The start of a new presidential administration also marks the start of a new editorial reign at Commentary magazine. John Podhoretz uses his first editor?s column to remind us that our current woes are not the greatest calamity ever to befall mankind:
As I write these words, ?the possibilities in America? are being subjected to a time of testing due to a series of financial shock waves whose reverberations are being felt worldwide. But the breathless tendency to imagine that we are on the verge of civilizational collapse, that we have it worse than anyone has had it in 75 years, and that democratic capitalism itself has been invalidated, is an example of the self-same ahistorical narcissism that leads so many today to believe they are possessors of a wisdom inaccessible to their forbears.
Booms are followed by busts. Bubbles burst. Crooks go to jail. A period of laxity is followed by a period of excessive control, the irritations of which help produce the conditions for the loosening that will, in turn, allow bust to turn into boom once again.
In the meantime, John Hood reminds us today that much damage can be done by ill-advised government meddling.
