Why Can’t The English?
This past week our nation marked the end of an eight year nightmare. The George W. Bush administration betrayed the American people, choosing to govern by truly un-American principles. People around the globe rejoiced as Chief Justice John Roberts swore in Barack Obama as the 44thPresident of the United States (or did he?) and many spoke of their hopes for the new President. Personally, I hope that President Obama reverses many of the ultra conservative social policies enacted by the previous administration, ends government intrusion in our daily lives, attempts to be more diplomatic in dealing with our foreign allies and negotiates an effective withdrawal of troops in Iraq. However, listening to voices from abroad and from some of the more radical elements in our own country, many have more nefarious hopes for our new President.
Anatole Kaletsky published a very telling piece in the Thursday, January 22, 2009, edition of London’s, The Times, in which he expressed his hope that President Obama would “reinvent” American capitalism. The plan Mr. Kaletsky spells out calls for the United States to abandon the very principles of capitalism that allowed our nation to grow its’ economy and, in doing so, replace the British empire as the world’s super power, and adopt in its’ place a smiley faced, sugar coated version of socialism accepted by most European nations.
Mr. Kaletsky attempts to convince his reader that American capitalism lies at the root of the eight year nightmare known as the “Bush administration,” that American capitalism is the sole cause for the current economic plight facing our world, that American capitalism, like communism, is evil and must be destroyed. I find irony in a Soviet born writer comparing “American capitalism” to the forces of communism that ultimately forced him to leave his home land. While some born in the Soviet Union saw the horrors of their government, defected and embraced our system of him freedom, liberty and markets (e.g. Ayn Rand), others like Mr. Kaletsky cannot fathom an economic system free of the heavy hand of government regulation and intrusion.
Why can’t the English get out of the way and let us save the world the way we have time and time again?
I aim not to dispute all the fallacies in Mr. Kaletsy’s argument, but merely to offer my voice as a supporter of both President Barack Obama and to free-market capitalism. The Federal government cannot cure our economic woes, only the markets can take care of themselves. Indeed, the Federal government will only make things worse. Yes, our nation elected President Obama on a platform of change, but our system of free-market capitalism is one of the few things in our nation not in need of change.
