Is it a Ponzi Scheme?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I thought the last two Republican Presidential debates on MSNBC and CNN have produced pretty good political theater, in large part because of the participation of Governor Perry.  Although I may be a little biased, I think he has more than held his own and is, right now, the best candidate among the field (and I am still more than just a little amazed by all of this).  That is not to say that the other candidates would not make better Presidents than our current Commander-In-Chief—they all would—but Perry has impressed me the most so far.

The dust-up in the last debate over the vaccination-mandate fiasco of 2007 was to be expected, for it was one of the biggest blunders of Perry’s tenure as Governor.  To his credit, he has responded to the criticism the only way he should—he has explained why he did it, and acknowledged his mistake.  There will be some who will never forgive him for this blunder and try to decipher corrupt motives from his actions; but, for many others (including those, like me, who often have been skeptical of his leadership over the years), he showed in the last debate that he learned a lesson from his mistake and has grown from the experience—a valuable and, indeed, necessary trait for a leader in the times we face.

But the really interesting debate that has emerged is over Social Security—and what a welcome and instructive debate this has become.  Essentially, three lines of debate have formed:

1. Governor Perry has framed the debate by calling the current system a “Ponzi scheme” and a “monstrous lie”, by saying it was an improper use of federal authority when it was first enacted, and by committing himself to fixing the system for future beneficiaries;


2. Mitt Romney has confronted both Perry’s descriptions of the system, and his reflection on its history, as being too provocative, while also committing himself to fixing the system; and


3. The rest of the candidates have committed to fixing the system one way or another, while trying not to get in the middle of the argument over the wisdom of Perry’s remarks.

So, what is the net outcome of this debate so far?  It is now refreshingly clear that Republicans are united in fixing the Social Security system to make it solvent for future beneficiaries; but, so far, only a few of the candidates are willing to confront and describe the actual problem with the system and give us an indication as to how they would approach fixing the problem.  It is clear that Perry—and probably Cain and Gingrich, too—realize that you can’t fix Social Security by tinkering around the edges.  Instead, you have to be honest with the American people about the problem at the core of the system, and how it needs to be fixed.

With that said, is Perry’s criticism correct?  And, if it is, what should we be seeking as a fix to the system?

To answer the first question, we need to understand how Social Security has been marketed to the voters over the years.  Since its inception, the creators and supporters of the current Social Security system have referred to it as an old-age insurance system, as a public pension system, as a trust account, as a contractual promise to pay out in retirement an amount based on what was contributed during working years, and as a social safety net to protect the elderly from poverty.  Are any of these descriptions correct?  Upon close scrutiny, the answer is “no”.  It is neither insurance, nor a pension, nor a trust account because it is not based on either actuarial, investment, or fiduciary criteria that provides for a return to the taxpayer of what he or she paid into the system plus investment growth.  It is not even a promise to receive what you paid into the system, because the dollars you paid into the system were received by other beneficiaries as you paid your tax, and you will receive payments from other taxpayers when you retire.  Finally, there is no real correlation between Social Security payments and poverty prevention—Warren Buffet gets the same benefit that your Uncle Fred and Aunt Martha receive, who, in turn, get the same benefit the poorest of our elderly receive.

So, what is this system, really?  You and I are asked to pay into a system and are told periodically that we will receive an amount of money at a certain age based on these payments.  Our future payments are not derived from the amount we paid into the system plus investment growth, but rather from new payments into the system from other people.  The fact and amount of our future payments are based on whether new people continue to pay into the system, and are dictated by the decisions of the person(s) controlling the system—not by the market.  These are characteristics common to illegal Pyramid and Ponzi schemes.  The only differences are that

1. the Social Security system is not only legal, participation is mandatory; and
2. payments can continue, even if new taxpayers don’t materialize, because the federal government can print money to cover the shortfall.

That means, that, unlike a classic Pyramid or Ponzi scheme, payments can continue with freshly printed dollars—though the value of those dollars will plummet as more are printed.  Eventually, though, you’ll arrive at the same result:  if you rely on the printing press at the Mint to save the system, you really won’t get back the money you were promised (just like how a Pyramid or Ponzi scheme ends—though a little less abruptly).

Quite frankly, if you measure the promises surrounding Social Security against its reality, Governor Perry’s descriptions are fairly accurate—it’s like a Ponzi scheme, and the marketing of Social Security has been a “monstrous lie”.

Well, then…what’s the answer to the second question—what should we be seeking as a fix to the system?  As all of the Republican candidates have acknowledged, the promise of this system, and its protection for many elderly Americans, has existed too long with too much public reliance to end it now, if ever.  But I think it would be immoral to continue lying to each other about this system and to not address and fix its faults.  Over the last 30 years there have been a lot of good ideas floated and even practiced—as in the case of Chile (as Herman Cain often notes) and a handful of other nations in Eastern Europe, including Russia—so we don’t have to come up with answers out of thin air.  Whatever fix we adopt should incorporate most, if not all, of the following basic principles:

1. A cut-off age for beneficiaries should be set above which the system will continue as presently structured, and below which fundamental changes will be made;
2. The age at which benefits are to be paid eventually must be re-set to an older age, and then indexed to the life expectancy of the population, so that both the age at which benefits are received and the average projected period for receiving benefits can be affordably subsidized by the working population;
3. Incentives should be created for allowing older Americans to continue to contribute to the economy through paid or volunteer work, after they have reached a point when they physically may not be able to continue working in their original professions but prior to their receipt of benefits;
4. The system should be re-structured so that younger workers are able to split their Social Security tax payments between support for a safety net for means-tested elderly and the younger workers’ own personal retirement accounts; and
5. Eventually, the payment of benefits from a safety net that is fully supported by current tax dollars should be based on means-testing, so that those who have the means to support their own retirements through their private and public accounts do not receive direct transfer payments from the government; such direct transfer payments should be received only by those who are truly in need.

These principles are neither controversial, nor hard to implement, but for the vested interests and expectations surrounding the politics of Social Security.  Those vested interests and expectations will only be broken through candor coupled with new commitments.  To the extent Governor Perry has forced the Republican field of 2012 candidates to face and debate this issue, he has already met an important test for the leadership we will need over the next few years.

Is There a Right to be Wrong?

This column originally appeared at US Daily Review.

Before the recent Iowa Straw Poll, Republican Presidential contender and former Pennsylvania Senator, Rick Santorum, paraphrased Abraham Lincoln during a debate on Fox News by saying that “the States don’t have the right to do wrong.” Santorum made this statement as a criticism of those conservatives, like Governor Rick Perry (and me), who believe in the application of Federalism and the limitations on federal responsibility confirmed in the 10thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution, even when those limitations are applied to certain moral issues that touch the very fabric of our society.

When Santorum made that statement, I was reminded of the statement made by another Republican Senator a generation ago. During the Iran-Contra Congressional hearings, Colonel Oliver North defended the Reagan administration’s decision to secretly facilitate the funding of rebels in Central America, in part, by claiming that Congress had been wrong to cut-off funding in the first place. In response, Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire said: “the American people have the Constitutional right to be wrong.”

As we conservatives attempt to re-establish limits on the role and responsibility of the federal government and return responsibility to individuals and states, we need to address the question posed by these apparently conflicting statements—who is right? I believe the answer is that both men are right, but Senator Santorum’s application of the principle is wrong.

I come to this answer by going back to the Declaration of Independence and the original conception of Federalism. Our Founders believed that the primary purpose of a legitimate government was to secure God’s gifts of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” to each individual. Any government—state or national—that deprived individuals of these gifts, or impaired an individual’s exercise of these basic rights without due process, committed a wrong that gave individuals the license to alter or abolish that government. When it came time to create a federal government, our Founders preserved State governments as the primary laboratories for the development of democracy by creating a unique, federal republic. The States’ role as the primary laboratories in this ongoing experiment was further secured by the 10th Amendment.

The Republican Party emerged from the great social and political upheavals in the America of the 1840s and 1850s. Central to all of the upheavals was the institution of slavery. Slavery was a wrong that deprived men and women of their God-given rights to Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Slavery was a wrong that could not and should not have been condoned, and those governments that legalized it were altered and abolished through war and constitutional amendment. It was during a debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, when talking about the wrong of slavery, that Lincoln said, “but if you admit that it [slavery] is wrong, he can not logically say that anybody has a right to do wrong.” It is that statement that Senator Santorum apparently paraphrased last week.

But the concept of liberty, arising from the gift of free will, requires that individuals, and the states they form, make choices. The very existence of the power of choice foresees the reality that some choices will be right and some choices will be wrong. In fact, the metaphor of the laboratory to describe the role of state governments implies that states will experiment with public policy choices, and the process of experimentation leads to many wrong choices during the search for a right result. Of course there are consequences that arise from our wrong choices that can be dire, and we arguably are now paying for many wrong choices that we have made and tolerated—as individuals, as communities, and through our governments—over the last 100 years, as we have confused liberty and the pursuit of happiness with license and irresponsibility. In fact, we theoretically can make enough wrong policy choices that we can destroy the fabric of our society and bankrupt our economy in the process—such is our right. But as severe as those consequences may be, liberty and federalism require that individuals and their governments have the right to be wrong—as long as our wrong choices do not deprive men and women of their God-given rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

What our Founders hoped was that we would continue to value the development and use of responsibility, moral character and wisdom as a guard against making wrong choices; that we would make more right choices than wrong choices along the way; that those wrong choices would be relatively minor; that we would learn and grow from the experiences and consequences of our wrong choices—individually and as a people; and that we would not long tolerate either the wrong choices or the consequences arising from such choices, and eventually correct our mistakes and make right choices in the future.

So, both Senators Rudman and Santorum were right. Senator Rudman was right that, generally, we have the right to make mistakes in our public policy—moral, economic, diplomatic, and military—even to the point of being so irresponsible that we put the whole fabric of our society at risk. Senator Santorum was right, too, because when those wrongs transgress our inalienable rights, they can not be tolerated and they must trigger our right to alter or abolish the offending government—typically, and properly, by election or amendment.

So, why do I say that Senator Santorum’s application of his principle to the example of gay marriage is wrong, and Governor Perry’s position is right? It is because gay marriage, like it or not, does not deprive anyone of Life, Liberty or the Pursuit of Happiness. I happen to agree with Santorum and others who believe that licensing gay marriage is a wrong policy choice that reveals a collective collapse of responsibility, moral character, wisdom and judgment; and that such policies, if adopted throughout the country, may threaten, eventually, our social fabric. However, such policies do not threaten anyone’s inalienable rights. So, the states have the latitude in our system to experiment with this wrong policy, just as Texas had the right to adopt a constitutional amendment to prohibit such an experiment—this is the frustrating genius of the Federalism of our Founders.

One can only hope that as we conservatives win elections and re-invigorate the development and use of responsibility, moral character and wisdom through our families, our schools and our neighborhoods, that these wrong policies will be corrected. In the meantime, sadly, our citizens, and our governments must tolerate our right to be wrong if we are to preserve our Federal Republican form of government that our Founder’s designed.

Now, the hard question.

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Ok, so over the last few posts, we been discussing what we will need to do to attack our public debts and permanently limit the size and scope of the federal government.  It not only will require better budgeting and management techniques; it will require a shift of responsibility from government to the individual, and a re-dedication from each of us to civic engagement—to the re-acceptance of individual responsibility, and the re-commitment to neighborly compassion instead of bureaucratic benefits.  For those of you who have followed my posts for a longer period, you know that I have addressed how to do this through processes like the “Tupelo Formula” in our communities, and zero-based budgeting at every level of government. 

What I have been advocating is what I understood to be an approach to government based on those principles drawn from the history of our experiences, of which de Tocqueville wrote and Reagan championed:  an approach to re-building our society for the 21^st Century based on its original purposes and principles—a society built on the foundational relationships formed in families, neighborhoods, congregations, private organizations; facilitated through the activities of free markets and free trade; and then preserved and protected by local, state and federal governments, each acting within their own sphere of competence and responsibility.   It is our adherence over the centuries to these original purposes and principles, which has made us “exceptional”.

 Creation of our exceptional society did not happen over night.  Instead, it arose from the hard work of many generations both before and after the American Revolution, who overcame many obstacles and hardships—and many terrible mistakes.  Over the last century, we have been dismantling this society through the aggressive use of government to supply our neighbor’s needs—culminating with the spasm of new government actions over the last two years.  We can reverse this trend toward larger and more expensive government, and unravel the layers of bureaucracy we’ve created—that’s actually the easy part.  We’ve known what needs to be done, and we’ve known it for a long time.

 The real question is whether we have the will and the desire to make the necessary changes in our personal lives required for re-engagement in the lives of our communities.  We’ve put off addressing this question for over a generation since Reagan told us it was A Time for Choosing and challenged us to form a New Republican Party.  For the sake of our future, we now need to face this question and answer it candidly.

Virtually every piece of data and research about civic engagement and the state of our neighborhoods, as well as the polling data related to our expectations about government, show that even many conservatives may not want to make the lifestyle changes needed to re-engage with our neighbors and re-accept responsibility for our neighborhoods.  That is because we’ve come to a moment in our history when we seem to confuse personal autonomy with Liberty, and to value the former over the latter.  Remember Liberty is based on a certain type of freedom:  freedom from the control of our lives by an anointed elite (hereditary, tribal, political, or religious) and their laws.  Liberty is not based on a right to be free from our neighbors, or from forming the bonds needed for a society to exist and thrive.  To be able to exercise Liberty and have it endure over time, our freedom must exist interdependently with our mutual responsibilities to our family, our neighbors, our communities, and our country.  In essence, freedom without civic engagement is not Liberty, it’s an empty cult of personal autonomy that rots the life of a society.

Through all of the struggles to expand opportunities and wipe away vestiges of discrimination in our society over the last half century, we promoted freedom while we destroyed the civic engagement of middle-class families in African-American and Latino communities, of women in neighborhoods, and of men with their families.  We’ve now created two generations of autonomous Americans at one end of the socio-economic spectrum, and two generations of dependent Americans on the other end.

While children of autonomous parents thrived in the suburbs and good schools, many, if not most, children in neighborhoods just down the street—like those in inner cities like Detroit, where 75% of children drop-out of school before the 12^th Grade—never finished school and often served time in jail.  Those children ended up under-educated and under-employed, and have doomed their families and their neighborhoods to economic decline, while the children of autonomous parents have entered the new global economy and thrived.  Today, most of these autonomous children live far from the home of their youth, travel across the country and across the globe for work, have or will soon have second homes, are as comfortable in an office or flat in Rome as in an office or apartment in Houston, and have developed few ties to the communities in which they currently reside.

Such children are now the second, international generation of personal autonomy.  Now, that does not mean that they, or even their parents, don’t care about other people—they usually do.  They care about the people in Darfur and in other troubled parts of the world, and would travel across the world for the experience of studying their plight; they care about “the homeless” and other disadvantaged, faceless groups of people, and rally for their causes; but, rarely have they looked into the eye of a neighbor in need and had to help.

The difference between these two autonomous generations and the cohorts they’ve left behind has been further exacerbated by the increasing income and educational disparities within our society.  For instance, as has been documented ad nauseum, both the educational performance and attainment levels, and income levels, have dramatically diverged between the top 10% of wage earners and the other 90% over the last generation.  What has not been discussed as much, though, is the incredible disparity that has opened up between the top 1% of wage earners and the other 9% of the top 10%.  This small group has become almost a separate civilization unto itself across the globe—not just autonomous from their neighbors, but virtually autonomous from all societies.  For this group, an eventual economic collapse in one country or region will not materially affect them—they can just relocate themselves and their assets, and then ride out the storm.

For this “Global 1%”, and for a growing number of the two autonomous generations of Americans, the current trend toward providing aid through centralized government entitlements is as beneficial to their lifestyles as those entitlements are perceived to be beneficial by those who receive the benefits.  By allowing government to try to care for our neighbors, the Global 1% and the autonomous Americans can enjoy the fruits of their freedom without any encumbrance of responsibility.  Meanwhile, more and more of the rest of Americans become more and more dependent on government entitlements in their daily lives.

There may be a term for what we are watching develop before our eyes, but it’s not Liberty; and it’s not true to our exceptional heritage.

I’ve recited all of this not to start a class war—because those of us of a certain age are all responsible for having created and fostered this predicament—nor do I advocate going back to some mystical, bygone era that never existed.  Indeed, we know how to correct these problems, and it’s not with more government re-distribution.  But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, we must realize that for a growing number of Americans across the political and economic spectrum, a return to a de Tocqueville America of civic engagement is an anathema—they don’t understand it, they don’t see how they will benefit from it, and it would require a change to their lifestyles that they don’t want to make.

If I’m right—both about what we need to do to wean ourselves from government and the real obstacles to re-building civic engagement—what do we do?

Again, without creating a class war, I think we first need to realize and accept that even though the “Global 1%” has a very large megaphone in our 24/7 media world, they have become so disconnected from the rest of us that they are politically irrelevant to how we address this issue.  If we try to build a program around their wishes we will get nowhere.  Second, it will be very difficult for those in the two autonomous generations to immediately accept the adjustments to their lifestyles that will come with new responsibilities, so engaging them immediately in this effort will merely slow the process down—and time is not our friend.

Instead, we need to focus, for now, on the rest of us—“Main Street Americans”.  We need to begin to promote civic engagement among Main Street Americans who still live, work and raise our families in local communities, and spread that engagement to neighborhoods whose residents have become dependent on government.  We need to focus the way we reduce government and re-align responsibilities among the different levels of governments, and between government and individuals, based on Main Street America’s re-engagement in the lives of our communities; including, for instance, how we re-build our infrastructure to provide for as much time as possible for individuals to care for their families and volunteer in their neighborhoods, churches, civic organizations, schools and local governments.

If Main Street Americans succeed in re-building a de Tocqueville America in this century, the problem with the Global 1% and the autonomous generation will take care of itself.  The result will be like the omniscient voice’s promise in “Field of Dreams”—if you build it, he will come”:  if we succeed, the Global 1% and the autonomous children will come home, because they will see what real Liberty is, and that it works.  America will be where they want to live and work, and together, our children and grandchildren may see the Shining City on a Hill.

What does “Responsibility” mean?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

As I’ve discussed in my last three posts here, and in other posts over the last year or so, our efforts to re-limit the federal government must be coupled with our re-establishment of individual responsibility for our families, our neighbors and our local communities.  In essence, we must re-establish a modern version of de Tocqueville’s America so that we can create Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill for our posterity.

I’ve always believed that what I’ve been trying to convey has been building on the ideas that Reagan, Goldwater, Gingrich, Sowell and others have discussed over the last few decades—mine are not original ideas.  Meanwhile, I’ve listened in order to hear if there are others who are embracing these ideas at this moment.  Recently, I was heartened when I heard Senator Rubio’s speech at the Reagan Library in which he discussed these concepts; and, a few weeks ago, I ran across a gem of a new book entitled Responsibility Reborn, published by Denali Press.

In that book, John Andrews, who served as President of the Colorado State Senate and as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, and who now teaches at the university level, provides a strong argument that what makes America unique is its foundation built on qualities derived from individual responsibility:  “… self-assertion to defend our liberties against intrusive government; self-restraint to control our baser impulses; self-reliance to survive and thrive in freedom; and civic knowledge to participate wisely in democracy.”  He provides a strong argument about the need to restore our commitment to, and exercise of these qualities in order to preserve the uniqueness of our society for our children, and then provides a list of ten steps to help in this process.  It is a great and quick read for anyone who is seeking a ideas about how we will address society’s needs if we conservatives successfully re-limit government.  His ten steps are consistent with what we will be addressing through Renewing the American Community.

In fact, I agree with at least 98% of what Andrews has written—right down to the phrasing he uses.  As I read the book, I felt I had been talking with him in my living room about the ideas I’ve been writing about on this website.  Moreover, I found Andrews to be a kindred spirit in another way—his view of individual freedom and responsibility is informed by his Christian faith, and his understanding of the faith that influenced our Settlers and Founders who established our unique society and government.

However, that 2% of disagreement is real, and I want to discuss that now—because, though our disagreement is subtle and small, it highlights what I believe to be the source for a real chasm within current conservative thought and politics.

My disagreement with Andrews arises from his view about the primacy of responsibility among the values needed for our society to continue to be unique and thrive.  Andrews believes that the duties that comprise individual responsibility are primary to freedom in the hierarchy of values.  In support of this view, he cites C.S. Lewis (who I believe is one of the great thinkers of the 20^th Century) to argue that man was not born to be free, but was born to adore and obey.  I respectfully disagree—since the Crucifixion, man has been born free, but challenged to adore and obey God and serve our neighbors.

Let me digress for just a moment to discuss the word “responsibility”.  It first appeared in the English language when Madison wrote about it in the newspaper opinion columns that became The Federalist Papers.  In Federalist 63, Madison writes,

I add, as a sixth defect [of the current government under the Articles of Confederation], the want, in some important cases, of a due responsibility in the government to the people, ….  …Responsibility, in order to be reasonable, must be limited to the objects within the power of the responsible party, and in order to be effectual, must relate to operations of that power, of which a ready and proper judgment can be formed by the constituents.  …It is sufficiently difficult, at any rate, to preserve a personal responsibility in the members of a numerous body [i.e., the House of Representatives], for such acts of the body as have an immediate, detached, and palpable operation on its constituents.

In Federalist 70, Hamilton then uses the term in a discussion of the Executive branch  (and continues to discuss it in Federalist 77 and 79):

But one of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the executive, and which lies as much against the last as the first plan is that it tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility.

In modern usage, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines “responsibility” as follows:

1.The state, quality, or fact of being responsible.  2.Something for which one is responsible:   a duty, obligation, or burden.

In the context of these definitions, what I believe Andrews is discussing in his book, and what I have been addressing in my posts, is the need to re-establish individual or personal responsibility for specific objects with which we have a relationship—our families, our neighbors, our communities, and our country—those objects that are within our power to reasonably and effectively impact through our daily actions.  Then, we both focus on the duties, obligations, and burdens comprising that responsibility, and the character traits needed to develop and nourish that responsibility.  As for the latter two points, I think both Andrews and I would both agree with the following statements, the first by Adam Smith in his The Theory of Moral Sentiment:

Nature … has endowed him [man], not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men….  The second [desire] was necessary in order to inspire him with the real love of virtue, and with the real abhorrence of vice.

and the second from the Virginia Declaration of Rights of June, 1776, written by George Mason and James Madison:

… no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.  …and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.   

With all of this agreement with Andrews, I do not agree with him that individual responsibility pre-exists, or is primary to, freedom.  Instead, they are symbiotic.  Responsibility is the flip-side of freedom, and the ability to exercise liberty can’t long exist without both.  You are born free, but with a duty to be responsible—as St. Paul says in Galatians:  “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, ….  … For you brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.”  If you don’t choose to be responsible, freedom on earth eventually will be impaired, even though our birthright from God to be free still exists.  Responsibility doesn’t pre-date or precede freedom in importance; responsibility  must coexist with freedom through our daily choices.

Though this seems like a subtle difference with Andrews, I think it may explain a major reason why there are priority differences when it comes to public policy between conservatives and those who only, or primarily, see themselves as either “social” conservatives or libertarians.  If you believe responsibility is a higher value than freedom, you will prioritize and try to shape policies differently than if you see them as of equal value and priority, or if you see freedom as a superior value to responsibility.

I believe American conservative must view freedom and responsibility as co-equal values that must coexist in equilibrium for a society of free people to endure.  Responsibility without freedom creates a subservience of one man to another, and we were freed from that subservience by the Crucifixion—our only subservience is to God.  Our Settlers established communities based on that freedom from subservience to men, and our Founders created a government to protect that freedom.  However, freedom without responsibility destroys the ability to form and sustain the relationships necessary for a society to exist, and creates a vacuum that other men will fill to impose society—and subservience—on the individual.  You must have both for our unique society to endure—one is not more or less important to the exercise of liberty than the other.

I agree completely with Andrews that for America’s unique society to continue we must restore and promote individual responsibility, along with the character traits and moral actions need to meet that responsibility.  But our goal must be to restore the proper balance to liberty, not to create another form of society that is subservient to man.