We had a taste of this urge for fierce regulatory recrudescence Sunday evening with the words of Democratic Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who warned, in calculated tones of inflamed class resentment, that once the Democrats save the day, they will ensure the end of deregulated markets (although after leaving Clinton's White House staff, he took a position at the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Chicago, where he worked from 1999 to 2002 and reportedly earned $18 million).
Last December, in somber rather than triumphant tones, leading conservative economic commentator Martin Wolf, of the British Financial Times warned, "What is happening in credit markets today is a huge blow to the credibility of the Anglo-Saxon model of transactions-oriented financial capitalism." As Wolf's further words have been characterized, when the crisis hits (as it now has), "That will certainly mean the end of the neoliberal consensus that has dominated politics for almost a generation." Or, as Newsweek's Howard Fineman wrote recently in more informal words, "The era of cowboy capitalism has died, largely of self-inflicted wounds."
I don't take those words as prophecy, but they are certainly shrewd warnings of the political things that may come. And it is true that it is harder this week than it was last week to argue persuasively for pure free-market principles if one has endorsed the $700 billion bailout and partial nationalization of the credit industry. (And I do emphatically endorse the bailout as the only available and preferable alternative to the calamitous economic status quo.)
So in the months and years to come, it falls to those of us who advocate for free markets to persist in making our case. It is true that momentary events likely will cloud the public's judgment and provide nefarious opportunity for statists and other political hustlers. But it is also the truth, which is vouchsafed by any fair reading of history, that excessive regulation and taxation -- which means political management of private property and previously free markets -- are inherently corrupt and inefficient. Prosperity and the dignity of human freedom are two sides of the same coin. It is an old lesson that now must be retaught and relearned. And it shall be.
Tony Blankley
Tony Blankley, a conservative author and commentator who served as press secretary to Newt Gingrich during the 1990s, when Republicans took control of Congress, died Sunday January 8, 2012. He was 63.
Blankley, who had been suffering from stomach cancer, died Saturday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, his wife, Lynda Davis, said Sunday.
In his long career as a political operative and pundit, his most visible role was as a spokesman for and adviser to Gingrich from 1990 to 1997. Gingrich became House Speaker when Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives following the 1994 midterm elections.
©Creators Syndicate