The election season is heating up and challengers are making headway. So, here comes the name-calling by media hot-heads. The boiling point was quickly reached when Keith Olbermann called a Tea Party candidate a liar and a traitor, declaring that the challenger should be arrested and jailed.
This is, sadly, not unexpected.
In the 20th century, what was once considered radical and extremist became mainstream. The common sense wisdom of America’s founders was thrown out for imported philosophies like socialism and “dirigisme.” The leading intellectuals at the start of the century, many educated in Germany, took home doctrines of limitless government and added a can-do American spirit, creating Progressivism and then the New Deal.
Big Government went from the thing most feared to Our Friend.
Then, in England, a socialist noted that this alleged Big Brother could be awfully cruel, the opposite of fraternal. An Austrian economist explained how even well-intentioned government, if unlimited by a rule of law, could send us all down the road to serfdom. A backlash began.
Though increasing numbers of intelligent, concerned citizens began to doubt and then decry the growth of government, government continued to grow. And establishment opinion called supporters of limited government “extremists” and “radicals.”
Now, as government spending lurches beyond all sanity, it’s the establishment that appears extremist.
Expect a few skirling kettles to boil over this season. And then boil dry — and empty. Like the establishment’s big government philosophy itself.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.