I find the expansion of government in to new areas, the increase in cost and complexity pushed by our ever expanding tax code and set of business regulations, the new health care law, the march of federal spending to near, and soon past $4tril, etc. to be negative and discouraging things. Both new movements, and continuations of old ones, reduce our liberty, and in many cases harm our prosperity.
OTOH some perspective is needed. We are currently headed in the wrong direction, and in some more narrow ways things have nearly continually gotten worse; but it's not as if modern America has been one steady unstoppable move away from freedom.
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"At a recent discussion, I overheard a much older libertarian disagree with a younger member of the movement who had made some remark on the constant downward spiral of statism: “You have no idea,” said the older one in effect. “You have no idea the stuff that used to happen, in this very country.”
He went on to mention the Interstate Commerce Commission, Nixon’s price controls, the military draft, and the onerous regulations on heavy industry that were dismantled in the Carter and Reagan administrations. He could easily have continued: the 90% tax bracket, the indecency laws, the blue laws, the “fairness doctrine”… all have either been abolished or severely curtailed.
Things have gotten vastly better on a number of fronts, and it’s actually arguable that we’re not on the road to serfdom anymore at all. While state power has continued to assert itself in many troubling new areas, it’s also faced a powerful and growing critique. These examples prove just how successful the attack has been; how much better off we are without them proves just how right the attack has been."
cato-unbound.org |
