By Les Dunaway

“When institutions protect the liberty of individuals, greater prosperity results for all.”

Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations”, 1776

This truth is a key measure of the fitness of a government to survive. When any government fails this test, the citizens of that government must resort to another statement, written the same year:

…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…

from “The Declaration of Independence”, 1776

Political and economic theories can only be proven in the “laboratory” of a nation or nations. This idea has survived such testing. In the next week, it’s likely that it will again be validated.

We live in a world where several nations and an economic confederation are within days of collapse. News reports this weekend suggest that the collapse of Greece and the resulting collapse of several other euro-countries will happen tomorrow – Monday, 26 September 2011.

Americans are suffering from the latest foolish, misguided attempt to institute the failed ideas of socialism. More people are unemployed, more people are living in poverty than in decades. Worse yet, millions of people have lost the assets they had spent a lifetime accumulating and now face a life of poverty when they should be looking forward to leisure and enjoyment. Further, the social “safety net” is coming unraveled.

The politicians, from both sides of the aisle, cannot plead ignorance of the problems with the economy or the safety net. They have been well know and widely discussed for decades. The only explanation for their inaction is that they have placed re-election before their constituents best interests. The American people made it clear, in the 2010 elections, that they understood the need for change. To their credit, many of the freshmen in the Congress have demonstrated that they “get it”.

The global business community has “voted” as well – by refusing to invest in a failing country who’s leadership has refused to make any move toward solving the economic problems of bloated, interventionist  government and ill-conceived “social” programs.

The causes of the economic roller-coaster that has destroyed the golden years of millions of prudent, hard-working Americans was well documented in Milton Friedman’s 1963 book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 and re-iterated in his Free to Choose in 1990. Yet, our government has continued to meddle and then, when the absolutely-predictable recessions began repeated the same failed policies.

Since 1995, the Index of Economic Freedom, an annual guide published by The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation, has brought Smith’s theories about liberty, prosperity and economic freedom to life by creating 10 benchmarks that gauge the economic success of 183 countries around the world.

In 2010, the United States first fell from “Free” to “Mostly Free” [read]

There is a well-documented quotation by Joseph de Maistre: “Every country has the government it deserves (Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite”) One of the source gives its origin as de Maistre’s Lettres et Opuscules Inédits vol. 1, letter 53, written on 15 August 1811 and published in 1851. This saying is often misquoted as “People get the government they deserve”.

It is a fact! America current suffering is a direct result of fools and knaves who voted in the 2008 election. Fools who believed widely-refuted lies and knaves who saw themselves profiting from their vote.

The American people have one, last chance to right that mistake and, thereby, earn the chance to right 40 years of wrongs by dismantling the nanny-state. For the fools, the hardest part will be turning-off American Idol, etc and paying attention to their future. For the knaves, the hardest part will be understanding and internalizing Maggie Thatcher’s admonition “The trouble with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money”. I recommend that they start by reading a real newspaper to see what’s happening in Greece, Italy, etc.