The recent tumult in U.S. equity markets has prompted many analysts to urge the Fed to postpone any increase in interest rates. This advice assumes that rock-bottom interest rates are balm for a weak economy, with the only possible side effect being price inflation. Yet it is the Fed’s artificially low interest rates that set up the economy for the 2008 crisis, not to mention previous crises.

The “doves” are right to point out that higher interest rates will lead to a repricing of many securities, aka a crash. But years of...