Fortune favors the brave

March 8, 2011

When OCPA president Michael Carnuccio and I were at a Heritage Foundation meeting in April of 2010, more than once did we hear from Heritage analysts and others that Oklahoma was going to have a golden opportunity to enact conservative policies in 2011 (yes, even in April the handwriting was on the wall, shellacking-wise). We agreed, of course, and OCPA has continued to make case for boldness. As we said a few months ago:

The Obama Administration wants to make government bigger and more intrusive, and taxes more burdensome on income earners.

Right now, at least, the federalist system allows Oklahoma to make opposite choices.

The future belongs to the bold. It was bold of Harry Truman to counter Soviet aggression with the Berlin Airlift after World War II. It was bold of John F. Kennedy to declare himself a citizen of Berlin. It was bold of Ronald Reagan to demand that a “reformist” communist dictator “tear down this wall”—and the wall came tumbling down, advancing the cause of human liberty and dignity.

Now is the time for Oklahoma to provide a freedom model in opposition to the feudal model being advanced at the national level. “This is a good time to be a little less constrained in your thinking,” Jeb Bush recently advised. “Think big and bold.”

In the 1950s William F. Buckley, Jr. memorably declared it was the mission of conservatives to stand athwart history, yelling “Stop!” It was the right theme for that era, but some things have changed.

That was then, and this is now. The mission of the current generation of Americans is to cry out: “Forward to Freedom!”

We haven’t changed our thinking. As this recent article in the Lawton Constitution makes clear, Carnuccio and OCPA continue to recommend boldness.