Larry Kudlow: Isn't a Bain turnaround what America needs? That's a pretty tall order, given that Bain's methods haven't been tried on anything as huge, broke and dysfunctional as the United States today. Would Bain Capital consider investing in it a sound risk of its investors' money, especially given the restraints that politics places on more debt and deficits now and the problems of cutting entitlement spending? On the other hand, with a revitalized economy, who can tell how long a turnaround would take? We know the tactics which the opposition would use, sowing fear of reforms, and how it has hurt previous modest attempts. This could be the biggest proxy fight in history and who can say that it would hold for long, once unemployment recedes and things began to improve? One is reminded of how the Israelites after their exodus began to complain of their hardships and talk about how they missed the flesh pots of their Egyptian captivity. I'm convinced, as Mark Steyn is, that America is unlikely to recover in the long run. We're just too dependent on welfare statism. Most of us have never known anything else, and most of those who do are acolytes of the New Deal and its aftermath. Many of Ron Paul's followers are young people disillusioned by the failures ahead for Social Security and liberal politics but still attracted by his libertarian ideas of permissiveness, never realizing that self-discipline and responsible behavior are the keys to true freedom. The real path forward is to choose those principles, because without insisting that everybody obey them a healthy society can't thrive and without that, the idea of rights has no meaning. God decreed freedom as the natural state of man but only so long as we live in a manner to retain it. Ron Paul's ideas are dead ends.