ANDERSON COUNTY — Amid all the talk of economic calamity with the “collapse” of revered financial institutions and the continuing unease among consumers, it’s a good time to remind Americans that our economic system remains one of the most robust and stable in the world.

Why else does so much foreign capital continue to flow into the American stock markets?

If you’re looking for a single-best explanation as to why we have enjoyed so much prosperity over the last two decades that would be it.

But our strong financial system was born out of our government’s early appreciation for the importance of regulating our economy (Alexander Hamilton anyone?). And more specifically, it was born from Depression-era regulations that were needed to correct the excesses of unbridled industrial capitalism.

When Wall Street collapsed in 1929, the possible consequences of excessive speculation in a nation’s capital markets were still poorly understood.

What happened this week presents an opportunity to determine how we manage the risks of global free-market capitalism — that giant interconnected “system” of global capital flows resulting from the fact that most of the free world has become stock-owning democracies where everything from your home mortgage to your retirement is tied to happenings from Boston to Beijing.

The reason we get this wonderful second “opportunity” is because our nation’s leaders temporarily blinded themselves to the possibility that government had actually done something right.

How else can you explain why the stringent banking regulations that had served us well in protecting our savings somehow were seen as unnecessary for securities firms guarding our retirement portfolios?

The right’s ideology of “free” markets now, deregulation forever may have grown out of America’s desire to distinguish itself from Communism.

Individual=good, government=bad was a great way to mobilize the world against “Evil Empires,” but a pretty simplistic principle for protecting our nation’s people and their resources from a money “system” that can be just as brutal and unforgiving as any bureaucracy run amok.

If free-markets and deregulation were sufficient in all cases, why would our Republican-led executive agree to “nationalize” massive parts of our economy in troubled times (or, for the matter, create massive bureaucracy to fight the war on terror).

American pragmatism almost always conquers American idealism (or naiveté?) so there likely will be some intelligent regulations put in place to protect us from a repeat of this most recent economic trouble. We should be proud that Sen. Lindsey Graham and other top Republican leaders are calling for such.

But the lesson here is about the destructiveness of our obsession over ideology.

When it comes to organizing our social and economic order, with all its profound and sometimes incomprehensible complexities, we would do well to ditch the pride, vanity and conceit that scorns compromise, turns opponents into enemies, and rejects all but the most basic government authority as an “immoral” limit on human freedom.

It’s time for America to be proud of its pragmatism, and for the right, especially, to return to discussing how we improve the workings of government, not continue to demonize it.

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