Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 10:44:59 AM
As I wrote in the last post, while we have handed the state almost unlimited power to compel businesses to form "partnerships" with the government, whether they want to or not, and then to use that power to enact almost any changes the state desires, for the moment popular opinion seems to limit that power to matter financial and automotive. So, while the government now has the power to effectively take over the entire economy through "investment", it lacks the popular support to do so.
But what about the next "crisis"?
When workers at Wal-mart strike, what is to prevent a government "partnership" forcing unionization? When there is a spate of hospital bankruptcies, what is to prevent the government from bailing out the health care industry, effecting a backdoor entry into universal health care? When any industry shows sings of the usual ups and downs of business, what is to keep the state from exercising the same sort of unlimited power that it has exercised recently with the auto industry and banks?
And it doesn't matter who is in office. Does anyone think a Republican will be less inclined to nationalize than a Democrat? Not with the "moderate" Republicans we now have in office, the ones voting to pillory AIG. Whatever party is in office, once the government is given a power, it will exercise it. It takes an unusual politician to refuse to use power, and we haven't been breeding Madisons, Jacksons or Clevelands lately.
So, whether Obama has the opportunity to use it or not, by granting the government unlimited power, we have sealed our fate. At some point the state will use this power again, and again. Unless an unusual man steps forward to save us from ourselves, we have given the state the tools it needs to take over every last vestige of private enterprise.