Even the Russians Have Figured It Out

Russia’s President, Dmitri Medvedev, addressed the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum yesterday. He pledged a new course for Russia:

Medvedev acknowledged that the government’s expansion in managing the economy and the centralization of authority in the Kremlin under Putin was necessary in an earlier period of the country’s post-Soviet development. But, he said, “this economic mode is dangerous for the country’s future.”
“The proposition that the government is always right is manifested either in corruption or benefits to ‘preferred’ companies,” he said.
“My choice is different. The Russian economy ought to be dominated by private businesses and private investors. The government must protect the choice and property of those who willingly risk their money and reputation.” …
“Corruption, hostility to investment, excessive government role in the economy and the excessive centralization of power are the taxes on the future that we must and will scrap,” he said.

Medvedev’s political future is very much in doubt, as is Russia’s ability to realize his free-enterprise vision. But it is striking that even in that benighted country, hard experience has driven home the lesson that the free market works, and government control doesn’t. So this is not exactly occult knowledge.
Here in the U.S., Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid must realize that they are fighting a rear-guard action on behalf of an ideology that already has been consigned to history’s trash can. But they and their colleagues are like the dog that can whistle, but only knows one tune. They have no other ideas to offer, and will ride their discredited theories all the way to ruin, if the voters let them.

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