Demon Soda

According to the US government, I am overweight. I’m 5’8” tall and this morning I weighed in at 187 pounds, which gives me a body mass index (BMI) of 28.4. That’s pushing the upper limits of the “overweight” category, trending toward the dreaded “obese” label. I have resolved to lose weight, not only for personal health reasons but also because I don’t want to be defined as obese by the government. I’ve seen what the nanny state’s health bureaucrats have done to smokers, and it’s clear that overweight people are next on their hit list. I’d prefer to avoid their wrath if at all possible.

I don’t overeat, and I don’t really eat much junk food. I get moderate amounts of exercise, though I could certainly stand to spend some more time in the gym. In fact, my only real health-related vice is that I drink way too much Coca-Cola. I’ve tried to cut back, but it hasn’t been easy and I’ve fallen off the wagon several times. So I know without a doubt that the single most important step I could take to improve my overall health would be to give up soft drinks. After all, those empty calories do add up – not only in terms of extra pounds around the midsection, but also in terms of extra dollars in the federal budget. It seems overweight soda drinkers like me (as well as those who are significantly larger than I) are going to be a real drain on the government’s resources now that the Feds have decided to nationalize the health care industry. Recent estimates indicate that spending on obesity-related medical care represents 9% of all the health care dollars spent, and obese people spend $1400 more per year on average than their svelter compatriots (of course, that’s private spending and not public spending, but let’s move on quickly before anyone notices).

The CDC has suggested that taxing soda drinkers could help lower health care costs. Drinking soda causes obesity, obese people spend more each year on health care than thin people, and the government plans to take on that spending whether we like it or not. Ipso facto, the government must dissuade people from drinking soda.

Of course I would suggest that if the government really wanted to save money it would simply stop looking for new ways to spend it. It seems to me that those people who want or need to consume relatively more health care services should either pay for it themselves or negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangement with private insurance providers or charities, but clearly I am out of step with the hope-and-change zeitgeist that’s all the rage these days. And I suppose that my attitude misses a larger point – Caesar has decreed that soda is bad, and therefore if we wish to indulge in such a politically incorrect vice we must pay Caesar for the privilege.

And far be it from me to try to defend the health benefits of soft drinks. To my knowledge, there aren’t any. Carbonated soft drinks are bad for you. Perhaps even really bad. But it seems to me that an important question is going unasked in the current debate (if one may call it that). The question is, "Why does soda cause obesity?" Or to put it more precisely, "Why does soda cause obesity now relative to the previous hundred-plus years it's been around?" Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper were invented in 1885, and Pepsi was introduced in 1898, but I don't recall hearing any stories about the soft-drink fueled "obesity epidemic" at any time during the early- to mid-20th century. So what changed?

No doubt there are a number of factors involved here. It could be that we're more affluent than earlier generations, and maybe we spend a greater portion of our disposable income on soft drinks. Perhaps that affluence also means we're not getting as much exercise as previous generations, or that our overall caloric intake is higher. All of these factors and many others besides could be contributing to the problem. But there has been at least one change to the product itself that is closely correlated to the upswing in obesity rates. Whereas the original Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Pepsi used sugar as the principal sweetener, today’s soft drinks use high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) instead. I've seen a number of articles (here and here, for example) that state that HFCS is less expensive than sugar, and that soft drink manufacturers made the switch to improve their bottom lines. Of course, the authors of these articles never manage to ask the question "Why is HFCS less expensive?"

You and I know the answer, of course. HFCS is a derivative of corn, which is heavily subsidized by the US government. Similarly, the US government levies high protectionist tariffs on imported sugar, which means Americans (and American manufacturers) pay about five times the world market price for sugar. So government policy makes sugar artificially expensive, and HFCS artificially cheap. Under these circumstances, the switch to HFCS was inevitable. But here's where all of this ties into the obesity problem - researchers have shown that HFCS turns off the body's chemical switch that tells the brain when it's full. This means that now we can drink more soda at one sitting, taking in more calories from soft drinks than we did in the past (and let’s not lose sight of the fact that HFCS is found in a lot more than just soft drinks). The proposed soda tax brings to mind once again Robert LeFevre’s adage that “government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.” Politicians first introduce distortions into the agricultural market, and now they propose to tax us for the ill effects caused by those distortions. This is typical, I suppose, but it also shows that the real purpose here is not to fight obesity or to defray the costs associated with it. If that were the case, the government could be a lot more effective by simply eliminating the problems it created through these tariffs and subsidies, and by halting its drive toward socialized medicine. But then again, that would require bureaucrats to take responsibility for their own actions, and we all know that will never happen.

So soda may soon take the place of cigarettes as public health enemy number one. In addition to the new tax imposed on soft drinks, I suppose we’ll also be subjected to endless public service announcements highlighting the evils of “Demon Soda.” Perhaps we’ll see a 21st century Carrie Nation taking an axe to Coke machines across the land. I wonder if Rachel Leigh Cook is still available…

***Many thanks once again to Gardner Goldsmith of Liberty Conspiracy for bringing this subject to my attention.

The Return of the Idiot

I just finished reading The Return of the Idiot (El Regreso del Idiota), by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Alvaro Vargas Llosa. This book is the 2007 follow-up to Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot (El Manual del Perfecto Idiota Latinoamericano) written six years earlier. The two volumes examine the reasons for and the results of Latin America’s lurch left over the past several years.

In Return, the authors distinguish between the “carnivorous” left of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Ollanta Humala, and the “vegetarian” left of Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and Brazil’s Lula da Silva. The authors have nothing but contempt for the former group, and point out the disastrous consequences of the carnivorous left’s economic policies in each country. On the other hand, the authors describe how the governments of the vegetarian left have resisted the urge to run their countries into the ground, adopting broadly pro-market policies that have left their carnivorous counterparts in the dust.

As I’ve mentioned before, the goings-on in Latin America are of interest to me for both personal and professional reasons. My wife is from Bolivia, so I have spent a great deal of time in La Paz with the in-laws over the years. My career has almost always been focused on Latin American operations, so I’ve worked in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. And of course, I have friends from virtually every country south of the Rio Grande, so it pains me to see the countries of the carnivorous left (to use the authors’ terminology) shoot themselves in the foot, reload, and keep firing.

Though Mendoza, Montaner, and Llosa certainly do a good job at picking apart their political opponents, their critique strikes me as more standard right-wing than libertarian, so there are a number of points in the book with which I disagree. Nevertheless, I thought it was a good overview of the region’s political landscape. And throughout The Return of the Idiot I discovered passages that apply just as well to the current political climate of the United States as to any of the Latin American countries surveyed, providing almost as much value for North American readers as for those in Mexico, Central, or South America.

Since Return has not yet been translated into English (to my knowledge, at least), I thought I’d share a couple of key passages here (the translation is mine, as are any errors associated with it). The first passage covers the rise and recurrence of populism in Argentina, but the US is certainly no stranger to these same tendencies.

“Aside from the Kirchner case, the nightmarish recurrence of populist cycles in Argentina demands attention. Why would a country that has suffered the consequences of populism and to a large degree owes its decline over the course of the 20th century to this perversion of our political life continually repeat its errors?

The periodic resurgence of populism has provoked instability and uncertainty each time, making it very difficult for economic agents to plan and invest over the medium and long terms. Another consequence has been the difficulty in accumulating first-rate human capital. This is seen not only in terms of education, but also in its effect on republican values, which seem to enjoy less and less consensus among Argentineans – the values through which people understand that tolerance and respect for rules are indispensable for progress and civilization.

One way of understanding the recurrence of populism has to do with that 'distributive struggle’ – as it is called in some studies from the Rosario Liberty Foundation, headed by Gerardo Bongiovanni – that is born of the parasitic role played by the country’s special interest groups.

At the start of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the twelve leading nations. By 1985, it was relatively poor, with an average income that equated to something less than 70% of that of the rich countries. Where did the ‘distributive struggle’ begin that changed the country’s tendency, placing emphasis on the distribution, rather than the creation, of wealth?

In reality, it started timidly in the 1920s (some would say even before that) and it continued into the 1930s, in part as the result of the movement of the rural population into the cities, which involved the meeting of somewhat different cultures and increased the number of urban actors who were ready to make their political might felt. With Juan Domingo Peron, who was at once the expression of and the impetus for this phenomenon, populism reached its height in the 1940s and 50s. This entire period is marked, for example, by salary increases that were greater than the increases in productivity. More is distributed, but less is produced. Less and less cake with more and more gluttons.”

Another passage that stands out describes the Latin American left’s anti-market mentality, but could just as easily describe the Obama administration’s takeover of certain activities that Americans once believed rightly belonged to the private sector (car manufacturing, banking, health care, etc.):

“The nationalists also propose the ‘nationalization’ of the economy, although, in tune with the euphemistic language of the postmodern left, they assure us that they do not want state control of businesses. With that, what they mean to say is that it’s enough for the State to declare itself owner of the resources, charge confiscatory taxes, determine prices, and control a percentage of the property of the companies that invest in natural resources, especially those in the mining sector. The gringos – a practical people, all in all – have a saying: ‘If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.’ The same holds true in the political sphere: if he takes over businesses like a statist, he must be a statist.”

These and many other passages in The Return of the Idiot make the book worthwhile. Not only does the reader come away with a better understanding of the political landscape in Latin America today, but US readers also get a cautionary tale for their own country at no additional charge.

Lagniappe - July 2009

National People’s Radio – I’ve been listening to NPR a lot lately, and I realized that they’ve really only got one story. Someone somewhere depends on some government program, and that government program is underfunded. That’s it. That’s the only thing happening in this country on any given day according to NPR. You’d think that, with a $3.5 trillion budget, a $2 trillion deficit, and an $11 trillion national debt, there would be at least one fully-funded federal program out there somewhere, but it seems that no amount of money will ever be enough for the NPR crowd. This attitude is not suprising given the fact that a good chunk of funding for NPR member stations also comes from tax money. “Support for NPR comes from a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust - and from you, the taxpayer, whether you like it or not. This is NPR. National Public Radio.”

Health Insurance vs. Health Care – Has anyone else noticed a shift in the language the media uses to discuss the debate over socialized medicine? I wrote about Obama’s plans for a government health insurance program last month. On more than one occasion since then, I’ve heard news stories refer to people who don’t have health insurance as “living without health care.” These are two very different things. One may be without health insurance and still be able to get health care – if one is willing and able to pay for it out of pocket, or if charity provides for it. (And once President Obama has his way, we’ll just all pick each other’s pockets to cover the cost). A sloppy use of language by the popular media can certainly color the debate in Washington - to the degree that there is a debate in Washington over socialized medicine. “We have to spend a trillion dollars on a government health insurance plan!” “A trillion dollars? Are you crazy? We shoudn’t spend a penny over $900 billion!”

Venezuela – Hugo Chavez continues his efforts to see just how bad he can make things in Venezuela. Oil workers have been told that they have to be socialists if they don’t want to be suspected of “conspiring against the government.” Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of a television station critical of the Chavez regime, faces a charge of “usury” stemming from a Toyota dealership he also owns, and has been told that he cannot leave the country. And Venezuelan newspapers can’t get the hard currency they need to buy newsprint. (The Venezuelan government maintains a currency control mechanism known as CADIVI, which it has used to prevent certain politically disfavored companies from importing needed raw materials and finished goods).

The newsprint story from Venezuela reminds me of something Murray Rothbard wrote over thirty years ago in his book, For A New Liberty. “Take, for example, the liberal socialist who advocates government ownership of all the ‘means of production’ while upholding the ‘human’ right of freedom of speech or press. How is this ‘human’ right to be exercised if the individuals constituting the public are denied their right to ownership of property? If, for example, the government owns all the newsprint and all the printing shops, how is the right to a free press to be exercised?”

Caritas In Veritate

President Obama met with Pope Benedict XVI last week at the Vatican. During the meeting, the Pope provided the president with a copy of his new encyclical letter, Caritas In Veritate. Most of the press coverage has focused on the pro-life elements of the treatise and the obvious disagreements between the Church and President Obama over issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. But it should be noted that the Pope’s encyclical dedicates as much (if not more) time to the issues of globalization and the current economic crisis, and in this respect the Pope and the President are like two peas in a pod. Both demonstrate the same profound ignorance of basic economics, and both prescribe bigger, more powerful government as the cure for what ails us.

Caritas In Veritate (Charity in Truth) is Pope Benedict’s 2009 sequel to Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, written in 1967. Ayn Rand shredded the 1967 original in her essay, “Requiem for Man.” (This post won’t be nearly as insightful as Rand’s review of Populorum Progressio, but it’s interesting to note that after more than forty years the Church still doesn’t understand the ethical superiority of the free market relative to the political sphere’s command-and-control model).

The text of Caritas In Veritate is long and rambling, and in many cases self-contradictory. Often it’s a one-step-forward-two-steps-back affair. At times the Pope makes some good points about some social ill or other, but then he offers statist solutions that would only aggravate the problem he seeks to remedy. And throughout the encyclical he overlooks the coercion upon which all state action is based – a troubling oversight from someone who supposedly spends every waking hour wrestling with issues of ethics and morality.

As the title suggests, the theme of the Pope’s letter is charity. In the letter, he claims that modern society lacks an overarching sense of charity that would encourage people to think of more than just themselves. This sense of charity should infuse not only individuals, but also their economic and political institutions. Pope Benedict sets out his premise in the introduction to the encyclical, which states (in part),

"Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace….

… Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law (cf. Mt 22:36- 40). It gives real substance to the personal relationship with God and with neighbour; it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members or within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones).

I am aware of the ways in which charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living and, in any event, undervalued. In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields — the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger — it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility."

And here is where the letter starts to get off track (the introduction). The Pope is trying to shoehorn the virtue of charity into the sphere of government and politics. One of the necessary components of charity (and of morality itself) is that it be freely chosen. One of the necessary components of government action, on the other hand, is coercion. These two elements – charity and government – are therefore mutually exclusive. The moral element the Pope wishes to inculcate in society is sacrificed the moment the state is used as the means to that end. One of the most basic elements of morality is free will. Once the individual’s ability to choose is removed, as it must be whenever the state is involved, that person’s ability to act as a moral agent is also eliminated. Once charity is forced upon someone, it can no longer be described as charity. Even if the state uses the taxes it collects for otherwise noble purposes, such as feeding the poor or clothing the naked, it ceases to be charity and becomes instead wealth redistribution. Redistribution of wealth is not the same as charity. The moral dimension that would quality an act as charitable if undertaken voluntarily is destroyed by the use of force.

At times Caritas In Veritate does pay lip service to the notion of freedom as an essential characteristic of charity. For example, in the following quote the Pope makes reference to individual rights, saying:

“Charity is love received and given…Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is ‘mine’ to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is ‘his’, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot ‘give’ what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it. Justice is the primary way of charity or, in Paul VI's words, ‘the minimum measure’ of it, an integral part of the love ‘in deed and in truth’ (1 Jn 3:18), to which Saint John exhorts us. On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. It strives to build the earthly city according to law and justice. On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving.”

So far, so good, but again the Pope immediately places this notion of charity that respects individual rights and justice in a political context:

“Another important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person's good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of ‘all of us’, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or ‘city’. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them. Every Christian is called to practise this charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis. This is the institutional path — we might also call it the political path — of charity, no less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbour directly, outside the institutional mediation of the pólis. When animated by charity, commitment to the common good has greater worth than a merely secular and political stand would have.”

Again, the Pope’s encyclical glosses over the means to the end. The political path of charity is indeed less excellent and effective than the kind of charity which encounters the neighbor directly outside the institutional mediation of the polis. From an ethical perspective, the use of force that underlies the political process is far less desirable than voluntary free-market interactions. From a practical perspective, the state’s insulation from market-driven feedback mechanisms ensures that it will be far less effective in reducing poverty than voluntary, grassroots organizations.

The encyclical continues with an analysis of the current global financial meltdown that reads as if it had been written by the reporters at NPR:

“Today, as we take to heart the lessons of the current economic crisis, which sees the State’s public authorities directly involved in correcting errors and malfunctions, it seems more realistic to re-evaluate their role and their powers, which need to be prudently reviewed and remodeled so as to enable them, perhaps through new forms of engagement, to address the challenges of today’s world.”

“Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, party because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions.”

“The right to food, like the right to water, has an important place within the pursuit of other rights, beginning with the fundamental right to life. It is therefore necessary to cultivate a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination.”

“Lowering the level of protection accorded to the rights of workers, or abandoning mechanisms of wealth redistribution in order to increase the country’s international competitiveness, hinder the achievement of lasting development.”

“…It must be borne in mind that grave imbalances are produced when economic action, conceived merely as an engine for wealth creation, is detached from political action, conceived as a means for pursuing justice through redistribution.”

You get the point. Read Caritas In Veritate in its entirety if you’re interested in more, or if you’re concerned that these quotes are taken out of context. I think they give a reasonable encapsulation of the Pope’s viewpoint on economic affairs. But don’t get me wrong - I don’t want to give the reader the impression that the Pope is just sitting on the sidelines carping about the economy without offering any solutions. Far from it. He goes on to provide some practical policy advice as well:

“In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth. One also senses the urgent need to find innovative ways of implementing the principle of the responsibility to protect and of giving poorer nations an effective voice in shared decision-making. This seems necessary in order to arrive at a political, juridical and economic order which can increase and give direction to international cooperation for the development of all peoples in solidarity. To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority, as my predecessor Blessed John XXIII indicated some years ago. Such an authority would need to be regulated by law, to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, to seek to establish the common good, and to make a commitment to securing authentic integral human development inspired by the values of charity in truth. Furthermore, such an authority would need to be universally recognized and to be vested with the effective power to ensure security for all, regard for justice, and respect for rights. Obviously it would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums. Without this, despite the great progress accomplished in various sectors, international law would risk being conditioned by the balance of power among the strongest nations. The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations."

That’s right. The Pope believes that society’s lack of charity can be solved by giving the UN more coercive power. Even though the world’s largest governments have routinely failed to deliver their citizens from poverty or to instill a sense of charity in the polis, an even larger government will succeed. This new, larger, more powerful government will, of course, avoid all of the moral failings that have plagued all other governments since time immemorial (somehow). The same UN responsible for Oil for Food and peacekeeping missions in the Congo will, in some unspecified manner, straighten up and fly right, thus becoming a paragon of virtue.

For some reason I’m skeptical that a bunch of corrupt, unelected, and unaccountable UN bureaucrats will use their guns, money, and power to make everyone in the world more charitable. I rather suspect that they would only use them for their own personal gain. So instead of imposing further UN-sponsored misery on the world, perhaps we should take a different approach. Although he seems to be completely unaware of it, Pope Benedict XVI himself alludes to this alternate approach in Caritas In Veritate:

“In Populorum Progressio, Paul VI taught that progress, in its origin and essence, is first and foremost a vocation: ‘in the design of God, every man is called upon to develop and fulfil himself, for every life is a vocation’…A vocation is a call that requires a free and responsible answer. Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility. The ‘types of messianism which give promises but create illusions’ always build their case on a denial of the transcendent dimension of development, in the conviction that it lies entirely at their disposal. This false security becomes a weakness, because it involves reducing man to subservience, to a mere means for development, while the humility of those who accept a vocation is transformed into true autonomy, because it sets them free. Paul VI was in no doubt that obstacles and forms of conditioning hold up development, but he was also certain that ‘each one remains, whatever be these influences affecting him, the principal agent of his own success or failure.’ This freedom concerns the type of development we are considering, but it also affects situations of underdevelopment which are not due to chance or historical necessity, but are attributable to human responsibility. This is why ‘the peoples in hunger are making a dramatic appeal to the peoples blessed with abundance’. This too is a vocation, a call addressed by free subjects to other free subjects in favour of an assumption of shared responsibility. Paul VI had a keen sense of the importance of economic structures and institutions, but he had an equally clear sense of their nature as instruments of human freedom. Only when it is free can development be integrally human; only in a climate of responsible freedom can it grow in a satisfactory manner.”

In this passage, the Pope inadvertently provides a very good explanation as to why state involvement is antithetical to real charity, progress, and human development. State control denies the individual the freedom needed to pursue his or her vocation. Government maintains the illusion that it is the source of prosperity, which in turn creates a false sense of security that ultimately reduces man to subservience. In contrast, true charity can only exist within a sphere of freedom. And it is only through greater freedom that individuals can make the moral choices necessary to deliver real human progress.

Go in peace.

Independence Day

Another round of Tea Party rallies was held all across the country on Saturday. I haven’t seen so many angry conservatives gather in one place since the Dixie Chicks came to town. Then again, conservatives (and the rest of us, for that matter) have a lot to be angry about lately. So it’s probably fitting that they came together on Independence Day, the day we celebrated an event that took place 233 years ago, when the original thirteen colonies announced their intention to secede from an oppressive government that had been trampling the natural liberties of its citizens for far too long. In the Declaration of Independence they cited the “long train of abuses” that had set them upon their fateful course – a course that would change human history.

The outcome was never certain. The odds were against the American colonists. After all, they were taking on the largest, most powerful government in the world at the time. Nevertheless, they persevered and they won their liberties – liberties that were theirs by virtue of their humanity, and not by virtue of any government grant. With that in mind, they set about to form a better government – one explicitly designed to protect individuals’ natural rights. Although they didn’t apply that protection equally, they did at least set the foundation for what would become the freest, most prosperous society mankind had ever known.

Today, however, that prosperity is in jeopardy because we have lost sight of a few things that the founders understood very well. They understood that government exists for one purpose only – to protect individual liberty. It cannot, in justice, do more than that because government can only help some people by harming others. The founders created a government with strictly limited powers because they knew that once government moves beyond its proper role of protecting liberty, it immediately becomes destructive to its own purpose. George Washington understood this simple truth, and he was correct when he said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

The founders also understood that any legitimate government rests on the consent of the governed. An inescapable corollary to this concept is that the governed may withdraw their consent should their government ever become oppressive or tyrannical.

Somewhere along the way we forgot these foundational principles. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, then we have indeed been derelict in our duty, and we now suffer the consequences of our own complacency. But the Tea Part protests show that some Americans are beginning to shake off that complacency.

Many, if not most, of the protestors at the Tea Party rallies are merely unhappy with the current administration, and mistakenly believe that everything would be just fine if only they could get more Republicans elected to office. Some of us, however, understand the larger issues at stake and have committed ourselves to the principle of individual liberty that was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence back in 1776.

Sadly, many Americans no longer agree with that founding principle, as evidenced by some talking heads in the media who have dismissed the Tea Party rallies and the demonstrators. Apparently they don’t think that tens of thousands of Americans taking to streets holding signs and shouting protest chants is very newsworthy. Barely able to suppress their contempt, they remind us that the original Boston Tea Party was all about taxation without representation. And since we have representation now, the argument goes, we should all just shut up and allow the federal government to run roughshod over our rights. I disagree.

In fact, I have to wonder if we are really represented at all these days. The nation’s opposition to the Bush/Paulson $800 billion TARP I plan was well publicized. And even though public opinion ran almost 99 to 1 against the bailout, our so-called “representatives” in Washington passed it anyway. In the face of such blatant disregard for the expressed will of the people, can we really claim that we are being represented? I have my doubts.

TARP I was bad enough, but the Obama administration will not be outdone in the bad ideas department. This year Congress passed a $3.5 trillion budget, and a corresponding $2 trillion deficit. The national debt is now well above $11 trillion, and we face over $100 trillion in additional unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare over the next several years. And the tab grows larger every day.

Something is obviously very wrong with this picture. Our elected representatives have not only lost sight of their duty to uphold the Constitution and to protect our liberties, but evidently they have also lost all touch with reality to boot. Most normal people understand that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging. In Washington, though, when the politicians find themselves in a hole, they immediately borrow more money to buy a bigger shovel.

So on Independence Day, thousands of Americans gathered in cities throughout the land to demand that the bureaucrats in Washington stop squandering the fruits of their labor with its irresponsible and wasteful spending. They made it known that they reject confiscatory taxation, the deliberate destruction of the dollar, and the bankrupt ideology that claims government can live our lives and run our businesses better than we can. Because of this stance, statists accuse them of being mere shills for so-called “corporate interests.” I disagree. I didn’t see a lot of CEOs and investment bankers. Instead, I saw mothers and fathers who are rightly concerned that the country they grew up in is in danger of losing the attachment to individual liberty that made it great in the first place. I saw parents who are concerned that their children will be less free than they were. And I saw Americans give notice that the federal government has overstepped its bounds and risks losing the consent of the governed upon which its moral legitimacy is supposedly based.

There are many other Americans, of course, who enthusiastically support the government’s economic policies. They tell us that we should wait and give President Obama’s plan a chance to work. I disagree. When someone lets go of a rock, we all know what happens next. It falls to the ground. There’s no need to wait and give the rock a chance to float up, no matter how much we might hope that this time it really will work. We know it won’t work because it can’t work. Nevertheless, President Obama, Ben Bernanke, Secretary Geithner, and most members of Congress tell us that if we just sit back and let them drown us all in debt and dollar bills, and if we just sit back and let them nationalize a few more industries, that everything will work out fine. We just need to give it a chance to work. Those who attended the Tea Party rallies on Saturday disagree.

Two years ago, Treasury Secretary Paulson said there was no fundamental problem in the economy. Then last year, he said that $800 billion would be enough to patch up the problems he hadn’t noticed before. Now the Obama administration tells us that that if they just spend a few trillion more here and there, the same people who didn’t know there was a problem to begin with will be able to fix the problem by doing more of the same things that caused the problem. And in the process the government may just have to take over the banks, the automobile manufacturers, the credit card providers, the mortgage companies, the healthcare industry, and any other sector of the economy they can get their hands on.

Many in this country believe that the government must take these steps in order to cure what they see as massive market failure. In this they are very, very mistaken. In looking to increase the government’s involvement in the economy, they are prescribing the wrong cure because they have misdiagnosed the disease. They do not see that the current crisis is the inevitable result of at least a century of bureaucratic micro-management in the economy – and you can bet that no one in Washington is going to call attention to that fact. The President, his cabinet, and Congress want us to focus on the car going off the road, but they don’t want to admit that they were the ones who switched all the traffic signs around in the first place.

When market actors engage in fraud or theft, they must be stopped. But for far too long now, the government has been involved in far more than simply deterring violations of property rights. Through a variety of means, it has attempted to coerce the market into behaving in ways that benefit the political class, using brute force to override the voluntary choices made by individuals acting in their own best interests. And yet despite the bailouts, the nationalizations, the mountains of regulations, the punitive tax code, and countless other interventions, those in government still refer to the US economy as a “free market.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In a free market and in a free country, the government does not dictate which actors will succeed and which will fail, the consumer does. In a capitalist society, the government neither punishes winners nor subsidizes losers. In our society, of course, the government does all of this and more.

We have yet to feel the real impact of these federal bailouts, nationalizations, sweetheart loans, excessive spending, and skyrocketing debt. The long run effects of these policies will not only be detrimental to the economy, but to our personal liberties as well. This would be reason enough to rise up and oppose the lunacy coming from Washington these days. But we should also oppose federal meddling in the economy from a purely pragmatic standpoint. Think about it for a moment. The federal government has the power to take as much of our money in taxes as it wants. It also has the power to print as much money as it feels it needs at any given time. And yet even with this awesome power, Washington still manages to lose $2 trillion a year. That’s an impressive display of incompetence. And these same people now claim that they have the business savvy we need to nurse the private sector back to health? Well thanks, but no thanks.

We’ve seen this movie before in countries all over the world, and we know how it ends. It’s nothing that we want here. Not in this country. In this country, some of us still value freedom. We still value individual initiative and individual liberty. And we understand that the free market is the manifestation of that initiative and of that liberty. These are core American values, and they cannot be managed by central planners in DC. They must be protected from the central planners in DC.

Our government is on a very dangerous and destructive course. If we do not have the freedom to make our own choices about how we spend and invest our money, if we do not have the freedom to manage our own health care or run our own businesses, if we do not have the freedom to succeed or fail based on our own individual skills and initiative, then we are not free. That is why thousands of people gathered together on Independence Day. Not merely to protest out-of-control government spending and a crushing tax burden, but to demand their very liberty.

There may be time yet to stop this madness. The American economy can rebound, and it can become stronger than ever. But if we are to recover and regain the economic dynamism that was once the hallmark of the United States, it will only be due to the individuals who go to work every day in a free market. It will not be due to those in government, who merely sponge off our efforts and seek to inhibit our prosperity.

My hope is that the Tea Party protestors will move beyond mere partisan rhetoric and will help rekindle the spririt of liberty that once animated the American republic. It’s time to tell all politicians, Republican or Democrat, from the local city council to the White House, that they may not saddle our friends, our neighbors, and our children with a crushing debt or a devalued dollar. Now is the time to make our voices heard. Because if we don’t stop this government’s reckless spending and headlong rush into socialism, we will not recognize the country we leave to our children. Hopefully a few more Americans have now renewed their commitment to the founding principle of this country, and will demand the natural liberties that were promised us on the first Independence Day.