The Republican Pledge to America released last nearly perfectly addresses the problems being created by the current leadership of our federal government. Its first sentence, making the point that Nobel Laureate economist Friedrich Hayek made fifty years ago in his The Constitution of Liberty, America is an idea, is something of major import that has been forgotten in this era of using government in an attempt to escape individual responsibility.
The reference to the Declaration of Independence contained in the rest of the Pledge should be obvious to us all, but unfortunately our education system is today more about garnering largesse for political unions than about educating our children on what ideas form the basis of our country.
The current jobs recession and the financial crisis that created it are the result of those in charge of an expanded federal government attempting to make the world in their own vision–in this particular case the vision that everyone has the right to own a home.
The response of those in power to the economic decline–from the TARP program, the stimulus bill fiasco, the cash-for-clunkers program, the first-time home buyers program, financial regulation, ad infinitum– has been to create massive uncertainty of what the rules of the game are. Combined with the takeover of the health care industry, we have created a situation where we no longer have what Hayek termed the Rule of Law.
Instead we have the arbitrary rule of whoever has power. This regime uncertainty, as Robert Higgs has called it, is the primary reason that we have nearly 15 million unemployed and another 8.9 million working part-time who would rather have full-time employment. The most important aspect of The Republican Pledge is that it provides the certainty of limited government that allows the market economy to provide opportunity and an elevated standard of living for all Americans.
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