Liberal Ideas (Almost) Never Work

I’ve described myself politically for years as a conservative-leaning independent libertarian (I’ve emphasized the title so as to make clear that none of those words is meant to be capitalized). I have never belonged to a political party, although a number of so-called third parties look better as I grow older – and hopefully wiser.

The reason I bring all this up is probably obvious. This nation is heading into an election, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long number of years. We will have on opposing major party tickets opponents who are not incumbents in the sense that they are from the previous or preceding administrations. The Republican is a “Maverick,” known for his strong personal and moral views on some subjects, but on others he will take a totally unexpected tangent and surprise everyone. The other candidate, though currently presumptive, is a political unknown. His record screams far-left liberal, but he spouts “change.” (That’s weird because the USA has been in the throes of liberalism since about 1932. For true change, the nation would have to move to the hard right or extreme libertarian, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what he means.)

I’m almost fifty. I’ve seen a lot, but nothing close to what others older than I have seen. I sat up late one night in 1969 and watched a human being walk on the moon for the first time in history. I’ve seen a younger generation in the span of ten years nearly tear asunder everything that was built by this nation over the previous 200-plus years. I’ve seen phones go from single rotary-dial appliances in most homes to nearly Star-Trek-sized communicators in the pockets of nearly every man, woman and child in America. Computers now have more power in a single chip than was used in the whole of the Apollo manned moon missions utilizing gigantic rooms full of six-foot tall computer cabinets. It has been truly amazing, and I am awed and excited by all of it.

America is a wealthy nation. We, as barely four percent of the World’s population produce fully twenty-five percent of the World’s wealth. America’s poor are, on average, wealthier than nearly all other people on earth. And it is this wealth that causes liberals (or Progressives as they prefer to be called) to make us believe that we are greedy, or not benevolent, or just too self-centered to see the problems around us. So, they must come up with solutions to make us fix our problems.

Sorry, but I don’t have any problems, except with liberals. Really. I don’t see a single issue out there that liberals and government can fix any better than I or my fellow citizens can. And while I understand that all these programs are based n the best of intentions, I also know to that the Road To Hell is paved with those same intentions. The examples are profuse, but I’ll dwell on but a handful.

In the 1930’s, in the throes of the Great Depression and the dustbowl and drought of the era, the liberal-hero-administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and its Soil Conservation Service and Civilian Conservation Service planted innumerable acres of kudzu, a decorative, Japanese vine, for use as a measure to combat erosion. The result? An incredibly invasive weed that has no natural predators and that can grow as much as one foot per day. They can overgrow whole sections of forest, cutting out sunlight to the engulfed trees, destroying it.

We all know of that Great Society program introduced during the administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson – welfare. To date in America, welfare has been a boon to no one except politicians and government employees and bureaucrats. The original estimate of the cost of the program was well less than $100 Billion dollars. To date it has cost well over ten times that, and the amount of poor in the nation has stayed approximately the same, as a percentage of population. Additionally, the social destruction caused to the American family, especially those it was meant to help, has been catastrophic. Single-parent homes, especially in the minority community, have grown exponentially. This has had an arguably detrimental effect on at least two generations of children, and will likely be the same on many more. The result of this program? No fewer poor and the average American family giving well over one-third of their hard-earned income to the government. On top of that, today a black child is less likely to be raised in a two-parent household than he was during Slavery.

Energy policy in America has been driven by two items in the past two generations: fading memories of the Arab Oil Embargo and the subsequent Energy Crisis of the early 1970’s, and the environmental lobby. Ironically, America has more coal reserves than the Middle East has oil! We also have huge oil reserves. And the environmental laws that have been enacted forbid American companies from using much of the coal available or drilling for and extracting much of the oil that is sitting under US territory. On top of all this, as America expands and needs more energy, environmental laws have made the construction of new, expanded, or upgraded refineries impossible. So, the result of these liberal programs and laws? Nothing less than $4.00-per-gallon gasoline.

And while we’re on the subject of energy and gasoline – in the 1980’s there was a great hoopla over oxygenated fuels for cars. At the time, the mixing of ethanol into gasoline was detrimental to some autos, so an alternative was needed. MTBE, this new alternative, was hailed by the liberal environmental community. It would lower emissions, including ozone, and lead to cleaner-burning engines, and was legislated into the gasoline supply. At the time I was in Colorado and Denver and Colorado Springs embraced the new chemical as the way to help clean the smog in the air! The result of this program? MTBE, short for methyl tertiary butyl ether, has now contaminated innumerable groundwater aquifers. The EPA has concluded that MTBE may cause cancer in high doses. The cost of this well-intended, liberal fiasco will be as much as $30 Billion.

So now, we have Hillary and Obama, both with Liberal and Progressive stamped all over them, wanting to continue in the mold of nearly every American president since Johnson (except for Reagan). Nationalize healthcare! Bush 41 wasn’t any better with a massive expansion of government with Medicare Part D, a liberal program barely started and already grossly over-budget. Welfare as it exists, were it a privately-run charity, and would be on most attorneys’ general Grinch Lists at Christmas. At yet, these people want more.

Outside of Civil Rights, which was too long in coming, I have yet to see a liberal social program that did not eventually become stagnant, old, despotic, and too cumbersome. America doesn’t need new programs, America needs to get rid of many, if not most, of the ones it has.

And the sooner it happens, the better off we will be.