Frustrated by Americans’ continued resistance to their benevolent control, liberals a few years ago hit on their Grand Idea: man-made global warming. It’s the ultimate excuse for regulating every human activity and expanding government. And it’s another great excuse for promoting abortion and non-procreative “alternative lifestyles,” since the birth of each human baby is a terrible threat to the environment.
Just to add perspective, this rush to regulate in the name of progress is a relatively new development. The U.S. government, for instance, did not have to issue a crackdown on horse doots and the hay industry to facilitate the mass switchover from ol’ Dobbin to the Model T.
Likewise, they did not have to punish Ma Bell in order to get us all off rotary units and into cell phones. Wait. They did. They broke up Ma Bell into seven Baby Bells. I stand corrected. But touch-tones and iPhones would have happened anyway because people like them and because Steve Jobs needed an outlet for his restless, entrepreneurial energy.
The point is, apart from the Space Program, which generated lots of technological breakthroughs on the taxpayer’s dime before Obama killed it, government does a lousy job of picking winners and losers compared to the free market. The freakishly expensive Solyndra boondoggle comes to mind, as do the billions spent on corn subsidies, ethanol mandates and light bulb dictates.
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