way or another, the democrats are tying their own nooses. The cure for what ails us cannot be the same as its cause. And that leaves me with only one course of action as a possibility – the return of conservatism.
But being a Libertarian, what I want to see most is the return not of Republican small government, but instead, the return of what government truly should be – responsible only for the things that individuals cannot possibly provide for themselves. The foundation of law, and its enforcement; disaster response; roads, highways and bridges; fire protection; national and international intelligence and defence, and a few other things come to mind. But those are debatable. At any rate, the present economic fiasco leads me to believe that only conservatism can be in our immediate future. I even think that the democrats could suffer a “lost decade” of their own, Japanese-style.
So I would like to say to President Obama: Mr. President, you are making the largest economic mistake in American history. Please stop now. It's going to cost you and your party dearly.
If you don't, I would like to say that the Libertarians are coming. THE LIBERTARIANS ARE COMING!
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