In one of his many exclusive interviews, President Obama makes the case to Business Week that his administration is ?pro-growth? and features ?fierce advocates for a thriving, dynamic free market.?
A featured quote in the print version of the story informs us: ?You would be hard-pressed to identify a piece of legislation that we have proposed out there that, net, is not good for businesses.?
Cough, cough ? card check ? cough, cough ? cap and trade ? cough, cough ? ObamaCare.
Sorry about that. I had to clear my throat. Now, where were we? Oh, yes, President Obama?s support for free markets and limited government.
Now might be a good time to revisit an astute observation John Podhoretz offered last summer:
I think that Obama and his people ? believe that the people of the United States can and will retain their entrepreneurial drive, their creative spark, and their willingness to take personal risks to make new fortunes and invent new ways of doing things no matter what. They would like to enjoy and make use of the benefits of the extraordinary energy of the American people in their pursuit of happiness, and so they believe they can act almost at will.
They can?t, though. A statist culture hospitable to individual achievement is a contradiction in terms. If the government of the United States makes it clear through word and deed that entrepreneurship is acceptable primarily because it provides funds to enlarge the government itself, and then moves aggressively to collect those funds at an accelerating rate, it will create both spiritual and practical disincentives to individual effort.
The question is: How much can government take before its efforts amount to slamming the brake on the nation?s entrepreneurial drive?
