Ideas

Back in the early 1980s, some of my co-workers were among the first Neocons I met. One of them talked politics all the time, and was very excited about the new breed of conservative politicians who were talking about "ideas." He said the word with wonder and reverence, as if nobody in history had actually had ideas before their invention in the 1980s.

All of these ideas boiled down to two concepts. People should be able to keep nearly every penny of whatever stack of money they could amass. And, perhaps, if this were not too revolutionary, that maybe our democracy would be better off if only those who owned property were allowed to vote. The rabble could not be trusted to understand what was good for the country and themselves.

I think my co-worker assumed that the uneducated would vote Democratic; perhaps nowadays he's pleasantly surprised at how well the Republicans have done with the common man.

Another assumption my friend made was that the election of somebody as liberal as Ted Kennedy to the presidency would "ruin the country." Let's examine these "ideas," which are, after all, not new, against the evidence of fairly recent history.

You have, perhaps, heard talk of an event called the Great Depression. This happened against a background of reckless speculation, a lack of regulation of the stock market and the banks, and a belief in the invisible guiding hand of the free market.

Things were so bad, for so many people, for so long, that most became convinced that the government had a role in giving people some security against the roller coaster ride of the free market. Now, there's an idea! The rough road of life can be smoothed by government programs. Franklin Roosevelt began the "New Deal."

I was born in 1950, and my life has been lived in the protection of New Deal policies. Social Security. Federal insurance to keep me from losing all my savings should my bank fail. Regulation of the stock market that did not allow a person to "buy" stock at fifteen cents on the dollar, gambling that he'd make his money back when the stock went up, as it surely must.

During my lifetime, the economy has been relatively stable, without severe ups and downs. This is not something I'm guessing at or making up. This is what I have observed, what I have experienced. My parents were not rich, but we got by, and I was able to go to college and do well for myself.

Then came the Reagan Revolution. The Neocons do not believe in the regulation of business. Never mind that regulated businesses have done quite well, and that America has thrived in the years since the Roosevelt administration. Since Reagan, the politicians with the same "ideas" that ruined our economy so many years ago have been working to chip away all of the New Deal protections. They did their job well during the George W. Bush administration, and by its end, the economy was on its way into the toilet once again. The same policies, therefore, had been pursued twice, with the same disastrous results.

Now, back to the subject of "unmitigated gall." Our villain from my last post, Rep. Darrell Issa, is searching for the answer as to why the economy has gone bad. The evidence is clear. The free market does not lead to a better standard of living all by itself. It needs regulation. But Mr. Issa is unable to see evidence that is in plain view. The reason? Ideologically-induced blindness.

Check out Darrell Issa's agenda for the House oversight committee:

"The committee will query business leaders 'about the government regulations that are doing the most harm to job creation efforts' and 'examine how overregulation has hurt job creation.'"

Yes, I feel so much safer with these reverse Robin Hoods in charge of the country.