Discussing Personal Goals And Achievements

Editorial: True freedom is a challenging concept for some conservatives

Republicans of recent vintage have gotten quite a bit of mileage out of riding the freedom train. At all levels of government, the GOP has pushed its smaller-government, fewer-regulations and lower-taxes agenda as the means of creating what it calls personal and economic freedom.

For the purposes of discussing a recent study by an oil industry-funded think tank, let's accept that premise. The study might give some Missouri Republicans a reason to veer off the tracks.

In its "Freedom in the 50 States" study , the libertarian Mercatus Center at George Mason University points out that Missouri already is, and has been for some time, among the freest states in the country — again, assuming that you define freedom the way that conservatives do. Missouri, says the study, is the fifth-freest state in the nation, up four spots from 2007.

The rankings are based on state laws as of Jan. 1, 2009, meaning nothing that the Legislature has done in the past two legislative sessions contributed to Missouri's high ranking. That ranking confirms what we repeatedly have argued: It makes no sense to continue to cut state spending and tax burdens when Missouri already is among the lowest in the nation in both of those freedom-promoting (as the Mercatus Center sees things) categories.

Compared with, say, our woefully low rankings for support for education, a reasonable argument can be made that Missouri's priorities are out of whack. A little balance between "freedom" and "responsibility" could be in order, but alas, we could find no "most responsible state" study.

There's another element of the Mercatus study that we find just as interesting. The Mercatus folks believe that freedom belongs to everybody, not just those who support a certain agenda.

The states that made the biggest gains in this year's freedom study, for instance, are Oregon and Nevada. Why?

Both states recognized domestic partnerships between same-sex couples. That's right, at the Mercatus Center, freedom applies to gay people, too.

"A lot of conservatives don't recognize that the freedom philosophy as it applies to the economic side also applies to the personal side," said William Ruger, one of the authors of the study. Mr. Ruger, an assistant professor at Texas State University, told us that many conservatives are inconsistent when they push for small government in the name of economic freedom and more government in the name of taking away personal freedoms.

Morality Crisis: Republicans Have to Choose Ayn Rand or Jesus

Republicans have been on an Ayn Rand binge for the last ten years, overdosing on the mantra of selfishness as the new God since the Randian Tea Party swept the House. At the same time, the Republicans continue to stamp their morally deficient policies with Jesus. However, atheist Rand sought to replace Christianity with her own belief system, and even called the Christian message monstrous.

BreakingPoint.Org wrote, “She (Rand) once said she wanted to be known as “the greatest enemy of religion.” And when Rand said “religion” she meant Christianity, which she once called the “kindergarten of communism.””

Yes, communism. It’s odd, isn’t it, that the people barking the loudest about President Obama wanting to “fundamentally change America” and suggesting that the President is not a Christian and, even on the far right suggesting that he is the anti-Christ, at the same time embrace the economic philosophy of Ayn Rand. Gone are the conservatives of charity, service, responsibility and morality.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that as America ushered in her culture of greed with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan at the helm, the right was mimicking Rand’s worship of the self and claiming selfishness to be the new Jesus. Greenspan, who had been an associate of Rand’s and had been deeply impacted by her worldview later admitted that he had been wrong.

Greenspan confessed during a House Oversight and Government Reform committee, “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.” Of course, it was too late by then. We had careened over the cliff of feeding the id — morality and ethics but a retreating image in our rear view mirror. We were a country with no tempering super ego.

It’s old school to talk of ethics these days — makes me long for characters like Atticus Finch as role models for our children. Stemming from the modern morality of reality TV narratives like survival-of-the-fittest and he-who-consumes-the-most-wins, Americans are considered weak if they don’t attack first and steal all of the food for themselves, stepping over the less privileged to get more than their share. It’s social Darwinism meets Any Rand religion and it’s not pretty.

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