By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
March 10, 2000
Well, today is the Western States Primary, in which Colorado, Utah and Wyoming Presidential Primaries take place. There's only 91 Republican delegates and 75 Democrat Delegates at stake and there's no longer much suspense as to who is going to be the eventual candidates in both parties. However, George W. Bush flew into Provo, Utah in the middle of a Spring blizzard for a brief rally in a hangar at the airport. Considering the conditions, it was well attended, filling the hangar with a responsive audience.
Conditions were not conducive to any really serious development of issues, but Bush concentrated on a couple of simple, but fundamental notions. What came across to me was a challenge to the notion, which goes back at least to 1933 in America , to the concept of an "imperial presidency" introduced by the Democrats to "solve" everyone's problems in life. The "imperial presidency," was merely a form of the same thinking of an era that created communist dictators such as Lenin and Stalin and Fascist dictators such as Hitler and Mussolini. It was based on the notion of class warfare and the need to redistribute wealth privately held by the "bourgeois " - those who owned property and the means to production, to the "proletarians" who were without property. The family, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was merely a manifestation of the natural, historic struggle between the "bourgeois," represented by the patriarchal father of the household, and his wife and children, who were considered part of the proletarian class. "Law, morality, religion, are just so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests," Marx wrote in "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848. It should not surprise us that after 150 years of such thinking that law, morality, religion and the family are under attack worldwide. There are few Americans alive today who still remember a time when individuals in a free land, not the government, were expected to solve their problems, work to create their own happiness and raise the next generation to do likewise. For those of George W. Bush's generation, such a notion is new and challenging. His attack on cradle to grave socialism that has developed in America in the last 65 years is revolutionary reform.
"This gives me a chance to share with you," he told the happy crowd, "what my priorities will be when I become your president. You need to hear it. My priorities will be my faith. My priorities will be my family. And my priorities will be the great land called America. "I look forward to being your president so I can remind people of what our nation's priorities need to be. It starts with something as simple, yet as profound, as this: That if you are a mother or a father; if you happen to be fortunate enough to be a mother or a father, that your most important priority in life is not necessarily your day job, but your most important priority in life is to love your children with all your heart and with all your soul."
In family centered Utah, this brought cheers from the crowd. This was not always a principle that had to be pointed out to the general public. It used to be a given - a basic, immutable fact of life. However, after a 65 year relentless march towards the basic social goals of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto, which called for the re-distribution of wealth, the defeat of the "bourgeois" and the concentration of the means of production into the hands of the State, this is real "reform."
"The best reform for this country," Bush said, "is to end the Clinton-Gore period. For eight years we have heard from the Clinton-Gore administration that we can't share the surplus of America through tax relief. For eight years we have heard from the voices of the status-quo in Washington that people can't have their money back."Here's what I believe: I believe we ought to share some of the surplus with the people who pay the bills. There's a fundamental difference in attitude. There is a fundamental difference between me and the vice-president (Gore.) I want to share the difference when it comes to the surplus. I know that the surplus is not the government's money. It's the people's money."
That brought sustained cheers from the crowd. For everyone in that hangar, that was a revolutionary idea. They had ALL lived in an era in which the dominant political idea, fostered by the Democrats, was the "right" of the "people" through their government to take and use for their own wants the money earned by other people. George Bush last night, and Alan Keyes the night before both were saying in their own manner that that is not correct. The money earned by the people is NOT the government's money to re-distribute as they wish. It really is the money of those who earned it.
A political and social idea that was born in the industrial age, when a few "owners" (bourgeois) employed hundreds if not thousands of "workers" (proletarians), is not really working in the information age where the bourgeois class has exploded to the majority and the proletarian class has shrunk to a minority. The jobs being created in America are mostly coming from small businesses, not huge industrial behemoths. A notion of entreprreurship and private enterprise that Marx and Engels confidently expected to be done away with has exploded and the old Marxist based thinking is totally inadequate to handle the situation.
"I have a plan that says we are going to share SOME of the surplus, after we make sure that Social Security is safe and secure. When I laid that out in a realistic way, the voice of Al Gore could be heard across the land saying, 'It's too risky! Governor Bush's plan to share money with the people who pay the bills is too risky.'"Let me tell you what's risky. What's risky is leaving unspent surpluses in Washington, D.C. Instead we will share part of the surplus by giving EVERYBODY who pays taxes in America tax relief.
"I don't want one of those Washington, D.C. 'targeted" tax cuts. That's one of those tax cuts where the few and the favored get relief. I believe that everybody who pays taxes in America - EVERYBODY ought to get relief.
"Under my plan a family of four in the great State of Utah making $50,000 a year, you get a 50% cut in the taxes you pay to Washington, D.C. My plan understands how to encourage entreprerneurship. This is the campaign for the entrepreneurs in America. This is the campaign for the small business people all across our land. My plan understands that the death tax is unfair to farmers and ranchers and small business people and we do away with the death tax. (sustained cheers.)
"My plan understands that a tax that discourages marriage is unfair. My plan understands that the earnings cap on Social Security recipients is unfair as well. My vision for this country addresses. I not only hear the entrepreneurs, I also hear the voices on the outskirts of poverty. We hear the voices of the small business people, but we also understand that being a single Mom trying to raise children is the toughest job in America.
"A Mom struggling to get ahead with mouths to feed and children to educate is an incredibly tough job. The current tax code, justified and defended by the Clinton Administration, if you are a single Mom with two children making $22,000 a year - for the current tax code - for every additional dollar you put on the table, for every additional dollar you earn to support your family you pay a higher marginal rate on that dollar than someone who is making $200,000 a year.
"This campaign and this cause hears the voices of the people who are working to get into the middle class. This plan knocks down the toll booth on the way the road to the middle class.
"They tell me that the polls say that the American people don't want tax relief and tax reform. I don't care what the polls say. It's conservative to cut taxes and it's compassionate to give people some of their own money back so you can save and you can dream and you can build for your family!"
Bush's plan, and Alan Keyes message are philosophically harmonious. Keyes is pointing out the moral and political contradictions that threaten a nation that was based on the notion that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable right. Bush's Plan seems to gradually wean the public away from socialism, while carefully preserving at least some socialistic props such as Social Security and Medicare for fearful seniors. While we seniors are stuck with a flawed system, hopefully our children and grandchildren can look forward to something better for their old age. Perhaps the younger generation can create a system which nurtures the expansion of the property owners or bourgeois of America - i.e. the home owners, small business, car, cell telephone, TV, computer and VCR owners, farmers, ranchers and entrepreneurs of the Information Age and allows them to regain the personal freedom which we failed to protect and defend for their generation.
To do that, our children and grandchildren need to support the true reformers in the Republican Party and reject the socialism and the fears of the depression and war years that made the Democrats' socialism look so attractive to their parents and grandparents.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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