Last March, I laid out my "Thirty Day Plan" for de-socializing America. But I didn't scrap all of big government; now it's time for more:
Gather round, taxpayers! This is the moment you've been waiting for! Time to calculate your Peace Dividend! Now that our archenemy, the Soviet Union, is disintegrating into throat-lozenge-sized independent republics with names like "Huzzubegonia," whose primary military activity is knocking over statues of Lenin, we don't need a Defense Department anymore. This means that you, the taxpayers, MAY ALREADY HAVE WON BILLIONS OF DOLLARS! SO DON'T THROW AWAY THIS NEWSLETTER, because we are ABOUT TO TELL YOU THE SIZE OF YOUR PEACE DIVIDEND! Get ready! Better lean close to the page so you won't miss it! That's it—just a little closer... here it comes...
The need for privatization is urgent, but unless ex-communists disabuse themselves of the notion that government should administer the transfer of state properties to private hands, privatization will remain an empty promise, and enervated state systems will lumber on indefinitely.
Has it occurred to many citizens that, for the few blessed days of federal shutdown, the world does not come to an end? That the stars remain in their courses, and everyone goes about their daily life as before?
The "partnership of government and business" is a new term for an old, old condition. We often fail to realize that the point of much of Big Government is precisely to set up such "partnerships," for the benefit of both government and business, or rather, of certain business firms and groups that happen to be in political favor.
Government control takes freedom of choice away from the public and puts it in the hands of bureaucrats responsive only to their own interests and those of the state, instead of the buying public. Private enterprise in medical care means patient sovereignty. The Soviets ignored this principle, and the public is now paying for it with their health and lives.
Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY) has performed a signal service for all Americans by calling into question, for the first time since the early 1980s, the soundness of the nation's beloved Social Security System.
It is generally agreed, both inside and outside Eastern Europe, that the only cure for their intensifying and grinding poverty is to abandon socialism and central planning, and to adopt private property rights and a free-market economy. But a critical problem is that Western conventional wisdom counsels going slowly, "phasing-in" freedom, rather than taking the always-reviled path of radical and comprehensive social change.
