A Nation Like No Other

by Newt Gingrich

  In short, the central failing of the big-government welfare state is that its designers and current champions do not think of people as individuals with inherent dignity who are capable both of self-government and compassion for their fellow man; they think of citizens as groups of people to be organized, placated, and for some radicals on the Left, to be molded into “new Americans.” The famous and influential Progressive activist John Dewey, for one, saw public education as a vehicle to remodel citizens to fit Progressive concepts of the role of the citizen in relationship to the collective state. This violates a core tenet of American Exceptionalism: respect for the inherent dignity of the individual.

  The main selling points of the big-government welfare state during the Progressive era—its efficiency, its moral purpose in unifying society, and its economic benefits—are in fact its greatest liabilities. It has become an unresponsive, broken, and destructive apparatus that has brought about huge debts, inefficient and intrusive government bureaucracies, a weakening economy, and a cultural and moral rot that has trapped generations of citizens in poverty and dependence.

  WHY AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM MATTERS

  As the big-government welfare state collapses, the Left has employed every tool at its disposal, no matter how corrupt, to preserve and expand its power base. It may cripple the country, but in the tradition of the urban political machine bosses of old, left-wing leaders figure, “At least we’ll own the wreckage.”

  That is why the Left passed ObamaCare despite the clear opposition of the American people. It’s also why it so bitterly resists attempts to make payment of union dues voluntary, not mandatory, and why it is fighting so hard to abolish secret ballot elections for forming unions. The Left knows that its power rests not on popular support, but on its ability to use Big Government to reward its allies and punish its enemies.

  Unfortunately, with some significant exceptions such as Congressman Paul Ryan, the Right has largely failed to offer a comprehensive, alternative vision to the Left’s failed model. Too many Republicans only offer cuts to the current welfare state—in other words, “less of the same”—to address our current challenges.

  This is inadequate. First, the American people will not tolerate leaving the poor helpless. It is important to note that the big-government welfare state, while fatally flawed, still has an innate attraction for many people because it appeals to a common desire for all Americans to have equality and opportunity.

  And second, if we were to keep the current system, the comprehensive cuts needed to stabilize it would be politically impossible to impose. As discussed, a significant portion of the American people, including the middle class, now depend on some sort of government program, such as Medicare and Social Security. The beneficiaries of these programs will not be willing to sacrifice that support without an acceptable replacement. That’s why, in the long run, being the “pain party” is a losing proposition for Republicans.

  Lincoln once declared, “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulties and we must rise to the occasion.…We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.” Lincoln’s counsel holds true today. I believe it is time for the Republican Party to disenthrall itself from the dogmas of being an opposition party, rediscover the fundamental principles of our republic, and based on those principles, work out a comprehensive program for renewing our economy and government. If we remember who we are, we will know what to do. That is why American Exceptionalism matters.

  TEN STEPS TO RESTORING AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

  Replacing the Left will require not only a fundamental change in policies, but a change in habits. Instead of waiting for government to reform itself, we should immediately start living our lives every day in ways that promote freedom, personal responsibility, and self-government. Fortunately, through their habits of liberty, the Founders provided us with a clear and proven model for the kind of virtuous life that sustains a healthy republic.

  The challenge is to apply our Founders’ example to twenty-first-century conditions. This is not difficult, but it will require some hard work and a personal commitment to action. Here are ten things you can do to help America’s future be as exceptional as its past.

  I. LEARN ABOUT AMERICAN HISTORY, EXCEPTIONAL AMERICANS, AND AMERICA’S FOUNDING PRINCIPLES

  If we are going to win the argument, we have to be prepared for the argument. One of the left-wing elite’s great advantages is that they include many of the most studied and most articulate people in our society. In their positions in the news media, schools and universities, bureaucracies, and judgeships, they can make powerful arguments for their views. They may be wrong, but they sound good.

  Americans should learn about the issues and analyze how they relate to the principles and history of American Exceptionalism. In the tradition of Abraham Lincoln, we have to study and master our arguments so we can make our case convincingly against well-prepared opponents.

  I am encouraged by the tea party movement’s commitment to study groups and by the number of people who now carry a copy of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Remember, learning always comes first.

  2. SPEAK OUT

  Once you feel confident in your knowledge, start speaking out in favor of American Exceptionalism.

  We live in an age of amazing and diverse media. You can establish your own website. You can tweet. You can communicate on Facebook and by email. You can go on talk radio. You can invent your own online talk radio show. You can write letters to the editors. You can organize events (for example, a public celebration of George Washington’s birthday) and see if you can get the media to cover them.

  If you are willing to be noisy, you’re in luck—because you live in the easiest time in history to be noisy.

  3. QUESTION GOVERNMENTAL AUTHORITY AT EVERY TURN

  Go to your local school board, city council, or county commission and ask questions. Go to town hall meetings for your state legislators or members of Congress. If they don’t hold town hall meetings, go to their office. Go with friends to the state capitol and even to Washington.

  Once you’re there, argue for the right policies. If those policies don’t yet exist, invent them. We are entering an age of citizen-centered politics and citizen-centered government. We need so many new solutions and our problems and challenges are so diverse and so difficult that every citizen should feel empowered to challenge the old order and to help develop new solutions.

  4.TEACH THE CHILDREN AROUND YOU

  There are many opportunities to teach the next generation about America—its principles, its history, and its heroes. Speak about this topic with your children, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces. You also may have the chance to speak to neighborhood children through organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Big Brothers Big Sisters, your local church group, etc.

  While I strongly believe our schools should teach American history more accurately and more thoroughly, I also think there are many things we can do to fill in the gaps and to build on the work of schools.

  The next time you travel with your children, look for historic sites you can visit. Even a brief introduction to a battlefield or a museum or a living exhibit can trigger a lifetime of interest in young people.

  If you come to Washington, pick up a copy of Rediscovering God in America, a book and movie I created with my wife Callista, and find out how you can spend a day or two in our national capital visiting the monuments and learning about America’s founding and America’s history.

  Look for powerful and entertaining movies to show your children that learning can be interesting and fun—movies like Glory, Amazing Grace, Sunrise at Campobello, and Chariots of Fire.

  Visit the presidential libraries for half a day. Visit Mount Vernon and its amazing new education center with its great exhibit on George and Martha Washington. And visit living exhibits like Williamsburg, where re-enactors bring the past to life
.

  5. INSIST ON SCHOOLS THAT TEACH RESPONSIBILITY AND THE FUNDAMENTALS OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP

  While you are serving as a teacher-mentor, you should also insist, as a citizen, on bringing America back into our schools.

  You can start by asking your state legislature to mandate that every year from K through 12 and in every tax-paid freshman year in college, there must be lessons on the Declaration of Independence. By reminding young Americans every year that there are self-evident truths and that we are endowed with unalienable rights by our Creator, we will convey the spiritual and liberating nature of America.

  Requiring the Pledge of Allegiance in homeroom every day is a reminder that we are indeed a republic that is united under God.

  A moment of silent prayer to open each day would also help. Young people need to be reminded continually that they are part of something much bigger than mere earthly existence. At school, they should be allowed time to reflect upon the spiritual component to their lives.

  Textbooks should be reviewed to ensure their factual accuracy. Through bias and censorship, the secular Left has grossly distorted and rewritten history. It is time to insist that our children learn the truth, especially as it relates to the founding and history of America.

  To effect this change, you’ll need to make your case to your school board, your state legislature, and your governor. In some cases it may mean replacing elected judges who are improperly imposing their radical secularism on American schools.

  Insist that your child’s school focus on homework, deadlines, and developing a robust work ethic for students. Young Americans are going to be competing in the world market with young Asians who start studying earlier, study longer, and study more intensely. We will not remain the world’s economic leader without re-establishing a serious work and achievement ethic in students.

  6. DEFEAT AND REPLACE BAD JUDGES

  The lawyer class loves judicial supremacy. It makes them the keepers of the secret knowledge of America’s future.

  In the 1960s, the Supreme Court outlawed voluntary school prayer and instituted tort rules that encourage lawsuits, weakening and in some ways sickening our society. But praying less and suing more has turned out to be a bad experiment with bad results.

  Lord Acton warned that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Note that he dropped the word “tends” in the second half of that sentence. He asserted that absolute power always corrupts.

  We now have judges who believe they have absolute power. When a majority of California voters reassert that marriage is between a man and a woman in their state, and one federal judge decides his opinion is more important than theirs, there is something wrong. When the Supreme Court empowers politicians to seize citizens’ private property and give it to real estate developers, there is something wrong. When justices start citing Zimbabwe and other foreign countries instead of the United States Constitution, there is something wrong.

  Judicial supremacists tell us we have no choice except to endure judicial tyranny. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi once asserted that when the Supreme Court issues a ruling, it “is almost as if God has spoken.”4 Yet as I have noted elsewhere, the Founders designed the judiciary as the weakest branch of the federal government. Additionally, recall that President Jefferson eliminated eighteen of thirty-five federal judges in the Judiciary Act of 1802—and you have to assume Jefferson and his secretary of state, James Madison, had some knowledge of the Constitution.

  Our generation must restore the proper balance between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches. A first step is to defeat elected judges who flout the Constitution. Developing a new, Jeffersonian approach to lifetime judicial appointees when they prove to be radically destructive would be another step.

  It may well be necessary to abolish the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—the most radical and most consistently overturned appeals court. This would be a much more modest step than the Jeffersonian reform of 1802.

  And a final step would be to make all new judges meet a higher standard of knowledge of American history and of the principles of American Exceptionalism.

  7. REESTABLISH THE WORK ETHIC

  In the long-term, our economy cannot be stabilized without first reversing the erosion of the work ethic that has occurred over the last two generations.

  For four hundred years, since Captain John Smith decreed that those who don’t work won’t eat, Americans have worked hard, dreamed big, achieved amazing breakthroughs, and created enormous prosperity.

  Whether you want to be a ballerina or a surgeon, a success in business or a success in sports, a good parent or a good citizen, it always takes hard work to achieve your goals.

  The most important contribution you can make is to encourage the work ethic in your children by setting an example. Show them that everyone can dream big, but that it takes learning and hard work to make their dreams come true. Every time you instill in young people the understanding that effort leads to reward, you have strengthened America.

  8. CELEBRATE AMERICAN HOLIDAYS

  Holidays should be more than just a day off work—we should celebrate them as the historic institutions they are. Explain to young people why Memorial Day and Veterans Day exist and the sacrifices those days honor. Spend time on the Fourth of July discussing why we are patriotic and why our Star Spangled Banner celebrates an American victory on our own soil. At Thanksgiving, spend a few minutes remembering the Pilgrims as well as President Lincoln’s first Thanksgiving proclamation. Talk about all the things we Americans have to be thankful for.

  These simple steps move us toward a patriotic, historically informed citizenry at remarkably little cost.

  9.VOLUNTEER IN YOUR COMMUNITY

  Restoring a healthy, free, and self-governing society will require an engaged and energetic citizenry.

  Tocqueville wrote about the enormous energy and enthusiasm of Americans voluntarily banding together to solve problems and create opportunities. But for two generations we have paid higher and higher taxes to hire more and more bureaucrats to replace citizens with “experts.”

  That experiment has failed.

  If we are to implement the Tenth Amendment and return power to the people, citizens will have to volunteer to fill the gaps that emerge when the bureaucrats are disempowered.

  Volunteering your time and encouraging others to volunteer is a major step toward a better, more engaged, and freer America.

  10. RUN FOR OFFICE

  Your country needs you.

  There are more than 513,000 elected offices in America. If you know a better way to run your school board, town, city, or state, take the initiative to do so. Put your convictions to the test by running for office. Convince your fellow citizens that your ideas are practical solutions to specific problems. Drum up support for your program, get elected, and follow through with your plans.

  RESTORING AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND AMERICAN PROSPERITY BY RESTORING THE WORK ETHIC

  Out of all our problems, the one that’s hurting the most Americans today is unemployment.

  It is impossible to balance the budget at 8 or 9 percent unemployment. If there is a significant recession in the next few years, joblessness could hit 12 or 13 percent.

  A recent report finding that 42 percent of African American teenagers are unemployed is a warning sign of a looming social crisis. Additionally, some of our greatest cities are becoming ghost towns as economic decay and unemployment destroy the very fabric of the community.

  The pain of unemployment is being compounded by inflation, stoked by the Bernanke policy of printing money and the government’s mania for economic stimulus. Cheap dollars become expensive oil, gold, silver, and other commodities. Expensive oil translates into expensive food since energy is vital to food production, processing, and distribution. All this threatens to bring back the stagflation of the 1970s, when President Jimmy Carter’s destructive policies led to both economic decline and inflation.


  There are specific policies that can reverse these damaging trends, as outlined below. But a single value must guide all these policies: the restoration of the work ethic.

  A government dedicated to encouraging and rewarding work will empower individuals to determine their own future and their family’s future, to pursue success at the risk of failure, and to provide for their own well-being without being stymied by bureaucratic regulation.

  In a society whose economic engine was built to run on self-reliance, the dependence fostered by the big-government welfare state has wreaked havoc on our economy and is increasingly undermining the foundation of American liberty itself.

  Consider some key areas of public policy in which new policies that emphasize the work ethic would help to reverse our current decline and encourage personal responsibility.

  A SIMPLE, LOW TAX SYSTEM

  Nothing will restore the work ethic more than policies that reward the creation of wealth instead of just spreading it around. We should begin by approving the 12.5 percent business tax rate that Ireland adopted almost twenty-five years ago, and which raised the Irish standard of living from the second lowest in Europe to the second highest. Our reform program should aslo include: eliminating the capital gains tax, which involves double taxation of capital income on top of corporate and individual income taxes; immediate expensing for investment in tools and equipment, accelerating the productivity and wages of America’s workers; and abolishing the death tax, which taxes for a fourth time the lifetime savings of American families. Tax reform for individuals should provide for an optional 15 percent flat tax, with generous personal exemptions of $12,000 per family member.