The era of big government is officially back. How do you like that? Fourteen years, almost to the day, from Bill Clinton's pronouncement that the "era of big government is over," we are scheduled to be delivered from the current economic morass by a new administration promising newer schools, better roads, and, of all things, faster internet service. Presumably Barack Hussein Obama's administration will take a pass on making all of our children taller and our hair healthier.
Not that the era of big government ever really ended (it has grown tremendously since 9/11), but at least no one was bragging about the growth back then. It appears that a good chunk of BHO's economic recovery plan is to spend our way out of it. Of course, now that large segments of the banking, insurance, and auto industries will be reporting to their governmental overlords, what harm could there be in nationalizing the data infrastructure, or throwing more money at our incredibly expensive (mis)educational system?
Now what we are witnessing is a brazen expansion of government, not for the purposes of national security as has been the excuse thus far this decade, but rather a massive expansion, apparently excluding national security apparatus, for the stated purpose of "solving" our economic troubles. Troubles that were, incidentally, CAUSED by the same activist government that now proposes to fix things. Indeed, there is no way we would be where we are right now without the government's persistent meddling in the mortgage markets.
My interpretation of what has happened here is purely Hegelian. The government says they want to help poor people get homes so they meddle in the markets and require banks to make bad loans among other economically blind efforts. This distorts the market, which always requires a correction. Corrections are painful things and now the government can ride in on a white horse and ease the suffering they have caused. Create a problem for someone and then offer them a solution. Who cares that the solution creates new problems that may be worse than the old ones or that we lose a little more liberty in the process? It may be a bad solution, but most of America sees it as a FREE solution.
That's what I think is going on here. A massive power grab under the guise of a solution for the very problem that the power-grabbing government caused. I sense that many of us on the right feel the same way, and I'm anxious to get some feedback as this process unfolds. The question is, will anyone stand up?
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