Renewing the American Community: A Case Study and A Challenge

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

Recently, some of the feedback I’ve been getting focuses on both the enormity of our the fiscal issues facing this country, and how we implement the right policies going forward to avoid getting into this mess again. It is that last issue that I have tried to address in many of my posts on this website over the last year. So to respond to this feedback, I want to summarize and amplify what I’ve tried to say over the last year.

First, I want to go back to what I said about the Founders in a recent post, and then what I felt were important actions we had to take:

To them, citizenship in a free society required active involvement in the life of the community and all its organizations; it was not a license to receive tax-paid benefits, nor a right to delegate community involvement to tax-paid bureaucrats. Democracy is what transpired in town hall meetings and town councils called or elected by the people to govern communities, in service organizations and church congregations, and in schools; while the work of elected representatives in state and national capitols was limited to a few specific tasks outlined in republican constitutions. …

… Remember that the remnants of our unique society still exist under all of the layers of government we’ve created. Those basic relationships that formed the core of our democratic communities still function every day. …

On these remnants we can re-build our unique society and re-establish limited and fiscally-sane government. But, we have to be willing to believe that the blueprints provided by the Declaration and the Constitution are still viable, and then re-commit ourselves to this project. We have to re-engage in the democratic life of our communities. We have to start and support local businesses, join our local service organizations and churches, and involve ourselves in our schools and local governments—and then demand that these enterprises shoulder the needs of our communities with our help, rather than look to Austin or Washington for action.

The skeptical questions I’ve gotten in response to these statements range from “that’s impossible today,” to “you’re advocating social revolution.” To both these sentiments, my answer is that I am no wild-eyed dreamer or revolutionary—but I am an optimist. We have examples all around us of how to make the transformations in our personal lives and in our political policies, which will be needed to accomplish this mission.

For example, here in Harris County our elected officials have established local medical clinics, and alternatives to juvenile detention, that are innovative, that involve the private sector, that improve local neighborhoods, and that provide services cost-effectively (or through private foundations, service organizations, or churches) without Austin or Washington. Our Commissioners and Juvenile Court Judges are showing that what I’ve called the Tupelo Formula works—if we’d just trust ourselves to apply it with conviction and consistency.

In an earlier post I re-told the story of how Tupelo, Mississippi pulled itself out of the Great Depression and other calamities to become a regional economic engine. I outlined the “Tupelo Formula” for local action as follows:

· The community faced a problem that appeared intractable, and that had been confounded by multiple events—not unlike the confounding factors of under-education, under-employment, chronic crime and poverty, and the impulse to be “left alone”, which exist in many of our neighborhoods today;

· One person, followed by a group of civic leaders, saw a strength within the community that created an opportunity that could be exploited to help the community address its problem;

· These citizens had the courage to take a risk with their own resources to take advantage of the opportunity and to share the gain with the community;

· These citizens involved businesses, private organizations, and local government in both the planning and the implementation of their plan; and

· The gains to the community were both short-term, and long-term, and were broadly shared—e.g., businesses were created and expanded, employment grew, per capita income grew, and schools improved.

I am confident that this model for local action will work not just in Harris County, but across the country, as the innovative former Mayors of Indianapolis and Jersey City, Stephen Goldsmith and Brent Schundler, and innovative educators like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, have shown over the last 20 years. Harris County is unique in that we are rich with innovative leaders in our private and public sectors, who could begin analyzing and addressing our communities’ needs through the prism of this formula, including:

· Our educational system, including the type of citizen we want to emerge from an elementary, secondary and college education in this state; the proper curriculum and delivery system needed to produce that citizen; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms needed to pay for, account for, and administer that delivery system;

· Our transportation system and physical infrastructure, including a vision of where our citizens will live and work over the next 25 years; an understanding of how and where our goods and services will need to move; the maintenance cycle for all capital investments; an appreciation for the property rights of all Texans; and the most efficient and cost-effective mechanisms for paying for the needed infrastructure improvements; and

· Our criminal-justice and mental-health systems, including the effectiveness of such systems to protect victims, the public, and the person being held and/or treated within the systems; and alternatives that can reduce recidivism and improve the educational opportunities and long-term economic viability of the families and neighborhoods affected by the incarceration or mental-health treatment.

We should confront these issues by creating long-term strategies for addressing them at the most local level possible, but not based on the old “tax-first-figure-out-a-plan-later” strategy recently used to pass Proposition 1 in Houston. Instead, we need to start with the idea that individuals and the private sector are the first sources for ideas, action, and funding—with local government’s strategic support as a resource for mobilizing and coordinating the efforts. This approach will make government live by our principles while addressing urgent problems; and will allow us as a society to begin to address some of the most vexing structural pressures on our public budgets, which put upward pressure on our taxes and downward pressure on job growth.

To start this transformation, we have to rebuild the human infrastructure needed to implement and sustain the Tupelo Formula, by:

· Starting new businesses and promoting policies that encourage small-business creation—small business creation is the easiest way to help people balance their need to make a living with our country’s need to rebuild neighborhoods. Businesses employ people, and employing people effects their lives. Every paycheck sets aside a retirement fund, pays for health care, provides for the sustenance of a family and (indirectly) for the support of the neighborhoods where employees live. Products or services generated by a business effects its customers, and those people touched by its customers. Wealth created by businesses increases the tax base and tax rolls, which in turn fund our schools—more wealth, creates better-funded schools. Programs that a business supports can enrich the lives of residents in the community where the business is located, as well as the lives of its employees. Each of us spends more time every day with our co-workers than with our family: the positive bonds you formed through this activity ripple out in every direction.

In essence, the greatest community service you can ever provide is to create or support a local business.

· Starting or joining a service organization, and promoting involvement in a traditional community-based service organization—between 1870 and 1920 many of the organizations that we remember as the backbones of our neighborhoods were created, and most still exist: Rotary, Kiwanis, the PTA, and many more. These organizations were designed to help serve the needs of their communities, and provide the social networks that build and maintain neighborhoods. Most of these organizations are crying for new members, but time and other commitments keep people from joining.

Find an organization that fits your interests, your community, and your available time, and support it. Then, promote policies that shorten commutes to work, offer tax breaks to companies who give employees paid time to work for schools and volunteer organizations, and offer tax breaks to individuals to donate time to charities (and faith-based organizations) as well as money or assets.

· Getting involved in assimilating our neighbors—To be a nation we must assimilate. Schools, churches, and childhood activities in the neighborhood were designed to assimilate children into our society as adults. Newcomers need the same help. We’ve argued way too long about the failure to promote assimilation. Let’s not just argue about it, let’s act.

Find an organization that is helping newcomers assimilate, and support it. Then, promote policies that give incentives to private organizations to create community centers and teach adults English and citizenship; that give children a safe place to meet, do their homework, and play; and that give families a safe place to interact and get to know and care for each other.

· Supporting organizations that help keep families and neighborhoods intact and building wealth, and promoting policies to accomplish those goals—As I mentioned before, our local GOP Juvenile Court Judges worked to create a model program, funded with private dollars and partnered with neighborhood churches, that is keeping first-time, non-violent juvenile offenders in school and out of jail. These types of programs will fight the long-term problems of under-education, under-employment, and chronic poverty that fester in communities where too many young people drop out of school and get a criminal record. We need more of these innovative programs that help rebuild strong schools, strong families, and strong neighborhoods.

By now you are thinking, “I can’t do all of that.” Well, nobody is saying you need to do all of that, but each of us can do some of the things I’ve listed to start rebuilding a service infrastructure in our neighborhoods that can sustain the needs of our neighbors without tax dollars. It is this overall effort that I’ve referred to in prior posts as Renewing the American Community. If you still don’t think it’s possible, let me leave you with a story that combines this message with my other favorite subject—Baseball.

When I was growing up as a White Sox fan in the mid-60s, one of the stars of that team was a young outfielder named Floyd Robinson. Unfortunately, a very promising career was cut short by an injury, and, in 1968, he left Baseball and returned to his home town in the Logan Heights neighborhood of San Diego, California.

Over the last 43 years, Logan Heights has come to be known as “Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood.” Taking up where his father left off as a small-business owner after World War II, Floyd Robinson and his wife built a successful construction and real-estate development firm. With the income from that business he maintained a small grocery store in the neighborhood where he employed and mentored young men, some of whom went on to play college and professional sports. He also used his income to fill a need for a senior-citizen assisted living center, which he financed and built, and which he has continued to manage for almost 30 years. Although he could afford to move to “nicer” neighborhoods in San Diego, he and his wife still live in the neighborhood he helped to build and maintain. And for some of you, another interesting epilogue to this story is that Floyd Robinson accomplished all of this as an African American in an integrated neighborhood.

Renewing the American Community using the Tupelo Formula is not only doable, but seeds for this transformation are being planted everyday by thousands of Floyd Robinsons—some of whom we know as neighbors, and some of whom we may never meet. All we have to do is accept the challenge. In fact, I soon will be putting a lot of time and effort where my mouth is on this issue, as I am working with a group of people to launch an effort to promote the goals of Renewing the American Community, including innovative solutions utilizing the Tupelo Formula.

So with this challenge in mind, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis:

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

What Are Our Priorities?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

I don’t know about you, but I’m already counting the days to two dates: Opening Day for Major League Baseball; and New Year’s Eve. I want to escape into my box scores, and then escape this year all together. The first quarter is not even completed, and yet this year already has presented us with more consequential events and decisions than we normally face over a decade.

Unfortunately, history doesn’t allow any of us to escape the time in which we live, so we need to face these events and decisions, and establish priorities. As I am watching events unfold, though, I see few people willing to take the reigns and focus seriously on setting these priorities. Even many of our Republican leaders seem to be flailing at the symptoms of our illness, rather than focusing on a proper treatment plan.

My guess is that anyone of you could come up with your own list of problems, but I believe that the three great issues of 2011 so far are our national debt; unrest throughout the Middle East; and the devastation of Japan. If we don’t make the right choices in addressing these issues this year, the consequences could create problems for the U.S. for at least a generation. So, I will deal with these in the order of importance that I see:

Our National Debt

When I say “National Debt”, I don’t just mean the debt owed by our federal government—I mean all public and private debt. Let’s take a look at of some numbers that I have gathered from multiple sources, including numbers recently compiled for Dick Morris, and by Americans For Prosperity:

• It is estimated that the total value of assets in the U.S. exceeds the total value of liabilities by about $25 trillion;

• U.S. national Gross Domestic Product—GDP—is between $14 and $15 trillion;

• Total federal-government debt is now over $14 trillion, grows at a rate of over $5 billion per day, and, over the last two years, has grown at a rate 27 times faster than over our entire history from 1789 to 2009;

• Annual federal-government expenditures exceed revenue by about $1.3 trillion;

• The State of Texas is dealing with a shortfall for the current fiscal year of $3 to $5 billion;

• The Texas Legislature also is grappling with a projected difference between what would be needed to continue state government’s current activities and projected revenue over the next two years of around $20 billion, which does not include future liabilities for outstanding bonds or unfunded pensions; and

• The total bond debt owed by just Harris County exceeds $3.4 billion, and the total bond debt owed by my local school district—Clear Creek ISD—is $1.077 billion, for an aggregate debt per Harris County resident within CCISD from just these two governmental agencies of $30,452.43 (which is more if you also live inside a municipality that is in debt).

On top of these numbers, the total private debt owed by U.S. citizens is estimated to range between $50 and $57 trillion—3 to 4 times GDP, and more than double the net worth of the country as a whole. Moreover, the price of most commodities have skyrocketed, as have unemployment and the money supply over the last two years, while average personal income has stayed flat or declined in real terms. As for the examples of local figures, these numbers don’t include the billions owed in short-term operating debt, long-term bond debt, and unfunded pension liabilities by local governments, special purpose entities (sports and convention authorities, port authorities, and transit authorities), and school districts.

Regardless of what the Paul Krugman’s of the world may say, this path is unsustainable. Unlike the 1930s, when our nation was the world’s largest creditor and held the greatest reserve of gold and other public and private assets, and could afford to incur more public debt to finance a public recovery, or unlike the 1950s when our economic wealth and industrial capacity could finance the Interstate Highway system and NASA, the U.S. in 2011 simply doesn’t have the wealth, or wealth-generating capacity to cover a continued growth in debt—or to maintain debt on this scale. We could tax the “super rich” up to their last penny, and, even if they didn’t flee to another country, the amount we would obtain would not cover more than a few months of the debt we are incurring.

We can no longer run government (including our schools), let alone our own households and business, in a “business as usual” manner. On the one hand, cuts to budgets and to social programs, no matter how draconian, will not be enough to address the problems we face; and raising the federal debt ceiling may seem prudent within the halls of the Capitol, but it is simply cowardice. On the other hand, Texas, like most states, has constitutional obligations, including the education of its 4 million students; while the federal government has constitutional obligations, including providing for our common defense—and we just can’t stop meeting these obligations.

Instead, we must stop incurring debt; we must re-structure salary, benefit and pension obligations of public workers to bring them in line with the private sector; we must set priorities for each level of government based on their core, constitutional responsibilities; we must zero-base budget for those priorities; and then we must agree on a fair system of taxation to pay for those priorities. We must find innovative private and local solutions for problems now managed by state and federal bureaucrats—innovations that will involve citizens and the private sector, including private foundations, service organizations and churches. State and federal governments can have a coordinating role to match the right people and organization to the needs of their communities, but these governments should not create, administer or pay for the resulting programs.

What is most needed, though, are leaders who will take the risk to stop this fiscal madness and set the new priorities we need. Some are emerging, like the new Governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and New Jersey. As leaders like these emerge in Washington, Austin, and locally, they will have a loyal ally and foot soldier in me.

The Middle East

In early February, I wrote a post with some thoughts about the emerging uprisings across the Middle East, which are largely confined right now to the Arab countries in North Africa and on the Arabian Peninsula. At that time, I wrote the following:

…we need to find a way to be on the side of the dreams of people of this region for freedom, education, and opportunity, rather than being perceived as siding with their monarchs or their extremists. We can not impose freedom, education, and opportunity like we tried in Iraq, and like foreign powers tried, to one degree or another, for centuries. Instead, we need to find a way through a mixture of trade, engagement, and security to help the people of that region build their own future.

Not long after that I wrote another post, in which I supported renewal of the Patriot Act. Some people who read that post could not square my thinking in the first post, and my thinking about limited government, with my support for renewal of the Patriot Act. With the opening of a third-front in Libya, in what now appears to be a never-ending military mission in the Middle East, I want to explain how I square these positions.

I believe very strongly that when our country has decided to go to war, and when Congress has authorized the Commander-in-Chief to prosecute the war with a clear instruction, Congress has the duty to provide the Commander-in-Chief with the means to fight that war effectively. Obviously, those means must be tempered and balanced by our commitment to civil liberties for our citizens, but, as Justice Robert Jackson observed many decades ago, our Constitution is not a “suicide pact.” A war-time balance normally calls for sacrifices that would not be tolerated in peacetime. I believe that the Patriot Act has given the President—both Bush and Obama—measured and balanced means to carry out the clear instructions in the war authorization following 9/11, especially in light of the 21st Century technology of communication and travel used by an enemy that wears no uniform and represents no single government.

However, my support for giving the President the means to carry out his orders contained in the war declaration, does not mean that I necessarily support a continuation of the war in all its current facets; and it certainly does not mean that I support an extension of our military footprint in the Middle East.

• First, we can’t afford continuing this fight in the manner we are fighting it (remember, that the National Debt would be my first priority).

• Second, even though the Arab League asked the West to intervene in Libya, many of those same Arab leaders are killing freedom protesters in their own streets. Those protesters must be asking, “who’s side are we really on?” At some point, we must ask this hard question ourselves before we start shooting off more missiles.

• Third, although the world will be far better off without Gadhafi and his sons (just as it is now with Hussein and his sons), is it really in our national interest to intervene in this civil war (and if it is, why did we wait until the rebel cause was almost lost to intervene)?

• Fourth, if this is a proper, limited fight for the West or Europe, couldn’t we leave this to France, Britain and the Arab League to fight, just as Eisenhower left it to France, Britain and Israel to fight the Suez War in the 1950s? Sixty-six years after the end of World War II, do we have to join every battle that our allies feel the need to fight?

We can and should at least discuss these issues, even if we end up disagreeing about them. In the end, we simply can not hope to fix all of the tribal, political and religious problems in the Middle East—many of which we simply don’t understand—with a gun. Again, what is most needed, are leaders who will take the risk to stop and think, and to set new, realistic priorities for our dealings with the people of the Middle East.

Japan

Words still can’t convey the horrible tragedy that has struck the people of Japan. On top of a second decade of economic stagnation, a governmental debt that is 200% of GDP, and the lowest birth rate in the industrialized world—all of which have been slowly eating away at the vitality of Japan—now comes this Apocalyptic series of catastrophes. All any one of us can do at this point is to pray for the Japanese people, and to provide as much support as we can in the months and years ahead.

Although it may seem cold-hearted to discuss this right now, our leaders must start thinking about an Asia without a vibrant Japan for the foreseeable future. This predicament will impact our diplomatic, economic and military policies in the region for years to come, and will immediately impact the balance of power on the Korean Peninsula and with China. Because of our indebtedness, and Japan’s indebtedness, Japan can not re-build with just our help, as it did after World War II. In fact, Japan will need and be able to depend on Chinese support, more than it will be able to depend on our support, and that will change the entire balance of power and alliances in the region. We must begin re-shaping our strategic thinking to be ready for this new reality.

And it is on this last topic—China—that I will end this post. Looking across the first three months of this year, the big winner of 2011 so far is China. Whether it is our debt and the continued stagnation across the U.S. and Europe, the uprisings within the oil-producing states of the Middle East, or the fortuitous emasculation of our strongest ally in Asia and the third largest economy in the world, China now is holding all of the economic and strategic cards—just as we did on the eve of World War II. Historically, China has never sought conquests beyond Asia, but, historically, it has never had the economic and strategic interests it now has on every continent—nor the economic and military strength it now enjoys. We must prepare ourselves for increasing diplomatic, economic and military competition and tension with China for years to come.

The best way to prepare for this competition is to face our National Debt and fix it, to change our approach to the Middle East, and to prepare for a new strategic reality in Asia.

What are we fighting for?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics.

I think a lot of people around the world could be asking that question right now.

We hear shouts for “returning to the Constitution” or “limited government” or “liberty” or “fiscal discipline” from Conservative activists here at home, just as we hear cries for “freedom” and “democracy” from the streets in the Middle East. If either movement is to succeed, they must move from their chants and slogans, to understanding, visualizing, and then implementing the real future they seek to create.

So, the first question that all of these activists must answer is “what is the future I seek to create?” In essence, they must answer the question: “what am I fighting for?”

I don’t pretend to know what that future could or should look like in countries whose people have formed a society and culture based, in whole or in part, on the teachings of Muhammad (or “Mohammed”), but I do have some thoughts about what that future should look like here. In his Farewell Address in January, 1989, Ronald Reagan finally gave America a glimpse of what he had meant when he said he saw America as a “Shining City on a Hill”:

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

I believe that many of us who desire to re-establish a limited, fiscally-sane governmental structure based on the blueprints provided in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, instinctively want to leave to our children Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill. I believe that this has been the desire of every generation of Americans, regardless of whether they are direct descendants of the original Settlers and Founders, their ancestors came here in the many waves of immigration since 1789, or they and their ancestors obtained their freedom from bondage and segregation through civil war and civil protests. Remember that when Martin Luther King, Jr., told us of his “Dream,” it was based on the promise of the Declaration of Independence and the words of the Bible—the same concepts that moved the Founders to strive to form “a more perfect union.”

But, to leave to our children Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill, we must first come to grips with what that effort will require, because the America Reagan saw, that King desired, and that our Founders addressed was a different America, with different attitudes and understandings, than the America of today. The Americans that received the Declaration of Independence and ratified the Constitution saw their obligations to each other far differently than we see them today, and they understood that the limited government they were establishing would not work without those obligations being met. We have to face the reality that establishing that Shining City on a Hill will require a fundamental transformation—a transformation that not only addresses a re-organization of government, but a re-orientation of the way we each see ourselves as citizens—those “people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.”

This re-orientation of our understanding of American citizenship will not be easy, because we are far removed from the Americans who first received the Declaration and ratified the Constitution. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Recently, on one of the Sunday-morning TV talk shows, Republican Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona was on a panel and began a statement with the phrase “government is a necessary evil.” Immediately, the moderator interrupted her with a condescending challenge: “Now, Governor, you don’t really mean evil, do you?” To which, a puzzled Brewer responded, “Ok, it’s necessary,” and then she went on to discuss her point.

Frankly, I initially was stunned by this segment, until I thought about it a little. I am sure that most of you reading this post know that Brewer’s original remark was a quote from one of our Founders. A subset of you can probably identify it as a phrase used by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 8 to describe the creation of a standing army, as well as a concept central to Madison’s arguments in Federalist Papers Nos. 10 and 51.

Unfortunately, those of us cursed with the memory of what “necessary evil” means must realize that, after 100 years of learning a different narrative about our country, most of our neighbors couldn’t identify the history of that phrase, would not understand its historical meaning, and would have reacted just like the moderator—in fact, none of the three other Governors on the panel, let alone Governor Brewer herself, attempted to explain or defend her use of that phrase.

But the audience who first read those words in the New York newspapers during the ratification debate over the Constitution—both Federalist and Ant-Federalist—would’ve known, understood, and agreed with those words. They eventually agreed with Madison’s approach to dealing with the “necessary evil” dilemma, because they understood that our liberty would be protected only by combining the promotion of the virtues needed to sustain the fundamental relationships of a free society, with the extended republic and checks and balances of the federal system of government written into the new Constitution.

Most importantly, that audience understood that promoting and sustaining the practice of fundamental virtues among individual citizens was fundamental to the success of their new experiment. They believed that liberty was the freedom from being controlled by a government, an elite class, or a faction; it was not freedom from their neighbors or their neighborhoods, for they understood John Donne’s point that

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

To them, citizenship in a free society required active involvement in the life of the community and all its organizations; it was not a license to receive tax-paid benefits, nor a right to delegate community involvement to tax-paid bureaucrats. Democracy is what transpired in town hall meetings and town councils called or elected by the people to govern communities, in service organizations and church congregations, and in schools; while the work of elected representatives in state and national capitols was limited to a few specific tasks outlined in republican constitutions.

As C.S. Lewis observed,

And all the time—such is the tragic-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. … In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

And to his observation, I would now add,

We now promote an isolation from our neighbors and expect them to provide care and charity when help is needed. We create a dependency on government to pay for essential services and are shocked when no one will sacrifice to provide for those services themselves. We call on our national government to address our every problem and need, while we demand that our representatives re-institute limited government and follow the Constitution.

The reality is that we can prune back the branches of the progressive governmental trees we’ve planted over the last 100 years by cutting their budgets to the trunk, but that won’t limit government to what our Founders intended. Eventually, if that’s all we do, the branches will grow back.

The change we want will require uprooting the progressive tree. It will require uprooting our lives from the patterns we’ve created and becoming more involved in the democracy of our communities—our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our service organizations and churches, and our local governments. I know that this challenge may sound too daunting to even contemplate, or that it is historically too late, or society has become to complex, to make this type of transformation possible—we Conservatives have faced these arguments for decades. As Herbert Hoover observed in a book published a year after he left office as the New Deal was being implemented:

Our problems today are all strongly silhouetted against the background of depression. …And from all this maze of problems and emotions many thoughtful people assume that our difficulties are due to an irreconcilable conflict of Liberty with our complex Industrial Age, …. We must not conclude that ours is the only generation which has thought this, nor the first that has had to meet great perplexities. Men of every generation have envisaged their problems in terms of despair, but the dynamic impulses given to men from Liberty always have found tolerable solutions, so tolerable that a gigantic progress swept onward from generation to generation.

… Those who proclaim that in a Machine Age there is created an irreconcilable conflict in which liberty cannot survive should not forget the battles of liberty over the centuries, …. It is not because Liberty is unworkable, but because we have not worked it conscientiously or have forgotten its true meaning that we often get the notion of irreconcilable conflict with the Machine Age.

As daunting as the challenge may seem, I believe that we have not completely forgotten the true meaning of Liberty. Remember that the remnants of our unique society still exist under all of the layers of government we’ve created. Those basic relationships that formed the core of our democratic communities still function every day. Teachers, parents and children still work together to mold productive citizens. Patients and doctors still trust each other to keep us healthy. Neighbors still have local courthouses available where they can resolve their disputes. Police officers and fire-fighters still stand ready at a moments notice to keep us safe. Water and sanitation districts, street and bridge builders, and gas and utility companies still work to make sure we have access to the basic necessities for our homes and neighborhoods to function. Entrepreneurs and professionals still start businesses, employ neighbors, sell products and services, pay taxes, serve on private boards, and support communities. We still have a network of families, churches, homeowners associations, and other private service organizations, ready and willing to address our daily needs, and to build and sustain our neighborhoods. It is the proper functioning of these relationships, over hundreds of years, which has made America exceptional—and none of them need Austin or Washington to exist or to thrive, but they do need us.

On these remnants we can re-build our unique society and re-establish limited and fiscally-sane government. But, we have to be willing to believe that the blueprints provided by the Declaration and the Constitution are still viable, and then re-commit ourselves to this project. We have to re-engage in the democratic life of our communities. We have to start and support local businesses, join our local service organizations and churches, and involve ourselves in our schools and local governments—and then demand that these enterprises shoulder the needs of our communities with our help, rather than look to Austin or Washington for action. Once we make that commitment, then all of the hard work of re-organizing government will have a direction and a purpose—and we can get down to the difficult work that such re-organization will require.

If we re-build society according to these timeless plans, I believe we will leave that Shining City on a Hill to our children. I don’t know about you, but that is what I am fighting for.