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 ree at last! Having
sent the manuscript of
On Two Wings to
Encounter Books, I can breathe again and look around at the
world above water. What a big blue sky!
I am amazed by how successful President Bush the Younger has been.
The “risky scheme” tax cut
of
2000 has just been passed by an overwhelming vote in the House and
a substantial vote in the Senate (57-34, 9 not voting). The education
bill passed by an even larger bipartisan margin. Talk about a centrist
presidency, a consensus government. Pity the lonely 34, the senatorial
extremists of the Left, the 153 in the House.
Granted, the education bill got only a fraction of what the president
first fought for, only the testing in certain grades, not the experiments
with school choice (parental vouchers). Granted, too, that it yields
too much to the Left’s fascination with spending money, endowing
that act with magical powers which regularly fail to work. The money
is a small price to pay for establishing the principle of accountability
in the schools. The Congress has now recognized officially that
some public schools are failing, and that the failing ones need
to be ferreted out by testing.
With a next step, perhaps the Congress will be willing to accept
a parental-choice program limited to public schools. In other words,
parents will be free to send their children to the public school
of their choice, and teachers at particular schools will be empowered
to improve their schools so as to attract students willing to show
greater annual self-improvement. Later on, after that, perhaps private-school
choice can be added.
Analogously, with respect to tax policy, the Democrats of the extreme
Left (including soft-spoken Tom Daschle) may yet come to see how
silly they look in their attempts to punish the top five percent
of the rich at all costs. In truth, everyone below the top one percent
is middle class. Furthermore, many of those in the top one percent
one year are not there the next. Most are not there for more than
a few years. Individuals rotate through that statistical rank rather
quickly. I myself made it ONE year, the year I received the Templeton
Prize. Never again, alas.
So what gives with all the contortions of the tax code — causing
enormous inefficiencies in investment and savings decisions —
in order to hyperventilate about treating the top one percent, five
percent, and ten percent to varying degrees of verbal abuse and
tax vexations?
The Democrats of the extreme Left look rather silly protecting four
of the top-five percent in order to load verbal abuse on the top
one percent. Their silliness costs the U.S. economy a minimum of
half a trillion dollars of inefficiencies every year. Not to mention
costing the government the tax dollars that gain would rake in.
The president has even won on faith-based initiatives, even though
he hasn’t gotten all that he wants yet. (He’ll need two terms to
complete all the new projects his campaign announced in several
directions.) He has won, first, by restoring the public legitimation
of religious faith and its activism on behalf of the suffering and
the poor, and giving that legitimation a deeper hue and better color
than it has had for more than 50 years. (The sudden delegitimation
began with the mythic legal history of “separation” invented by
Justice Hugo Black in 1948-49.)
He has also won by focusing immediately on getting government off
the back of religiously inspired initiatives on behalf of the poor.
He has asked five departments to streamline the burdens they currently
place on citizen action. Since the mid-1960s the federal government
in its hubris began arrogating to itself all projects for the poor,
and adding burden after burden upon all rival suppliers of assistance,
until many were driven from the arena. By mandating that government
agencies review the burdens they have been heaping up and cut back
on them, President Bush has (without spending a penny) already achieved
most of what needs doing to breathe life back into self-starting
citizen initiatives, both faith-based and plain-vanilla humanitarian.
Government has no monopoly on compassion; is not, in fact, its source.
The president has established that point quite clearly.
The president’s address at the 2001 Notre Dame commencement should
be produced as a pamphlet; it is a marvelously succinct statement
of first principles, most of them already achieved in practice.
If you haven’t read it, do. It woke up the echoes of Lyndon Johnson’s
Great Society address to an earlier commencement at the University
of Texas.
The Compassionate Society adds the long-missing human dimension
to the Great Society, and is a necessary corrective.
In my humble opinion — poor philosopher, no political expert
— even the treachery of Senator Jeffords (who just six months
ago covenanted with the voters of Vermont one to help the Republican
party keep its majority, and who wholeheartedly embraced the Bush
campaign, and now without submitting himself to the voters has cost
them dearly) will work to the benefit of the president.
When the Democrats were equal to the Republicans in the Senate,
their left wing, including their leadership, was vituperative and
obstructionist. But the extremists could not be held responsible.
Their behavior was interpreted as understandable bitterness and
frustration.
Now they have their majority of one and their higher visibility,
and they will be held accountable. They will be fatter targets,
and they will be held to higher standards. Moreover, the president
can blame them for what they do not grant him, and take the case
to the people. It will be easier for President Bush to challenge
the obstructionism when it is out in the open on the lips of majority
leaders, and to counter the arguments put out in public by the newly
visible leaders of the extreme Left.
The Democrats are a deeply divided party, and forcing that division
out into the open can only help. There are more red Bush states
that blue Gore states. A Senate that reflected that division would
be favorable terrain indeed.
What the Left does not understand about today’s conservatives is
that, as Florida proved, we have become hardened street fighters,
and we will fight on any terrain and in any weather. Moreover, we
do not mean by “conservatives” those who “conserve.” For why on
earth would we want to conserve the desert that the Left has made
of this once united and most vibrant society on earth? We have our
own vision of the future. We cannot call ourselves “progressives”
only because the false prophets of the socialist Left have expropriated
that honorable name and befouled it.
When we think back on our ancestors, though, we see so much to love,
admire, and emulate that we do not mind being linked to them by
the name “conservative.” First principles are ever-renewable resources,
bubbling up with constantly fresh energies for new circumstances,
and branching out like a fertile vine in ever-new directions, aiming
to produce vintages better than any ever seen before, if only the
lessons of proven wisdom are heeded.
We are pretty confident that we own the future. Certainly, we will
fight to prevail.
And that, speaking for myself, is what I like about George Bush
the Younger. Call it the vision thing, and the youthful energy,
and the patient easygoing practicality.
I have felt since the beginning of the 2000 campaign, when I did
not support Bush, that Providence would play an unusually great
role in the election of 2000, one way or the other. After the events
of November-December last, the evidence of that role must have come
clear to many.
In
my opinion, God still blesses America. I had been afraid that--for
good and sufficient reason--He no longer did. If you will forgive
a faith-based initiative, I give thanks to God.
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