Common Sense 1992

...It is not a matter of taking over the levers of power...

...The democratic revolution is due, at least in part, to our victory in the Cold War...

...If he earns more, then he receives nothing until retirement age, at which point the pension kicks in...

...They are meddling in too many areas of life...

...This requires not only the right values, but real economic and military power...

...Although the chances are good, there is no guarantee of success, for the enemies of freedom are many, and their allure is considerable...

...As of now, Congress is exempt from everything from the normal requirements of everyday banking to the Ethics in Government Act...

...They have not yet coalesced behind a leader and a program because no leader has come forward with a program that embraces the revolutionary imperatives of the moment...

...In Moscow, the old guard is back, and has taken Yeltsin hostage...

...we defeated it and its surrogates on several military battlefields, from Grenada and Angola to Afghanistan and Nicaragua...

...It is by now accepted that democracy is not only the best system of government, but the best guarantee of international tranquility...

...That means a greater reliance The American Spectator June 1992 23 on the private sector and on local government than on national bureaucracies that are politically and geographically remote from the great mass of the citizenry...

...The Italians savaged all their parties...

...We want quality education at all costs, not public education at the highest cost...

...They still believe in the virtues of central planning, despite its monumental failure worldwide...

...Tenure corrupts, whether in the academy or in the government, at all levels...

...In one of the paradoxes that characterize revolutionary moments, the German national bank—the very symbol of the "new Europe"—is now systematically sinking the Good Ship Europa...

...And we must continue to develop new technologies, and do our best to keep them out of the hands of our enemies and commercial competitors...

...And the world took notice of our military prowess—and will to use it—in Panama and Kuwait...

...T he democratic revolution has already smashed most of the old anti-democratic regimes and their empires, but it did not stop there...

...If he chooses to work—most will, given the Calvinistic angst that drives most Americans—and takes a job that pays less than his government post, he is paid the difference...

...But if we are serious about supporting the democratic revolution, we must be strong enough to fright-en the enemies of democracy...

...the levers must be smashed, and the power dispersed...

...Americans in primary after primary are saying "none of the above" to all the candidates of the established parties, and such excitement as exists is limited to a short billionaire from Texas...

...At present, they can slander anyone and can't be sued...

...Ditto the Special Prosecutor, as in Judge Lawrence "Torquemada" Walsh...

...As the leading democracy in the world, we should spearhead the democratic revolution...

...Maastricht, which was to have been the prelude to a new European symphony, will instead prove to have been the swan song of the old order...

...The Italians describe government as lo stato ladro—the thief-state...

...Gibraltar...

...That means the Freedom of Information Act must apply to Congress—or be scrapped...

...And we Americans, who first gave the world a workable model of democratic revolution in the eighteenth century, must again serve as the beacon to the nations...

...I doubt that this is an extravagance...

...He himself signed a decree imposing a "30-year rule" on the Archives of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party...

...When Israel demolished the Syrian air force over Lebanon, it was a triumph of American military might...

...And like the Gosplan, it proved once again that central planning can be fatal to even the strongest economy...

...So it is that we hear the chant that "there is a role for government," as if it were merely a matter of program and personality...

...Years ago, in Italy, it was calculated that the nation would save many billions of dollars by paying the public sector not to work, and I have no doubt that the same would occur here...

...Now, in the first truly free elections since the late 1930s, the people of the West are telling their governors that they have had enough...

...On other battlefields—most dramatically in the Middle East—our allies, fighting with our weapons, defeated Soviet allies fighting with theirs...

...Scores of movements have emerged in Europe, on all bands of the political spectrum, the only thing linking their striking success being their denunciation of politicians and bureaucrats...

...The iron law of bureaucracy must be revoked, and the spirit of enterprise must flow through the free world...

...But what do the people want in its place...

...The Germans kicked sand in the faces of Michael Ledeen is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute...

...If those currently feeding at the trough of the...

...Thus, we must insist upon term limitations for all officials, whether elected or appointed...

...The only solution is to institutionalize the purge...

...both major parties...

...Taxation without representation is tyranny" was a call for democratic self-government in the eighteenth century, and it remains so today...

...Nothing will more quickly undo some of the outrageous bits of legislation than making legislators subject to their provisions...

...They want institutions over which they can exercise greater control: institutions that are smaller, leaner, and more efficient...

...Reform" will not suffice...

...This well suits the British—who had expressed reservations even while signing the doomed Maastricht Treaty—as well as others, like the Italians, who never had the courage to give public voice to their private terror at the consequences of turning their economic future over to the Germans...

...It is only fitting that this latest chapter in the endless struggle against evil be conducted despite our leaders...

...There's less to this apparent contradiction than meets the eye: indeed, it is entirely reasonable to demand better services and less government...

...True, this healthy scream of anarchism has long been with us, but, from the rise of fascism until the fall of the Soviet empire, the gusher of rage at bad government was plugged by the healthy fear of totalitarianism, and elections in the Free World were constrained by the knowledge that weak governments might not be able to resist an even greater evil...

...So it is up to us to drive our countries along the right path...

...But the Japanese crash—like the parallel German crisis—is good for us, because it once again demonstrates the superiority of free markets over planned economies...

...Corporation for Public Broadcasting can't make it in a world of hundreds of television and radio frequencies, they should seek employment in a different field...

...In Romania, the battle still rages in the streets...

...In times of great statesmen, it is hard to demand a reduction in government power, for we want great leaders to have maximum opportunity for innovation and accomplishment...

...If some public schools prove unequal to this challenge, close them down...

...Even Fidel hangs on...

...As for "public" broadcasting, any such organization will inevitably be politicized, and become the plaything of the Washington establishment...

...we want them to direct their attention to the essentials...

...No citizen can be above the law, and therefore all laws pertaining to government officials must apply to officials of all branches...

...0 26 The American Spectator June 1992...

...Desperate to maintain their power and privilege, the old rulers now seek to capture the revolutionary movement by calling for "reform...

...Instead of smaller government and more freedom and democracy, they propose ever larger units and Pharaonic bureaucracies...

...Government must be slashed down to size, its gluttonous tentacles torn he first order of businessis to break the grip of the professionals on our political system, to return to the Washingtonian ideal of the citizen-politician who serves for a time, and then goes home to tend a farm, or prepare cookies and tea, the better to raise and educate children...

...This means, in practice, that we will not see anything that has anything to do with "national security" after 1961, and we will see nothing at all after 1981...

...Do not believe that the world is turning toward democracy merely because everyone has suddenly seen the light...

...British voters punished the Conservatives, but refused to permit Labour to form a new government...

...Bureaucrats in a halved government will be unable to hide in their endless committees, and will be forced to focus their activities, and explain their actions...

...We want to win the next war as easily as we won the last...

...Education should be in the hands of communities, not Washington...

...Peoples east and west understand this seeming paradox, which is why they are demanding greater freedom to solve problems themselves...

...They have expressed it in the best way available to them, by telling their politicians, in government and out, to go to hell...

...Can we not do better than these feeble reeds...

...In China the murderous gerontocracy rules unchallenged...

...The established classes dismiss this revolutionary impulse as a protest against a particular set of policies or politicians, or against corruption, and not a primal scream for freedom from government as such...

...To be sure, the planning mechanism was housed in a mixed The American Spectator June 1992 25 public-private cartel by the name of MITI, but, whatever its name, it was the Japanese version of the Soviet Gosplan...

...First, randomly choose half the bureaucrats, and inform them Government must be slashed down to size, its gluttonous tentacles torn out of the body of society, its insidious poisons purged from the lifeblood of enterprise and education...

...Our current leaders cannot inspire this movement, for they are managers, not revolutionaries...

...For all elected officials, and for all appointees down at least to the level of assistant secretary, after a given period of time (eight years for members of Congress, two terms for senators, and eight years—two presidential terms—for appointees), out of government...

...Our own polls show that the American people don't trust government to solve real problems, and bitterly resent the amount of money it takes from them...

...Today, Ukraine and the Basque country, tomorrow Cabinda and out of the body of society, its insidious poisons purged from the lifeblood of enterprise and education, its mindless bureaucrats blown away from their telephones and fax machines, its presses stopped, its linen washed, its babies and bathwater thrown out together in a great tidal wave of purifying destruction...

...All such proposals provoke outrage among the political and intellectual classes, because these people do not believe in the marketplace...

...Vouchers will encourage the growth of high-quality private education...

...We need the real thing: revolution, the whole nine yards, root and branch...

...This global phenomenon has been badly described and poorly understood...

...Having achieved a major technological breakthrough in military power, we should lock in our advantage...

...Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the only hope for improved government lies in reducing both the numbers of public employees and the amount of money they get to spend...

...The Soviet Empire was not only an economic and social failure...

...Consider the intellectual vogue of Japan...

...Our elected representatives will complain that it will be impossible for them to deal with all the issues currently before them—and that's exactly the point...

...To ensure a relatively painless transition, each ex-bureaucrat will be guaranteed full salary (complete with step increases) until retirement age, and the pension he would have received had he continued in his job...

...Ten, a hundred, a thousand Stealth aircraft...

...From Marseilles and Milan to Moscow and Manhattan, in national and regional elections, state primaries, and caucuses, and in the most sophisticated polling data, a single theme resonates: Down with the politicians...

...But today, with lackluster figures in virtually every Western capital, we need not hesitate...

...But we must not be confused about our goal...

...To paraphrase Jefferson, the tree of liberty grows best when sprinkled regularly with the blood of bureaucrats and politicians...

...The French spat in the face of the Socialists, but without embracing the old men of the right...

...Soviet history will remain a riddle in a mystery inside an enigma until the revolutionaries rise again to man the bureaucracies...

...Whatever can be accomplished by the Education Department can be done better and cheaper close to home, and we must encourage competition in education by giving parents real choice...

...The people know this...

...The democratic revolution is therefore also threatening the old nation-states that no longer respond to the needs and desires of their peoples...

...paradoxically, the task of freedom is facilitated by the mediocrity of our leaders...

...What should have been Thatcher's and Reagan's moment of triumph is being treated as a damage-control problem by their successors...

...For these are the highest callings in a civil society...

...We can indeed...

...For many of the problems of bureaucracy derive from its size, which makes it simultaneously slow and non-accountable...

...Up until a few weeks ago, Japan was treated as a clear example of American failure, and the virtues of long-term planning...

...24 The American Spectator June 1992 that their services are no longer required...

...It is symptomatic of the confusion of the established classes that, when policy planners in the Pentagon reiterated this self-evident principle of foreign policy, it was assailed as if it had come from Mein Kampf Indeed, liberal America-bashers have long regretted our military might, considering it unclean...

...In its latest annual report, the Bundesbank has announced that the policies of the Kohl government will not do, and must be changed, in such a way as to make the monetary unification of Europe impossible...

...All broadcasting should be competitive and privately owned...

...Of course, we need a professional civil service, but a small one, and the bureaucracy must be drastically reduced...

...it is also about accountability and responsiveness...

...The answer seems tricky: while voters have lost confidence in government and wish to withhold their money from it, they also want many of the things that government currently provides...

...And (my particular favorite) members of Congress should be held accountable for their public statements, and therefore liable for libel suits...

...Our task is to provide a serviceable road map to a freer world...

...One fine day, we will wake up and find the Alaskans demanding greater autonomy...

...t is not only the bureaucracy of the executive branch that must be reduced, but also the legislative staff...

...Whether calling for a "new Europe," run by governmental professionals in Brussels and Bonn, or a U.N.-sponsored "new world order," they offer only more misgovernment-as-usual...

...The external threat having collapsed, the people are ready to reclaim control over their destiny...

...When the Japanese stock and real-estate markets crashed and burned, our intellectuals—who had warned of the imminent Japanese conquest of the entire economic universe—warned darkly of the terrible consequences for the American economy...

...Then we must shut down various government operations, from the Department of Education to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting...

...For this revolution is not simply a demand to replace one political system with another...

...But their so-called reforms can only offer more of the same...

...Today, Bosnia and Hercegovina, tomorrow Quebec and Scotland...

...Political power does not come exclusively from the barrels of guns, but if your political enemies have bigger guns than you, you will be at a considerable political disadvantage...