Inconsistency

In the perceptive letter below, Don Boudreaux notes the inconsistency in the editorial positions the Wall Street Journal takes on domestic meddling by the federal government and international meddling, such as the proposed attack on the Syrian regime.

He doesn’t understand the disconnect and neither do I.

Editor, Wall Street Journal
1211 6th Ave.
New York, NY  10036

Dear Editor:

You rightly praise the late Ronald Coase for warning against people who, intoxicated by hubris, seek to use government force to try to engineer the world into a better state (“The Wisdom of Ronald Coase,” Sept. 4).  And you also frequently – and correctly – point to the Obama administration’s ham-fisted interventions into the economy as manifestations of the destructive arrogance that Mr. Coase criticized.

And yet on the same page on which you praise Mr. Coase for counseling humility, you (“Water’s Edge Republicans”) and William Galston (“Syria and the Iraq Syndrome”) endorse the Obama administration’s plan to unleash Uncle Sam’s military might on the Syrian government – a government that poses no real threat to Americans.

You should take more seriously Mr. Coase’s warnings against hyperactive government – perhaps by pondering his wise admonition that “To ignore the government’s poor performance of its present duties when deciding on whether it should or should not take on new duties is obviously wrong.”*

Why do you suppose that the same government that fails so regularly at home will succeed abroad?  What reason, do tell, justifies government humility only in domestic affairs or only for bureaucracies not housed in pentagon-shaped buildings?

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics