America the Strong: Conservative Ideas to Spark the Next Generation
288
America the Strong: Conservative Ideas to Spark the Next Generation
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Overview
Discover a strong, clear conservative vision of America for the next generation.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781496409751 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tyndale House Publishers |
| Publication date: | 09/22/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
Read an Excerpt
America the Strong
Conservative Ideas to Spark the Next Generation
By William J. Bennett, John T. E. Cribb
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2015 William J. Bennett and John T. CribbAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4964-0593-7
CHAPTER 1
FREE ENTERPRISE
* * *
One summer day in 1807, a crowd gathered on the bank of the Hudson River in New York to watch Robert Fulton launch a "boat driven by a tea kettle." People called it "Fulton's folly" and predicted it would explode. Fulton lit the boiler, and the boat chugged up the river at an astounding four miles per hour. The Clermont, the first commercially successful steamboat, marked a new age of steam transportation.
Orville and Wilbur Wright dreamed up the first airplane in their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. They experimented with model wings in a wind tunnel built out of an old washtub, a fan, and a wooden box. One of the nation's leading scientists had shown by "unassailable logic" that human f light was impossible. But on a frigid December morning in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers' plane lifted into the air with Orville aboard and launched the age of flight.
In the early 1970s, Motorola Corporation began developing a wireless phone that people could carry around with them. One day in 1973, Motorola engineer Martin Cooper stood on a sidewalk in Manhattan, punched a number into a handset while pedestrians gave him curious looks, and made the first cell phone call. "Joel, I'm calling you from a cellular phone," he told his counterpart at rival Bell Labs, "a real cellular phone, a handheld, portable, real cellular phone." That first cell phone was as large as a brick and weighed two and a half pounds. Within four decades, billions of people worldwide had pocket-sized phones.
On April Fool's Day 1976, twenty-five-year-old computer hobbyist Steve Wozniak ("Woz" to fellow nerds) and his friend Steve Jobs, twenty-one, formed a company to sell a computer circuit board that Wozniak had built. Jobs sold his Volkswagen minibus and Wozniak sold his programmable calculator to fund their efforts. They assembled the circuit boards in the Jobs's garage. It was the beginning of Apple, Inc.
All of those ventures were made possible by a system that in itself is a miracle, one that has transformed the world again and again — free enterprise.
Free enterprise is an economic system in which property, resources, and industry are controlled by individuals and businesses to make profits. Another name for free enterprise is capitalism, although free enterprise is in many ways a more accurate term since the freedom to conduct business is one of its bedrock principles.
Is free enterprise good or bad for the world?
Free enterprise has its drawbacks, but overall it's a terrific economic system — the best the world has known. It's certainly the best system in history for creating jobs and material well-being. Even government jobs depend on it since tax revenues generated by free enterprise pay government workers' salaries.
In free markets, companies have to compete against each other for profits. That competition encourages businesses to offer the best possible products and services for the lowest cost. That puts a higher standard of living within more people's reach. Opportunity unleashes the creativity of inventors and entrepreneurs. That creativity drives civilization forward, from steamboats to airplanes to cell phones.
One way to appreciate free enterprise is to look at what life was like before it came along. Modern free enterprise, or capitalism, began in Great Britain along with the Industrial Revolution in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Before then, cities such as London were filthy, violent places where most people struggled simply to make it from one day to the next.
A child born in London around 1750 faced poor odds — as low as 25 percent — of living past age five. Most people were illiterate. Poverty and disease were rampant. Jobs were hard to come by and often fleeting. The masses owned little more than the clothes on their backs. They had almost no hope that their lives or their children's lives would ever be any better.
In the short term, free enterprise and industrialism did little to improve people's conditions — in some ways, they may have made things worse. You've probably read Charles Dickens's descriptions of early industrial towns full of soot-covered streets and dark factories with chimneys "out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled."
But over time, as nations and cities adjusted to the upheaval brought on by rapid change, something close to miraculous happened. For millions of people, life got immeasurably better as they gained access to mass-produced goods — clothes, furniture, books, and automobiles. As business increased, so did job opportunities. A middle class emerged. Literacy spread. Incomes rose. People began to live much longer. Free enterprise was not solely responsible for these changes, but it had a great deal to do with them.
If you want to see the stark difference between life with free enterprise and life without it, search the Internet for "North Korea night photo." Take a look at one of the nighttime satellite images of North Korea, a country run by a harsh dictatorship that controls the economy, and neighboring South Korea, a vibrant republic where free enterprise thrives. The darkness of North Korea is a sobering sight.
Yes, there is a troubling side to free enterprise. There are booms and busts. People get laid off, sometimes at the worst of times, as companies watch their bottom lines. In some parts of the world, workers labor in sweatshops.
But overall, the effects of free enterprise have improved people's lives in countless ways. It is difficult to imagine what life would be like without mass-produced electric lights, washers, telephones, medicines, vaccines, motors, pens, soap, tires — the list goes on and on.
As Peter Wehner and Arthur C. Brooks write in their book Wealth and Justice: The Morality of Democratic Capitalism (to which this chapter is indebted), "The history of the last three centuries is indisputable: The rewards and benefits of capitalism far outweigh the drawbacks. In our view, it is not really a close call."
Doesn't free enterprise make some people rich while others remain poor?
The median pay package of CEOs at large American companies was over $10 million in 2013.6 Some of those businesspeople put on lavish displays of wealth with their mansions, yachts, and private jets.
It's enough to make some people ask, "Is that fair, when so many people are struggling? Is it too much money?"
The first point to realize is that free enterprise can't make everyone wealthy. No economic system can. We can't all be rich. It's just a fact of life we need to accept.
But the second point is just as important: while making relatively few people rich, free enterprise brings countless others good incomes. It can help make everyone better off.
A woman who founds and spends twenty years building a biotech company might (or might not) make a lot of money for herself, but along the way her company provides jobs for its employees, jobs that otherwise would not exist. That's a very good thing. In this way, free enterprise has done more to employ people, lift them out of poverty, and improve their lives than any other economic system in history.
"Fine," you might say, "let some people make lots of money, but not that much money — not $10 million a year!" The problem with this argument is that it raises the question, Who gets to decide how much money people should make? The government? Should officials in Washington, DC, have the power to decide how much that woman who built the biotech company with twenty years of hard work should make? Is that fair? Should a nameless bureaucrat get to decide how much you can make?
If you take away people's chances to earn money and even make themselves rich, you take away much of their incentive to work hard, take risks, and launch new businesses. Do that, and people have much less reason to build companies like Apple, Google, and General Electric — or smaller companies like your local bank and hardware store. Then everyone loses, especially people who need jobs at those companies.
Fans of free enterprise need to acknowledge that huge income gaps between a company's management and its workers can lead to resentment. That can be bad for the company and all involved. It's something corporations must keep in mind.
People who make lots of money should remember, as Saint Paul tells us, that "God loveth a cheerful giver." It's also smart to remember that the Bible warns again and again of the dangers that wealth brings.
As for those among us who don't make lots of money, it's good to remember that free enterprise offers the best opportunity to rise in the world and to make more money, perhaps even creating more jobs for others along the way. As Abraham Lincoln said, "The man who labored for another last year, this year labors for himself, and next year he will hire others to labor for him."
Is free enterprise a moral system?
Critics say that free enterprise causes greed and excessive ambition. It turns life into a vicious competition in which the ruthless and dishonest exploit others to come out ahead.
In truth, sometimes people can and do act immorally in business — just as people sometimes act immorally in government or in their family lives. Human beings are imperfect creatures, and any system involving humans can lead to abuses and corruption. But we must weigh the good against the bad.
Yes, free enterprise is driven largely by self-interest, as the moral philosopher Adam Smith pointed out in his great book The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. People are naturally interested in getting things they need and want for happy, comfortable lives.
But self-interest is not the same as selfishness. We can be interested in improving our own lives while at the same time helping others. That's what most business owners do when they hire people or when they sell products that people want. They are helping others while they help themselves.
In many ways, free enterprise can actually help us become better people because it encourages us to exercise several virtues. In work we learn responsibility and reliability when tasked with projects large and small. We gain perseverance in meeting tough deadlines. We learn about cooperation in dealing with colleagues and about civility in relations with customers, employers, and employees.
Entrepreneurs exercise creativity in coming up with new ideas. They develop habits of thrift in saving to start a business and dedication in getting it off the ground. Managers and employees alike learn the value of honesty because the reality is that in the world of business, dishonesty is one of the surest ways to lose a business or get fired.
That said, the main purpose of free enterprise is to help people prosper and have more comfortable lives, not maintain virtue. To make sure people act morally and treat each other fairly in a free enterprise system, we have to look outside of free enterprise itself.
Government can help here. Laws that keep businesses from putting children to work or dumping chemicals in streams, for example, are good checks on free enterprise. As long as they don't hamper business with too much red tape, legislatures and courts can be business's allies in improving lives.
More important than government, though, is culture. The morality of any society's economic system depends on the morality of its culture. A corrupt culture will produce corrupt enterprise (and corrupt government). A decent culture will produce businesses that treat people well.
That means our most important institutions — families, churches and other houses of worship, neighborhoods, schools, and communities — must help produce people of good character who make good employers and employees. It takes a lot of work to maintain a culture that keeps capitalism within moral bounds. In a world full of commercialism, attention to virtue helps keep money and the things it can buy in perspective.
Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president of the United States, is famous for saying that "the chief business of the American people is business." But he also reminded us that for all the prosperity that free enterprise has brought this country, without dedication to some deeper matters, it's all for nothing. "The things of the spirit come first," he said. "Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp."
Does socialism work?
Socialism is a political and economic system in which the government controls the means of production (such as factories and land) and the distribution of income. In essence, government control replaces the free markets of capitalism.
Virtually all Western nations, including the United States, have "mixed economies" — that is, economies that contain some elements of socialism mixed with free-market capitalism. The mixture varies from nation to nation. Political debates often involve the question of how far government control over a nation's economy should go.
Some people on the left are attracted to the idea of socialism because it promises more economic equality. Because government has more control over the economy, the theory goes, it can make sure workers receive a greater share of goods.
The real-world record of nations that have veered toward socialism, however, is not good.
One reason socialist countries have often failed is that it's virtually impossible for government officials — or for anyone — to plan and run an economy. Economies are enormously complex, made of countless interacting forces. No one fully understands how they work. Over time, centralized government control doesn't work well.
More important, socialist countries take freedom away from people. Since the government assumes more control, individuals have fewer choices. If you have an idea to start a business and it doesn't fit into the government's plans, too bad for you — you might wait years for a permit to start that business, if it ever comes at all.
Someone once said that the problem with socialism is socialism, while the problem with capitalism is capitalists. Capitalism, despite the good it does, is sometimes abused by people. Socialism, on the other hand, is itself a fundamentally f lawed system.
Socialism demoralizes people while making them dependent on the state. It promises equality but in fact levels everyone down (except the ruling authorities) by taking away liberty. As Pope John Paul II wrote,
In the place of creative initiative there appears passivity, dependence and submission to the bureaucratic apparatus which, as the only "ordering" and "decision-making" body — if not also the "owner" — of the entire totality of goods and the means of production, puts everyone in a position of almost absolute dependence. ... This provokes a sense of frustration or desperation and predisposes people to opt out of national life.
Cuba is a nearby socialist nation. A journalist on a recent visit wrote about the misery of most citizens and the luxurious lifestyles of the ruling class that controls the poor. Outside Havana's tourist district, "the rest of the city looks as though it suffered a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina or the Indonesian tsunami. Roofs have collapsed. Walls are splitting apart. Window glass is missing. Paint has long vanished. It's eerily dark at night, almost entirely free of automobile traffic. ... It is filled with people struggling to eke out a life in the ruins."
Free-market economies, even with their f laws, are far better than the trap of socialism.
What is "crony capitalism," and what's wrong with it?
In a free enterprise system, one of government's jobs is to make sure competing businesses all play by the same rules. Government shouldn't give some corporations special privileges and others not. Competition that's truly free and fair requires a level playing field.
Unfortunately, modern American government tends to do this job badly. Big corporations often get too cozy with government officials. That can lead to special treatment known as "crony capitalism." Under crony capitalism, businesses (usually big corporations or groups of corporations) hire lobbyists who work to pass laws and regulations that favor those businesses. This goes on a lot in Washington, DC, in statehouses across the country, and even at the local government level.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from America the Strong by William J. Bennett, John T. E. Cribb. Copyright © 2015 William J. Bennett and John T. Cribb. Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Introduction v
Conservative Principles: An Overview 1
The American Record 17
Part 1 Free Enterprise
Free Enterprise 27
Equality and Opportunity 39
Energy and the Environment 49
Part 2 Limited Government
Limited Government 63
The Welfare State 79
Taxes and Spending 91
Government Debt 101
Part 3 Individual Liberty
Individual Liberty 111
The Rule of Law 121
Immigration 129
Marijuana 139
Race, Class, Gender, and Ethnicity 151
Part 4 National Defense
National Defense 163
Islamic Terrorism 173
Part 5 Traditional Values
Traditional Values 185
Marriage and Family 197
Faith and Religion 209
Abortion 219
K-12 Education 229
Higher Education 241
Conclusion 255
Acknowledgments 259
Notes 261