Free markets and a ‘fair, stable society’

There appears to be a conscious attempt underway to shift the grounds of the current American political debate in preparation for this fall's presidential campaign.

Interestingly, this attempt to shift the goal lines comes from the political left, despite the fact that Democrats remain confident that the nation is about to elevate the most liberal senator in Washington to the presidency by acclamation. The problem with such predictions, of course, is that Republican John McCain seems perfectly capable of coming out of the gate come Labor Day, warning that Democrat Barack Obama plans to "solve all our problems" with higher taxes and bigger, more expensive government -- a recipe that American voters have rejected in every presidential election for 30 years.

How to prevent this from happening? One strategy would be to convince Republicans to abandon this winning line of attack before they've even given it a try, by seeding the public discourse with seemingly uncoordinated declarations from "objective" sources that the public has "soured" on the notion that free markets are a good thing, that nowadays all manner of "experts" have instead decided bigger and more powerful government is the answer after all, "looking with favor at more, not less, government involvement in the economy."

Republicans who fall for this line of bull would be rewarded by being called "moderate" and "reasonable."

Thus, we get Thomas Frank, The Wall Street Journal's new token op-ed Leninist, declaring on July 16: "This, historians will someday say, was the snarling end of an era in which our leaders believed that markets represented the very will of the people; that to serve one was to serve the other."

Thus it is that the Los Angeles Times on the very same date gives us their economic reporter, Peter Gosselin, declaring in an analysis headlined "Americans may be losing faith in free markets": "For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets ... certainly better than government meddling. No longer.

"Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair, stable and efficient society."

When Mr. Gosselin submits that "the current market system" is not "the key to a fair, stable and efficient society," he's using some very carefully chosen words. For what could be "fairer" than allowing each participant in any transaction the freedom to sell or not to sell; to buy or not to buy?

There is only one alternative to "free markets," and that's "coerced markets" -- a system where armed government agents threaten to arrest and jail anyone who tries to buy and sell without government permission, where some voluntary transactions are barred, and other transactions are required whether both participants like it or not.

Yet we're told this would be "fairer"?

Meantime, government economic "managers" have always promised greater "stability and efficiency." Ask the people of Eastern Europe whether they want to go back to the massively "stable and efficient" economic system that prevailed there from 1918 to 1991. Ask the Italians whether they want to bring back Musolini's economic system, dubbed "fascism" after the Roman symbol of a bound sheaf of wheat stalks, the fasces. Heck, just ask Americans who lived through the gas lines and rationing of the late 1970s whether they'd like to go back to Nixon-Ford "wage and price controls."

Yes, we're in an inflationary economic doldrum. But note the sectors that are in worst shape are precisely those where our markets are currently least free.

Where can we get one of those "almost unregulated" mortgage loans Mr. Gosselin talks about, by the way?

It's a good trick: Set up a "mixed" system with too much wasteful and counterproductive government command and control, call it a "market" and then moan -- when the interventions of government politicians and regulators mess everything up -- that this "proves markets don't work."

Let's put our eye back on the ball. The goal here is to inoculate Sen. Obama and this fall's crop of Democratic congressional candidates against perfectly credible charges that they're philosophically indistinguishable from those who advocate that the government run the economy in the same fashion as was an utter failure throughout much of the world last century.

Now: why would anyone want to raise a hullaballoo in an attempt to stop Republicans from making that charge -- unless that charge is true?