Four years ago, I wrote an open letter to the dismayed supporters of Hillary Clinton in the wake of her loss to Donald Trump. Before celebrating Biden’s win in this year’s election, it’s important to reflect back on the past four years. Remember your frustration, your anger, your fear of someone you believed was unhinged and dangerous being in control of all of the immense powers that are now vested with the federal government of the United States of America.

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If Democratic candidate Joe Biden is elected America’s forty-sixth president, what happens to the mandate to end the endless wars? It doesn’t go away, but rather falls on the Democrat-controlled House and (presumably, for now) Republican-controlled Senate.

President Donald Trump was elected partly due to his promise to rein in the US government’s military intervention abroad. He managed to not start any new wars, but he hasn’t ended any either. That may be changing in Afghanistan now. Only time will tell, but it’ll have to be be sooner rather than later.

The United States has not had a large, organized laissez-faire political movement since the 1890s, when the Democratic Party explicitly embraced an agenda of low taxes, restrained foreign policy, political decentralization, and opposition to a central bank. Certainly, since that time, laissez-faire factions have been part of various political coalitions and parties.

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article.

Even as production of goods and services has declined as a result of the reaction to covid-19, governments have been issuing larger and larger amounts of money.