Citizens for Principled Government

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Dear Friends,

Christmas is such a beautiful time of year when good will abounds and mankind is truly at his best.  There is so much in the world that is beautiful and stirs our souls with continuing appreciation for all we have been given.  However, there is also sorrow and hardship.  Brave and loving parents shield their children from the worries of life.  They will likely never know until they are much older the pressures and heavy responsibilities their parents quietly carried within as they brought their family together to share in all the joyful and tender feelings of the Christmas season.

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The spirit and tradition of Thanksgiving holiday in America is rooted in our nation’s miraculous victory in the great American Revolution.  George Washington expressed his fervent hope that Americans would never forget God’s role in that great battle.  In his first address as President, he said, “I am sure there never was a people who had more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their affairs, than those of the United States and I should be pained to believe that they have forgotten that agency, which was so often manifested during our Revolution, or that they failed to consider the omnipotence of that God who is alone able to protect them.”  

No one was a more direct and frequent witness of the hand of Providence in the birth of our Nation than Washington who is rightfully hailed as the “Father of our Country”.  He repeatedly assured his countrymen that God had intervened to rescue and preserve what he called “the sacred Cause of Freedom”.  Unlike today, public expressions and demonstrations of faith in God and the Bible were routine for the Continental Congress.  Throughout the War for Independence, they regularly called for national days of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer” and days of “public thanksgiving and prayer.” Throughout colonial America, there was a pervasive, deeply held belief that the Higher Law of God as revealed in the Bible takes precedence over the laws of man whenever the two conflict.

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PART I

CHRISTMAS 1776

Christmas 1776 was a crucial turning point in America’s war for independence.  It brought a most heroic and unexpected victory on the heels of humiliating retreat from New York through New Jersey.  Few people recall that bleak moment in December, 1776 when the very existence of the American cause of liberty was so severely threatened.  The Declaration of Independence was only six months old.  Thomas Paine’s immortal words describe this critical period as the “American Crisis”.  He said: “These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The magnificent courage exhibited by Washington and his men on Christmas 1776 must never be forgotten. It was truly a miracle and a sign of further blessings yet to come. The significance of that Christmas night along the Delaware River was perhaps best expressed almost five years later in a Virginia town near the Chesapeake Bay.  The occasion was a victory dinner after America’s final victory at Yorktown.  As was the custom in those days, the victorious General Washington had just proposed a toast to the defeated British General Lord Cornwallis (the same man who five years before drove Washington and his rapidly diminishing troops from New York and on through New Jersey and across the Delaware to the safety of the Pennsylvania shore). The British General looked squarely into the eyes of the man who had been his skilled and determined opponent for more than half a decade.  Who, better than Cornwallis, could accurately assess the strategies and abilities of America’s Commander-in-Chief?   All awaited Cornwallis’ answer to the toast offered by General Washington.  Surely, it would refer to Washington’s decisive victory in the just concluded battle of Yorktown.  Instead, however, Cornwallis said: “When the illustrious part which your Excellency has born and the long and arduous contest becomes a matter of history, fame will gather your brightest laurels from the banks of the Delaware rather than those of the Chesapeake.”

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During the last Presidential Election, the Democrat ticket continually railed against what they called, “the last eight years”.  And yet, how could they or anyone forget the tragedy and the heroes of 9/11 that has  so profoundly influenced us a nation since then?  When attacked, America united in a spirit of deep patriotism and determined resolve in support of our leaders, our armed forces and our Country.  It was, indeed, a defining moment of “moral clarity” for our generation.   As William Bennett has written,

“In the wake of September 11, the doubts and questions that had only recently plagued Americans about their Nation seemed to fade into insignificance.  Good was distinguished from evil, truth from falsehood.  We were firm, dedicated, unified.  It was, in short, a moment of moral clarity – a moment when we began to rediscover ourselves as one people even as we began to gird for battle with a not yet fully defined foe.” (Why We Fight – Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, p. 10).

The War on Terror did not just begin on September 11th, 2001. It was preceded by the earlier bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the bombing of the U.S. Barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the suicide assaults on two American Embassies in Africa in 1998 and on the USS Cole at Yemen in 2000.

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PART III

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM DECADES OF FEDERAL CONTROL OF STATE EDUCATION?

What do we have to show for all the Federal “assistance” (control) in public education? Between 1973 and 2004, when Federal spending on education more than quadrupled, test scores remained either flat or increased by only 1% among American seventeen year olds. Money alone is obviously not the answer to our quest for education excellence. Idaho and Utah (with large families and large per household education spending but low per pupil government spending) do very well among national test scores. The District of Columbia, however, with the nation’s highest per pupil expenditure (over $15,000 per pupil) scores dead last in student achievement.

Obviously, there are other factors including the stability of home life and the culture in which young people grow up that affect their overall well being, the quality of their education and, ultimately, their education performance. The Utah public school system is regarded as the most efficient in the country. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently gave Utah an “A” for return on investment and ranked our state as the highest in the country in that category.

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PART I

Add the college student loan program to Washington’s latest takeover of private enterprise. In yet another government “makeover” or “change” that is supposed to give new “hope” to America, the runaway train engineered by Obama, Reid and Pelosi (all liberal democrats) has again through congressional slight of hand found a way to pass radical “reform” legislation. This is again done without debate or prior committee review and input to screen and protect against such abuse of power.

Remember the wit and wisdom of Ronald Reagan who said, “The scariest words in the English language are, ‘Hello, I’m from the government and I am here to help you.” For decades, the Federal student loan program has respected the role of private banks and other financial institutions in making low interest loans with deferred repayment schedules to help young people finance a college education and improve their station in life. The government’s only role in these “student loans” has been to provide back up in the form of guarantees. Lenders are then willing to make such loans and apply a relaxed set of qualifications for those who are just getting started on their chosen career path.

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PART V

“RUNNING ON EMPTY”

Peter G. Peterson is a former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.  He critiqued the state of the national debt and congressional budgeting process in his book, Running on Empty. He calls for a comprehensive long-term budget for the next 50 years and not just one year at a time.  He calls for Congress to enact long term cost control reforms in all its current major programs.  He emphasizes the need to use the “accrual accounting” method that is so common in the private sector.  It tracks long term liabilities but “Congress pretends never to have heard of it.” (    ).  They are allowed to ignore some unfunded retirement obligations and leave over a trillion dollars off of its annual deficit calculations.  This is part of the illusory accounting methods that make government less than transparent.

Peterson also calls for a “generational impact statement” that calculates and discloses the long-term effects of any new spending or tax bill.  He notes that “what often makes marriage couples stop fighting is a good look at their kids.  Americans need to ask [their] leaders . . . to do the same – to look at our kids.”  (p. 224-225).  He further adds:

“Citizenship means looking out for one’s neighbors and giving a hand to those less fortunate. But it also means understanding the big issues of one’s time, seeing past the hype and spin, and working together to hold political leaders accountable.  Your time is coming, and when it does, your generation, like every generation, will get the government it deserves.  If it is distracted by pseudo-issues and gridlocked by special interest, it will be because too few of you paid attention and made your voices heard.

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PART III

“THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP GOVERNMENT FROM GROWING IS TO QUIT FEEDING IT” — Ronald Reagan

Today’s majority in Washington are willing to use deficit spending and the national debt to avoid tough decisions, which are often unpopular.  Resorting to more borrowing instead of making difficult but necessary budget cutting decisions provides the short-term cover and avoidance of political unpopularity that seems to be forever on their mind. The current uprising among the people, however, is beginning to blow that cover.  That is a positive development with great potential if it can be channeled into the corrective measures we sorely need at this time.

President Ronald Reagan said, “The only way to keep government from growing is to quit feeding it.” He pushed for the power of an executive “line item veto,” which he was able to use as Governor of California. When the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they tried to create and adopt such an added check and balance on Federal spending but the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that action.  Thus, today, we are left with outrageous “earmarks” (such as $200 million for an indoor tropical rain forest in Iowa) and the clever and less than transparent insertion of unrelated items into various Bills. This is shrewdly done to ensure passage and avoid a principled debate on the individual merits of such proposals.  (President Obama and the Democrat majority did that again recently to further their “sexual orientation” agenda.  They inserted unrelated “hate crimes” legislation into the military defense budget.  See prior post on this site in the archives, November 12, 2009).

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PART I

1 Year and Counting

After a year in office and a record increase of $1.4 trillion dollars in deficit spending, the President now tells us that our nation is experiencing a “deficit of trust” in our national government. This is strikingly similar to former President Jimmy Carter’s description of the “malaise” he saw among the people but somehow could not understand or remedy.  Fortunately, Ronald Reagan soon followed.  He ushered in the return to conservative principles and reduced taxes. This soon spawned a soaring and lasting economic recovery.  “Malaise” gave way to “Morning in America.”  It will happen again if the people reject the flawed assumptions and government dependency offered by the current Democrat majority in Washington.  We must reclaim the vision and wisdom of former times and apply the lessons of liberty and principled government, which they provide.

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