21st Century Culture: Free Enterprise vs Government Control

Arthur C. Brooks

This is not the culture war of the 1990s. It is not a fight over guns, gays or abortion. Those old battles have been eclipsed by a new

Free Enterprise needs to exist for the gears to move.

struggle between two competing visions of the country’s future. In one, America will continue to be an exceptional nation organized around the principles of free enterprise — limited government, a reliance on entrepreneurship and rewards determined by market forces. In the other, America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, a managed economy and large-scale income redistribution. These visions are not reconcilable. We must choose.

It is not at all clear which side will prevail. The forces of big government are entrenched and enjoy the full arsenal of the administration’s money and influence. Our leaders in Washington, aided by the unprecedented economic crisis of recent years and the panic it induced, have seized the moment to introduce breathtaking expansions of state power in huge swaths of the economy, from the health-care takeover to the financial regulatory bill that the Senate approved Thursday. If these forces continue to prevail, America will cease to be a free enterprise nation.

I call this a culture war because free enterprise has been integral to American culture from the beginning, and it still lies at the core of our history and character. “A wise and frugal government,” Thomas Jefferson declared in his first inaugural address in 1801, “which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” He later warned: “To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” In other words, beware government’s economic control, and woe betide the redistributors.

Now, as then, entrepreneurship can flourish only in a culture where individuals are willing to innovate and exert leadership; where people enjoy the rewards and face the consequences of their decisions; and where we can gamble the security of the status quo for a chance of future success.

Yet, in his commencement address at Arizona State University on May 13, 2009, President Obama warned against precisely such impulses: “You’re taught to chase after all the usual brass rings; you try to be on this “who’s who” list or that Top 100 list; you chase after the big money and you figure out how big your corner office is; you worry about whether you have a fancy enough title or a fancy enough car. That’s the message that’s sent each and every day, or has been in our culture for far too long — that through material possessions, through a ruthless competition pursued only on your own behalf — that’s how you will measure success.” Such ambition, he cautioned, “may lead you to compromise your values and your principles.”

I appreciate the sentiment that money does not buy happiness. But for the president of the United States to actively warn young adults away from economic ambition is remarkable. And he makes clear that he seeks to change our culture.

The irony is that, by wide margins, Americans support free enterprise. A Gallup poll in January found that 86 percent of Americans have a positive image of “free enterprise,” with only 10 percent viewing it negatively. Similarly, in March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked individuals from a broad range of demographic groups: “Generally, do you think people are better off in a free-market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time, or don’t you think so?” Almost 70 percent of respondents agreed that they are better off in a free-market economy, while only 20 percent disagreed.

In fact, no matter how the issue is posed, not more than 30 percent of Americans say they believe we would fare better without free markets at the core of our system. When it comes to support for free enterprise, we are essentially a 70-30 nation.

So here’s a puzzle: If we love free enterprise so much, why are the 30 percent who want to change that culture in charge?

It’s not simply because of the election of Obama. As much as Republicans may dislike hearing it, statism had effectively taken hold in Washington long before that.

The George W. Bush administration began the huge Wall Street and Detroit bailouts, and for years before the economic crisis, the GOP talked about free enterprise while simultaneously expanding the government with borrowed money and increasing the percentage of citizens with no income tax liability. The 30 percent coalition did not start governing this country with the advent of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It has been in charge for years.

So, you think the dollar gained value?

The inflated currency isn’t worth a 1,200th of an ounce of gold

Lew Rockwell

The collapse of the dollar to less than a 1,200th of an ounce of gold is emerging as one of the astonishing stories of our time. Yet even more astonishing is the lack of focus on that story by the intelligentsia in our press and politics. It is a silence on which these columns have remarked a number of times of late, including on March 14, 2008, right after the value of the greenback toppled below a thousandth of an ounce of gold. At the time we suggested that, once the Democrats had their nominee, it would be up to Senator McCain to confront them with the fact that the Congress they’ve controlled since 2006 has resulted in the dollar falling below a thousandth of an ounce of gold and to warn of its further collapse without the right leadership.

Now the default that has followed has been bi-partisan. It was less than five years ago that we issued, on December 5, 2005, an editorial called “The Bush Dollar.” It charted the collapse of the greenback to barely a 500th of an ounce of gold from the 265th of an ounce of gold that it was worth when President Bush acceded to the office where the buck – or, to use the phrase that our contributing editor Larry Parks likes, the “paper ticket” that passes for a buck – stops. At the time we issued that editorial, Mr. Bush had just named Benjamin Bernanke to chair the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. We noted that the dollar had continued to lose value at what we called an “astonishing rate.”

So on the eve of the election that gave the Democrats the control of Congress, we issued an editorial proposing the dollar be renamed “The Greenspan,” in honor, or dishonor, of the Fed chairman who’d just written a book that gave short shrift to the whole idea of measuring a dollar in gold. When it didn’t happen, we issued, on November 30, 2006, another editorial, “The Pelosi,” focusing on the fact that it was to the Congress that the Founders of America delegated power to coin money and regulate the value of it. Despite the efforts of Congressman Ron Paul to return to the idea of constitutional money, it rapidly became clear that the Congress wasn’t going to do anything more about the dollar under Mrs. Pelosi than it had under Dennis Hastert.

So in 2007 we proposed renaming the dollar “The Bernanke.” It called the pace at which the dollar was falling “scandalous.” It also quoted Congressman Ron Paul as having, in 2006, written, prophetically it looks like: “Economic law dictates reform at some point,” Mr. Paul had written in the fall of 2006. “But should we wait until the dollar is 1/1,000 of an ounce of gold or 1/2,000 of an ounce of gold? The longer we wait, the more people suffer and the more difficult reforms become.” We quoted Dr. Paul as warning that “runaway inflation inevitably leads to political chaos” and declared that the time for action is now.

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