Problem Solvers: A New Political Ideal
April 14, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
The next time you’re asked about your political affiliation or leaning, say that you’re a problem-solver.
Because I often write about politics, I’m frequently asked what political party I belong to, or if I’m a liberal or a conservative. I always struggle with the answer because politics and society seem much too complex to pigeonhole ourselves into such sweeping generalizations.
For example, I believe that we are stewards of the earth, and as such, we should take care of it and maintain its beauty and sustain its productivity. So does this make me an environmentalist liberal? I believe that the proper role of government is to protect unalienable rights, including the rights of conceived but unborn children. I must be a conservative then, right? I adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s idea of foreign policy, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Since our current neo-conservative foreign policy is at direct odds with this, then I must be a liberal.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. The broad and confusing labels of “conservative” and “liberal,” “Republican” and “Democrat” are prohibitively confining in an age when our problems are immensely complex, party lines are increasingly obscure, platforms are highly evolutionary, and our values seemingly too diverse to find common ground.
Pulitzer-prize winning historian and author of 1776 David McCullough once said something in an interview that resonated with my independent-thinking mind. He said, “….we’re all in this together. And I feel very strongly that we need people who are there to help solve problems. I wish we had a Problem-Solver Party because we have very big problems that need solving. And I think a lot of our attention is addressed to the wrong problems.”
Ah, if only…
If only we had a political party that was actually concerned with solving root problems, rather than selling the people on temporary Bandaids. If only there were politicians concerned with more than proving their opponents wrong, or amassing self-aggrandizing power. If only we had public servants who actually did what their title suggests: served the people out of a sense of true public virtue, as opposed to simply seeking the security of a government job.
I think that Mr. McCullough is on to something, and he just may have the solution that millions of Americans have been searching for. Wouldn’t that be something: an army of open-minded, principle-based, and independent thinkers united behind the common cause of solving problems? Surrendering ego, getting beyond shallow labels, and really being a force for deep, sustainable, and positive change?
The next time someone asks me if I’m a conservative or a liberal, I’m going to answer, “I’m a Problem-Solver.” I invite you to join the new party, or rather, the new political ideal.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The New Liberalism
January 25, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
America faces serious economic challenges. We all know that socialism means to take from the rich to give to the poor.
But our nation is faced with a more complex problem than this customary type of wealth redistribution. Our problem is what I refer to as reverse socialism. If we wish our nation to be free for future generations then We the People must fix this problem.
Free enterprise is, among other things, a legal structure that treats all individuals and business entities equally before the law. The proper role of a free enterprise-promoting government is to simply protect unalienable rights — not to favor one man over another through benefits and entitlements.
Our national political debate has become convoluted between two sides with equally flawed premises and goals. The liberals want social programs to benefit the poor, while most mainstream conservatives want the government to serve and protect “big” business, even if it means to favor a large corporation over a small start-up.
What neither side seems to recognize is that both are equally as dangerous and detrimental to freedom and prosperity. They both lead to the exact same result, and that is the concentration of too much power in the hands of too few.
Favoring the “Haves”
Most people who believe that wealth redistribution programs are wrong see only the government taking from the “haves” to give to the “have-nots.” But what has been lost in the shuffle of “progressive” social policy is the fact that our legal structure has also has evolved into favoring those with capital over those with little or none.
Those who recognize the problem of taxing the wealthy to give to the poor seem to be virtually unaware of the dangers of favoring large corporations over small businesses.
Here are two examples of this reverse socialism: 1) In Cedar City, Utah, when Wal-Mart decided that they wanted to open a store here, the city council waived most of the fees and gave them about 5 acres of land. But the individual citizen who wishes to open a small retail store is subject to all of the mandated regulation and fees, and a land grant to them wouldn’t even be considered. 2) A friend of mine is an owner/operator of his own tractor-trailer. He told me that the biggest trucking companies in the country pay almost half as much for fuel as do the small companies or individual truckers.
Whether you take from the rich to give to the poor, or if you favor the rich over the poor, the effect is the same. In both scenarios you wind up with an unnatural and inequitable economic system with the majority of the wealth concentrated in the hands of a few people.
Here are some statistics to illustrate the state of the American economic system: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2001 the bottom quarter of families in the United States had zero net worth. The bottom 90% of families had less than 20% of the net wealth, and the top 10% owned 80.7% of all the net wealth. Federal Reserve research in 1995 found that the wealth of the top one percent of Americans was greater than that of the bottom 95% and that the net worth of the top one percent was 2.4 times the combined wealth of the poorest 80%.
It hasn’t always been this way. In 1800, census information showed that over 90% of our population were owners of the means of production — mostly small business owners and farmers. In 1900 that statistic was the same — over 90% of us were owners. In 2000, those numbers were exactly reversed — less than 10% of our population are now owners.
Economic power in many cases equates political power. So what we have arrived at is precisely the same thing that has caused all nations throughout history to fall, and that is too much power in the hands of too few. Aristotle wrote that, “The only stable state is the one in which all men are treated equally before the law.” Our nation is unstable because our forms of law have been corrupted.
The Solutions
The first step to solve the problem of these large discrepancies in wealth distribution is to identify the cause of the inequity. The cause is two-fold, but both aspects of the cause spring from the same root. One reason is that the majority of our citizens have bought into the dependence model of employeeship and government entitlements.
The other cause is that we have changed the forms of our Constitution to allow for illegitimate wealth redistribution. This redistribution is allowed by our legal structure in two ways: Taxing the rich to give to the poor, and also by favoring those with capital over those with little or none.
Both of these causes spring from the same root, and that is that we as individual citizens have failed to take personal responsibility both in our individual financial lives and in our public duty to maintain a strong and free Democratic Republic.
Identifying the cause of the problem now leads us to the solution. First of all, we as individuals must take the responsibility to start being a “have,” as opposed to a “have-not.” Taking from the rich and distributing down will simply mean that we all lose, because no wealth is being created; it simply leads to an impoverished mediocrity. But if the 80% of us that were mentioned in those Census Bureau statistics would simply create wealth from the bottom up, then everyone rises together.
Those of us who have little capital must employ our mental resources to create wealth. The problem of economic inequity can only be solved from the bottom up — not the top down.
There is one other thing that must be fixed in our political structure if we wish America to remain free. We must renovate our Constitutional forms so that our legal structure will again — as it was created by the Founders in the original Constitution — treat all individuals and entities equally before the law.
It is an improper and dangerous use of government to take from one person to give to another, or to favor one business over another. The proper role of government is to treat everyone equally in the defense of their unalienable rights. When the government steps out of that realm it concentrates too much power in the hands of too few.
Conclusion
We are at a critical point in our nation’s history. History has shown repeatedly that the 200-year mark is where nations must either reinvent and reform themselves, or fall because of their inability to check and balance power. Our chance for an American renaissance is now or never, and We the People have the inescapable responsibility for that rebirth.
We must all, individually, create our own financial freedom and become owners of the means of production. And we must educate ourselves to gain the power to fix our bent governmental forms. Our government must treat all individuals and businesses equally before the law and stop all forms of unnatural, forced redistribution.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
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