Isn’t the response of President Bush and other
Washington officials to the NASA tragedy so very typical?
Amidst charges that NASA officials have knowingly and
intentionally ignored safety warnings for years, the
knee-jerk response of Washington’s big spenders is:
Increase the NASA budget immediately! Only in Washington
do failure, neglect, and negligence result in immediate
financial success.
Of course, we saw the same phenomenon in response to the
September 11 terrorist attacks. The FBI’s ignoring
of critical evidence in advance of the attacks, including
its almost obsessive focus on bordellos in New Orleans,
bordered on gross negligence. Yet the knee-jerk response
of Bush and his congressional cohorts was, again:
Increase the FBI’s budget immediately!
Unfortunately, almost everyone in Washington is missing the
most important point in the NASA tragedy: Government has
no more business engaging in space
exploration than it has operating trains or mail
delivery. Ownership of such enterprises properly belongs
in the private sector, not the government sector.
“Omigosh! Couldn’t that might mean that we might not
have space shuttles, trains, or mail delivery?”
That’s possible, but it would also mean that
people’s resources were being diverted into what
they, rather than government officials, considered to be
their most urgent needs.
Aren’t the owners of resources — including
income, savings, and capital — better suited to
determine their needs than the politicians and
bureaucrats who rule over them? Aren’t private
ownership and free enterprise, rather than public
ownership and socialistic central planning, what
Americans are supposed to be standing for?
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of the Future of Freedom Foundation.
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