Saner Heads Have Thwarted Pro-Dark Agers

Employment reports that come out this week are going to place this number somewhere near 10%. It will be higher in states such as mine, Michigan, where the destabilization of industry itself has sent shockwaves through employment environments.

What is important to note in all of this, I think, is that despite these numbers, and despite a still sluggish housing market—and home foreclosures that seem to be nowhere near abating yet—there are palpable signs of recovery both domestically and internationally. For the naysayers who were leading campaigns denouncing government bailout plans and all but predicting the apocalypse to descend any day now were clearly way off. The same can be said for those who have been demonizing the health reform legislation in Washington. While there will certainly be challenges ahead for both these areas, saner heads have prevailed and both the economy and health care are moving to amicable resolutions.

What is most clear now is that there are zealous political forces pushing a lot of these naysayers in to the front lines of the public dialogue and, truth be known, these naysayers are not very credible. All this talk of the country turning in to some socialist regime is ridiculous; if anything, the forces of entrepreneurship are awakening everywhere throughout the U.S. these days—and much of it being driven by absolute necessity. Such forces will ultimately shape the larger debates about the economy and health care reform, I believe, and those forces want conditions to emerge that will make for a more dynamic and creative free market system, not some intracetable highly politicized debate that insults people’s intelligence by not being very well thought through. It isn’t socialism we should be afraid of; rather it is following these non-free thinkers into an era of a new Dark Ages.

Yikes!