When Barack Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel recently stated that one of the chief goals of this presidential administration was to "never let a serious crisis go to waste," elephants all across our nation claimed outrage. (Those who weren't immediately inflamed with outraged were quickly fanned into code-red "frothing at the mouth" status by the agitprop specialists within the Republicrat machine spearheaded by Sean Hannity and his ilk.) You would think that, to the Republicrat mind, such openly exploitative behavior by those in power was a crime on the same level as nailing Jesus Christ to the cross of Calvary. Never! no never! would an elephant use a crisis to expand governmental power and size in the way that the Demopublicans were! Banish the thought!
Really? Let's listen in to a meeting of the National Security Council days after the 09/11 attacks. A little history can serve to dispel both myth and wishful thinking, if one is honest with oneself.
Within days [of 09/11], Condoleeza Rice called together members of the National Security Council and asked them "to think about 'how do you capitalize on these opportunities' to fundamentally change American doctrine, and the shape of the world, in the wake of September 11th." [1]
Kinda sounds like the same kind of power-grabbing, big government, Fed-zilla-type strategy, now doesn't it?
Suggested reading: Robert Higgs, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government.
1. Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003), 229.
