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Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Rahm Emmanuel: Never want a crisis to go to waste
The main impetus of the growth of Big Government Leviathan, throughout the history of every democratic nation, has been through crisis. Woodrow Wilson used World War I to centralize government in accordance with his progressive theory of presidential-based policy making. Franklin Roosevelt took advantage of the Great Depression to bring statism to our shores. George W. Bush used 9/11 to launch two wars, expand government, and curb civil liberties. Dubya also used a meltdown of our financial sector to bailout banks and begin a new phase in American corporate socialism.
Robert Higgs describes this phenomenon in his work -- Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government.
Now, Rahm Emmanuel, Obama's chief of staff, tells us we cannot let this financial crisis go to waste. Democrats have serious opportunities to usher in a new era of statism, and Obama's administration isn't embarrassed to admit it!
(Crossposted at AbuHatem.com)Posted by Omar Abu Hatem on November 19, 2008 in U.S. politics | Permalink
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Comments
"Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.” Milton Friedman
Times of crisis are opportunities to make deep structural changes that are difficult to change. Power holders of both the left and right wing know that and have proven it historically.
Libertarians on both the left and the right are both fighting against the permitted corporate cronyism and greed that led to the current crisis.
Emmanuel is in power in this time of crisis ... so it is nice to see he is not deceiving people about his understanding of his role in the crisis, even though you may not agree with what he will do with this power.
So how do we achieve the balance of a more free economic system that still allows people and communities to have power over their own social spheres? How do we improve our lives without impoverishing others? No matter our ideological perspective, there are moral issues in these questions that both the left and right can answer with fundamental agreement.
Posted by: Holographic | 2008-11-19 8:41:15 AM
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