Below is Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's response to President Obama's 2009 State of the Union message. I have been pondering this for a week now, and I would like to say more but I walked away a week ago believing that the Jindal response was as unwise as President Bush's speech to congress after September 11, 2001.
I haven't paid a lot of attention to the response, but I understand that there was a general eruption of response much like mine. I am a life-long conservative, with a preference for market and local solutions over central government takeovers, but I am NOT anti-government. I'm very pro-government, as a matter of fact, and as a conservative Christian theologian recognize the necessity thereof.
I found Jindal's response too simplistic, almost anti-government in tone. We are in the midst of a great financial crisis that is the result of the fact that many who could have and should have been looking (Democrats and Republicans) looked the other way.
Government refs the game. Ever watch a game where the refs "let 'em play" too much? People get hurt. Ever watch a game where the refs were overinvolved? Creativity and innovation is stiffled.
Government is not an outside entity. It's us. We elect these people to help set the game's rules and enforce them. To say we just "want you to be free" leads to the kind of myopia that let AIG, Bear Stearns, et alii do their thing. WE--and I mean all U.S. citizens--WE need to be wiser, better. The solution to the financial crisis is not to let people figure it out for themselves but to be wiser, to expect their government to be wiser.
Perhaps I'll write more later, but I promised a friend I'd post my thoughts.
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