Getting America Right: The True Conservative Values Our Nation Needs Today - Hardcover

Feulner, Edwin J.; Wilson, Doug

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307336913 ISBN 13: 9780307336910

Publisher: Crown Forum, 2006

Synopsis

Where did we take a wrong turn?

That’s what proud conservatives are asking. The era of liberal dominance is finally over, but sometimes you wouldn’t know it. Government spending is out of control, huge waves of illegal immigration endanger our security and our American identity, more and more Americans look to Washington for the “quick fix,” the government grabs for more power at the expense of our liberty, American businesses are fleeing overseas, and terrorism threatens us more than ever.

How do we deal with these crises when our leaders refuse to? By following Edwin J. Feulner and Doug Wilson’s unique and practical six-point plan: specific steps that every one of us can take to put America back on course.

As conservative leaders—Feulner as president of the nation’s preeminent think tank, The Heritage Foundation; Wilson as chairman of America’s leading conservative news and community website, Townhall.com—the authors know that what will rescue us now are the things that have always made this nation great: free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, a strong national defense, and the rule of law. We must demand accountability and a return to our core principles.

Getting America Right reveals:

• Stunning real-world examples of government run amok, and how it hurts you

• The politicians who are selling out, and the brave souls who are fighting for what’s right

• How to restore fiscal discipline among Washington’s pork-addicted pols—Feulner and Wilson identify ridiculous programs we should slash now

• The blueprint for getting the federal government out of our way and out of our pockets

• The threats Washington is ignoring, and the steps we must take at home and abroad to ensure our security

• What you can do to hold politicians accountable

What is at risk if we fail? Nothing less than the freedom, prosperity, and security of ourselves and our children and grandchildren. We must get it right—each and every one of us. And we need to start today. As Newt Gingrich writes in his foreword to Getting America Right, “The blueprint for our action—yours and mine—is contained within the pages of this remarkable book.”


Also available as an eBook.

Visit GettingAmericaRight.com for more resources to join the fight to put America back on track.

About this title

About the Author

Edwin J. Feulner is the president of The Heritage Foundation, the esteemed Washington, D.C.–based research and educational institute. A veteran of the Reagan administration, he holds both an MBA and a PhD. Feulner was honored by President Reagan with the Presidential Citizens Medal for his contributions to the conservative movement. He lives in northern Virginia.

Doug Wilson is the chairman of Townhall.com, America’s leading conservative news and community website. He is also the president of Next Solutions, a management-consulting firm. Wilson served with Jack Kemp and William J. Bennett on the advisory board of Empower America and has taught at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Southern California. He lives in Newport Beach, California.

Reviews

Flag, faith and family; free markets and free trade; limited government, local control and individual responsibility are the ideals championed by Heritage Foundation president Feulner and Townhall.com chairman Wilson in this conservative manifesto on what's wrong with America and how we can fix it. Drawing on Heritage Foundation research, according to the foreword, they prescribe a litmus test for government policies that readers can employ on their own by asking the following questions of any proposed policy: "Is federal action necessary?... Does this measure promote self-reliance?... Is it [fiscally] responsible?... Does it make us more prosperous? Does it make us safer?... Does it unify us?" Censuring both "tax and spend" Democrats and today's "borrow and spend" Republicans, the authors are critical of the Bush administration and the mushrooming national debt—$7.7 trillion at the time of publication, they note. But their tally of federal waste (e.g., overpayments in tax credits for "the undeserving poor") and fraud to cut—$100 billion worth—comes nowhere near closing the huge federal deficits they decry, and their solutions (e.g., flat tax and Social Security privatization) will surely provoke partisan debate. Regardless of the reader's ideology, however, this book makes for a clear articulation of core conservative ideas. (Mar. 7)
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Chapter 1: We Can Push Back

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. –Ronald Reagan

Where did things go wrong?

For proud conservatives this should have been the best of times. After all, conservatives are finally steering the ship of state after decades of liberal dominance.

But look what’s happening in this putatively conservative era. Look at the extent to which our government now intrudes into its citizens’ lives, reaching for ever more power at the expense of individual liberty. Look at the greed and corruption that have produced outrageous pork-barrel politics and government budgets spiraling out of control. Look at the fiscally reckless accumulation of unimaginable public debt that now threatens the nation and the world. Look at how many Americans now look to government for the “quick fix” or for personal advantage.

And all this is occurring at a time when our nation faces a tsunami of dangers–terrorists eager to massacre innocent civilians; uncompetitive economic practices that drive businesses and jobs overseas; ill-defined immigration policies that jeopardize the uniquely American notion of E pluribus unum (out of many, one); runaway government growth that threatens to bankrupt the country.

Gloomy as we may sound in diagnosing America’s current ills, we are actually optimistic about the potential for effective cures. Some key changes have already begun, giving us hope for the future. What we urgently need is an action plan for building on these changes to make America as great as she can and should be.

Getting America Right,we believe, is that action plan.

Any plan for fixing the problems that plague our government must involve individual Americans. Too many Americans feel helpless in the face of the government leviathan, watching as budget numbers soar, the number of Washington bureaucracies expands, and government feels more and more removed from our lives. But as this book will reveal in real-world terms, government is not some abstract entity with little connection to our lives; it dramatically affects all of us. Simply put, social power is a zero-sum game: When government takes it, individuals lose it.

The growing complexity of government lets bureaucrats and elected officials hide their acts behind an opaque screen, allowing them to escape accountability. Getting America Right shows how we can and must pull away that screen–how each and every one of us can demand responsibility and a return to core principles.

And what are those core values and principles? They are nothing less than what has made America great. And despite our hotly contested elections and increasingly rancorous partisan disputes, Americans still share fundamental principles.We still support free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, a strong national defense, and the rule of law. Most Americans still believe in the Ten Commandments as guides for our individual lives.We still stand for such traditional American values as fairness, volunteerism, the primacy of family, the freedom to worship as we see fit, self-government, and the defining faith that the least among us can rise to the top–but that no one is above the law.

These ideas define our worldview. They are grounded in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which insists on equality under the rule of law, natural rights, liberty, and government only with the consent of the governed. Thomas Jefferson credited the wisdom of the Declaration to a higher power than himself: He called it “an expression of the American mind.” In short, the United States exemplified the then radical idea that governments exist to serve their people, not the other way around–that nations become great only when they free their people to become great individuals.

But too often, politics trumps principle in our nation’s capital, particularly since powerful interest groups, wealthy lobbyists, and angry extremists have come to dominate the political scene. So why do we have reason for optimism? Because those groups do not represent mainstream America. Much as it may bore the jaded celebrities of New York, Hollywood, or Washington, myriad polls show that mainstream Americans overwhelmingly hold dear the time-tested anchors of God, citizenship, and patriotism. Consider these recent poll results:

• 85 percent of Americans say religion is very or fairly important in their lives.

• 71 percent believe the Constitution promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

• 88 percent agree that “schools should make a special effort to teach new immigrants about American values.”

• 80 percent of Hispanic parents say it’s more important for children to learn the rights and responsibilities of citizenship than to focus on their own ethnic group’s customs and heritage.

• 81 percent of all Americans believe immigrants should learn English.

• 69 percent proudly display the American flag on holidays and any other time they wish.

Now it is time to defend and honor–not just pay lip service to–the principles that have always been the strength of our great nation.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

In Winston Churchill’s words, “The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.” Conservatism is not a religion, not an ideology or a political platform. Conservatism is a set of beliefs that prizes moderation, reflection, tradition, and reason; it cherishes the old and valued even as it produces new solutions. It seeks ongoing improvement of a society, but always in the context of an existing cultural system.

Conservatism is thus a broad social movement of diverse but reinforcing beliefs, gathering travelers on the same journey–pilgrims who may argue over the topography of the promised land, but still move in the same direction.To be a conservative is to apply old ideas to new circumstances. As liberal thinking took center stage politically in the 1960s and 1970s, conservatives relied on the time-tested principles and ideas that could be fashioned into constructive change. And these days, it is the conservatives who seek new approaches while, at the same time, preserving enduring principles. In a speech to the graduating class of 2005 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, President George W. Bush told the new midshipmen to be “champions of change” and to “pursue possibilities others tell you do not exist.”

We would add only one caveat: Change must be evolutionary, not radical or revolutionary. If customs and traditions need to be altered, the new form can’t be imposed from on high. People must be persuaded that change is necessary. Humans are too complex for a healthy society to emerge from the theorizing and the social engineering of elites–academics, editorialists, government officials–proclaiming “enlightened” policy. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to use Abraham Lincoln’s eloquent phrase, requires the active involvement of an informed citizenry.

Yet for the past seventy-five years, the federal government has sought increasing power over the American people, at the expense of many of our traditional values, and it has often done so in a revolutionary fashion. As conservatives, we continue to believe in the empowerment of individuals, and we remain skeptical of government programs that promise utopia. The American people know their own needs and values and can judge what is in their interest far better than any distant bureaucrat or elite authority. Fundamentally, a civil society derives its strength not from big impersonal government, but from virtuous individuals and “little platoons” joining forces to achieve a dynamic social impact. When government steps in to provide a service that private sources could perform, it crowds out private entities that outperform government if left alone to respond to local needs on their own. Small example: The staff and volunteers at the local soup kitchen go on alert when a regular client fails to show up; they can find out what’s wrong and mobilize local help to deal with it. By contrast, the federal food stamp program is simply a remote paper-churning bureaucracy, oblivious to the real people it supposedly serves.

First among society’s little platoons, of course, is a stable, loving family. A host of formal and informal institutions follow, ranging from neighborhood schools to churches and synagogues to volunteer fire departments to the Boy Scouts to the Rotary Club. What they have in common is faith in America’s shared moral order that respects human dignity, inculcates decency, overcomes fear, and inspires people to help one another in times of trouble.We have learned truths through the ages, among them that all individuals seek freedom, that human life has intrinsic value, and that it is unjust to show arbitrary preference for some people over others.

We also know that freedom is not a license to do anything one pleases. Freedom requires limits and responsibilities–to separate the two trivializes the entire concept of freedom, as sociologist Charles Murray has argued. Freedom endures in a civil society only when individuals accept that with liberty comes responsibility. In return for enjoying liberty and prosperity, we commit ourselves to virtuous behavior, notably in defending the worth of other lives, not just our own. And while we join in helping society’s weakest members, we expect them to help themselves to the best of their abilitie...

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown Forum
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307336913
• ISBN 13: 9780307336910
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256