Hopefully, This Is Just The Beginning

Well, it’s been quite a week.

On Monday, the voices of those opposed to further government intervention in the economy scored a surprising victory when the House of Representatives voted the proposal down.

That victory was short-lived, however, because only two days later the Senate, after adding a bunch of pork to the House’s crap sandwich, overwhelmingly passed the bill and told us that we were just too dumb to understand what was necessary. Then today, the Paulson-Bernake Bailout passed the House on the second try thanks to 26 Republicans and 32 Democrats who managed to change their mind in four days, and President Bush signed it into law before the ink had dried on the paper.

It’s pretty easy to be pessmisstic at the outcome, but Leslie Carbone thinks there’s reason to take heart:

For four days, we held Leviathan off. Against an Administration that prizes cronyism over competency and stampedes over dissenters, against the inclination of politicians to slurp up power like chocolate milkshakes, against a Wall-Street lobby that has tons of money to buy pols and ads to proclaim its dire financial straits, we held Leviathan off. Against all the doomsday talk, the cynical appeals to the greed, laziness, and irresponsibility that beset human nature, and the knee-jerk reflex to do something, anything, no matter how bad, we held Leviathan off.

We flooded Congress with calls and emails. We raised free-market objections and alternatives. We called for government to uphold the natural justice that rewards virtue and punishes vice.

If you voiced your opposition to this bail-out to your Senators and Representative, in a blog post or a letter to the editor or a call to a talk-radio show, or in a conversation with a friend or family member, you are part of a historic effort, an effort to throw off the soft tyranny of federal molly-coddling.

Every movement to cast off the yoke of tyranny has started with a small group of dedicated believers who fought their way through tremendous early discouragements.

So is this the beginning of something ? I certainly hope so. It’s certainly a sign that the public doesn’t buy in to the idea that the government exists to solve everyone’s problems. That alone is reason for optimism.