By Selwyn Duke
It’s no secret to the informed that statists are using the current financial crisis as a pretext to increase the power and scope of government. Yet, the bold-faced lies shameless politicians and pundits will tell in the service of this cause are striking. And one of them concerns the fanciful notion that we have a laissez-faire economy.
There are many propagandists and useful idiots who characterize it as such, and George Reisman speaks about this at his blog. Citing numerous statements spreading the laissez-faire lie and then commenting on the matter, he writes:
‘The mortgage crisis is laissez-faire gone
wrong.’‘Sarkozy [Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France] said ‘laissez-faire’
economics, `self-regulation’ and the view that `the all-powerful market’ always
knows best are finished.’‘`America’s laissez-faire ideology, as practiced during the subprime crisis,
was as simplistic as it was dangerous,’ chipped in Peer Steinbrück, the German
finance minister.’‘Paulson brings laissez-faire approach on financial crisis….’
‘It’s au revoir to the days of laissez faire.’
. . . The mentality displayed in these statements is
so completely and utterly at odds with the actual meaning of laissez faire that
it would be capable of describing the economic policy of the old Soviet Union
as one of laissez faire in its last decades. By its logic, that is how it would
have to describe the policy of Brezhnev and his successors of allowing workers
on collective farms to cultivate plots of land of up to one acre in size on
their own account and sell the produce in farmers’ markets in Soviet cities.
According to the logic of the media, that too would be ‘laissez faire’—at least
compared to the time of Stalin.Laissez-faire capitalism has a definite meaning, which is totally ignored,
contradicted, and downright defiled by such statements as those quoted above.
Laissez-faire capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private
ownership of the means of production and in which the powers of the state are
limited to the protection of the individual’s rights against the initiation of
physical force.
The only question we must ask about the foolish disgraces to journalism and politics who utter such nonsense is if they’re ignorant, liars, or ignorant liars. I learned the meaning of "laissez-faire" back in high school, and it’s not a difficult concept to understand. Of course, when you want to move a civilization on the left further left, you have to portray it as too far right. And with these people at the helm, left we will be in the dustbin of history.
Despicable creatures.
© 2008 Selwyn Duke — All Rights Reserved
selwynduke.com 
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