Posted by
S.C. Hickman on Monday, November 10, 2008 1:20:06 PM
Many people are quick to criticize and disparage conservatives, yet very few of these critics truly know or apprehend the underlying power of the conservative vision. The
Republican Contract with America is still viable and worthy of our support but will be difficult to enact now that the Democrats have power, yet that does not mean we should resign our selves to apathetic withdrawal and cycnical despair. No. Now is the time to fight, to oppose the liberal paternalism that Baruch Obama, Congress, and the Senate will strive to facilitate.
What is the biggest issue we face as a nation? Economics. Inflation. And what is the cure? As Milton Friedman once remarked: "The cure for inflation is simple to state but hard to implement." The side effects of inflation hurt many people. Slow growth and high unemployment have already become apparent and will only deepen in the future. We know that Baruch Obama will engender a "
behavioural economics", one that will lead to a benign Liberal Paternalism, a socialististic pavlovianism seeking to restrict the consumers set of choices and prohibit destructive behavior through government intervention using economic and social programs.
This type of economics leads to the curtailment of freedoms for the common good, which is the sort of centralised social engineering strategy that lead the old communist regimes to enact five-year plans, and which in Washington might enable bureaucrats to announce that millions of people will have to change their conduct over the next five years. Is this what Obama really wants to facilitate? Is this what he meant in his inagural speech when he mentioned that people will need to make "sacrifices" for the common good?
Instead of the Liberal Paternalism that Obama and the Democrats offer we need to move forward with the tried and true economic policies that made Reganomics so viable; based as they were on the Chicago school of Free Choice and an economics of prosperity. Yes, we will have to meet the needs of our own time, change things to suit the moment, but inflation and its side effects is still the same no matter what time as historical review shows. We will have to mitigate the effects of this cycle of inflation with the a strident no nonsense policy, one that will help the people to readjust to these long-term effects, give them a set of what Friedman termed "escalator clauses" as a temporary measure. Wage contracts, rental contracts, and loan and mortgage contracts must all be taken into account for inflationary discretion. Yet, this must not become a permanent solution because universal escalator clauses would reduce the advantage in the long run of people and corporations of being able to carry on transactions cheaply and effectively. The conclusion as Friedman succintly stated it is:
1. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon arising from a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in the output.
2. In today's world government determines the quantity of money.
3.There is only one cure for inflation: a slower rate of increase in the quantity of money.
4. It takes time- measured in years, not months- for inflation to develop; it takes time for inflation to be cured.
5. Unpleasant side effects of the cure or unavoidable.
Unemployment and stagflation will be with us for some time, but how we cure the problem is going to be the next great challenge of the Republican party. Will we allow the Liberal Paternalism of Baruch Obama and his economic advisors to move us toward a socialistic solution - a welfare society , or will we strive once again to enact what Friedman called an "Economic Bill of Rights" to complement and reinforce the original Bill of Rights? As Friedman shows us such an Economic Bill of Rights would be a good first step in helping limit government, it would help formulate amendments and shape public opinion toward an effective economic policy. This would help decentralize the policies and put them back into the hands of citizens in state by state balloting to adopt amendents rather than be in the hands of legislators at the Federal level.
Obama would concentrate power in the Federal Government and put the control of our economic future in the hands of the Legislators, a Liberal Paternalism that will include another middle-class tax cut; more tax credits for education and fuel-efficient cars; a bigger budget for the National Science Foundation; and the establishment of a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, with an annual budget of $6 billion. This is the liberal agenda. Government control and intervention through programs and welfare strategies. It did not work during the New Deal to the Great Society of the 60's and will not work now. It is a bankrupt ideology that we as conservatives must oppose at every turn.
Friedman in response to President Kennedy's inagural address once said:
"The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him, nor what he for his country. He will ask rather “What can I and my compatriots do through government” to help us discharge our individual responsibilities to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: “How can we keep the government from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?” Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is concentration of power."
Maybe this is where we should begin our campaign against Obama's Libertarian Paternlism: the
threat of concentrated power that is the earmark of an engineered society.
Friedman was an optimist. He was convinced people could be taught the truths of economics, and if people were properly taught, then institutions could be built to protect society as a whole against the corruption and overreach of the government. This is the type of conservative optimism that individuals need again. We need a healthy fear of government. Maybe a little of the old, libertarian school philosophy, from the days before the scolds had captured the levers of power in the conservative movement, might help us. The simple distrust of government intrusion into people's private business. We should abhor government deficit spending and cynical politicians who pretend that the costs of government are less than they are by pushing the raising of taxes to pay for spending off into the future. And, most of all, we should all attack this new democratic agenda of "tax and spend" for what it is: the death knell of the American Economic system.