To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine (37 page)

What will be the tea party movement’s ultimate impact? We don’t know yet, as it is evolving before our eyes. The change we need to save America will not come with one election cycle, but we are beginning to see campaigns, electoral victories, and energetic grassroots action that should give us all hope.

Undoubtedly, the approval of the Democrats’ healthcare reform bill was a blow to freedom. But that was an act of politicians, not the people. Note that the bill was not the reform that candidate Obama had endorsed when the people elected him. In fact, he had specifically repudiated a key part of the reform—the individual mandate—during the Democratic primary.

Since Obama’s election, the people have rendered their judgment on his policies through the ballot box. The victories of Bob McDonnell in Virginia, Chris Christie in New Jersey, and Scott Brown in Massachusetts all demonstrate a roiling dissatisfaction with the direction Obama is taking this country. These victories are also strong indicators of the influence of the tea party movement, in that the winning messages of these three candidates were rooted in tea party principles of lower taxes, smaller government, and individual liberty.

This is not a movement of any one party. While the recent GOP victories are good for the movement, success will also require moderate, small-government Democrats to beat the secular-socialist machine’s candidates in Democratic districts.

The tea party movement is an extraordinary development in the great tradition of American citizen action. It should give us cause for optimism in these dark days. Although we are facing a tenacious opponent, the American people are energized for the fight.

 

 

 

T
he challenges facing America are so fundamental they will shape the very nature of our lives over the next 40-70 years. These challenges include: the growing power of the secular-socialist machine; the importance of scientific and technological innovation; the growing influence of China and India; the nation’s ineffective bureaucratic and litigation systems; the need for cultural reaffirmation of American values; and our government’s remoteness from and arrogance toward the American people it is supposed to represent and serve.

I encourage every American to engage in active citizenship and that’s best done at American Solutions, where I serve as general chairman. As a citizen action network of more than 1.5 million members, including 30,000 small business owners, American Solutions’ goal is
to unite a majority of Republicans, Democrats, and independents in a tri-partisan coalition to support the next generation of solutions that will ensure the United States remains the safest, freest, and most prosperous country in the world.

In 2010, American Solutions’ objectives are three-fold: to stop the radical Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda; to develop the best solutions at every level of government; and to begin to train candidates and elected officials to implement the kind of real change that is so desperately needed to save America.

The first, easiest step you can take is to visit our website at
www.AmericanSolutions.com
, where you can:

American Solutions is dedicated to advocating replacement solutions that work. Denouncing the Left’s failed programs and machine politics is important, but it is not enough. If you want to learn about practical alternatives like the ones presented in this book, visit the American Solutions website. It aims to convince you of one thing: there is a better way to create a better future for our children, our grandchildren, and our country.

Turning America’s current problems into opportunities is the great challenge of our generation. While the frustration is with politics and the problems are with government, we need to focus on a deeper challenge that exists on four levels:

We first have to think through what has to be done.

Then we have to learn to communicate our solutions so Americans will support them.

Then we have to win the political struggle to defeat those in both parties who are stuck in old, obsolete, destructive patterns, and to elect people dedicated to the new thinking and new solutions.

Finally, our new coalition of those committed to the right values, the right language, and the right solutions has to translate political victory into profound changes in government.

There are no institutions that work on all four levels of the challenge. Many do a good job at one part or another, but no one puts it all together into one coherent approach.

Until now. To address all four levels of the challenge, American Solutions is working to identify and promote positive solutions that can help create a better America, and to energetically oppose the bad policies that threaten our prosperity. It will take great effort and many citizen leaders to help people remember and understand what has made America great and what it will take to keep her great.

That is where the Solutions Academy comes in.

The Solutions Academy is an online learning and training center for elected officials, candidates, and citizen leaders. While equipping these individuals to more effectively lead, communicate, and persuade, the academy will also advise them how to take specific actions to support the adoption and implementation of policy solutions that will advance America’s safety, prosperity, and freedom.

The Solutions Academy will offer individual lessons in subject areas such as the economy, energy, education, corruption, and core values and principles. In the energy section, for instance, you will find lessons on offshore drilling, nuclear power, renewable energy, and the dangers of a cap-and-trade energy tax, just to name a few. Each lesson will include a wide variety of compelling content in the form of video, audio, research, polling data, handouts, and recommended reading.

In addition to the public policy lessons, the Solutions Academy will include lessons on running for office and leading in office that will teach skills such as effective communications, fundraising, social media, and grassroots organizing. Candidates will also be able to listen to podcasts to get advice from candidates and their senior advisors, such as Virginia governor Bob McDonnell and his campaign chairman Ed Gillespie, on what made their campaign successful.

In short, the Solutions Academy is a rich resource to help elected officials formulate legislative solutions, help candidates create campaign platforms, and help citizen leaders stay informed and get the tools to persuade their friends and family about the solutions to advance American prosperity and freedom.
ⁱ

Today, the marketplace of ideas is dominated by a left-wing media, academia, and pop culture that equip citizens, either directly or indirectly, with destructive training in bad ideas that run counter to classic and successful American values and principles.

If we are to save America, we need a growing and active group of elected officials at every level of government, candidates for those offices, and citizen leaders who can persuasively communicate the values, principles, and solutions that will ensure a safe, prosperous, and free America.

 

 

 

“T
he land of the free and the home of the brave.” There is a reason our national anthem’s first verse ends with those words. The generations who created America fought terrible wars against overwhelming odds. They deeply believed freedom required bravery. Unless we were the home of the brave, we would not remain free.

That principle is as true today as it was when Francis Scott Key wrote the words to “The Star Spangled Banner.” If the American people do not have the courage to work and fight for their freedom, they will not remain free. Bravery is not just a battlefield phenomenon.

Bravery is a parent protesting a bad policy to her school board.

Bravery is a student challenging his teachers when they propagandize factually incorrect accounts of U.S. history.

Bravery is a politician fighting to reform a powerful bureaucracy.

Bravery is a conservative faculty member risking the loss of tenure and even the loss of her job by standing firm for her beliefs.

Bravery is a businessman risking an audit or worse by speaking out against government intrusion into the private sector.

Bravery is a woman speaking up for life among feminists who will accuse her of being anti-woman.

Bravery is parents deciding to homeschool their child.

Bravery is an entrepreneur deciding to create jobs, not just have one.

Bravery is a reporter ignoring the institutional bias of the mainstream media and insisting on writing the truth.

Bravery is a citizen running for office and accepting all the indignities and frustrations of public life in order to improve his community.

Bravery is a person calling into talk radio and telling the truth as he sees it, even if the host and the audience disagree.

Bravery is crucial, but it is not enough to keep us free. We also need leadership. I’m not saying you have to run for Congress or some other public office (although that is always an option for every citizen). We can all display leadership in our everyday lives.

You lead when you teach positive values to your children and grandchildren.

You lead when you get engaged in civic organizations.

You lead when you assume responsibilities in your religious organization.

You lead when you work in nonprofit and charitable organizations to help people and communities in need.

You lead when you get involved with your local government.

You lead when you mobilize fellow citizens to gather at rallies, demonstrations, and events to voice your objections to government policy.

With brave citizen leaders, the movement to save America will succeed.

Don’t think you are powerless because you have no national audience. Politics is primarily local, and that’s where we need to focus in order to win—persuading one person at a time, one family at a time, and one community at a time that we have better solutions than the corrupt, collectivist policies now being decreed in Washington. That is how you can contribute to our common cause: be brave, be a leader, and never stop fighting for what’s right for America. Together we will bring about a new generation of freedom.

 

 

 

Shortly before this book went to press, the House of Representatives passed the Left’s big-government health reform bill, which President Obama quickly signed into law. The vote was the culmination of a shocking series of bribes, thuggish tactics, and lies, all pursued in direct opposition to the clearly expressed wishes of the American people.

The day after the vote could justifiably have been a miserable one for those Americans who spent the last year fighting against the government’s takeover of one-sixth of our economy. But it wasn’t. The Left’s unconscionable power grab simply strengthened their resolve. The spirit of the day was not resignation, but defiance. In op-ed columns and TV programs, in weblogs and Facebook pages, around water coolers and kitchen tables, the bill’s approval was met with one word:
repeal
.

That day I wrote in my newsletter, “This is not the end of the fight. It is the beginning.” With its corrupt payoffs, legislative tricks, and blatant disregard for the will of the people, the secular-socialist machine has revealed its true nature. Now it’s up to us, the American people, to dismantle this machine.

We have the energy and we have the determination to save America. November 2010 will be our first big chance to render judgment
on the Left’s healthcare bill, and two years later we’ll have another opportunity. It’s easy to despair, but that energy is better put toward preparing for these elections, which will be the most consequential of our lifetime.

We must speak out, organize, and never forget what’s at stake: our livelihood, our freedom, and our precious country.

 

 

 

T
his book is my personal testimony to where we are and what we must do. It is the culmination of fifty-one years of work going back to August 1958, after I watched French paratroopers kill the French Fourth Republic and bring General De Gaulle back to a temporary dictatorship to create a new government. That summer saw the first Berlin crisis with the Soviet Union, the revolution in Iraq, the United States Army (my father’s service) go into Lebanon, and a host of other crises that seemed capable of permanently changing our lives.

For more than half a century, I have had an amazing number of friends, colleagues, mentors, and supporters. I hope each of them feels that part of our work together is in this book.

Joe DeSantis has been an invaluable partner in developing
To Save America
. His deep patriotism, love of America, and commitment to intellectual honesty really helped strengthen and reinforce what we are trying to communicate about this great crisis. He is a mainstay of my intellectual and communications work, and this book reflects his hard work and commitment to helping save America.