MARINA DEL REY, CA--The Democrats are using Enron's collapse to attack business and free markets at the expense of America's highest priority, the war against terrorism, said a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. Robert W. Tracinski was a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute between 1997 and 2004.
Robert Tracinski, also a syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate, believes that the Democrats hope to use this case to smear all corporations as "Enrons waiting to happen," or worse: to hold up Enron as an example of the alleged ethics underlying capitalism--justifying the left's quest for more government controls to "protect the public."
"Enron executives do not represent the proper ethics of capitalism," said Tracinski. "They only represent the liberals' caricature of these values. And there is only one realm in which these Enron ethics--the view that personal or party advantage is to be gained by unprincipled, short-range opportunism--is normal. That realm is politics."
"Even in peacetime," said Tracinski, "these hearings would be a waste of time. There is no political issue to be investigated. In effect, the resources of the United States Congress have been diverted so that a few congressmen can conduct an ordinary criminal fraud investigation."
Tracinski said that the politicians should let the justice system deal with Enron and direct their efforts toward the nation's real, life-or-death priority: the War on Terrorism. "If they don't," he cautions, "the gains we have made in Afghanistan will vanish like Enron's profits."