The Audacity of Arrogance

From the mountains to the valleys, from sea to shining sea, from Oprah to Bill Maher, America is going crazy with excitement over Barack Obama. At Obama rallies people scream and throw themselves in the isle crying. Commentator Arianna Huffington has called Obama “the foundation of our country.” Obama’s appeal doesn’t end at the border, over 70% of French are “very excited” about Obama’s election.

This excitement is terrifying, or at least it should be. It reinforces myth propagated by the American media and political elite: an assumption that all progress comes from Washington. The love struck Boston Globe now urges Obama to take "bold steps to fix our economic crisis." The New York Times suggests the choice is "between a big-bang strategy of pressing aggressively on multiple fronts versus a more pragmatic, step-by-step approach .... " In other words, the choice is between one type of government mandate versus another government mandate. In the same editorial, the Times crows endlessly about how FDR ended the Depression and Obama will do the same.

Now Obama tells the nation, "we don't have a moment to lose," and he and the Democrats insist that government must support trade unions while destroying the worker’s right to a secret ballot and even more tax money needs to be handed out like candy to American industries.

This idea that politicians know best how our money should be spent is arrogance of the highest order. Only within Washington’s cloistered halls could this ideology ferment.

Obama promise "We will change the world ... There is nothing we can't do, nothing we can't accomplish if we are unified". Who is this "we" politicians always invoke?

It certainly isn’t me.

The politicians’ "we" isn't really a group of people. It means big government. The politician’s “we” will take your money by force (because they know best) and tell you what to do and how to do and how long you can do it for. That's no way to create prosperity.

Obama is an extraordinarily talented man. But there is one thing even “the one” can't successfully do: ignore the laws of economics. No one can do that. That's why we call them "laws."

The politicians cannot raise wages or create jobs or eliminate poverty by executive order. We can do so by freeing people to save and invest and accumulate capital. The politicians can't make medical care universal and inexpensive by legislative fiat, and we certainly cannot do it with a single-payer health care system. But we can approach that goal by permitting an unrestricted free market in medicine to work.