The
Future of Freedom Foundation| The
Future of Freedom Foundation |
|
|||||||||||||
|
May 19,
2008 Sen. Barack Obama has made this the centerpiece of his campaign. He strives to hold himself above the partisan fray and talks about “changing Washington.” As a result, some people look on Obama as a savior who needs to be given a chance to deliver us from the muck of gutter partisanship. His promise is nothing if not extravagant. “We want a politics that reflects our core decency,” Obama says. A politics that reflects decency would seem as likely as a square circle, but let’s give the man his say. In the speech that launched his campaign last year, he staked out his niche, acknowledging that we have heard all this before: I know there are those who don’t believe we can do all these things. I understand the skepticism. After all, every four years, candidates from both parties make similar promises, and I expect this year will be no different. All of us running for president will travel around the country offering ten-point plans and making grand speeches; all of us will trumpet those qualities we believe make us uniquely qualified to lead the country. But too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own. Nice words, but they have trouble withstanding scrutiny. Obama is right. There’s nothing new about the “new politics.” Someone is always running for president by campaigning against Washington. Mitt Romney did it. John McCain says he’s doing it. Many did it before them. So why does Obama get treated as though he’s the first? More important, why does anyone believe he will deliver where others have failed? There’s little reason to expect this because, in substance, Obama’s program is about as new as sliced bread. Does his platform break new ground in any way? No, it doesn’t. He offers the same stale political answers to the perennial questions about poverty, medical care, energy, Social Security, education, and national security. In every case, his answer is: the government will fix it. But what is government? It’s compulsion. Underlying Obama’s siren song of unity, bipartisanship, and cooperation is the reality of physical force. When government acts, someone gets coerced. How does Obama propose to give medical coverage to the uninsured? By forcing the taxpayers to subsidize it. How does he propose to replace fossil fuels? By forcing the taxpayers to pay companies to develop alternatives. How does he propose to fix Social Security? By forcing some people to pay more. How does he propose to improve education? By forcing the taxpayers to finance more programs. How does he propose to protect America? By forcing Americans to maintain a global empire, which is the source of so much hostility. There’s a term for Obama’s program, which was coined by the French liberal Frédéric Bastiat: legal plunder. Meanwhile, Obama shows no appreciation for what the free market — that is, free individuals cooperating to achieve diverse ends — can accomplish. Has he once blamed government interference with economic freedom for creating or aggravating a problem? If so, it’s not made the news. ”I got into this race to change how business is done in Washington,” he says. He is being either naive or disingenuous. If government is going to tax, borrow, and hand out $3 trillion a year, there is no way to stop well-connected interests from gaming the system to get its hands on the money. There’s a reason why other attempts at the “new politics” have failed. Obama is promising to square the circle.
Gary D. Barnett is a Policy Advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org) and President of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana. Tibor Machan is a Hoover research fellow, Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, Auburn University, Alabama, holds the R.C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics and Free Enterprise at Chapman University’s Argyros School of B and E and is a research fellow at the Pacific Research Institute and Hoover Institution (Stanford). He is an advisor to Freedom Communications. His most recent book is Libertarianism Defended, (Ashgate, 2006).
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., author of Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State, and editor of The Freeman magazine. Visit his blog “Free Association."
Scott McPherson is a policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Samuel Bostaph is head of the economics department at the University of Dallas and an academic advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation
Anthony Gregory is a policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, January 2006) and Terrorism & Tyranny (Palgrave, 2003), and is policy advisor at The Future of Freedom Foundation
Benedict LaRosa is a historian and writer and serves as a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation
Bart Frazier is program director at The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email. |
America's Anti-Militarist Tradition The FBI's Right to Threaten Torture Busy Bush Has Time to Run the World Woodstock May Have Saved Sen. McCain's Life A Day in the Life of an Unwilling "Federal Agent" Should the State License Human Beings? Torturing the Language of Torture Are Conservatives (Undocumented) Aliens? More Victims of Immigration Control Pathetic Arguments for Foreign Intervention Individualism, the Collectivists’ Nemesis InfraGard: An Unhealthy Government Alliance The Government's Chickens Are Back Why the Peaceful Majority of Muslims Are Not Irrelevant Complete Archives for The Future of Freedom Foundation  |
|||||||||||
