The Bus to Serfdom Just Went Into Hyperdrive

Thousands of hung over bureaucrats will awake this morning with a new president, a new congress, and starry-eyed fantasies of further entrenching themselves in their positions of power. Change will most certainly come quickly as the new administration begins its reign, and it won’t be pretty. The change that most are yearning for is a master of economics and infrastructure, healer of the sick, benefactor of the poor, and punisher of the rich. It appears at least half the country hopes that our new leader can eliminate all of the unpleasantries and misfortunes of life, regardless of the freedoms they must sacrifice or the chains they surreptitiously place on their fellow men. Of the other half, a worrisome number don’t mind the schemes of legal plunder or coercive measures, they simply “hope Obama will be a great president,” as if history is without lessons and man is without unalienable rights. Like an addict with no fix, nothing is sacred.

Here’s to the people getting what they’ve asked for!

The democrat party is loathsome to be sure, but the G.O.P. has been reduced to the level of a man who watches with a blank and apathetic stare as his family is butchered. The only meaningful opposition to the leviathan in D.C. lies in whatever segment of the population has retained self-respect after over half a century of being told that the state is the only hope.

A moderate, gutless, compromising republican party with a weak handshake lost big in 2006. The establishment decided that more moderation was the ticket in 2008. As if a platform centering around more government growth coupled with insignificant spending cuts wasn’t enough, the republicans redefined “civility” as never saying anything that may be construed as too negative about the opponent’s plans to drive the country over a cliff. Short of a full blown revolution of thought among republican politicians, the party is finished as a useful apparatus for derailing the leviathan.

It is now up to us to either bring about that revolution of thought, or throw out the thoughtless in massive numbers. If the debate remains over how to grow government and expand its coercive powers, the best days of our little experiment have surely passed. It will be an interesting two years, and even more interesting to see if the G.O.P. shows any signs of life afterwards.