The (Near) Death of the State (Lew Rockwell)

Lew Rockwell may exaggerate slightly, but the failure of the bailout bill was indeed a tremendous victory:

I'm fully aware that Paulson and Bernanke have some nefarious scheme in mind to reverse the thrilling defeat of their criminal bailout package, a package shot down by independent members of Congress on both sides. But reflect for a few minutes on what it means that the House did this. It was a revolutionary act in the best sense of that term.

The entire establishment was united in favor of what was surely the most horrible and outrageous bill ever to come before Congress. The Fed, the Treasury, leadership of the Democrats and Republicans, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, all the major think tanks, most talking heads, the wealthiest corporations, important academics — in short, the whole of the power elite — were united in favor of this awful thing that proposed the following: Americans were to be stripped of their earnings and their future to prop up failed enterprises.

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