Liberty Maven

As is often the case, Lew Rockwell is right on the mark when he takes Obama’s policies to task in his most recent article at the Ludwig von Mises Institute.  He points out that Obama and his team clearly fail to realize that freedom is the foundation of and the reason for social and economic flourishing, and in fact they operate as though the opposite were true.  At the same time, the general populace (especially those who have high hopes for the Obama presidency) seem to think that the nation’s leader can solver all of our ills through sheer will.  And of course, the so-called “economic stimulus” doesn’t stimulate the economy; it merely  stimulates the government.

Read the article:

The great failing of the Obama administration is that it is packed with people who show no apparent knowledge of the essential truths of liberal theory. That theory — which is the core of the American political contribution to, and the driving force of, modernity itself — is that freedom is the foundation of and the reason for social and economic flourishing. All evidence suggests they know nothing of this.

Obamites hold the opposite view, the one advanced by the pharaohs and emperors of old, all the way through the Talibans and Hugo Chavezes of our own time. It is the view that nothing is beyond the competence of the state and its great leader. Particularly in economic affairs, these people have a wildly inflated view of what the nation’s chief executive can accomplish through sheer will.

Liberal theory teaches that one truism of government is that whatever it does, the results end up making the problem not better but worse. [Continue]