I’m glad to see that Vincent Carroll seems to have recovered from his temporary bailout insanity and returned home to economic liberty. He writes:
The “core mission” of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce “is to fight for business and free enterprise.” It is also “to advance human progress through an economic, political and social system based on individual freedom, incentive, initiative, opportunity and responsibility.”
These stirring words appear on the chamber’s Web site. Sounds like a political philosophy, doesn’t it?
“Don’t tell me about philosophy,” declared Thomas Donohue, president of the national chamber, during a visit to Denver this week. “If we let this thing go under, we are looking at millions and millions of unemployed people.”
Donohue was explaining to his Denver audience why the chamber is so gung-ho about flushing tens of billions of federal dollars into the U.S. auto industry…
“Don’t tell me about philosophy.” That pragmatic, anti-principled sentiment perfectly reflects why we’re in economic trouble to begin with. If more politicians and business leaders had paid attention to the right philosophy, they wouldn’t have promoted the sorts of monetary manipulations, federal mandates and controls, and redistributionism that caused the crisis. And they wouldn’t advocate the further destruction of economic liberty as the “solution.”
Philosophy? Who needs it?