A Letter to the RNC Chairman
I sent the following letter to the RNC Chairman at http://www.gop.com/Connect/ContactUs.htm. I encourage everyone to send one of their own.
Mr. Chairman,
As the Republican leadership considers why we lost the election, I hope you will consider the following points:
1) George W. Bush won in 2000 running on traditional Republican principles such as limited government, free market economics, fiscal sanity and a non-interventionist foreign policy.
2) George W. Bush abandoned all of these principles after 9/11.
3) John McCain lost the election running on a platform of war, statist intervention in the economy and an ever-expanding federal government.
My hope is that the Republican leadership will understand that we lost because they forgot our core principles, not because the American people have suddenly decided they want big government to take care of them as the Democrats would have us believe.
Also, there was one man that tried to tell us this before it was too late, but many of us derided him at the time. I think it is past time to include Texas Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul, at the highest levels in the debate over the party’s future.
Thank you for your time,
LT C. Chance Litton, USN
Chance,
I would like to point out that “free market” economics is the same arguement used to deregulate finacial markets over the past two decades. This includes banking deregulation championed by Phil Gramm in the Gramm-Bliley act of 2002, which bears some responsibility for the current finacial mess. The problem is that the “free market” arguement has been hijacked by commerical interest, and the republican party has become beholdent to these commercial interest. In a purely intellectual exercise completely unregulated markets will eventually self-correct, but in a practical world we can not afford this self-correcting process. Regulation does limit upside potential, but when applied correctly it also limits downside damage to those who can least afford it. This is a realization that many have learned the hard way over the last year, and a lesson that I hope we will remember even as times improve in the future.
Chris,
While free market economics may indeed have been used as the excuse for deregulation, that does not mean the free market philosophy is to blame for the current financial mess.
Free market does not mean lack of regulation, it means lack of intervention. The government has a role in the economy of a free society; to guarantee contracts between individuals and corporations, or in other words, to prevent entities from infringing on the rights of others through fraud.
Our current government grossly exceeds this responsibility. It controls prices (i.e. the Fed sets prices on interest and the state enact taxes and tariffs to control markets), it prints money causing inflation, it steps in to prevent companies and industries that have followed poor policies from failing, and it subsidizes whole sectors of the economy such as agriculture.
You also have to remember that whenever the federal government takes one of these statist actions, it funds its efforts with money it has taken through force from the population (or worse, with many they borrow on our behalf or print out of thin air).
When GM follows poor business practices and gets a reputation for making a substandard product, the American people stop buying cars form them. So now, the government takes money from those same people and gives it straight to GM without even demanding a product in return. That sounds like a much better business than actually having to sell something! You just have to get a heavily armed force to steal stuff from people on your behalf.
It’s not just a matter of efficiency, but also a matter of liberty. A people cannot be socially free without being economically free.
Here are some words of wisdom to those who would like to blame free market capitalism for our current troubles:
“Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not a fiat currency manipulated by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military industrial complex, and foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. That is not capitalism!
To condemn free market capitalism for anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism even exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political spectrums. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names: Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.”
- Ron Paul, Congressional Record, US House of Representatives, 2002