[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 75 (Wednesday, June 4, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1115-E1117]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      THE PROMISE OF CONSERVATISM

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. HELEN CHENOWETH

                                of idaho

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 4, 1997

  Mrs. CHENOWETH. Mr. Speaker, in these trying times when many of our 
leaders appear to be second guessing our moral and political 
underpinnings, I commend to my colleagues' reading an address by former 
U.S. Senator Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming entitled, ``The Promise of 
Conservatism.'' It is one of the best descriptions of the crossroads at 
which we find ourselves:

       The Promise of Conservatism, an Address by Malcolm Wallop

       Before this audience of conservatives, most of whom are 
     Republicans, I would enjoy setting forth a conservative 
     agenda for the Republican Party. I would like to think that 
     you could then put whatever insights I might give you to work 
     for the Republican Party. But I'm afraid that the most useful 
     insight I can give you is that the Republican Party seems 
     well on the way to denying its conservative birthright, and 
     that with every passing day you and I are becoming strangers 
     to it.
       The party's leadership seems determined to follow the 
     disastrous example of the Canadian conservative party, which 
     became afraid to challenge the socialists except with empty 
     rhetoric, and which was entirely wiped out at the polls. But 
     that's all right. Parties are born when they take up 
     important tasks, and die when they let them drop. We cannot 
     control the destiny of the Republican Party. We can control 
     the destiny of the American conservative movement--and 
     conservatism is a permanent fixture of American life, because 
     the American people always need some shield against 
     overweening government.
       But I want to impress upon you that the character of 
     conservatism is not written in the stars. It is subject to 
     change for the better or the worse. It could just as easily 
     come to resemble more the small and mean minded thing we see 
     nowadays in Europe than the conservatism of Reagan, 
     Goldwater, Coolidge, Lincoln, Clay, the Adamses, and 
     Washington. My task here today is to help clarify the 
     difference between the kind of conservatism that made this 
     country great and a Republican Party so fearful of the shadow 
     of principle that it is cowering before Bill Clinton. I 
     suggest to you that Bill Clinton and all his works are 
     examples of the difference between government as it has been 
     practiced since the New Deal and the way of life established 
     by the Founding Fathers. The exposure of President Clinton's 
     conversion of power into money is giving the conservative 
     movement a historic opportunity to instruct itself and the 
     country about the consequences of discretionary government 
     power. The conservative movement dare not let it pass because 
     it makes our point: Big government is corrupting America. It 
     deprives us of freedom, makes us poorer, sows strife among 
     us, undermines our families, and debases our souls.
       Let's first address the Republican default, then turn to 
     the practical, everyday mission of American conservatism: to 
     cut back the extent and power of government.
       From the time of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party has 
     been a party of principle. The Democratic Party lives now as 
     it has lived for most of its history as a brokerage house for 
     government favors. Lots of people make a living out of 
     being Democrats. The teachers' unions, the government 
     workers' unions, the abortion industry, and a host of well 
     connected businesses, the kind who get the U.S. government 
     to set up deals for them abroad or to tailor regulations 
     for them--they make a living out of being Democrats. Very 
     few people make a living out of being Republicans. Today, 
     many of our party's leaders envy the Democrats' vast 
     network of patronage, and they have begun using Republican 
     presidential victories in the '80s and congressional 
     victories in the '90s to try to set up shop like the 
     Democrats.
       In front of us all during the last campaign and now with 
     the new Congress, Republican leaders are running away from 
     the issues.
       Nowhere was this clearer than in California, where the 
     California Civil Rights Initiative, a reaffirmation of 
     equality before the law, withstood a titanic campaign against 
     it. It won by ten points, yet our Republican candidate, down 
     by double digits, waited till the final week to associate 
     himself with the issue, and then weakly. The Republican 
     leadership's unwillingness to ride a horse that

[[Page E1116]]

     was obviously heading for victory, a horse that was so 
     rightly its own, indicts its elementary political competence, 
     as well as its commitment to conservative principles. Adding 
     symbolic insult to injury, the Speaker decided to have as his 
     guest to the State of the Union, not Ward Connerly, but Jesse 
     Jackson--someone who stands for group rights over individual 
     rights, who heads a federally financed patronage network, and 
     who is supporting the proposition that the judiciary can 
     overturn the result of the California referendum.
       Our leaders seem tacitly to accept the liberals' premise 
     that the voters disapprove of the conservative vision of 
     American society, that piety, propriety, responsibility, 
     standing for the rights of citizens and families against 
     bureaucratic encroachment amount to extremism. So the 
     Republican leadership now presses upon us an agenda best 
     characterized as Rockefeller Republicanism--fiscal stringency 
     combined with claims of superior competence in management, 
     and guilty protestations of moderation.
       On top of this, they timidly set a veneer of procedural, 
     contentless conservatism: The balanced budget amendment 
     instead of a commitment to cut taxes; the line item veto 
     instead of commitments to cut entitlements and de-fund 
     leftist advocacy groups; propping up a ponzi scheme going 
     broke instead of real efforts to privatize Social Security; a 
     declaratory Defend America Act instead of a bill to build 
     real missile defenses; touchy-feely talk about concern for 
     the environment instead of reforming environmental laws so 
     that they don't steal people's property. And then they wonder 
     why Republican voters have lost their enthusiasm and why Bill 
     Clinton, that thinly veiled blob of fraud, was able to cast 
     himself as the defender of families, religion, indeed of 
     ``our values'' and was able to cast the Republicans as dark 
     forces threatening America.
       On Election Day, according to exit polls, some 25% of self-
     described conservatives and a big majority of self-described 
     moderates, most of whom share the cultural premises of 
     conservatism, voted for Clinton. I stress that Clinton was 
     able to occupy this conservative ground only because the 
     Republicans vacated it. The cynically counterfeit character 
     of Clinton's appeal to cultural conservatism could have been 
     blasted away by a single picture of a partial birth abortion, 
     or by a pointed reference to Romer v. Evans, or by a real 
     commitment to tax reduction. But the Republican candidate and 
     party seemed afraid of their own issues. The reason why our 
     leaders flock to contentless issues is precisely that they 
     spare them the trouble of taking on real interests and 
     changing real habits.
       The American conservative tradition, which began with 
     Washington and Adams, is founded on human dignity and a 
     concern for character. No phrase came from Washington more 
     often than ``We have a national character to establish.'' 
     Following Aristotle, Cato the elder, and others, George 
     Washington repeated that the Republic could only be built on 
     the firm foundations of private morality. John Adams surveyed 
     the world's peoples and found that only in America were there 
     the same habits that under-girded freedom in a few ancient 
     republics. In crafting our institutions, the Founding Fathers 
     limited the power of government because only under limited 
     government can we encourage those habits. The government 
     established by the Founders did not make us moral. But it 
     took pains to be on the right side of the great moral 
     questions.
       Now let me say a few words about our historic opportunity 
     to make clear which way of life we want to foster and which 
     way of life we abhor.
       Republicans did themselves and the country a disservice in 
     1996 by talking about the ``Character Issue'' without ever 
     mentioning Bill Clinton's specific misdeeds and above all 
     without explaining what about them is wrong. They failed to 
     make the essential political point: The conversion of power 
     into money, or sex is corruption and is the inevitable result 
     of big government. Corruption can be fought only by 
     restricting the opportunities to profit from it. The late 
     Christopher Lasch wrote that whereas the American dream once 
     was that any person, no matter his circumstances, could make 
     his way without having to curry anyone's favor, now that 
     dream consists of the opportunity to rise out of the class of 
     the ruled, into the class of the rulers. We conservatives 
     want to do away with Bill Clinton's America, where people 
     must wheedle and pay for privileges as well as to stay out of 
     trouble with the government. We want to bring back the 
     Founders' America of freedom, responsibility, and, yes, 
     virtue.
       Today government at all levels taxes, spends, and regulates 
     roughly twice as much as when I grew up. It touches every 
     aspect of our lives, and harms just about everything it 
     touches. It will fine you for not wearing a seat belt, but 
     will not protect your life from criminals. It will deliver 
     contraceptives to your children, but cannot deliver the mail. 
     It prohibits a Jewish community in New York from having a 
     school district--who knows what politically incorrect things 
     their kids might learn from reading the Bible--but it forces 
     others to accept the normality of two moms. In the name of 
     racial equality, the government forces us to discriminate on 
     the basis of race. Once upon a time our government was a 
     bulwark against domestic enemies. Now big government has 
     become our chief domestic enemy.
       That is why there is really only one issue. Who will stand 
     on the side of the American people against their government 
     gone bad? Make no mistake: America is rapidly dividing into 
     two sets of people with two distinctive ways of life. One set 
     has behind it the full power of Bill Clinton's corrupt state 
     of clients and patrons. The other set, that tries to live 
     virtuously and by their own hard work, is looking for 
     political leadership. It is up to us to protect the vast 
     majority of the American people against a government that is 
     undermining our capacity for self government, our prosperity, 
     our families, our spiritual lives, and even our capacity for 
     self defense.
       With each passing year, America resembles less and less 
     what the Founders bequeathed us and looks more and more like 
     the countries our immigrant forefathers tried to get away 
     from. This is happening in large part because the ruling 
     classes who run our government, the universities, the media, 
     the entertainment industry, the arts, have gathered unto 
     themselves enormously powerful means of governance.
       They detest our patriotism. They dislike our people's 
     prosperity. It is their policy that we consume too much of 
     the world's resources.
       But whether the excuse is en- vironmentalism or poverty or 
     crime, the recipe is always the same. Take money away from 
     independent working people and give it to the favorites of 
     the ruling class.
       Of course, this is a recipe for economic decline. Nowhere 
     in the writings of the Founding Fathers is there anything 
     about managing the economy. Our Founders wanted to promote 
     prosperity, not manage it. They set about ensuring that 
     government would be small, frugal, impartial, and moral. We 
     became rich because government, in Jefferson's words, would 
     not ``take from the mouth of labor the bread it had earned.'' 
     If we abandon the Founders' mores, no economic policy can 
     keep us out of the poorhouse.
       The ruling class dislikes our tradition of self-government. 
     They equate local control of crime with brutality and racism. 
     Local zoning is racism. Local control of schools is racist. 
     We are all racists--except they. They have turned laws that 
     prohibit racial discrimination into mandates for racial 
     preferences in everything from school admissions to hiring 
     and firing. A whole industry has grown up to administer this 
     American form of apartheid.
       The ruling class does not care about public safety. Having 
     made it very difficult for States and localities to police 
     themselves, having left ordinary citizens with no choice but 
     to protect themselves as best they can, they now try to take 
     our guns away. In fact they blame us and our guns for crime. 
     This is so wrong that it cannot be an honest mistake.
       The ruling class does not care that our children are being 
     diseducated, that schools are becoming factories of ignorance 
     and decay. Every proposal regarding education that has come 
     out of the establishment calls for more money and more union 
     control.
       Above all, the people who run this country have deep 
     contempt for the culture on which it rests. They tell us we 
     are zealots if we talk about social issues like abortion, 
     education, homosexuality, race relations, and the role of 
     religion in public life. Because liberals have failed the 
     country on these issues, they would rather we not talk about 
     them--I say we must.
       In this period of capitulation and bewilderment, it would 
     be easy to wring our hands and say that it's difficult to 
     know what to do. But it isn't. It's easy. The tools and 
     policies are right in front of us.
       We can and should end welfare--not ``as we know it.'' Just 
     end it, period. Charity for those who deserve it is something 
     with a long and honorable history in America.
       We can and should privatize Social Security--obviously 
     people who are already retired should get every penny already 
     promised. But just imagine if every penny deducted from us 
     henceforth went into individual retirement accounts of our 
     choosing and to our families. We could all look forward to a 
     lot more money, and the government would have a lot less 
     to spend from day to day.
       For the monsters of Medicare and Medicaid, we can and 
     should substitute individual medical savings accounts, backed 
     up by vouchers.
       We can and should be rid of the monstrous educational 
     establishment by giving parents vouchers for whatever amount 
     any level of government taxes them to educate their children.
       We can and should re-establish the line between what is 
     individual property and what is the government's property by 
     replacing the failed Endangered Species Act with conservation 
     programs that really work because they do not pit the 
     interests of wildlife against those of landowners.
       We can be rid of the terrible bureaucracy of the IRS, and 
     of all the distortive inequities of the current system just 
     by instituting a flat tax.
       We can restore self-government by reducing the power of the 
     federal courts to review the acts of state courts and the 
     enactments of citizens. The Founding Fathers wrote Article 3, 
     Section 2 of the Constitution precisely to make sure that the 
     judiciary would be, in Alexander Hamilton's words, ``the 
     least dangerous branch.'' Now that the courts have become a 
     clear and present danger to our democracy, it is time to use 
     the Founders' remedy.
       We can and we should thwart the administration's devilish 
     and dangerous Chemical

[[Page E1117]]

     Weapons Convention and just say no to dishonest diplomacy 
     that makes our citizens feel secure while their danger 
     increases.
       Shrinking the government would yield many specific 
     benefits. But these are not the main reasons why we should 
     cut government.
       We want to cut taxes not primarily because doing so will 
     put more money in our pockets, but because it will put the 
     means of freedom in our hands. We want to cut the 
     government's power to grant privilege not primarily because 
     privilege is economically inefficient, but because we don't 
     want to be a nation of favor-seekers. We want to keep and 
     bear our guns not because we want to shoot somebody, but 
     because we have a right and duty to take care of ourselves. 
     Moral leadership, today as in 1789, does not mean that the 
     President of the United States forces anyone to go to church 
     or synagogue. But it does mean that by word and deed he leads 
     the country in giving unto God the things that are God's.
       The dignity of citizenship has been co-opted by laws and 
     rules. These confine and direct the lives of Americans away 
     from liberty, faith, and prosperity, into behavior defined by 
     the ruling classes as acceptable to them. Thus denied the 
     gifts endowed by our Creator, we become sheep to be 
     shepherded.
       My friends and colleagues, we cannot succeed by proposing 
     to take over management of the redistributionist state from 
     the Democrats and pat ourselves on the back for doing it more 
     efficiently. We must attack it root and branch. We cannot 
     prevail by continuing to hand out the favors and the goodies, 
     only fewer than the Democrats.
       At this time when all too many Republican leaders have lost 
     their way and don't know what to do except capitulate to 
     forces of big government, it is up to conservative activities 
     in this room to provide the nerve and backbone that the 
     leadership so noticeably lacks.
       I do not say this casually. The organization I founded when 
     I retired from the Senate in 1995, Frontiers of Freedom, 
     supported any number of conservative initiatives in the last 
     Congress. But when the Republican leadership strayed, we did 
     not hesitate in crossing swords, even with the Speaker of the 
     House.
       And so I say to you, where does the strength come from to 
     be a vigilant conservative? From:
       The dignity of citizenship
       the passion of patriotism
       the honor of freedom
       the security of property
       the joy of opportunity in a free society
       the nurture of family
       and the love of God.
       These things belong to tomorrow no less than the past. Rise 
     up my friends and demand that if Newt and Jack and the others 
     will not lead us there . . . then by golly, get out of the 
     way because that is our destination. That is the promise of 
     conservatism.

     

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