The Price of Excess:

There seems to be nothing we’ll say “no” to. $200 billion for Fannie and Freddie? Yeah, we’ll do that. The Iraq War? Sure, we’re in that. $700 billion in open-ended spending? Yeah, OK. How about some cuts? How about somebody with the maturity of an adult in the political class saying, “You know, we’ve overextended ourselves. We’re going to have to do without something”? Yet this entire problem in many ways is the result of the failure of people to say we can’t have everything. We’ve tried to have everything and now we’re reaping the whirlwind.

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I’m what was once known as a “classical liberal” — I believe in limited government and personal responsibility and I would remind everyone that we live in what is ideally a profit-and-loss economic system. It does not work without losses and this recent debacle is partly in an attempt to avoid losses. They must come, or we will end up living under a state that is much more powerful than it has been in the past and I do not believe that such a state will lead to prosperity or freedom. So I think it’s extremely important to try to return to basic principles. Those principles are somewhat less popular than they were before. I’m hopeful they’ll have a comeback.

I tried to emphasize these points when I was in the media over the past few weeks, but I guess the audience has no stomach for it. Anyhow, read Russ’s latest novel, it is a marvel.