The Noose Around the Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs

It's not often I agree with Peggy Noonan's kind of mushy observations on our culture, economy and government. But today she hits it pretty much on the nail. We are being run by a bunch that have no idea how their actions hurt ordinary Americans...How their meddling is ruining the goose that laid the golden egg, OUR PRODUCERS. By taking away our freedom and tightening the noose around the goose they are laying waste to our beloved America. Without Atlases, the men who hold up the world - the producers, inventors, creators, and titans of Industry, the rest of us will languish with a bleak future. These atlases should throw down their tools and build a Galt's Gulch - then the big mouthed Washington politicians can do see what they can do without giants to disparage, rob and abuse.

...When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren't they worried about the impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?

I think I know part of the answer. It is that they've never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don't have the habit of worry. They talk about their "concerns"—they're big on that word. But they're not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa's lap.

They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—"strongest nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power," "highest standard of living"—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice. READ at WSJ