This past week President Bush and Treasurery Secretary Henry Paulson announced a staggering $700,000,000,000 (yes, that’s eleven zeroes) economic bailout plan intended to rescue flailing financial firms, banks and other institutions, all at the expense of the meager American tax payer. Apparently it is the job of the average American citizen and tax payer to bail out gigantic lenders who made stupid decisions and won’t seem to reap any consequences as their result.
Don’t worry lenders, you are no longer subject to the Free Market where occasionally ventures actually fail. The Federal Government, whose executive branch is supposedly run by conservatives and Republicans, has decided that absolutely unprecedented and massive interventions in to the free market are OK, even if it will send our already criminal level of national debt to an unbelievable precipice of $11,300,000,000,000 (that’s pronounced eleven-trillion, three hundred billion dollars). At this point I’ve come to believe we’re dealing with Monopoly money.
Eric Margolis of Edmonton Sun put it great when he wrote this week, “The “free market” Republican administration has ended up nationalizing nearly $1 trillion worth of businesses, including the federal mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Sterns, and global insurer AIG. Welcome to Wall Street socialism.”
My only bone of contention with Margolis might be his characterization of socialism. The Federal government’s actions in the past weeks strike me more as fascism, or big government colluding with big business at the expense of the tax payer. Be the government’s actions fascist or socialist though, I sure as Hell know they’re not capitalist, and no citizen should support them.
Despite my political affiliation and role within my Party, I know that many of my fellow Republicans will be furious with me for this column, but let me say this: there is nothing inherently special about the Republican Party. Blind partisanship based upon Party affiliation alone is simply stupid. Partisanship based upon philosophy, however, is both honorable and desirable for a healthy Republic. The Bush administration, while obviously Republican in name, can not hope to ever be called truly Conservative.
There is nothing conservative about infringing upon personal freedoms and civil liberties. There is nothing conservative about expanding the size and scope of the Federal government more so than any President since Franklin D. Roosevelt. There is nothing conservative about war.
There is nothing conservative about not trusting the Free Market. There is nothing conservative about cutting taxes while simultaneously and massively increasing spending on socialist programs such as Medicare that conservatives and Republicans have traditionally been opposed to, or at least questioned. There is nothing conservative about proposing a plan which would have allowed millions of illegal immigrants to remain here and eventually become American citizens.
Simply put, there is almost nothing conservative about this Administration whose foreign policy most resembles the misguided idealism of Woodrow Wilson (a Democrat) and the domestic policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt (another Democrat). I can only hope that John McCain can save this Party.
While this column was originally meant to be about the current economic crisis, it has largely helped me realize what I believe is the last straw with the Bush Administration whose economic incompetence has brought us to the point of what many people consider insolvency.
If ever there were a dark time for America, surely it is around the corner, and all because the most successful civilization to ever have lived didn’t have the discipline to control its own spending. American capitalism- R.I.P.
