From Billy Beck:***
Samizdata's Brian Micklethwait links a lecture by John Allison at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. This is eighty-six minutes of video and you should watch it all.
A principal element that you must take away from this: "Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae would not exist in a free market." A central delusion of our times is that the current economic mess is a consequence of a "free market". My personal conviction is that the greater the prominence of any given person who tells you this, the greater the probability that he or she is a bald-faced liar who knows the truth but has great political investment in asserting and maintaining the lie. (Precept: "In confusion, there is profit." The profit in this case is the institution of socialist policy.)
There is nothing true about the assertion. This is not a free market, and the failure that you see all around you is a failure of government. Understand: this is not an argument for re-doubled government efforts. All "reform" is nonsense.
Allison brings you all the bullet-points of destruction. This is about principles and their integration, ladies and gentlemen. The great cynicism of our times is that principles are simply conventions that can be disposed of at any turn of a moment. Well, I am here to tell you that you are living them right now, whether you know it or like it or not, and they are all wrong.
Allison moves quickly through the material, and you'll need to keep up with him, but you can do it and you should, unless you prefer somnambulance, in which case you're simply depraved.
Last fall, I was hearing people who I respect saying, "We've got to do something or else everything will fall apart." There was no way to convince them of how wrong they were. Well, we are now nearly six months into this disaster and it has gotten nothing but worse, and that's just up to date. The costs of the damage done so far will be like nothing America has ever seen before, and the only comparisons in world history now are the proudly proclaimed socialisms of the twentieth century. This was espoused by people who had lost their nerve and defaulted to government security over courage.
These lessons must be learned, else these long-term cycles of ignorance and panic will eventually claim everything we are. It might, in fact, be too late to prevent that. Combining the Obama administration with American cultural demographics (the rise of the imbecile, reared in proud ignorance at the feet of government) makes that prospect all too real. At the very least, however, people with brains in their heads might understand what they're looking at when they behold insects like David Brooks or Ezra Klein.
Wake up, kids.
Right now.
***
Raptus regaliter.
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