In his Friday column my Freeman colleague Sheldon Richman takes a look at how politicians take advantage of crises to increase their power. Naturally, after each crisis has passed, the increase in power remains. This ratchet only works in one direction.
Too bad that politicians are hardly ever honest enough to admit that the crisis they say they must deal with would not have arisen if it weren’t for their mania for tampering with the order of civil society. I don’t know if Obama understands that the current economic crisis is the result of governmental interference in credit and especially home financing markets, but even if he did, to say so would be to undermine the belief he wants people to have in the goodness and wisdom of the state. Therefore, we get deceptive blather about “greed” so that he can exploit the crisis to greatly expand the scope of federal power.
