Pelosis New Direction For America - Road to the Middle Class

IF YOU WANT to know what life will be like under a Democratic Congress, here is an article by House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi that lays out her agenda for the 110th Congress.

She writes that the American people voted for a change, for “greater integrity” and “greater civility” in Washington D.C. On Iraq, she writes,

The strategy of "stay the course" is not working, has not made our country safer, has not honored our commitment to our troops and has not brought stability to the region.

And she promises to enact the New Direction For America.

We will make America safer by implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission; make our economy fairer by raising the minimum wage and ending taxpayer subsidies for sending jobs overseas; make college more affordable by cutting the interest rates on student loans; improve healthcare by allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower prescription drug prices and promoting stem cell research; achieve energy independence within 10 years by investing America's energy dollars in the Midwest instead of the Middle East; and guarantee a dignified retirement by improving Medicare, protecting Social Security and making it easier to save for retirement.

All these policies, she writes, are supported by large majorities of Americans.

They are, in fact, minor crowd-pleasing course corrections to the direction of the vast welfare state. But what do the American people really want from their government? That is always the question.

It is, however, a meaningless question. You might as well say: What do the customers really want from their neighborhood restaurant? What they want is a good meal and a feeling, after they have left, that they would like to come back.

When you have been eating at the same restaurant for years and years, you get an impulse to try something else.

The question is: Will you stay with the new restaurant, or return to the old one?

Sphere: Related Content |

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

TAGS

Action

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

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

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

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

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

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

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

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

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

Democratic Capitalism

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

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

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

mysql close 0