Recently President Clinton begged the wealthier countries of the world to provide help to the poorer countries, so that they too could expand their economies and improve the lives of the people.
Now that sounds like a nice charitable sentiment until you think about how the good ole US of A grew from a poor nation into the wealthiest people in the history of the world. We did not become rich because of charity from Great Britain or France. Our ancestors built this country with their bare hands, and their dreams. We had what so many countries did not have: freedom.
If you want a country to be rich, encourage it to be free. Of course, a lesson in free-market economics is probably not a lesson your typical dictator wants to hear. They’d rather have the handouts. The kind that are easy to divert to Swiss bank accounts.
Al Gore shares this same welfare mentality when he calls Internet access “a fundamental right.” Thanks Big Al, but in a free country we’re getting on line just fine on our own. The people who started this country embraced freedom and individual responsibility.
As James Madison said, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. . . . [but] upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves . . .”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.