A Nation Like No Other (27 page)

There are many opportunities to teach the next generation about America—its principles, its history, and its heroes. Speak about this topic with your children, grandchildren, nephews, and nieces. You also may have the chance to speak to neighborhood children through organizations like the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Big Brothers Big Sisters, your local church group, etc.

While I strongly believe our schools should teach American history more accurately and more thoroughly, I also think there are many things we can do to fill in the gaps and to build on the work of schools.

The next time you travel with your children, look for historic sites you can visit. Even a brief introduction to a battlefield or a museum or a living exhibit can trigger a lifetime of interest in young people.

If you come to Washington, pick up a copy of
Rediscovering God in America
, a book and movie I created with my wife Callista, and find out how you can spend a day or two in our national capital visiting
the monuments and learning about America's founding and America's history.

Look for powerful and entertaining movies to show your children that learning can be interesting and fun—movies like
Glory
,
Amazing Grace
,
Sunrise at Campobello
, and
Chariots of Fire
.

Visit the presidential libraries for half a day. Visit Mount Vernon and its amazing new education center with its great exhibit on George and Martha Washington. And visit living exhibits like Williamsburg, where re-enactors bring the past to life.

While you are serving as a teacher-mentor, you should also insist, as a citizen, on bringing America back into our schools.

You can start by asking your state legislature to mandate that every year from K through 12 and in every tax-paid freshman year in college, there must be lessons on the Declaration of Independence. By reminding young Americans every year that there are self-evident truths and that we are endowed with unalienable rights by our Creator, we will convey the spiritual and liberating nature of America.

Requiring the Pledge of Allegiance in homeroom every day is a reminder that we are indeed a republic that is united under God.

A moment of silent prayer to open each day would also help. Young people need to be reminded continually that they are part of something much bigger than mere earthly existence. At school, they should be allowed time to reflect upon the spiritual component to their lives.

Textbooks should be reviewed to ensure their factual accuracy. Through bias and censorship, the secular Left has grossly distorted and rewritten history. It is time to insist that our children learn the truth, especially as it relates to the founding and history of America.

To effect this change, you'll need to make your case to your school board, your state legislature, and your governor. In some cases it may mean replacing elected judges who are improperly imposing their radical secularism on American schools.

Insist that your child's school focus on homework, deadlines, and developing a robust work ethic for students. Young Americans are going to be competing in the world market with young Asians who start studying earlier, study longer, and study more intensely. We will not remain the world's economic leader without re-establishing a serious work and achievement ethic in students.

The lawyer class loves judicial supremacy. It makes them the keepers of the secret knowledge of America's future.

In the 1960s, the Supreme Court outlawed voluntary school prayer and instituted tort rules that encourage lawsuits, weakening and in some ways sickening our society. But praying less and suing more has turned out to be a bad experiment with bad results.

Lord Acton warned that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Note that he dropped the word “tends” in the second half of that sentence. He asserted that absolute power
always
corrupts.

We now have judges who believe they have absolute power. When a majority of California voters reassert that marriage is between a man and a woman in their state, and one federal judge decides his opinion is more important than theirs, there is something wrong. When the Supreme Court empowers politicians to seize citizens' private property and give it to real estate developers, there is something wrong. When justices start citing Zimbabwe and other foreign countries instead of the United States Constitution, there is something wrong.

Judicial supremacists tell us we have no choice except to endure judicial tyranny. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi once asserted that when the Supreme Court issues a ruling, it “is almost as if God has spoken.”
⁴
Yet as I have noted elsewhere, the Founders designed the judiciary as the weakest branch of the federal government. Additionally, recall that President Jefferson eliminated eighteen of thirty-five federal judges in the Judiciary Act of 1802—and you have to assume Jefferson and his secretary of state, James Madison, had some knowledge of the Constitution.

Our generation must restore the proper balance between the judicial, legislative, and executive branches. A first step is to defeat elected judges who flout the Constitution. Developing a new, Jeffersonian approach to lifetime judicial appointees when they prove to be radically destructive would be another step.

It may well be necessary to abolish the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—the most radical and most consistently overturned appeals court. This would be a much more modest step than the Jeffersonian reform of 1802.

And a final step would be to make all new judges meet a higher standard of knowledge of American history and of the principles of American Exceptionalism.

In the long-term, our economy cannot be stabilized without first reversing the erosion of the work ethic that has occurred over the last two generations.

For four hundred years, since Captain John Smith decreed that those who don't work won't eat, Americans have worked hard, dreamed big, achieved amazing breakthroughs, and created enormous prosperity.

Whether you want to be a ballerina or a surgeon, a success in business or a success in sports, a good parent or a good citizen, it always takes hard work to achieve your goals.

The most important contribution you can make is to encourage the work ethic in your children by setting an example. Show them that everyone can dream big, but that it takes learning and hard work to make their dreams come true. Every time you instill in young people the understanding that effort leads to reward, you have strengthened America.

Holidays should be more than just a day off work—we should celebrate them as the historic institutions they are. Explain to young people why Memorial Day and Veterans Day exist and the sacrifices those days honor. Spend time on the Fourth of July discussing why we
are patriotic and why our Star Spangled Banner celebrates an American victory on our own soil. At Thanksgiving, spend a few minutes remembering the Pilgrims as well as President Lincoln's first Thanksgiving proclamation. Talk about all the things we Americans have to be thankful for.

These simple steps move us toward a patriotic, historically informed citizenry at remarkably little cost.

Restoring a healthy, free, and self-governing society will require an engaged and energetic citizenry.

Tocqueville wrote about the enormous energy and enthusiasm of Americans voluntarily banding together to solve problems and create opportunities. But for two generations we have paid higher and higher taxes to hire more and more bureaucrats to replace citizens with “experts.”

That experiment has failed.

If we are to implement the Tenth Amendment and return power to the people, citizens will have to volunteer to fill the gaps that emerge when the bureaucrats are disempowered.

Volunteering your time and encouraging others to volunteer is a major step toward a better, more engaged, and freer America.

Your country needs you.

There are more than 513,000 elected offices in America. If you know a better way to run your school board, town, city, or state, take the initiative to do so. Put your convictions to the test by running for office. Convince your fellow citizens that your ideas are practical solutions to specific problems. Drum up support for your program, get elected, and follow through with your plans.

Out of all our problems, the one that's hurting the most Americans today is unemployment.

It is impossible to balance the budget at 8 or 9 percent unemployment. If there is a significant recession in the next few years, joblessness could hit 12 or 13 percent.

A recent report finding that 42 percent of African American teenagers are unemployed is a warning sign of a looming social crisis. Additionally, some of our greatest cities are becoming ghost towns as economic decay and unemployment destroy the very fabric of the community.

The pain of unemployment is being compounded by inflation, stoked by the Bernanke policy of printing money and the government's mania for economic stimulus. Cheap dollars become expensive oil, gold, silver, and other commodities. Expensive oil translates into expensive food since energy is vital to food production, processing, and distribution. All this threatens to bring back the stagflation of the 1970s, when President Jimmy Carter's destructive policies led to both economic decline and inflation.

There are specific policies that can reverse these damaging trends, as outlined below. But a single value must guide all these policies: the restoration of the work ethic.

A government dedicated to encouraging and rewarding work will empower individuals to determine their own future and their family's future, to pursue success at the risk of failure, and to provide for their own well-being without being stymied by bureaucratic regulation.

In a society whose economic engine was built to run on self-reliance, the dependence fostered by the big-government welfare state has wreaked havoc on our economy and is increasingly undermining the foundation of American liberty itself.

Consider some key areas of public policy in which new policies that emphasize the work ethic would help to reverse our current decline and encourage personal responsibility.

Nothing will restore the work ethic more than policies that reward the creation of wealth instead of just spreading it around. We should begin by approving the 12.5 percent business tax rate that Ireland adopted almost twenty-five years ago, and which raised the Irish standard of living from the second lowest in Europe to the second highest. Our reform program should aslo include: eliminating the capital gains tax, which
involves double taxation of capital income on top of corporate and individual income taxes; immediate expensing for investment in tools and equipment, accelerating the productivity and wages of America's workers; and abolishing the death tax, which taxes for a fourth time the lifetime savings of American families. Tax reform for individuals should provide for an optional 15 percent flat tax, with generous personal exemptions of $12,000 per family member.

These reforms will make the United States the world's most attractive country in which to create and grow companies, increasing the reward for hard-working and innovative entrepreneurs.

Since coming to power, the Obama administration has waged a war on American energy that has led to rising gas prices, lost American jobs, strained family budgets, and a greater dependence on foreign oil. For example, due to President Obama's recent moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and his administration's subsequent reluctance to issue new drilling permits, the Energy Information Administration projects that oil production in the United States will decline by an astounding 220,000 barrels per day in 2011, which translates to us sending an additional $10 billion this year to foreign countries instead of investing in American jobs and American energy.

Alongside their heavy restrictions on our own fossil fuel production, President Obama and his officials have consistently distorted the facts about America's true wealth of energy resources. Instead of an all-out effort to increase domestic oil and gas drilling, the Obama administration has naively expressed hope that the often hostile, often unstable countries of OPEC will “continue to support our economic recovery.”
⁵

Conservative estimates of American resources suggest we have more than a 100-year supply of natural gas and at least three times as much oil as Saudi Arabia locked away in shale in the American West. Offshore we have tens of billions of additional barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of additional cubic feet of natural gas. We have an enormous capacity to produce more nuclear power, and recent innovations in renewable
technologies show great promise for the future. But in order to realize this energy potential, we have to get serious about actually producing American energy, which starts with allowing producers to do what they do best: creating affordable and reliable energy.

What does this have to do with the work ethic? Quite simply, President Obama's energy policies mean that thousands of Americans will lose their jobs due to a worsening economic situation caused by higher energy prices. If we would aggressively develop American fossil fuels, we would create abundant and affordable domestic energy supplies, leading to hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Look no further than the Dakotas to see what producing American energy can do: North Dakota has a booming economy with an unemployment rate of 3.6 percent. In addition to low taxes, the key driver of North Dakota's economic boom is oil and gas production in the Bakken formation. Much of this drilling is taking place on private lands, but the message is clear: encouraging energy production, including more domestic drilling, will create jobs and grow the economy.