“If you have a car and you want to go forward, what do you do? You put it in 'D,'” Obama said. “When you want to go backwards, what do you do? You put it in 'R.' I'm just saying -- that’s no coincidence. We are not going to give them the keys back." (Click here for full article.)That line gets a hearty chuckle from politically-empathetic crowds, but the larger historical record of leftist economic policy tells a different story.
In the introduction to his book, Capitalism and Freedom
(click here for Book Reports), Milton Friedman explains how the modern-day "liberal" has come to favor a resurrection of the paternalistic state policies of seventeenth-century mercantilism against which proponents of classical liberalism---free market capitalism, that is---fought:
"In the very act of turning the clock back to seventeenth-century mercantilism, he is fond of casting true liberals as reactionary!"Free market capitalism was a tremendous leap forward out of the economic doldrums of the past. The more people were free to exchange goods and services, the faster the standard of living rose for untold millions of people. When societies fostered freedom in their markets, they set the course of their lives and the lives of their posterity forward into greater prosperity.
As Ludwig von Mises noted in chapter one of The Anticapitalistic Mentality
(click here for Book Reports):"Capitalism deproletarianized the 'common man' and elevated him to the rank of 'bourgeois'...Those underlings who in all the preceding ages of history had formed the herds of slaves and serfs, of paupers and beggars, became the buying public, for whose favor the businessmen canvass."Increasing government intervention and influence in our lives and liberties in not setting the car that is our society in "Drive." With every increase in the central control of our market and therefore economic lives, the government currently controlled by the Ds are heading in Reverse, turning the clock back to the mercantilistic policies that stalled societal adavance and the elevation of millions from hand-to-mouth existences. Fannie and Freddie control of home mortgages, taking over GM, bank bailouts, and centralizing our health care into the hands of a bureaucratic Leviathan is most certainly putting the car in reverse.
In so far as any of the Rs agree to go along with these backward, regressive economic policies, the president is correct, they are putting the car in reverse. But the ones putting the car in Reverse are hopping along for a ride with you, Mr. President.
