The Rise of Weak Men is Killing American Innovation and Prosperity

From American Thinker.com (Oct. 10, 2021):

Donald Trump failed at business…a lot. USFL, Tour de Trump, Trump Resorts, Trump Airlines, Trump University, etc. Leftists love to point that out. But that’s not the whole story. Trump had great successes as well. Not only has he developed world-class properties around the globe, but he was also produced and starred in one of the most popular television shows for more than a decade. Most telling of all was his renovation of the Wolman Ice Rink. New York City had spent $13 million and six years trying to renovate the Central Park icon when, in 1986, NYC admitted it had failed and must start from scratch. Trump offered to do the job in six months and under the $3 million budget. Reluctantly, the city gave him the contract and he finished in 4 months at a cost of $2.25 million. In just four months Donald Trump demonstrated exactly how dysfunctional government is!

But it’s his failures that provide the life lesson that leftists never get: Whether in business, love, or most non-government-related things, failure is the sign that someone was willing to risk the consequences to try and accomplish something. I say “non-government related” because government is one of the few areas of life where failure is the rule rather than the exception and it rarely results in soul searching.

Proof abounds! From a failed fifty-year War on Poverty to the abject failure of government schools to twenty-year wars that end exactly where they started, government continues to grow and accumulate more power year after year, regardless of its demonstrable and perpetual lack of success.

But government is not the nation. Government is not the people. Government is supposed to be a mechanism by which citizens protect individual rights and defend the nation—but that’s not what it is today. Today it’s everywhere, all the time. There is nothing in our lives that is more ubiquitous than government regulation.

In 1958, Leonard Read wrote an essay called I, Pencil that looked at the countless elements and activities necessary to make a #2 pencil. The whole point of this Cold War-era piece was to demonstrate how complex it is to make a simple pencil, how society benefits from freeing up markets to provide all the necessary inputs, and how it’s unlikely government control could accomplish that task. It’s extraordinary and it’s just a simple pencil! [read more]