Offering a hint at the direction he will take the Heritage
Foundation as its new president, Senator Jim Demint told reporters today that
there is “no truth whatsoever to the lie that movement conservatives are
abandoning their laissez faire principles in relation to the
marketplace of ideas.”
Said the Senator, “No, we’re not all converting to
intellectual communism just because we lost an election cycle. In fact, if the
recent elections told us anything, it’s that the marketplace of ideas needs
more deregulation not less.
“The 2012 election will go down in history as a study in
what happens when non-market forces are allowed to warp the political
discourse--when you start saddling one side’s ideas with onerous encumbrances
like burdens of proof and science and fact checking and consistency tests.
“What isn’t the left getting about the simple laws of supply
and demand? When there’s a demand for the idea that more deregulation fixes the
economic problems caused by deregulation you meet that demand. When people keep
buying the idea that the deficit is what you fixate on fixing in times of
widespread economic hardship for the middle class and below, you keep selling
them that idea.
“When you don’t, you catastrophically keep the magic hand of
the free market of ideas from steering the ship of state in its natural
rightward direction.”
Explained Rick Preston from the Cato Institute, “What
happens when the jackbooted liberal idea police throw their monkey wrenches into the works of the free
exchange of ideas is that market distortions start popping up all over the
place. Suddenly otherwise perfectly viable ideas with a right to life are
having to be bailed out in the interest of protecting the integrity of the free
idea market.
“It’s not natural for one side to have to spend hundreds and
hundreds of millions of dollars running an elaborate life support system for the idea that there is such a thing as clean coal, for instance, or that global warming is a
myth, or that right-to-work laws have the best interest of workers in mind, or that voter suppression is all about saving the integrity of our Democracy.
“The thing is, the travesty being made of the marketplace of
ideas isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s eventually likely to do very real
damage to the actual free market. If we allow the demise of the idea that
wealth trickles down, how long do you think we can keep basing our economy on
that idea?
“So like Senator Demint is saying, no, we’re not about to
abandon our conservative love of freedom. We will keep resisting any and all
restraints on the ideas we come up with in our struggle to make America safer
and safer for the job creators at the top.”
In related news, at a “frank” sit-down in the Oval Office on
Thursday to discuss the upcoming fiscal cliff, President Obama reportedly told
House Speaker John Boehner that he might be willing to budge a little more on
spending cuts if some of the patent lies Republicans keep telling about the
economy were put on the chopping block.
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