(I'm feeling cranky this morning, so I need to vent. The URLs herein are intended for the newcomers to this forum.)

With the increased public regulation of the financial, insurance, and even manufacturing industries in our economy, as well as an expanded role of the Federal Reserve Bank in directly subsidizing specific businesses within our faltering financial industry, our Economic Freedom Index will surely be falling significantly next year. Our Civil Liberties Index may well follow suit (though in truth, they are not that far apart conceptually).

I sense a palpable change in personal philosophy among the rank and file U.S. citizenry, fueled by the main stream media. Our uniquely American economic and political freedoms are now simply looked at by many citizens as some grand but somehow failed social experiment that has apparently run its course.

Our lack of vigilance as a free society has slowly allowed freedom preserving institutions to be eroded, with their decreasing potency allowing a much more volatile and less predictable process for creating prosperity. The eyes of our complacent citizenry see a decreasingly meritocratic determination of income generation in society, resulting in a less egalitarian distribution of economic status--life just doesn't seem fair under capitalism anymore.

Yet, our people fail to connect their unfulfilled utopian vision for the American experience to the demise of individual freedoms in American society. Prosperity, apparently, should be automatic, consistent and costless. Change was demanded; democracy was exercised; the people's voice was heard. The role of government in American economic lives has now substantially expanded.

Without preserving the constitutional protections against the encroachment of government upon individual freedoms, the noble institution of democracy simply becomes an energy efficient vehicle for transporting us down the short highway to the land of unfettered socialism.

Comparing societies throughout history has shown that capitalism is the superior institution for channeling individual self-interest towards producing prosperity. Further, capitalism is more effective than democracy at promoting individual well-being in society, especially for women.

But the institution of capitalism does not deliver perfection. Its preservation and maintenance is not free--it requires eternal vigilance. Capitalism is simply the institutional arrangement with the lowest social opportunity cost.

Perhaps the American people will soon awaken from their intellectual stupor, ignore the media, and demand from their elected representatives that all their freedoms be returned. Maybe...