Freedom Will Find a Way 
By Robert Maynard 

One of my favorite movies is the original Jurassic Park. The film is about a tightly controlled attempt to create a theme park that would display dinosaurs rejuvenated from DNA obtained through fossils. The process was to be so tightly controlled that the dinosaurs could not breed, and thus overrun the place. One of the scientists, who was a main character in the movie, expressed skepticism about the possibility that life can be controlled. One of his more famous quotes in the film is that "Life Will Find a Way".

I thought of this quote when I read the National Review column by Larry Kudlow entitled "Are Republicans the Economic Pessimists?". (See the "Elsewhere" section.) As I read this column, the notion that freedom also will find a way came to mind. Larry Kudlow is a free market economist who, like George Gilder, sees an economic recovery on the horizon IN SPITE OF the harmful policies being followed by the political leadership in Washington D.C. In the article, he points to numerous signs of economic recovery and agrees with Senator Demit that "the economy is getting better mainly because of the corrective forces of free-market capitalism in the private free-enterprise sector, and not from all this government spending and borrowing". If they are right, and we do have an economic turn around despite ill advised economic policies, it is because "Freedom Will Find a Way".

There are other free market economists, largely from the Austrian School of economics, who doubt that the signs of recovery are real and see all of the spending and borrowing as leading to economic disaster. This view sees whatever current signs of recovery that may be on the horizon as an artificial bubble to be followed by inflation induced economic collapse. The problem as they see it is that government spending and borrowing is sucking funds from the private sector, where it is more likely to be invested in productive ventures, and diverted through political cronyism to non-productive activities that might create a short lived bubble at best. Comparisons are often made to the Weimar Republic in Germany.

It remains to be seen which of these to outlooks on our economic future will turn out to be right. Free market optimists like Larry Kudlow and George Gilder are not the first to insist that prosperity and individual initiative often finds a way to triumph even in the face of folly and numerous obstacles placed in the way. This week in our quotable section, we have included a relevant quote from Adam Smith’s "Inquiry Into the Wealth of Nations":

"The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security is so powerful a principle that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often incumbers its operations; though the effect of these obstructions is always more or less either to encroach upon its freedom, or to diminish its security."

In time, the effect of foolish, anti-freedom policies may very well cause the sun to set on the American experiment in ordered liberty, but the collapse of an economy as large and vibrant as our does not happen over night. Here is where the comparisons to the Weimar Republic in Germany are misplaced. The American economy is MUCH larger and more resilient than that of Weimar Germany. Add to that the fact that our economy is tied to the global economy and it seems like it would be awfully hard to sink it. We must remember that it took Rome centuries to finally collapse even after people like Cicero saw the signs of its pending demise.

I think that Kudlow is right and that conservatives should not simply count on a bad economy to turn people against the left. We need to put forward an affirmative vision that will prevail in times of economic downturn as well as times of prosperity.

Robert Maynard is the Editor of the True North website