I agree with Rush. FREEDOM is the key here, I’m sorry you don’t understand that, AprilOrit. The government chose to give these banks money. It was a stupid decision that goes against America’s principles, but that doesn’t mean you punish the bankers or start taking away their freedoms. In the Northern Trust case, Obama spontaneously gave billions to a bank that didn’t even ask for it. (It happened to be the bank that holds his mortgage… hmmmmmm.) Hold congress accountable for the stupidity and corruption.

To make an analogy: If you decide that my clothes are too shabby, so you give me $100 and tell me to buy some new shirts, am I obligated to buy shirts? I wasn’t the one who wanted shirts, and I never promised to buy shirts, nor did I even ask for the money. If I use the $100 to buy something I want, do you have the right to sue me? Of course not.

Learn your lesson. Don’t give people money out of the blue and assume that that gives you the power to take away their freedom.

If the government didn’t want the banks to decide how to spend the money, it shouldn’t have given the money to them.

joe_doufu on March 1, 2009 at 12:07 AM

Well said! A free society requires a captive government. There’s no way a wealthy, enlightened nation will tolerate its poor starving to death in the streets, so some degree of social spending is inevitable. The problem is that some version of the Left will always be there to ask the question: if *some* social spending is good, then wouldn’t a gigantic amount of social spending be *really* good?

The only way to prevent the slow degeneration that began with the New Deal, and ended with the current madness, is to regard government as a beast that must forever be kept in chains. Even when we decide government must be given funds to address some social issue, they should be monitored carefully. The kind of dedication, humility, and selflessness required to efficiently administer charity is only found in organizations like the Salvation Army. It will *never* be found in any operation run by politicians.

Most urgently, the government must be forever separated from the economy, because in order to serve its proper role as a watchdog and enforcer of laws, it cannot be an active participant. There’s a reason referees wear funny shirts and stand on the sidelines during the game. Isn’t it interesting that the degree of crisis in any given sector of the economy today is directly related to how much government is involved in that sector? If private enterprise bears the primary responsibility for the mortgage crisis that kicked off the nightmare of Fascist America, then why didn’t they cause the crisis ten, twenty, or fifty years ago? It took a government appratchik to dream up the Fannie Mae meltdown. The free markets can be brutal and make mistakes, but only compulsion could have made them hand out money to people they knew couldn’t repay it, and only seeing government as a partner could lead them to expect a bailout in the aftermath.

The post-Obama reconstruction will require some radical changes to our system of government and enterprise. I expect the demolition and reconstruction of the ridiculous tax system will be one of them – a key factor in the metastasizing of the New Deal cancer was the introduction of paycheck withholding, which made the growth of government largely invisible to workers. The abolition of deficit spending will be another – how many votes would Obama have gotten if he’d ended his promises of vast new spending by telling the voters they would all be receiving a bill for $20k in new taxes to pay for it?

How will the voters be persuaded to support such bold reforms? I would submit you’ll never get them on board with long monographs and pie charts. Leaving aside the grim question of outright stupidity, there’s no question that the voters are somewhat lacking in *engagement.* They have to become excited about something to get on board – they live in a culture of sardonic apathy, and conservatives will be fighting a media culture that equates spending government money on something with “caring” about it or “doing something.” The media’s most profound bias is its belief that only action taken by government counts as “doing something” about a problem – they find nothing heroic, bold, or sexy about a huge tax break, or the reduction of wasteful and inefficient government spending. To reach the voters and energize them, conservatism needs people of wit and passion, who aren’t afraid to be a little shocking. In short, we need a sober plan, advanced by intoxicating people.

Doctor Zero on March 1, 2009 at 12:35 AM