1. During the presidential campaign
, there was a great deal of talk about the seeming inability of our economic system to solve the problems of unemployment .... Issues such as taxes and government power and costs were discussed, but always these things were discussed in the context of what government intended to do about it. May I suggest for your consideration that government has already done too much about it? That indeed, government, by going outside its proper province, has caused many if not most of the problems that vex us.
2. Beginning with the traumatic experience of the Great Depression, we the people have turned more and more to government for answers that government has neither the right nor the capacity to provide. Unfortunately, government as an institution always tends to increase in size and power,
3. The result is a fourth branch of government added to the traditional three of executive, legislative and judicial: a vast federal bureaucracy that's now being imitated in too many states and too many cities, a bureaucracy of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can't be removed from office by our votes.
4. To give you an illustration of how bureaucracy works in another country, England in 1803 created a new civil service position. It called for a man to stand on the cliffs of Dover with a spy glass and ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. They didn't eliminate that job until 1945. In our own country, there are only two government programs that have been abolished. The government stopped making rum on the Virgin Islands, and we've stopped breeding horses for the cavalry.
5. More than anything else, a new political economic mythology, widely believed by too many people, has increased government's ability to interfere as it does in the marketplace. Profit is a dirty word, blamed for most of our social ills. In the interest of something called consumerism, free enterprise is becoming far less free. Property rights are being reduced, and even eliminated, in the name of environmental protection. profit, property rights and freedom are inseparable, and you cannot have the third unless you continue to be entitled to the first two.
6. It is difficult to understand the ever-increasing number of intellectuals in the groves of academe...who contend that our system could be improved by the adoption of some of the features of socialism. I'm sure that most of you are aware that some years ago the Soviet Union had such a morale problem with the workers on the collective farms that they finally gave each worker a little plot of ground and told him he could farm it for himself and sell in the open market what he raised. Today, less than 4 percent of Russia's agricultural land is privately farmed in that way, and on that 4 percent is raised 40 percent of all of Russia's vegetables, and 60 percent of all its meat.
7. In spite of all the evidence that points to the free market as the most efficient system, we continue down a road that is bearing out the prophecy of De Tocqueville, a Frenchman who came here years ago. He was attracted by the miracle that was America. [H]e came here and he looked at everything he could see in our country trying to find the secret of our success, and then went back and wrote a book about it. Even then, he saw signs prompting him to warn us that if we weren't constantly on guard, we would find ourselves covered by a network of regulations controlling every activity. He said if that came to pass we would one day find ourselves a nation of timid animals with government the shepherd. Was De Tocqueville right? Well, today we are covered by tens of thousands of regulations to which we add about 25,000 new ones each year.
8. It all comes down to this basic premise: if you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom and in fact all freedom. Freedom is something that cannot be passed on genetically. It is never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it. Once freedom is gone, it's gone for a long, long time. Already, too many of us, particularly those in business and industry, have chosen to switch rather than fight.
The more astute can probably guess who wrote this....
You can find out here: Hillsdale College - Imprimis Issue
2. Beginning with the traumatic experience of the Great Depression, we the people have turned more and more to government for answers that government has neither the right nor the capacity to provide. Unfortunately, government as an institution always tends to increase in size and power,
3. The result is a fourth branch of government added to the traditional three of executive, legislative and judicial: a vast federal bureaucracy that's now being imitated in too many states and too many cities, a bureaucracy of enormous power which determines policy to a greater extent than any of us realize, very possibly to a greater extent than our own elected representatives. And it can't be removed from office by our votes.
4. To give you an illustration of how bureaucracy works in another country, England in 1803 created a new civil service position. It called for a man to stand on the cliffs of Dover with a spy glass and ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. They didn't eliminate that job until 1945. In our own country, there are only two government programs that have been abolished. The government stopped making rum on the Virgin Islands, and we've stopped breeding horses for the cavalry.
5. More than anything else, a new political economic mythology, widely believed by too many people, has increased government's ability to interfere as it does in the marketplace. Profit is a dirty word, blamed for most of our social ills. In the interest of something called consumerism, free enterprise is becoming far less free. Property rights are being reduced, and even eliminated, in the name of environmental protection. profit, property rights and freedom are inseparable, and you cannot have the third unless you continue to be entitled to the first two.
6. It is difficult to understand the ever-increasing number of intellectuals in the groves of academe...who contend that our system could be improved by the adoption of some of the features of socialism. I'm sure that most of you are aware that some years ago the Soviet Union had such a morale problem with the workers on the collective farms that they finally gave each worker a little plot of ground and told him he could farm it for himself and sell in the open market what he raised. Today, less than 4 percent of Russia's agricultural land is privately farmed in that way, and on that 4 percent is raised 40 percent of all of Russia's vegetables, and 60 percent of all its meat.
7. In spite of all the evidence that points to the free market as the most efficient system, we continue down a road that is bearing out the prophecy of De Tocqueville, a Frenchman who came here years ago. He was attracted by the miracle that was America. [H]e came here and he looked at everything he could see in our country trying to find the secret of our success, and then went back and wrote a book about it. Even then, he saw signs prompting him to warn us that if we weren't constantly on guard, we would find ourselves covered by a network of regulations controlling every activity. He said if that came to pass we would one day find ourselves a nation of timid animals with government the shepherd. Was De Tocqueville right? Well, today we are covered by tens of thousands of regulations to which we add about 25,000 new ones each year.
8. It all comes down to this basic premise: if you lose your economic freedom, you lose your political freedom and in fact all freedom. Freedom is something that cannot be passed on genetically. It is never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it. Once freedom is gone, it's gone for a long, long time. Already, too many of us, particularly those in business and industry, have chosen to switch rather than fight.
The more astute can probably guess who wrote this....
You can find out here: Hillsdale College - Imprimis Issue
