Losing arguments: are free market ideas beating a retreat?

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: From the Top - Editorial

"WE'RE LOSING," is the provocative and depressing starting point from which Fox Business Network host John Stossel begins his meditation (page 38) on how liberty is counterintuitive. In the never-ending battle of political and philosophical ideas, the facts on the ground--current government policy and the way we talk about it--would seem to indicate that the free market, limited government, individual freedom side of the debate has consistently and convincingly lost the argument.

Take federal spending: In March, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) proposed, and House Republicans passed, a budget blueprint that increases federal spending over the next decade from $3.6 trillion to $4.9 trillion (in current dollars), and according to the Congressional Budget Office never once comes close to balancing any year's budget during that time frame. At a time when debt levels and entitlement time bombs are putting the nation at severe financial risk, Ryan's budget should be seen as inadequate to the task of averting catastrophe. Instead, he's being accused of deliberately starving the poor.

Ryan's budget, President Barack Obama said in early April, "is a Trojan horse. Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country. It is thinly veiled social Darwinism. It is antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everybody who's willing to work for it."

Instead of laughing off the social Darwinism charge--which remains as inaccurate today as when historian Richard Hofstadter popularized it a half-century ago to slime Victorian philosopher Herbert Spencer--the nation's commentariat applauded the president's truth telling. "His remarks," The New York Times editorialized, "promise a tough-minded campaign that will call extremism and dishonesty by name." Economist Jared Bernstein, a former top adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, seconded the motion at Rolling Stone's website. "According to Rep. Ryan's plan, the trouble is this: The poor and middle class have too much and the rich have too little," Bernstein wrote. "The Ryan plan wants to vastly shrink the role of government."

Bill Clinton's last submitted budget was $1.8 trillion. Barack Obama's first was $3.6 trillion. We are growing government so fast and so programmatically that the choice between jacking up the federal price tag to either $5.8 trillion (Obama's preference) or $4.9 trillion (Ryan's) is being portrayed as the...