Newts Ideas At Cooper Union - Road to the Middle Class

YEARS AGO in the 1990s a political cartoonist drew a memorable line of filing cabinets, each drawer marked "Newt’s Ideas." Way out on the end was a drawer marked "Newt’s Good Ideas." At least the good ideas were on the right end of the filing cabinets.

But of course, anyone with good ideas will be found to have generated plenty of ordinary ideas. It’s like the salespeople say: Each No is one step closer to Yes.

Former House Speker Newt Gingrich’s latest idea is one-on-one debates between presidential candidates: half hour speeches from each candidate and 30 minutes for questions. No journalists, just a time keeper. He tried out the format in a debate with former NY Governor Cuomo on February 27, 2007 at the Cooper Union in New York City, as reported in the New York Times by Eleanor Stables.

It’s obvious why Newt likes the idea. It’s a good format for a candidate with a lot of serious ideas. Like Newt. If you watch the Cooper Union event here you see Newt in complete command. He hits his marks; he gets the ideas out that he wants; he illustrates his points with interesting anecdotes; he worries for his grandchildren; and he finishes on time. Newt was all about the problems of today and a vision of hope for the future.

In comparison Mario Cuomo spent a lot of time talking about the perfidy of Republican tax cuts of twenty years ago, and more money for health, education, and welfare. He ran over his time, and didn’t have any compelling prescription for the future.

The debate showed indirectly that politicians don’t just come up with political ideas out of thin air. It takes a lot of work to assemble and shape up a set of ten point plans. Without the spur of an election campaign, politicians just sit around rehashing the past. Newt’s running, so he’s got ideas. Cuomo isn’t, so he’s just dusting off old ideas and current partisan talking points.

What about Newt’s ideas? He is right down the middle on the current conservative agenda.

He wants reform of health care so that people can shop for prices. He talks of the difference between a colonoscopy for $5,700 in the Northeast and $3,300 in Salt Lake City.
He wants reform of Social Security so that we can do something about the main difference between the rich and the poor. The rich have investments and the magic of compound interest. So let’s have a Social Security that puts real investments and real compound interest to work for poor people.
On the War on Terror Newt favors creating trouble for Iran and North Korea. It is passing strange, he seems to think, that the one refinery in Iran that supplies gasoline hasn’t yet been sabotaged. And it would be a good idea to fund smugglers to make things difficult for the government of North Korea instead of giving food to the government of that nation.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

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The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

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Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

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“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

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I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

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Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

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The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
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