Back to the Future...

Today’s Quote:

Is it that God has at last removed his blessing from the U.S.A. and
what we feel now is just the clank of the old historical machinery,
the sudden jerking ahead of the rollercoaster cars as the chain catches
hold and carries us out and up toward the brink from that felicitous
and privileged siding where even unbelievers admitted that if it was
not God who blessed the U.S.A., then at least some great good luck
had befallen us, and that now the blessing or the luck is over, the
machinery clanks, the chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward?

From Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins

Sometimes, before we resume battle, we require time to reflect on past as well as current events. As I thought about what to write this morning, I thought about a time thirty years ago that my brother and fellow blogger may scarcely remember. I thought, too, about the opportunity that bad times offers, and the consequences that flow from the ways in which we use that opportunity.

Two months ago we faced a gasoline shortage in my neck of the woods. A tsunami of bad events seemed to rain down upon us; it included the hurricane that disrupted refining and shipping of gas to parts of the country, followed quickly by the unbelievable failure of Wachovia, followed by the equally incredible fall of the market. The failures in the banking/mortgage sector and the market seemed surreal. We could not grasp the terrible news that kept coming and getting worse. Oddly, having to hoard and hunt for gas made all of the larger bad events seem more real. For me, the hoarding and the hunting recalled memories from decades ago: when I was in college, Jimmy Carter was elected. Gas prices, along with all other prices, skyrocketed, and I remember sitting in gas lines caused by Carter’s misguided effort to control them. I remember, too, graduating from a top university with top honors and discovering that unemployment awaited me. So, I won a scholarship to go back to school. When I finished, Ronald Reagan had just been elected president. With the economy still in free-fall, my spouse and I found jobs and a nice little house with a sixteen percent fixed thirty year mortgage. And then began the decades of prosperity and relative peace. My children have never known hard economic times. They have no idea what it is to work hard and find no reward. Ronald Reagan saw the opportunity that the last bad times offered, and he used that opportunity to the lasting benefit of a generation.

Now we face another such opportunity, but with a very different president-elect at the helm. I do not think that presidents really control the large events such as hurricanes and financial markets, but how they use the opportunity that bad times offer will affect us all for good or ill. Carter prolonged a recession by increasing taxes and trying to control inflation with price controls. He also aggravated the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, again prolonging that crisis. What little information President-Elect Obama has given us regarding how he will use the opportunity that current bad events offer suggests that he will emulate Carter. If so, my children will face what I faced thirty years ago or worse: they will graduate with good degrees and face unemployment; they will face higher taxes and consequent inflated prices; they will face shortages of key commodities; they will face ongoing crises abroad. Such a wonderful childhood they had, but what of their future?

Freedom from Excessive Regulation

Freedom is a notion that too many Americans take for granted. Few Americans today fully understand or appreciate freedom’s sacrifices. This was something that Ronald Reagan understood implicitly, and made sure to remind us, in only the way Reagan could. Freedom, as Reagan would acknowledge, is something that must be won over and over again. In his own words,

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."

And so it is again today.

When Reagan came to office, he faced staggering economic decline, in large measure brought on by excessive government regulation and burdensome taxation that strangled ingenuity and entrepreneurship, the backbone of a free and thriving economy. Reagan understood then that America was dangerously on the brink of losing its freedom from within, imposed by its own government as much as any risks posed by external sources.

That’s why, now 28 years after Reagan inspired Americans to dream again, to have faith in the American spirit again, and to embark on a new era of lesser government, we must redouble our efforts to remind Americans that bigger government is never the answer.

Conservatives did not have a voice in this election. Consequently, the liberals effectively shaped the debate on the economy as a failure of deregulation. Regrettably, the Republicans in this election seemed to concede this issue. Deregulation in the 1980s, however, led to one of the biggest and most sustained economic booms in American history. It opened up opportunities for millions of Americans – to travel, to open businesses, to land good jobs, and to reap economic rewards from the fruits of their labor. Few in either party questioned the merits and the successes of deregulating the economy. Today, as we once again hear calls for greater regulation, let us call to task those blaming our economic challenges on deregulation. Let us remind our citizens that it is not deregulation that has led us to where we are today, it is expansion of government and government mandates as represented by government sponsored enterprises (namely, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae) that are directly to blame. It was government that created these enterprises, government that imposed upon these enterprises legislative obligations to place people in homes they could not afford, and government that failed to heed the early warning signs that all was not well at Freddie and Fannie. We should not and cannot allow liberalism to use its own failings as represented by Freddie and Fannie to re-impose regulations on the rest of the American economy.

Today's Quote:

So let us ask ourselves, "What kind of people do we think we are?" And let us answer, "Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well."

from Ronald Reagan's June 8, 1982 Westminster Speech