in its allocation of these funds.
The long, lonely campaign, first against the GSEs, then the housing bailout, and ultimately the Wall Street bailout, revealed just how few friends the cause of liberty actually enjoys inside the Beltway when it really matters. At each step there were fewer and fewer with us in Washington. But a growing, soon-to-be Tea Party movement had been awakened that would result in more allies than we had ever dreamed possible.
In the days leading up to the final House vote, many friends and fellow travelers in the free market movementâbusinessmen, Republicans, and alleged limited-government conservativesâall went out of their way to scold us for our philosophical intransigence. It was as ironic as it was frustrating to hear âfree marketeersâ lecture us on the importance of the bailout. Many of these same people worked for organizations that for years made their living by holding politiciansâ feet to the fire to make them take the âtoughâ vote for freedom. Yet when Congress was poised to vote on perhaps the most significant expansion of government power we may see in our lifetimes, some chose the easier path, the path of appeasement.
What good are principles if you can ignore them or alter them or bend them just a little to accommodate a difficult decision? Sometimes the principle of the matter demands that you stand up when no one else seems to want to do it. In times of crisis, when the details are in dispute or even unknown, values, principles, and an unbending understanding of markets matter more, not less. Principles matter most under the most challenging of times, and principles matter most particularly when they are unpopular or inconvenient.
SETTLING ACCOUNTS
U NFORTUNATELY, WE ARE ONLY beginning to understand how much was lost due to the Wall Street bailout. This massive intervention into the economy has fueled a big-government mentality that has continued through to the new Obama administration, which has proposed trillion-dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see, massive âstimulusâ spending packages, and a major intrusion into the health care market. The government remains a major shareholder of General Motors, and more recently appointed two members to the board of AIG, a private company.
Whatever one might have thought of the proposed use of extraordinary and unchecked executive authority, the actual implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program by both the Bush and Obama administrations is now giving every advocate of limited government permanent indigestion. Americans for Prosperity, which initially supported the TARP, has since removed any evidence of that position from its Web site and now rails against government bailouts along with the majority of Americans.
T EA T IME
W HEN T REASURY S ECRETARY P AULSON first announced the White House bailout plan on September 22, 2008, Matt Kibbe was quoted in Politico predicting that the âgrassroots reaction is visceral 25 and going to be big.â The prediction turned out to more right than we could have hoped or planned for at the time.
But when we first opposed the TARP legislation, we had the terrible feeling of lonely martyrs fighting for an antiquated ideology of dead menâan ideology that had been conveniently embraced during good times but was now to be replaced with a pragmatic modus operandi of doing something, no matter what that âsomethingâ happened to be. Being a lonely martyr is a bad strategyâthe last possible strategyâand it comes with an awfully dark feeling to know you are going to lose a fight you canât possibly afford to lose. But we marched on with the company of the few allies willing to step in front of the Treasuryâs runaway freight train.
Despite our hopes that grassroots citizens could rise up and stop this policy malfeasance, the speed with which Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Representative Barney Frank, and
The long, lonely campaign, first against the GSEs, then the housing bailout, and ultimately the Wall Street bailout, revealed just how few friends the cause of liberty actually enjoys inside the Beltway when it really matters. At each step there were fewer and fewer with us in Washington. But a growing, soon-to-be Tea Party movement had been awakened that would result in more allies than we had ever dreamed possible.
In the days leading up to the final House vote, many friends and fellow travelers in the free market movementâbusinessmen, Republicans, and alleged limited-government conservativesâall went out of their way to scold us for our philosophical intransigence. It was as ironic as it was frustrating to hear âfree marketeersâ lecture us on the importance of the bailout. Many of these same people worked for organizations that for years made their living by holding politiciansâ feet to the fire to make them take the âtoughâ vote for freedom. Yet when Congress was poised to vote on perhaps the most significant expansion of government power we may see in our lifetimes, some chose the easier path, the path of appeasement.
What good are principles if you can ignore them or alter them or bend them just a little to accommodate a difficult decision? Sometimes the principle of the matter demands that you stand up when no one else seems to want to do it. In times of crisis, when the details are in dispute or even unknown, values, principles, and an unbending understanding of markets matter more, not less. Principles matter most under the most challenging of times, and principles matter most particularly when they are unpopular or inconvenient.
SETTLING ACCOUNTS
U NFORTUNATELY, WE ARE ONLY beginning to understand how much was lost due to the Wall Street bailout. This massive intervention into the economy has fueled a big-government mentality that has continued through to the new Obama administration, which has proposed trillion-dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see, massive âstimulusâ spending packages, and a major intrusion into the health care market. The government remains a major shareholder of General Motors, and more recently appointed two members to the board of AIG, a private company.
Whatever one might have thought of the proposed use of extraordinary and unchecked executive authority, the actual implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program by both the Bush and Obama administrations is now giving every advocate of limited government permanent indigestion. Americans for Prosperity, which initially supported the TARP, has since removed any evidence of that position from its Web site and now rails against government bailouts along with the majority of Americans.
T EA T IME
W HEN T REASURY S ECRETARY P AULSON first announced the White House bailout plan on September 22, 2008, Matt Kibbe was quoted in Politico predicting that the âgrassroots reaction is visceral 25 and going to be big.â The prediction turned out to more right than we could have hoped or planned for at the time.
But when we first opposed the TARP legislation, we had the terrible feeling of lonely martyrs fighting for an antiquated ideology of dead menâan ideology that had been conveniently embraced during good times but was now to be replaced with a pragmatic modus operandi of doing something, no matter what that âsomethingâ happened to be. Being a lonely martyr is a bad strategyâthe last possible strategyâand it comes with an awfully dark feeling to know you are going to lose a fight you canât possibly afford to lose. But we marched on with the company of the few allies willing to step in front of the Treasuryâs runaway freight train.
Despite our hopes that grassroots citizens could rise up and stop this policy malfeasance, the speed with which Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Representative Barney Frank, and
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