Build An Agenda Of Hope

SOME REPUBLICANS are out blaming President Bush, Congressional Republicans, immigration policies, an unpopular war, and big government conservatism as they look at defeat on the morning after.

But others are saying: Look, we gave the election our best shot and the American people told us to get lost. So let us accept their decision and move on.

Unlike Democrats over the past years, Republicans should be philosophical about defeat. The American people decided what they wanted, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. If we can’t persuade the American people in a fair elecion then we have a problem. So let us begin right now building a new Agenda of Hope.

The Democrats have not been doing any thinking in their years in the wilderness. It is still 1933 and time for New Deal policies like raising the minimum wage. This is a huge advantage for Republicans.
The welfare state isn’t going anywhere except downhill, with its overpaid functionaries doing less and less to deliver social services.
Resurgent Islam isn’t going anywhere. Democrats are going to have to decide just what it is that they think the War on Terror is all about. Maybe some time about 2011 we can get to a national consensus on the war.
The Democrats cold-cocked us on education reform in 2001 and Social Security reform in 2005. The time to start thinking the deep thoughts on how to do these reforms is now, while Republicans and conservatives are in the political wilderness. These problems will continue to fester because Democrats aren’t interested in a solution. They like the support of monopoly-wage teachers and dependent Social Security recipients. Why would they change?
Democrats are going to spend money on global warming with a vast menu of mega-projects and subsidies for their pet schemes, and it is going to hurt the economy.

So let us be in good heart and start to build again. There will come a time when the American people will turn to us again, and we should prepare ourselves to deserve that honor.

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

Comments:

Posted by: Steve on 11/09/06 8:40am

I need to warn you about a Bill that is coming in front of Congress that all of India is talking about. It is a bill that makes it easier for them to get nuclear technology from us. India has a very large number of Muslims in it. Please look into it.

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Chappies

“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

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

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

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

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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