Three Simple Steps to Solve America’s Debt, but one Giant Leap for the Nation’s Politicians

Nostalgia or integral to the future?

   There are three simple steps required to get America working at its best again, but they will require a giant leap in faith by politicians. The final space shuttle launch is perhaps a metaphor for where America is today. America has been travelling the European road towards secularism and dependency in recent years. This journey was not embarked upon by President Barack Obama, though he has hastened the journey’s end greatly.

This European road is one where the apparatus of State is the repository of morality, rules and decisions. This leaves its civil dependents free not to care, because the State cares for society’s ills, it is somebody else’s problem. This is the selfishness of liberalism, it leads to abdicating personal responsibility for the community and leaving the State to deal with it and legislate.

Morality becomes defined by what the rules say you can and cannot do. The responsible individual is therefore one who keeps to the rules, which are increasingly defined by a remote governing and law-making process. The liberals who drive these new rules don’t care about the Poor, or Race or all the other things they pontificate on so eloquently. They are only interested in the IDEA of the Poor, Race and other classes who live far from their zip codes. They can have the best of both worlds: live their own nice life free of any conscience because they care about classes.

The outcome of this is moral malaise, economic stagnation and ever growing cost of government. Sound familiar? Look around you, do you see the evidence?

This mentality has to change, and it is a big ask. It is a giant leap. What is needed is not just a change of leader, but a change in attitude in America. This needs to be a mixture of commitment to the faith and enlightenment ideals which founded America, and, a commitment to applying these ideals to making a better tomorrow.

Liberals like to dismiss all the talk of the Constitution and Founding Fathers by the Tea Party and Conservatives as being at best nostalgic and at worse backwards. It is not. It is integral to understanding the solution to America’s current ills.

So, what about the three steps? They are:

Step 1: Repent and Pray, and remember what the American Ideal means

Step 2: Focus on growing the economy

Step 3: Cut Government deep

The first step:

The hubris of government is rooted in the Enlightenment without God, something the Founding Fathers never intended. The negative proposition of the Founding is that we only progress knowing that we are answerable to a higher order, to God the Creator. This is because of the Fallen nature of humanity. The positive proposition of the Founding is that we progress because God fills us with Hope. This is the uniqueness of the American ideal, which is an ideal for all humanity not just Americans.

Hence, we repent because of our weakness and we pray because of the Hope that God inspires within us to innovate, create for ourselves and community, and to help each other: family, friends and community. The obsession with “human rights” is a denial of this combination of weakness and hope, placing confidence in regulation and courts. Instead of court being the outcome of wrongs, it becomes the starting point of establishing “rights.” The starting point should be God and individuals caring for each other, placing confidence in God to guide us.

The second step:

All the talk about cuts, deficits and taxes is placing the emphasis in the all the wrong places. They are of a secondary order, not just in this list of three steps but in the economic approach now needed. The economy thrives on confidence and energy. Both have been sapped in recent years. During the last presidential campaign, candidate Obama talked up the doom and gloom of the economy, resulting in companies taking more drastic actions they would have ordinarily. Had 2008 not been an election year, the economy would still have entered a recessionary cycle but it would not have been as deep as it has been. Of course, the candidate figured that as President he would be the economy’s savior. How wrong he was!

There is a need to cut government, not just to save money but to stop the dependency and return people to a focus on economic growth. This means people being entrepreneurial, realizing the economy is not a fixed pie to be shared out by government. When you’re short of pie, you bake some more! This means people out of work looking for ideas and opportunities, and for those in work they need to innovate their businesses and take the right kind of risks to generate new business. In short, individuals and businesses need to dig deep to solve problems.

This also means a consumption that is not just consumerism and speculation, but also investment in self and family. The disposable society figured we could dispose of responsibility as well. The great lesson of this recession is that far too many people and organizations had built their economic well-being on shifting sands.

The Third Step:

The 2012 candidates have to be prepared to address voters in a call to taking back responsibility from government. When people say “We want our country back” they should be saying they want to take responsibility back. Governments do not fix economies; they only tax entrepreneurial energy and dollars.
Government has an important role as servant of society, but it makes a very poor master.

These are the small steps, but for politicians they are a Giant Leap. These are not popular suggestions, I know. They do not satisfy human selfishness. Adam Smith, that great Scottish enlightenment figure, distinguished between selfishness and self-interest. It is self-interest which is the motor of the economy, and candidates need to take a giant leap to explain and inspire people as to what is in their self-interest and in the self-interest of America.

Only then will this economy grow at the rate it needs to and to sustain America. The nation needs to raise up a leader who can lead from the heart, not just their own heart but the beating heart of America, and this starts by reminding the American voters of the Soul of America.

Let’s start with Step One. Jesus said, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” This is the campaign slogan America needs right now. The current debate is not about the economy. The economy is not the driver of things to be, that is Socialist philosophy. The economy is the reflection of things that are, and right now the economy is reflecting the struggle for the soul of America.