|
And Rightly So
October 30, 2009
Conservative publishing is a very small world.
I've often at least met the authors of our Main Selections
before they're selected. If I were overscrupulous about
full disclosure, too many of these columns would be clogged
with name-dropping accounts of the circumstances under
which I'd encountered the authors: "Michael Medved had me
on the radio to publicize my book . . . Ann Coulter stopped
by our office, and she's even thinner and blonder in person
than on TV . . . I helped Tony Esolen get
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization/i> published . .
Robert Spencer introduced me to David Horowitz at CPAC . .
. . I was in a meeting with Carrie Prejean, and she seems
just as unspoiled and genuinely charming as you wish all
beauty pageant winners were . . ."
But sometimes the relationship is close enough that it
does seem like I ought to mention it -- for example, in the
case of Robert Spencer, a very old friend who was already
debating Muslims when we were in college together at the
University of North Carolina.
Tim Carney, the author of
Obamanomics: How Barack
Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street
Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses, is also a
real friend. One who has opened my eyes to important truths
that I hadn't seen before, about the reasons our government
continues to grow and grow -- to the point where it's now
swallowing up ever-larger swathes of the private economy,
ruining our national credit, and, if we don't somehow get
it under control, breaking America beyond repair. I met Tim
Carney when he was working for Eagle Publishing --
the Conservative Book Clubs parent company -- toward the end
of the Bush administration, when so many conservatives were
bitterly disappointed about the Republicans' record on
financial responsibility (and this was even before the
bailouts). One key insight that Tim Carney helped me to
attain is that for politicians, even Republicans, being
"pro-business" unfortunately doesn't always mean actually
being pro-free market, pro-entrepreneurship, pro-
capitalism, or pro-a sound economy -- or even genuinely
good for business.
Real conservatism on economic issues means protecting
property rights, a truly free market, and real economic
liberty. Those things create a level playing field for all
businesses, allow the whole economy to prosper, and ensure
the maximum liberty for individual citizens. Faux
conservatism on the economy means using government’s
crushing powers of taxation, regulation, and coercion to
protect existing businesses and property owners from the
competition of the free market. Too often, Republican
politicians in the Bush years fetishized some one
particular feature of a capitalist economy and used
subsidies and regulation to inflate it all out of
proportion to its real value, twisting that one good thing
so out of its natural context in the market as to actually
undermine the economy. The most obvious example is
President Bush's well-intentioned but disastrous push for
an "ownership economy." Home ownership is a good thing. But
recklessly promoting "home ownership" with intrusive
government regulation and massive subsidies that push
people into houses they can never really afford has nothing
to do with a truly free economy. Nor does saddling our
grandchildren with crushing debt to bail out high-rolling
Wall Street gamblers, a.ka. "abandon[ing] free market
principles to save the free market system."
These days, we have much worse things to worry about
than faux conservative economics. Now, Tim Carney turns his
remarkable economic insight and finely honed reporter's
skills on the economic shenanigans of the Obama
administration. What Carney discovers is that Obama is more
beholden to big business (particularly corrupt big business
that wants a permanent place on the government gravy train)
than any Republican -- and that he’s more ready to
subsidize it, crush its competition, and guarantee its
profits at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Not because our President loves business -- far from
it. But because an alliance with corrupt, rent-seeking
businesses is the quickest path to what he wants: more
government control of us. Like any Leftist, our President
is sure that he and his hand-picked elites can run our
lives better than we can. If he has to make a deal with
"evil" insurance companies, Big Pharma, or Big Oil (all the
while posing as the public's champion against big business)
in order to get the power to tell us where to set our
thermostats or what medical treatments we can and can't
have, he'll do the deal. In
Obamanomics, Tim Carney has
provided an invaluable service, laying out exactly how
President Obama will beggar America, enrich his fat cat
cronies, and take our liberty -- if we don’t see the threat
in time to fight back.
--Elizabeth Kantor
andrightlyso@ConservativeBookClub.com
|
|
