You are invited to read the latest commentary from the Free Enterprise Foundation. It will make you think!

The Way Back

America’s Founders confronted EVERY issue, social, economic, and primarily personal, with the Biblical moral virtue that formed the basis for the boundaries they established in creating and designing the Republic. American “leaders” today confront EVERY issue with secular “political correctness.” Until “We the people” correct this, America will continue its moral, social decline and will result in relinquishing its standing as the leader of the free world. Then who will the oppressed turn to? (Gary Allen, Ears to hear website as found in Alain’snewsletter.com)

Given the forces tearing at the world’s body politic, there is no one profession that deserves our prayers more than those who toil in public service. Whatever the nation for which they toil, collectively their actions become state actions affecting their people, and in our increasingly interconnected planet, our own as well. No longer do statesmen have the two weeks it took in 1860 under favorable conditions to sail from Sandy Hook to London to allow tempers to cool and thought to percolate before responding in a similar time lag. Life was noticeably slower.

In a digital world our problems become, in the click of a mouse, the world’s problems and its, ours. Today it is our politicians with whom I have a bone to pick. Our politicians are today at the root of actions that will adversely affect our nation for decades. Laws of hundreds and even thousands of pages are steaming through Congress or have already passed. These new laws will upset our life’s rhythms and take, even if faithfully executed, at least a decade to sort out. Abetted by an aggressive Executive, Congress has so stretched the national purse, our future is no longer our own to determine. It is hostage to whatever tin pot dictator or accident of nature or man caused disaster happens when it can least be absorbed by our economy. Prudence, ordered consideration, plan and thoughtful execution are all forfeit. Our national cold is on the cusp of becoming pneumonia.

Warren Buffett recently noted the old saw that it isn’t wise to bet against America. I agree, but though he still supports the President and believes the financial steps taken were needed, he also noted that we are sick and getting sicker without end in sight, and there is no predictable date when we will emerge from our plight.

Our first step in solving our current dilemma must be to focus on home and our heritage. We have a consuming responsibility to ourselves to focus on restoring the individual, value driven society that was left to us by our forefathers. Only in individual responsibility and adherence to a Judeo Christian set of values by our society, can we hope to work ourselves out of this mess. There simply is not enough national capital to bail out everyone who feels entitled to health care from cradle to grave, nor can we, today, achieve a non polluting energy grid delivered to our home at a price that won’t break the bank and make our industries non competitive in the process.

The spiritual reawakening I have written about in the past is sweeping the country but meeting stubborn resistance particularly in urban media that have surrendered their critical faculties to political correctness and running with the “smart set.” The smart set is neither smart nor correct. When two centuries of settled law is overturned to fashion a politically correct solution for auto giant bankruptcy, our country suffers. When the government doubles an already irresponsibly high national debt with no plan to pay it back, America suffers.

Actions do have consequences. They may not be immediate, but they are inevitable. The government must depend on the private sector to restore our affluence…To paraphrase Willy Sutton, “That’s where the jobs are.” The government which has already grown as a share of GDP to a size not seen since the 1940’s, does not produce anything that must not be paid for by all of us. It is all “outgo.” We are the government’s sheep to be shorn. Net growth in the country must rely on the private sector.

To abuse settled commercial understandings, to flaunt economic expectations will surely dry up entrepreneurial risk taking. Rail against capitalists if you want, but capital knows no nationality. It flows where the conditions for gain are most promising. Right now it is not flowing our way. Initial public offerings are moving abroad, and I read of one last week where a major offering was happening through merger with a foreign shell company. All of this is to avoid our federally mandated costs and abusive regulatory environment. It is in correcting this situation we must labor to right the balance and restore the proper order. I fear my original characterization of our President as the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is being borne out in practice.

Though we must turn to the free market to restore our national health, government does have a huge job ahead of it figuring out how we can pay for our past and current excesses without straying to other tasks. I fear we are currently too exposed internationally to succeed. So often when faced with challenge in our national political scene, the answer lies with our founders. George Washington in his farewell address noted, “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”

This warning to avoid entangling alliances was picked up by John Quincy Adams. In 1821 in an address to Congress, he noted that America is a “well wisher to the freedom and independence of all” nations, but we “must not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy under banners other than our own” and predicts that breech of this standard would bring with it the loss of our “freedom and independence.” Lincoln saw us as “the last best hope of earth.” But by that he meant we had the responsibility to model for the rest of the world how a great Republic conducts itself under stress. He clearly was not suggesting we make the world’s problems our own.

We are too exposed internationally today to properly do what we must to solve our problems and restore domestic tranquility. To those nations beyond our shores who count on us, restoring our economy is our foremost responsibility. If we continue to act as the world’s policeman, we will fail our client states as well as ourselves. We must, for a time, pull in our horns and allow such mischief as occurs to be solved by others. I am not an isolationist. Prudence in today’s world will not permit that, but we have neither the economic staying power nor national appetite at present to project our power around the globe. Ultimately our forefathers were right. We should be friend to all but foil for none. Our interests are uniquely ours. Solving our current problems is decidedly the best we can do for our friends and customers abroad and essential in countering those who would destroy us.

Copyright © 2009 by Robert E. Freer, Jr. All rights reserved

About the author: Robert E. Freer, Jr. is President of The Free Enterprise Foundation. He is a Visiting Professor, at The Citadel and elected in 2005 to be their first John S. Grinalds Leader in Residence. A regular contributor to the Mercury, He can be reached by E-mail at The Citadel . Copies of his earlier columns can be found The Free Enterprise Foundation.