Getting it Wrong

Jake Auchincloss (D -MA) says controlling crime, homelessness, and cost of living is the key to electoral success for the Democrat Party.

In his Annual Message to Congress on January 6, 1941 (now known as the State of the Union Address), Franklin Roosevelt presented his reasons for American involvement in WWII. This speech eventually came to be known as the “Four Freedoms Speech.”

In it he outlined four “freedoms” forming the basis for protecting Britain (and the western world) from the encroaching tyranny – these were the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.

FDR masterfully combined two constitutionally enumerated rights, freedom of speech and worship, with two emotionally based, subjective “rights” that were not constitutionally expressed, the first, freedom from want, is impossible to define and the second, freedom from fear, is impossible to obtain.

So, in my opinion, he looked at the horror of war and came to the wrong conclusion – at least on these two “freedoms.”

In an article in the WSJ today, Jake Auchincloss (D -MA) cites craving for orderly society, which means controlling crime, homelessness, and cost of living as the key to electoral success for the Democrat Party. Auchincloss is quoted as saying “Others [prices] rise, year after year, like housing, utilities, and healthcare. These sectors have what he calls “cost disease,” which, like any disease, requires intervention. “Policymakers need to start treating cost disease.” That, he says, means going after local-government red tape that holds down the supply of housing, and health insurers who are “price gouging simply because they have a monopolistic position.”

Setting aside the fact that contemporary Democrats have never removed an inch of red tape (without attaching strings), it isn’t about “controlling” anything. It is about the government doing the jobs it is delegated and enumerated to do while understanding what is off limits. I am amazed that it never dawns on these “smart people” that maybe, just maybe, too much government intervention in markets causes distortions that result in negative outcomes.

Auchincloss holds a Harvard undergraduate degree, and a MBA from MIT (government and economics), and served in the Marines, so should not be as clueless as he appears to be – I guess he is just truly miseducated – but the part I don’t get is that military service tends to inject reality into a person but he styles himself as an “Obama-Baker Democrat”, which means another Mitt Romney type, just more left.

Auchincloss is continuing FDR’s tradition of experiencing history and taking exactly the wrong lesson from it. Today’s Democrats have decided that what people want is more cowbell – more control - which to them means more things under government control.

We don’t want crime “controlled,” we want it policed, and the criminals prosecuted. Most of the homelessness is a function of choice, mental illness, and drug use. Milton As to the cost of living, Milton Friedman pointed out that only government can create inflation because it is the only entity that can create money.

FDR’s “four freedoms” illustrate the progressive mind’s desire to create “positive” liberties instead of the negative ones defined in the Constitution. With freedom of worship (religion) and speech – the Constitution states that government is constrained from doing anything, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”

Freedom from fear and want are positive “liberties,” requiring government to act and are “liberties” not enumerated in the Constitution.

The lesson from the first eight months or so of Trump 2.0 is that we want less government, and when government does have a role, we want to see it effectively, efficiently, and successfully done. Stop distorting markets with government intervention. Stop with the “positive liberties.”

No more Auchinclosses.

That’s all we want.