A New Golden Age

By Sam Huntington

The Heritage Foundation recently suggested that changing America’s course is within our grasp and offered a few suggestions how we might achieve a new golden age: hard work and personal achievement. Bless their little pea-picking hearts …



Toward getting America into its second century, Heritage suggested the following:

• End energy subsidies

• Provide school choice

• Promote free trade

• Reduce the federal budget

• Reform the tax code

• Repeal Obama Care

• Reform Medicare

Of course, the underlying proposition is that Americans even want a second American century. I think most do, but certainly not all. Not every American wants to see their country succeed. They may live in America, but liberals, progressives, and neo-Marxists prefer to see themselves as citizens of the world —and they easily comprise one-third of our voting population.  

But if America wanted to succeed, if we wanted to ensure a second American century, how should we proceed? Heritage is right to suggest ending federal oil subsidies —because either we have a free market, or we don’t. Either we believe in the invisible hand, or we don’t. It is unwise to trust government to pick business winners and losers. By the way, why does government insist on using ethanol in gasoline? It does nothing more than gunk up engines, increase the cost of corn, the cost of animal feed, and the price of meat.

If we want to improve American public education, we can begin to do that by doing away with the Department of Education and wasteful federal earmarks, such as Title 1 spending. Education belongs to the states, or to the people. Federal allocation of Title I funds is a usurpation of state authority.

I understand the arguments about free trade; I just haven’t seen any evidence that free trade works to the advantage of the American people. Free trade policy appears based on economic theory by university muttonheads, rather than on empirical evidence. In my view, free trade has cost our people jobs, not increased them. We should wonder why the United States is interested in helping our trading partners more than they are about putting Americans to work. Of course, the World Trade Organization likes “free trade.” They are adherents of world socialism, after all.

Yes, the federal budget demands our skeptical eye. We must take a hard look at entitlement programs, but we also need to evaluate heretofore wasteful spending, including corporate, farming, and educational subsidies. We need to re-think foreign aid. We need to limit Congressional spending beyond annual revenues, except in case of national emergency. The Constitution must dictate federal spending, not the whims of Congress.

We must have tax reform; it is utterly usurious to demand that American workers give up 55% of their monthly income to federal, state, and local taxes. We must have dependable infrastructure to support free enterprise, but we must know where to draw the line. It should be a matter of common sense. Sometimes political brainstorms are too costly. We can and must do better.

Obama Care has to go. Sooner is better than later. I agree with The Heritage Foundation that reforming Medicare is not an option: it is a necessity. We can start by placing American seniors in charge of their own destiny. It is none of the government’s business if my father or mother suffers from heart disease; federal bureaucrats are not entitled to copies of their medical record. Let’s have this discussion, and let’s do it in the open. You know, transparent but not like Obama transparency. And this brings us back to our so-called citizens of the world.

The major obstacle to implementing fiscally responsible programs, leading us into our second American century is that peculiar segment of our society that demands more from government, and who demand someone else pay for it. These neo-Marxist progressives intend on fundamentally transforming the United States of America; they deserve no place at our table.

We’ve been fighting communists since the 1900s; are they somehow “better” communists now because they were born in the United States? Given their awful track record, why do we suddenly believe these miscreants have anything to say that is worthy of our attention? Are they even capable of embracing American values? Have we forgotten that the goal of Marxism is the destruction of the American dream?

Moving this country back to its pre-Obama greatness will be an uphill battle for any conservative administration —not because of congressional impediments, but because so many people in this country have transformed themselves into radical communists or useful idiots.