When President George W. Bush was recently interviewed on CNN regarding the economy, he left us with another “Bushism” that will likely go down in history along with the economy his interventionist policies are destroying, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system.”

Bush incoherently believes that corporatism (e.g., the bailouts) and the Federal Reserve’s hyper-expansion of the money supply (e.g., monetary socialism and debasement of the dollar) are crucial to make free enterprise viable, despite his claimed devotion to the Christian, natural-law, moral principle that the end never justifies the means. However as with most politicians (including Obama, Dodd, McCain, Pelosi, Schwarzenegger, Frank, Reid, Cheney, Biden, Clinton, . . .), for Bush, means are ethically situational depending on one’s own personal and political fortunes.

A classic Calvin and Hobbes cartoon by Bill Watterson illuminates many of the key factors at work here (i.e., vanity, arrogance, intolerance, ignorance, narcissism, fraud, greed, indifference, foolishness). Thanks to Paul Theroux for the reference (please click on image to see full size).