The Litany

Daily on liberal talk shows, and every day in Obama and other Democrat speeches, we have to be subjected to "The Litany"- the list of everything that is supposedly going wrong in the world right now due to Bush/Republican/Conservative ideas- high gas prices, high health care costs, businesses going bankrupt and cheating people out of pensions, houses being foreclosed on, education failing, roads falling apart, and the rising threat of global warming.

The question is, are these failures because of Bush/Republican/Conservatives, or in spite of them? I know it's not fair to lump Bush, Republicans, and Conservatives together, but my point is, look again at all the failures above. Supposedly, the right is pushing for less government, less regulation, more choice, more freedom, and more personal responsibility. But, in the area of energy, healthcare, education, home loans, roads, bankruptcy laws, and management of public lands, the opposite is occurring.

To me, the problem is obvious- as more laws, regulations, and restrictions have been placed on energy development, gas prices have gone up. As the government has placed more laws, restrictions, oversight, lawsuits, etc on healthcare, the costs have gone up. As the government got more involved in providing sub-prime loans to homeowners, the situation got worse. As education became more monopolized by government, received more government funding, the situation got worse.

Liberals are not pointing to places where freedom, responsibility, and choice have been growing and saying 'fix this'- no, those areas are doing quite well. Deregulating telephones resulted in a lot of great things- no one wants to go back. Having many competing soda companies is a great thing. The competition among pencil builders has driven down price. Any example of free enterprise is thriving- the areas that are not are areas that are heavily regulated.

So, what is the solution? Any reasonable person would say- 'if you do more, you get less, so try less, and see if you get more.' Any liberal would say 'if you do more, you get less, so try more, and see if you don't get less.' Less is more!

I think this is called the "Rahn Curve"- I'll have to do some more research on this later, but this blog is a good starting site, which appears to be based on this article.