There are few things more disturbing than hearing your President claim that a founding principle of your country has never worked.  Yet that is precisely what President Obama did in Kansas a week ago.  In his speech he claims that free markets have never worked.  Economic freedom is a founding principle of the United States of America.  It is also largely responsible for a group of tiny British colonies growing into an economic superpower in less than two centuries.  Mr. President, it does work.

President Obama’s speech in Kansas demonstrated a poor understanding of history, and the basic principles of this country.  President Obama spoke highly of Teddy Roosevelt, who many consider the first progressive President.  Roosevelt began the process of slowly eroding America’s laissez faire capitalist society into a progressive interventionist system bordering on socialism.  For Obama, it seems America accomplished nothing of note until then.

Here is the key excerpt from his speech:

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the ‘50s and ‘60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

President Obama admits that the theory of free markets and laissez faire policies is at the core of American values.  As he says, it is in our DNA.  Yet, he says this core value has never worked.  That alone is incredibly disturbing.

Obama ignores several basic historical facts.  The most obvious being the incredible success of the free market leading up to 1901 (Roosevelt’s first year in office).  A fledgling republic of less than 4 million in 1790 grew into a prosperous industrial juggernaut of 76 million by 1900.  In the early years the two great empires of the time, United Kingdom and France, dwarfed the U.S. in size.  The United Kingdom was a prosperous empire with 10.5 million subjects in 1800.  France was home to 28 million people in 1800.

Despite the incredible size and power of Europe’s empires, they gradually emptied.  Millions of Europeans fled their own older nations to make something of themselves in America.  Millions of English, French, Irish, Italians, Germans, and Poles left behind everything for the opportunity of America.

It wasn’t an issue of land or natural resources.  No other former European colony in the New World grew as rapidly as the United States.  From Mexico to Argentina, no country accomplished what we accomplished.

Another troubling statement is his mentioning of the decade before the Great Depression.  The decade before the Great Depression is referred to by historians as “The Roaring Twenties.”  It was age of economic prosperity and new cultural dynamism.  It is astounding for the President of the United States to refer to one of the most celebrated periods of American history as a period of failure.

President Obama is trying to perpetuate the myth that the crash of 1929 and subsequent Great Depression was caused by a failure in the private sector.  Had he bothered to learn a little more about the time period other than the whitewashed left-wing version, he would’ve learned the Federal Reserve played a major role in the crash.  It also contributed significantly by allowing the national money supply to shrink by one-third between 1929 and 1933.  That is to say nothing of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, which led to a global trade war and major decline in international trade.  The Great Depression was the result of a failure of government, not the private sector.

Progressives love to argue that laissez faire principles leave some people behind, causing pain and suffering while giving great wealth and benefit to a select group.  Yet the United States has among the lowest poverty rates and highest standards of living in the world.  Most poor American households have a refrigerator, microwave, air conditioning, TV, and DVD player.  To be poor in America is roughly equal to middle class in the rest of the world.

The American laissez faire, free market economic system has produced more wealth than any other on Earth.  Not only that, America has shown an incredible ability to recover from recessions on its own.  It’s when the federal government decides to intervene that America suffers economic agony.  The Great Depression and the current economic slowdown are the longest in American economic history.  It is largely because in both cases the government thought it could sort things out faster and better than the private sector.  It cannot.

President Obama’s rejection of free market principles is disturbing and dangerous.  It demonstrates his rejection of the founding principles of this country.  It is especially troubling that he was hired to teach Constitutional Law in one of the most prestigious law schools in the country.  It makes one wonder what young Americans are learning in these elite education institutions.

The U.S. needs a President that understands how we got here, not from 2008 but from 1787.  We need someone who knows what has worked in the past and what has not.  Most importantly, we need a President who will not openly reject one of the most basic founding principles of this country.  President Obama’s time has ended.  We can ill afford four more years.

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