Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
415892718
label
[Speech Draft-The Fourth American Revolution, c.1991]
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
415892718
contentType
document
title
[Speech Draft-The Fourth American Revolution, c.1991]
citationUrl
identifierLocal
13899-003
collections
Records of the White House Office of Speechwriting (George H. W. Bush Administration)
Tony Snow Subject Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
415892718
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
db9ab26fd944a181
ocrText
Originally Processed With FOIA(s):
FOIA Number:
S
FOIA
MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the George Bush Presidential
Library Staff.
Record Group/Collection:
George H.W. Bush Presidential Records
Collection/Office of Origin:
Speechwriting, White House Office of
Series:
Snow, Tony, Files
Subseries:
Subject File, 1988-1993
OA/ID Number:
13899
Folder ID Number:
13899-003
Folder Title:
[Speech Draft-The Fourth American Revolution, c.1991]
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
G
18
29
2
7
GEORGE BUSH AND THE FOURTH AMERICAN REVOLUTION
DRAFT
2,500 years ago, Heraclitus wrote: "Nothing endures but
change. " And so it goes.
Yet even if change is a constant, surely the changes in the
world over the past three years have been profoundly historic.
The fall of the Berlin Wall. The collapse of communism in the
Soviet Union. The reversal of the nuclear arms race. Change has
come so quickly, says Vaclav Havel, that "we have literally no
time even to be astonished."
In this latter part of the 20th century, a momentous change
is underway -- the demise of the bureaucratic state. Like a
cancer, bureaucracy came in two forms -- benign and malignant.
But regardless of the stage of their metastasis, both cause
damage to the body politic. No matter whether it's the cradle-
to-grave welfare system of a socialist Britain or Sweden, or the
police state gulags of a communist China or Siberia, their
effects range from the merely bad to the truly evil.
Ronald Reagan saw the writing on the wall back in 1981.
"The West won't contain communism," he said at Notre Dame, "it
will transcend communism. It won't bother to denounce it; it
will dismiss it as some bizarre chapter in human history whose
last pages are even now being written."
When the world changes, empires crumble. From Moscow to
Mexico City, and in states and towns all over America,
bureaucracies can no longer produce government services at
anything approaching a reasonable price or level of satisfaction.
Bureaucracies once worked, but were designed for a different era.
2
And as Seneca noted 2,000 years ago, "All things move in accord
with their appointed times; they are destined to be born, to
grow, and to be destroyed."
A similar global movement was afoot in the 19th century as
well: the rise of nationalism and the demise of feudalism,
serfdom and slavery. In politics, royalty gave way to republics,
while in economics, industry entered the Modern era. Slavery was
abolished in Britain in 1833, France in 1848, Cuba in 1880, and
Brazil in 1883. The disparate German states at last united into
one country, as did the Italian city-states. In America, before
the Civil War, the "United States" was a plural noun, as in "The
United States are in crisis." After the war, the United States
was a singular noun, as in "The United States is a great nation."
Slavery would have ended at some point, just as the U.S. was
destined to grow into a great nation. But we remember Lincoln as
our greatest president -- we memorialize him at the end of the
Mall -- because he took bold action to accomplish both and
hastened the process. As leaders in transitional times, Lincoln
was to Modernism and nationalism what George Bush is to post-
Modernism and post-communism. Presidents can't stop historical
trends; they can't reverse waves of the future. But they can
help them along, slow them down, or simply fail to adopt and be
swept away.
By all accounts, Lincoln was a modest man, with a creaking
voice and lacking in social graces. Made fun of for his physical
appearance, denigrated by his own cabinet, as a campaigner he was
3
the Paul Tsongas of the 1860s. Disraeli said, "Every politician
must know two things: himself and his times." But in times of
crisis, the times can make the man.
Lincoln is remembered as the president who freed the slaves
and saved the Union. But he is not remembered for his domestic
policies achievements, which were quite radical and important:
granting 160 acres to pioneers through the Homestead Act,
granting more land to build a transcontinental railroad, creating
Land Grant colleges and the Agriculture Department to conduct
research for the benefit of all farmers. These revolutionary
policies opened the West to settlement and changed the course of
American history for the rest of the 19th century.
Similarly, President Bush's clearest accomplishment has been
in the area of "war and peace": managing and encouraging what he
called "the Revolution of !89" -- the peaceful end of communism.-
Presidents Reagan and Bush did it by keeping America's military
strong enough to convince the Soviets that they could never hope
to win the Cold War. Now that the Cold War is history, I predict
the President will provide the leadership to complete another
revolution -- this one in domestic policy: the liberation of
government from the dead hand of bureaucracy.
There have been three revolutions in American history. We
are entering the fourth. The First Revolution was the establish-
ment of the world's first government whose powers were derived
from the consent of the people. The "Second American
Revolution," as it's called by historian James McPherson, was the
4
abolition of slavery -- the fulfillment of the Declaration of
Independence's promise that "all men are created equal." The
Third Revolution was the creation of the bureaucratic welfare
state as an engine of social progress -- beginning as the New
Deal and culminating in the Great Society. Modernization,
industrialization, and bureaucracy all grew up together and did
constitute progress. The Fourth Revolution, now underway, is
about the abolition of bureaucracy and placing power back in the
hands of the People.
All these revolutions are fact. Some say George Bush is the
wrong president for these times. Some say he resembles Buchanan
-- James Buchanan, who fiddled while the Union burned and failed
to provide vision and leadership at a crucial time. While anyone
would shy away from making comparisons to Lincoln, I believe
George Bush will lead this Fourth Revolution, and if you find
that hard to believe, I can understand. I'm sure the President
is as modest about the idea of being a revolutionary as Lincoln
was in issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. But I would argue
that George Bush and Abraham Lincoln experienced the same kind of
radicalizing events that inspired them to seek a new order.
Compare, as one small example, President Bush's vague promises
five years ago to be the "Education President," to his current
position on school choice, in which he says, "If we want to
create a climate for change, let parents decide which school,
public or private, is best for the kids."
5
To understand George Bush's role in leading the Fourth
Revolution, we must look back to the Second Revolution -- and the
events leading up to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln was chosen as the Republican nominee in 1860 because
he was a moderate. He came from the center of the country --
politically, geographically, and culturally. He was acceptable
to the radical abolitionists who supported John C. Fremont and
Salmon P. Chase, as well as the more accommodation-minded like
William H. Seward and Horace Greeley. Historian Richard
Hofstadter wrote: "To become President, Lincoln had had to talk
more radically on occasion than he actually felt; to be an
effective President, he was compelled to act more conservatively
than he wanted."
Once the South seceded, abolitionists urged Lincoln to turn
the conflict into a revolution to abolish slavery. They wanted
to complete the First American Revolution in which supposedly
"all men are created equal" by extending liberty to blacks as
well as whites.
Thaddeus Stevens, leader of the Radical Republicans in
Congress, said, "We must treat this war as a radical revolution
and free every slave, slay every traitor, burn every rebel
mansion, if these things be necessary to preserve" the nation.
Such words grated on Lincoln's ears. Lincoln throughout his
political career was consistently anti-slavery, but he was no
abolitionist. He preferred to end slavery by compensated
emancipation stretched over a generation. Lincoln said: "My
6
paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is
not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the
Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could
save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do
it." Hardly the words of a revolutionary.
In this regard, James Randall, the foremost Lincoln scholar
of a generation ago, considered Lincoln to be a conservative. By
that he meant, "caution, prudent adherence to tested values,
avoidance of rashness, and reliance on peaceable evolution."
Sounds like a description of George Bush. (Wouldn't be
prudent.) For three years, he has pursued a kinder, gentler
version of Ronald Reagan's uncompleted revolution without
challenging much of the status quo. Just as Lincoln did not
confront the abolition of slavery until his third year in office,
President Bush is coming to grips with the central issue of our
times: the catastrophic failure of the bureaucratic welfare
state. "Right now," the President said in March, "the system is
not accountable, effective, efficient, or even compassionate."
He also called raising taxes in 1990 a mistake.
In conducting the Civil War, though Lincoln was personally
opposed to slavery as a moral wrong, he felt politically
constrained from making freedom for the slaves a goal of the war.
For one thing, Lincoln needed to keep the four border slave
states -- Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri -- from
leaving the Union. Furthermore, half the voters in the North
7
were Democrats. If one Democrat instead of two had run for
president in 1860, Lincoln never would have been elected. And as
many votes were cast against Lincoln in 1864 as were cast for him
in 1860. Those Northern Democrats would fight to preserve the
Union, but might oppose a war against slavery.
For these reasons, Lincoln acted to keep the Radical
Republicans and abolitionists at bay. Early in the war, when two
of his generals freed slaves in areas under their control,
Lincoln countermanded their orders.
Lincoln's initial military strategy for putting down the
rebellion was to reclaim as much territory as possible. It was
an attempt at physically preserving the Union. The Northern
armies left untouched the property, food, and slave labor that
enabled the South to fight.
On the political front, Lincoln worked tirelessly with
border state congressmen to convince them to accept his plan for
compensated emancipation. Accept it, he warned, or slavery will
be swept aside in a revolution that cannot be contained.
On the battlefield, Confederate aggressiveness and Union
ineptitude quickly left the North in sorry shape. In the first
two years, 150,000 Union troops had been lost. The limited-war
strategy of conquering Southern territory could not succeed as
long as the Confederate armies remained intact. After the
shocking Union casualties at Shiloh, Ulysses S. Grant was one of
the first to realize this. At that point, Gen. Grant "gave up
all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest."
8
After three attempts at compromise with border state
congressmen, on July 12, 1862, Lincoln's plan for compensated
emancipation was rejected by Congress. An angry Lincoln decided
that very night to issue a proclamation on emancipation. He was
through with conciliation.
Faced with intransigence in Congress and incompetence in his
army, Lincoln had no choice but to wage total war. Just before
signing the final proclamation, Lincoln wrote, "It must be done.
I am driven to it. There is no other way out of our troubles.' "
General-in-Chief George McClellan had counseled Lincoln
against emancipation, afraid his troops would not fight to free
the black man. "Destroy the rebel army, " Lincoln ordered
McClellan before Antietam. When McClellan failed to seize the
initiative, Lincoln removed him from command. At that point,
Lincoln said, it is time for "decisive and extensive measures.
We want the army to strike more vigorous blows. The
administration must set an example, and strike at the heart of
the rebellion." By that he meant the entire plantation system.
Lincoln scholar James McPherson called Lincoln a "pragmatic
revolutionary, for as a pragmatist he adopted a means to an
end
Not an ideological revolution, to be sure -- Lincoln was
no Robespierre or Lenin with a blueprint for a new order -- but
he was a pragmatic revolutionary who found it necessary to
destroy slavery and create a new birth of freedom in order to
preserve the Union."
9
Emancipation became both a means to winning the war and an
end in and of itself. In one of his more brilliant moves,
Lincoln ordered the acceptance of blacks into the Union Army,
totaling 180,000 by war's end. Lincoln knew that was the South's
worst nightmare. Writing to Andrew Johnson, then military
governor of Tennessee, Lincoln said, "The bare sight of 50,000
armed and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi
would end the rebellion at once."
Emancipation had military value, of course, but Lincoln took
full advantage of its moral power as well. Abolitionists
unenthusiastic about a war to save the Union finally enlisted in
Lincoln's cause. Said abolitionist leader William Lloyd
Garrison: "Either he has become a Garrisonian Abolitionist or I
have become a Lincoln Emancipationist, for I know that we blend,
like kindred drops, into one." Emancipation also played well to
abolition sentiments in Britain, keeping them from intervening on
behalf of the Confederacy.
Lincoln's moral position delivered political victory as
well. Throwing his full support behind a constitutional
amendment to ban slavery, Lincoln put it in the Republican
platform of 1864 and got it through the House in January, 1865.
Emancipationists took control of Missouri and Maryland, passing
state constitutional amendments that abolished slavery.
McPherson says, "It was the war itself, not the ideological
blueprints of Lincoln or any other leader, that generated the
radical momentum that made it a second American revolution." Or
10
as Lincoln put it, "I claim not to have controlled events, but
confess plainly that events have controlled me."
By freeing the slaves, Lincoln became a radical
revolutionary. He finally had a morally compelling message.
Much has been made of Lincoln's dealings with his generals, but
less attention paid to his message. For as good as Lee and his
Confederate generals were, they were destined to lose. Victor
Hugo knew this -- in a quotation that's usually paraphrased, but
in the original is particularly apt: "An invasion of armies can
be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. "
Just as apartheid in South Africa was destined to disappear,
slavery in the 19th century was destined to disappear. The only
question was when and how. The courage of an F.W. De Klerk or an
Abraham Lincoln can force things to a head. By fulfilling the
promise of liberty for all contained in the First American
Revolution, Lincoln brought forth the Second American Revolution.
The Republican Party dominated the White House and Congress for
the next 65 years.
During that time, however, new technology brought on the
Industrial Revolution. Big Business arose, and with it, immense
power and wealth for those at the top. In the Progressive Era of
Theodore Roosevelt's time, it was thought the only way to counter
the power of Big Business was with Big Government and Big Labor.
The Great Depression caused people to lose faith in business'
ability to deliver prosperity, so they transferred their faith to
Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.
11
FDR's Third American Revolution was a success. Large
bureaucracy in the age of the telephone and typewriter worked
well. It reached its pinnacle of achievement during the New Deal
and in organizing the war effort for World War II. In the age of
the hard drive and hypermedia, however, bureaucracy is headed for
extinction.
Government bureaucracies are the most labor-intensive,
technologically backward offices in America. Think about how
fundamentally different our expectations are about the service we
receive from bureaucracies versus private business. If you were
to call Mastercard's 800 number and inquire about your account,
they could immediately call it up on a computer screen and give
you a list of every transaction for the last month and your
current balance. Some banks let you call their computer on the
phone, punch in some I.D. numbers, and a voice will tell you your
balance and the last five checks that cleared.
But can you call the IRS and find out the status of your
refund check? Or call FHA and find out the status of your
mortgage application? Or call and get a pothole or street light
fixed? If you've ever bothered to try, you know that not only is
it difficult to get an answer -- or even find the right person to
talk to -- that person probably doesn't care whether you get an
answer. And we know for sure the system doesn't care.
The problem with bureaucracy is that it costs too much, and
is so dysfunctional that it disrupts people's lives and makes
them resent bureaucratic behavior. When it comes to government,
12
says Newsweek's Bob Samuelson, "The American people are skep-
tical, not stingy." They are willing to invest in what works.
Newt Gingrich, one of the Founding Fathers of the Fourth
Revolution, says: "The greatest single change in American life,
from Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to the modern era, was the
shift from government as a primary benefactor to government as a
primary threat to the average person. "
More and more Americans view their government as their
enemy, not their servant. Instead of treating citizens as
customers, bureaucracies arrange their work to benefit their own
civil service employees. They have no reason to attempt to
please their political masters or the citizenry at large, because
under the rules of this Old Paradigm, they can't be fired or
demoted or shut down no matter what. The Fourth American
Revolution will return to us a government of the People, working
for the People.
This Fourth Revolution, or as I've called it before -- the
New Paradigm -- is not anti-government, but it is anti-
bureaucracy. David Osborne, another Founding Father of the
Fourth Revolution, describes its principles as "growth with
equity, a focus on market solutions, a search for non-
bureaucratic methods, fiscal moderation, investment rather than
spending, redistribution of opportunity rather than outcomes, and
a new federalism." The New Paradigm's primary organizing
principle is the idea that government's purpose and method should
13
be defined by the services the people want, not by what the
bureaucracy is currently designed to deliver.
Bureaucracies with monopolies on providing services do what
all monopolies do: they maximize their own welfare, not their
customers' satisfaction. And they have no incentive to control
costs. In studying their system of socialized health care,
British physician Max Gammon discovered that as the number of
health care employees increased sharply, the number of hospital
beds actually fell. From this study he posited Gammon's Law:
"In a bureaucratic system an increase in expenditure will be
matched by a fall in production. Such systems will act like
black holes in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in
resources and shrinking in terms of emitted production."
Milton Friedman described the difference between a private
hospital and a public one. If a private hospital lost money, its
backers would either cut costs, suffer the loss out of their own
pockets, or shut it down. Shutting something down is an
admission of failure, something none of us likes to do. But if a
public hospital is losing money, its managers would say its lack
of success comes from a shortage of resources. If they are
persuasive enough, they will get more resources from the
taxpayers' deep pockets. It's little wonder, Friedman says,
"that unsuccessful government ventures are generally expanded
rather than terminated."
It costs $7,561 to educate each pupil in New York public
schools, $3,000 more than the national average. And I'm sure you
14
could get passionate arguments from the city's educrats on why
they need even more. Yet New York SAT scores fell in the 80s,
ranking 45th in the nation. Despite this failure, the Old
Paradigm bureaucracy churns on -- there are more school
administrators in New York than all of Western Europe.
Last month, two teenagers were shot dead at Thomas Jefferson
High School in Brooklyn just an hour before Mayor Dinkins was
scheduled to visit. No one should be forced to go to a school
like that. We now spend 40% more in real terms per pupil in this
country than we did just ten years ago. Are we really getting
our money's worth. Are the schools 40 percent better?
Consider how New York cares for the homeless. The city
provides shelter on demand, warehousing each night thousands of
people in huge, violent, drug-infested armories. The systems
costs a mind-boggling $350 million a year -- $18,000 per homeless
person. And for what? One homeless advocate who has stayed in
shelters in America's 20 largest cities says New York's shelters
are the worst. "It's like a prison day room with mental
institution overtones," he says. "There's no one in control and
your life is not safe." And unlike most other cities' shelters,
there's no requirement for the homeless to work, save money, get
off drugs, or limit how long they can stay.
Think about that. $18,00 per person spent, and they're not
required to do anything at all. That's crazy. It's obscene.
It's an outrage to think how much more effectively those millions
could be spent -- for drug treatment, mental health, all to help
15
the homeless -- instead of pouring it down some bureaucratic
black hole. And if I sound a little wound up here -- sometimes
hysteria is the appropriate response to the situation.
25 years ago, the mayor of New York was considered at the
cutting edge of what a thoughtful, dynamic progressive should be.
Today, inheriting that tradition, the current mayor leads some of
the most retrograde forces in American government. The problem
is not Dinkins, who's decent and well-meaning; it's systemic.
Joe Klein, New York magazine's astute observer of
government, put it this way: "New York City no only is a
geographic anachronism; it is also a bureaucratic museum piece.
The grand governmental structures -- the Board of Education,
welfare system, Housing Authority, civil service, and unions --
are vestiges of the centralized, assembly-line 'efficiencies' of
the Industrial Revolution. They lack the flexibility, speed, and
accountability
of post-industrial society."
New York government's greatest problem is that the civil
service unions have eaten the Big Apple. School custodians have
a contract that only requires them to sweep every other day and
mop the halls three times a year. Ten years ago, the city
realized they could cut one man off their garbage truck crews.
But to get the union to agree, the city had to give a 25%
"official" kickback of the money the taxpayers would save to the
remaining two-man crews. New York City's union contracts total
$13 billion a year -- that's bigger than the budget of 47 states.
16
While unions' over-all membership in this country is
declining, civil service unions have grown. From 1979 to 1989,
membership in the Steelworkers union fell by 50%. Over the same
10 year period, AFSCME, the largest government employee union,
grew by 22%. In 1959, membership in government employee unions
was 8% of total union membership. Today, half of all union
members are government employees.
At the federal level, look at the number of U.S. Department
of Agriculture employees. In the last 90 years, it's grown from
3,300 to 129,000, while the number of farmers in this country has
fallen by 3 million. Back in 1900, the ratio of farmers to USDA
employees was 1,694 to 1. Today, it's 16 to 1.
And think about this, in an age with fax machines, computer
networks, Federal Express, and UPS, do we really need 748,000
postal workers in this country? Is this the way to stay
competitive with Germany and Japan?
Combine civil service rules and privileges with negotiated
labor contracts, and it's no wonder elected officials are unable
to improve the delivery of services, lower bureaucracy's cost, or
eliminate programs that don't work. The Bourbon-like Democratic
Party is the institutional expression of the status quo. The
idealism of their past is gone. They are incapable of changing
this system because union money is what keeps them in power.
The flood of money flowing between politicians and their
favored recipients of government largesse is eating away at the
very foundation of the system: public trust in the
17
incorruptibility of their leaders. In 1989 and 1990, 2,200
officials were convicted of public corruption. A system this
sick cannot be cured; it must be overthrown.
Today, with all due respect to Francis Fukuyama, we may not
be at the end of history, but we are at the end of an era. The
Age of Bureaucracy is dead. The only question is when will we
remove the corpse? And who will do it?
If Lincoln had not acted to end slavery, would it have
survived in the South? Of course not. Slavery was on its way
out. The industrial revolution and the mechanization of farming
would have destroyed it anyway. Similarly, the backwardness and
inflexibility of bureaucracy have already doomed it because it no
longer meets the wants and needs of the people.
Thomas Jefferson once wrote: "as new discoveries are made,
new truths disclosed,
institutions must advance also, and
keep pace with the times." It is the very nature of Americans to
be innovators and doers. We've almost made the national motto:
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." de Toqueville
noticed this 150 years ago: Americans "all consider society as a
body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in
which nothing is or ought to be permanent; and they admit that
what appears to them today to be good, may be superseded by
something better tomorrow."
Every segment of our society has been transformed over the
past 15 years -- all except government. Even giant bureaucratic
corporations like IBM and GM are changing, not because they want
18
to but because they have to. The invisible hand at work.
Government, on the other hand, has no competitive pressure, and
could use a very visible boot in the rear. It's time to ask of
government Peter Drucker's famous test of any organizational
process: If we weren't doing it this way now, would we start?
America's Fourth Revolution began just as the second one
did: with visionary leaders who saw what was right and worked to
set things right. Newt Gingrich is like the fiery abolitionists
and radical Republicans who sought to cut out the rotten core of
the reactionary institutions. Jack Kemp is like the idealistic
Col. Robert Shaw, the white Massachusetts idealist portrayed in
the movie "Glory" who led an all black regiment against the
bigots in the Union army and the slave owners of the Confederacy.
Seeing Kemp in the inner cities, the public housing projects,
trying to bring hope and opportunity to those forgotten
communities, should be an inspiration to everyone who calls
himself a Republican.
At important moments in their history, the American people
have reached out for leadership based on principle. They fall
back on the words of the Gettysburg Address, and rededicate
themselves to the proposition that "these dead shall not have
died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth
of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, and
for the people shall not perish from this earth."
These United States almost single-handedly sustained the
idea of free people, free markets, and freedom of choice
19
throughout this century from the twin menaces of fascism and
communism. But the menace of bureaucracy has challenged the
notion that we truly have a government of the people, by the
people and for the people.
Our fundamental complaint against communism was what it did
to the individual. As Ronald Reagan said in his historic speech
to the British Parliament in 1982, "It is the Soviet Union that
runs against the tide of history by denying human freedom and
human dignity to its citizens." Yet as former communist nations
throw out the bureaucrats and the centralized planners and adopt
free markets, here at home we're almost paralyzed by a lack of
choice. If we dare preach human rights abroad, then we need to
apply them here at home -- not only civil rights, but choice,
empowerment, personal safety, and responsibility. If we had the
power to change the world, then surely we have the duty to change
America, to bring forth a "new birth of freedom."
The Old Paradigm liberals have no plan, no desire to change.
They ignore Gammon's Law, throwing more money into the same
failed systems. With the passing of the great Soviet centralized
bureaucracies, they now represent some of the most reactionary
forces in the world.
Two years ago, President Bush said, "When old centralized
bureaucracies are crumbling, the time has come for yet another
paradigm, a form of government which, like the spirit of '76,
give power back to localities and states and most importantly, to
the people; a model which rejects the view that progress is
20
measured in money spent and bureaucracies built." We've been
making slow, but steady progress -- like the Union army -- over
the last three years, toward what the President called "our New
Paradigm."
"Where there is no vision, the people perish," says Proverbs
(29:18). The New Paradigm has a dramatically different vision.
Lincoln believed that government's greatest purpose is "to
elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from
all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all."
Choice and empowerment will be a new emancipation proclamation
for the poor.
Just as Harriet Beecher Stowe crystallized abolitionist
sentiment by publishing Uncle Tom's Cabin nine years before the
Civil War, some have seen this movement coming for a long time.
Jack Kemp once wrote, "Until 1932, the Republican Party was the
home of black Americans, the party of Lincoln, of economic
growth, of civil rights, of equal opportunity; the Democratic
Party was still the implicit defender of white supremacy. FDR
did not disown Dixie Democrats, but when it came to a choice
between Republicans offering marginal advances in civil rights
and Democrats offering a New Deal on economic policy -- a little
bit of growth and a lot of redistribution -- the Democrats won
over black America." For years, Jack Kemp has been trying to get
the Republican Party to make common cause with blacks who have
been victimized by a bureaucratic system gone amok.
21
Today, it's the Democrats who are offering marginal advances
in civil rights, while Republicans are offering private school
vouchers, home ownership, and job creation. To the black mother
in Chicago with two kids in elementary school, Newt Gingrich asks
which is the more compelling political choice: The chance to
have your child get a good enough education to be an astronaut or
a computer programmer or the chance to get 8% more in food stamps
next year?
Which party really represents the interests of the poor?
When bureaucratic government was seen as capable of solving
poverty, the Democrats were seen as the saviors of the poor,
because they were pro-government and Republicans were anti-
government. Over the last 10 years, there's been a change. As
the bureaucratic approach to poverty has failed, Democrats are
now stuck defending status quo government while Republicans want
governmental reform.
Today, the condition of the underclass is as debilitating
and humiliating as slavery ever was. Southerners claimed that
slavery was good for blacks. Today, bureaucrats say their system
is good for blacks, and refuse to consider the natural American
impulse for change and reform. Paternalism now, paternalism
tomorrow, and paternalism forever.
Like Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, George Mitchell and
Tom Foley are putting up heavy resistance. But they are fighting
a lost cause. As Lincoln told Congress on the eve of the
Emancipation Proclamation: "The dogmas of the quiet past are
22
inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, we must
think anew, and act anew." James McPherson called Lincoln "a
reluctant revolutionary," but more radical than even Washington
or Jefferson in the First Revolution, because unlike them,
Lincoln fundamentally changed the society he led.
On March 20, George Bush came to the same conclusion that
Lincoln did in fighting the Civil War. To bring about the coming
revolution, total war must be waged. The bureaucratic welfare
state's sources of power must be destroyed. The power of the
unions and the civil service to block reform must be overcome.
And their protectors in the Democratic Party must be defeated.
To enter this battle, I'll admit, President Bush is
outgunned. And he's fighting with McClellan's army: a big,
slow-moving, mistake-prone Administration and party that came to
the Potomac, and some forgot what they're here for -- but not
all. Without any new ideas, they've been content to collect
taxes for the welfare state and tinker around its margins.
After 12 years in the White House, if we run this year as
Republicans, we may lose. If we run as reformers, we will win.
Let's face it. The American people are tired of Republicans. If
we say, "Here we stand, warts and all," they look at the warts.
If, however, we're willing to take on the special interests who
want to keep people divided, poor, and stupid, if we pursue
reform as a way to a Greater Society, we will win.
For the past three years, President Bush attempted to work
with the dinosaurs in Congress, peppering them with proposal
23
after proposal for reform. All were thrown back in his face.
After Congress missed his deadline for action on the economy, he
said, "The time has come to take the case to the American
people." As Lincoln learned with the border state Democrats who
wouldn't accept compensated emancipation, President Bush has
learned that when compromise won't come, revolution must.
In the Persian Gulf war, the American people didn't fully
support the effort until it became clear that it wasn't just a
fight for national interest, but a fight against aggression,
against tyranny. Americans will enlist, in the Wilsonian
tradition, to fight in a moral cause. And the liberation from
poverty, welfare dependency, and bureaucratic chains is, indeed,
a moral cause.
Empowerment and choice will do for the poor what
emancipation did for the slaves. In Milwaukee, for example,
State Rep. Polly Williams, a black Democrat, joined with
Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson to start a pilot program of
vouchers, so black students trapped in miserable schools could
have the chance to go to private school. The educrats were
outraged and sued to stop it. Just listing the plaintiffs and
defendants tells you everything you need to know about how
corrupt and evil the bureaucratic empire has become. On one
side: Lonzetta Davis and her daughter Sabrina; Velma Frier and
her daughter Shavonne; Thais Jackson and her daughter Tamika;
along with the Urban Day School, and the Juanita Virgil Academy.
On the other side: The Wisconsin Association of School District
24
Administrators, the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers, and the
Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. The Wisconsin Supreme
Court just ruled in favor of the voucher program, with Justice
Louis Ceci writing that the choice program "attempted to throw a
life preserver to those Milwaukee children caught in the cruel
riptide of a school system floundering upon the shoals of
poverty, status-quo thinking, and despair."
Lincoln once said, "The right of revolution is never a legal
right
but a moral right, when exercised for a morally
justifiable cause. " When the monolithic teachers' unions rise up
as one to smite down poor black girls who want the chance for a
better education in private school, you know the Fourth
Revolution will succeed, because the other side has lost its
moral claim to lead.
Finger by finger, we will peel the hand off the necks of
poor black kids. There are 98,000 children to go in Milwaukee,
and millions nationwide, waiting for the chance to go to private
and parochial schools.
Private school choice is not only the most profound change
to come to education in 150 years, it is the paramount civil
rights issue of our time. And that issue is the key to
overthrowing the bureaucratic status quo in this country and the
Democratic Party that supports it. Just as Lincoln pulled down
the old regime by freeing the slaves, we must go after the
pillars of the Old Establishment: the trial lawyers, the
National Education Association, and the politicized unions that
25
keep the Democrats in power. Just as Sherman invented total
modern warfare with his march to the sea, we can't seek victory
through half-measures. By offering children the chance to escape
from public schools, and by stripping away the unions' political
funds through enforcement of the Supreme Court's Beck decision,
we will destroy the Democrats' ability to fight, just as
emancipation destroyed Lee's army.
President Bush has said, "If we want to create a climate for
change, let parents decide which school, public or private, is
best for the kids.' When the black parents of this country
figure out that the $3,000 to $7,000 per pupil they pay in taxes
for lousy public schools could instead be turned into vouchers
that could enable their churches to start their own schools --
without the drugs and violence, and with the strong values of
their own faith -- those parents will support the party that made
it possible: the Republican Party.
President Bush has said, "Freedom and the power to choose
should not be the privilege of wealth. They are the birthright
of every American."
The President will be reelected because he will take his
moral cause to the American people and they will support it. He
will campaign on behalf of the poor. He will make Polly Williams
and what she stands for -- common knowledge. Just as Lincoln
provided a Homestead Act, he will seek an Urban Homestead Act.
Just as Lincoln pursued equal rights and equal protection under
the law, he will pursue equal economic rights and equal oppor-
26
tunity for all. And he will champion private school choice, em-
powerment, and welfare reform. His campaign slogan has become:
"If we can change the world, we can change America."
Announcing his bid for reelection on Lincoln's birthday,
President Bush echoed the Great Emancipator, who said, "We will
make converts day by day, and unless truth be a mockery and
justice a hollow lie, we will be in the majority after a while.
The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle." And so
it shall.
Like those who listened at Gettysburg, we are engaged in a
great civil war, testing whether this nation can meet the
challenges here at home and from abroad.
Gladstone once said, "You cannot fight against the future.
Time is on our side. " The Fourth American Revolution is here,
and like those that came before, it will deliver a "new birth of
freedom" and a Government of the People, by the People, and for
the people.
#