FAXLINE REPORT

First Principles and the Lever of Government

By Brett A. Magbee · Thu, Dec 18, 2008 01:47 PM CST
FaxLine Report

Gee, how fickle can we be? Seems like just yesterday both Republicans and even “new Democrats” were eulogizing Ronald Reagan for changing the way we viewed the proper role and function of government for all time. Reagan proved that government intrusion was the problem to our economic and societal malaise, not the solution. Now all we seem to hear from all quarters is how much we need government to interject itself into every area of our economy. Tsk, tsk, tsk . . . People who study Reagan know that his ideas weren’t really new at all. No, they were just tried and true, and straight from the first principles of the nation’s founders. It had just been a very long time since those principles had been really practiced by those whose hands were on the levers of government. After a few painful years of wresting control back from much of the big government bureaucracy, the Reagan Revolution implemented some fundamental changes and the economy boomed into the three following presidential administrations.