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PRI's Lance Izumi on NRO -- "Bush should listen to Friedman and Hayek". Quotable:

The president seems not to fully realize that taxation and spending policies are more than just fiscal tools to improve economic performance or address group demands. In addition, these policies determine the extent of individual liberty in our society. In this regard, Bush should heed the advice of two Nobel Prize-winning economists and conservative icons, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek ..

Government spending on noble causes, even those staked out by Bush, still adversely affect the individual liberty of Americans. In his famed book Road to Serfdom, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year, Hayek warned that when government seeks to impose specific effects on people, "It must, of necessity, take sides, impose its valuations upon people and, instead of assisting them in the advancement of their own ends, choose the ends for them." The National Endowment for the Arts, for example, has certainly been guilty of imposing the government's values on people in its choice of art projects to fund.

Hayek further observed "that the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people." Although it may take generations, "even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine that spirit."

One can see such a transformation occurring in the American people. A people who once demanded "give me liberty or give me death," now say "give me a government program" as an answer to any perceived problem.

An expansionist government, even in the pursuit of noble causes, reduces freedom. That's why the current federal spending spree isn't just a budget issue, but a freedom issue. Given the unrest among his conservative base, President Bush must rediscover the importance of limited government to the maintenance of a free people and the promotion of a free society.