Dear Comrades, Let's Do Nothing

The rationalization goes like this: Government helped caused this mess, so government needs to fix it.

Maybe. But as Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economics professor, recently wrote: "The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government."

Most of our worst ideas are reactions to emergencies — some imagined and some real. We're in a fix. There will be consequences. But every now and then, the solution to a crisis is to do nothing. Especially when what we're doing is an assault on all those pesky principles we're supposed to be protecting in the first place.

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