For the past five months each week has been a surprise, each week we see our federal government get larger and more invasive.  Are we on the right path?  This discussion is not about left and right, republican or democrat, this discussion should be about up and down.  Are our actions and the actions of our elected representatives elevating our society to the ultimate freedoms our founding fathers envisioned, or are we being dragged down under an ever more controlling government toward totalitarianism? 

            In the past few weeks we have witnessed government take control of our banking industry, our insurance industry, the automobile manufacturing industry, and the credit card industry.  Proposals have been made to artificially and intentionally greatly increase the cost of energy for the express purpose of making our current way of life unaffordable to the majority of Americans, thereby changing behaviors and giving the illusion that alternative energy sources are more affordable.  The president announced new draconian CAFÉ standards for all American manufactured automobiles.  This legislation serves to force the auto industry to limit the type of cars they make to very small, very dangerous econo-boxes that Americans would not otherwise purchase.  Once again taking away our ability to choose how we want to live our lives.  Now we are facing another assault on our health care system.  An assault that, if successful, will cost trillions of dollars and destroy the best health care system that currently exists anywhere.

            Currently there are 6 million people in this country collecting unemployment benefits.  While they are collecting those benefits, they are purchasing goods and services and paying their bills.  What will happen when those benefits run out?  As the benefits expire, fewer goods and services will be purchased, more homes will be foreclosed on, and more bankruptcies will be filed.  Meanwhile we are adding 600,000 new jobless Americans to that list each month.  Our economy is just in the beginning stages of spinning out of control.  As fewer people are spending fewer dollars, more and more layoffs will occur as the cycle feeds on itself.  Lately the media and economists have been trying to tell us that while the economy is still bad and getting worse, it is getting worse at a slower rate, so therefore things are getting better.  Our weekly jobless numbers remain dismal, unemployment rates for the nation and individual states are continuing to worsen, so why are we being told not to worry?  These economists point to the number of Americans collecting unemployment and how that trend is starting to flatten, implying that it means fewer Americans are unemployed.  Actually, we are seeing people that no longer qualify for unemployment fall out of this statistic. 

            The solution to our current plight will not be easy.  We as Americans must demand from our politicians that they stop spending our money wastefully.  We must demand that they stop nationalizing our industries.  As a nation, we must stop borrowing money from around the world, stop printing new money at unprecedented rates, and learn to live within our means.  Taxes must be lowered to allow people to keep what they earn so that we the people can have the ability to rejuvenate our economy. 

            Government does not create wealth.  By taking wealth from those who earn it and redistributing that wealth, we are reducing people’s and businesses ability to grow and create the wealth that is required to grow our economy.

            We are living in historic times.  In the past months we have been witness to the largest government takeover of private industry ever seen.  AIG, Citibank, GM, and Chrysler have all been taken over by our government.  To get a glimpse of what this will mean to our citizenry, we need look no further than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

            Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac created the housing bubble that has led to one of the greatest losses of global wealth in history.  Rather than using standard risk management models to determine eligibility of a loan or assessing the ability of the potential borrower to pay back the loan, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were politicized and used to promote a social agenda whereby loans were given based upon minority status.  When the individual could not put any money down on the property, zero down loans were created.  If the payments were too high, short term adjustable rate mortgages and interest only loans were created.  In order to compete, other banks were encouraged and in some cases forced to offer similarly risky loans.  All of this easy credit led to excessive inflation in home values.  What we see now is that many of the people that were supposed to have been helped through the social agenda based loan policies are now the ones that have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy, and in many cases lost their jobs through the economic collapse caused by the housing bubble burst.

            To apply these same political processes to our financial, insurance, and manufacturing industries will be devastating to our nation, our freedoms, and our very way of life.  Even those companies that have been fiscally responsible will be affected.  As GM and Chrysler move forward, they will be forced by the government to produce alternative energy and sub-compact vehicles, vehicles that the majority of Americans have rejected through free choice.  Earning a profit will no longer be a prime motive for determining what vehicles are produced since the government now owns a majority stake in these companies.  Without a profit motive, these companies have no reason to improve services or seek innovation to produce better vehicles.  As the companies lose billions of dollars annually, the federal government will subsidize them in the same way is has subsidized Amtrak for the past 37 years.  Other auto manufactures will be unable to compete simply because they are not receiving government subsidies.  Just as Amtrak has prevented any other passenger rail service companies from being able to compete, GM and Chrysler will eventually spell the demise for automobile manufacturing in the U.S. 

            As I have written before, we can resolve these problems through conservative principles of limited government and the free market system.  I wrote months ago that both GM and Chrysler should have been allowed to enter bankruptcy protection instead of accepting bailout money.  Through the principles of allowing failure and rewarding success, we will reverse the ineptitudes of government that is epitomized by Amtrak, the Postal system, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.  There is nothing that the government does better, more efficiently, or more effectively than the private sector.  As our government continues to nationalize key industries, we lose the competitive drive, rugged Americanism, and entrepreneurship that has made this country the most successful in the world and made her the envy of all others.  Rather than apologize for our success, rather than make our states beholden to the federal government through acceptance of so called stimulus funds, our elected officials need to look toward the conservative values that allowed us to become the world’s greatest nation.