You will be shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that I don’t support Mitt Romney. First off, his mannerisms and patterns of speech are similar to my dad’s, and that is just weird. Second, I don’t think he is really saying anything. That’s the best case scenario. The worst case is that he is contradicting himself right up and down. He begins by talking about unemployment, falling median incomes, and the disappearance of the middle class. Then he goes on to talk about the politics of envy and resentment of success, implying that the unemployed, the underpaid and the disappearing middle class are whiners.
What we need, says Mitt, is a return to the Constitutionally guaranteed Founding Principles of Economic Freedom. There’s a problem with that. There are no constitutional guarantees of economic freedom. These were not founding principles. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, the cornerstone of free market economics was published in 1776. These were brand new ideas, not widely accepted. And do we need to revisit the fact that the Founders were definitely not hip to a free market for labor?
But here is the fundamental thing: Mitt says he does not believe in the government. Instead he believes in the people. But our Constitution is clear on this point: the government IS the people. We do ordain and establish our government. If we truly believe as a people in economic freedom and competition, it is incumbent on our government to create the conditions in which that competition is fair and everyone starts from the same place. If we believe that those who don’t succeed maybe don’t deserve to be ground into the mulch of consumer capitalism, then perhaps it is the government’s role to prevent this from happening. And not just for the good of the downtrodden, but for the Soul of America.