Obama To Americans: You Don't Deserve To Be Free

Harry Binswanger Contributor

defend laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand's Objectivism.
President Obama's Kansas speech is a remarkable document. In calling for more government controls, more taxation, more collectivism, he has two paragraphs that give the show away. Take a look at them.

there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let's respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. "The market will take care of everything," they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes--especially for the wealthy--our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, well, that's the price of liberty.
Now, it's a simple theory. And we have to admit, it's one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That's in America's DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here's the problem: It doesn't work. It has never worked. (Applause.) It didn't work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It's not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the '50s and '60s. And it didn't work when we tried it during the last decade. (Applause.) I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory.

Though not in Washington, I'm in that "certain crowd" that has been saying for decades that the market will take care of everything. It's not really a crowd, it's a tiny group of radicals--radicals for capitalism, in Ayn Rand's well-turned phrase.

The only thing that the market doesn't take care of is anti-market acts: acts that initiate physical force. That's why we need government: to wield retaliatory force to defend individual rights.
Radicals for capitalism would, as the Declaration of Independence says, use government only "to secure these rights"--the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. (Yes, I added "property" in there--property rights are inseparable from the other three.)
That's the political philosophy on which Obama is trying to hang the blame for the recent financial crisis and every other social ill. But ask yourself, are we few radical capitalists in charge? Have radical capitalists been in charge at any time in the last, oh, say 100 years?