The Reagan Phenomenon
[Free Life: The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1984)]
[Free Life: The Journal of the Libertarian Alliance, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1984)]
A curious thing is happening in this extraordinary election year. The liberals are beginning to adjust to Ronald Reagan. After all, they claim, he's getting more moderate, he'll have to shift to the center to win the election, and he was a moderate and "flexible" governor of California for eight years. Maybe he won't be that bad, certainly not as erratic as Carter.
Long before interventionism became a fixed policy of the government, American students went to Europe to complete their education, and immigrants introduced their exotic foods to the American table. But these were voluntary adoptions.
If the newly elected budget "hawks" really wanted to impress us, they could refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Then they and their colleagues would have no choice but to start slashing.
It was the physiocrats who broke with centuries of sound economic reasoning and contributed to what would become, in the hands of Smith and Ricardo, a reactionary and obscurantist destruction of the correct analysis of value.