Rewriting History To Suit Your Own Purposes

Vice President Biden has always had a way with words, but he also has a way with history.  According to the Washington Examiner on Thursday the Vice President recently stated in a speech that, “Every single great idea that has marked the 21st centery, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive.  In the middle of the Civil War, you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States….No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

Wow.  Cato Institute’s Tad DeHaven commented on the statement.  Mr. DeHaven pointed out that the railroads in the eastern United States were built almost entirely without government subsidies and succeeded because they were a superior form of transportation at that time.  The government subsidies built the transcontinental railways because there was no market for that railroad line at the time.  The article also mentions that the subsidies also inspired Credit Mobilier, one of the worst government corruption scandals in American history.  The article at the Washington Examiner goes into the details of that scandal.

Somehow I can’t picture Eli Whitney, Henry Ford or Thomas Edison waiting for a government check to pay for their research.  Somehow we have lost the idea that the individual can create and invent independently from the government.  I think we need to get that idea back.

Vice President Biden’s statement is an example of the thinking that has invaded the political left in recent years–the only way anything valuable happens is if the government sponsors or subsidizes it in some way.  That sort of thinking is almost certainly guaranteed to send the country into backruptcy. 

If you believe that individuals are capable of solving the problems that our country faces (rather than government), I strongly suggest that you vote Republican on November 2.  The Republicans are not the best answer, but right now they are the only answer.  They can be held accountable for what they do and voted out in two years if they do not stop the runaway government spending.  At least they believe in individual problem solving–not government funding for everything.

To quote Ronald Reagan on January 20, 1981, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”