America: The Next Generation

In the News: The First New Deal and the Second New Deal

This week's news challenges us to consider what is really going on in the 21st Century battle of ideas.  As the new Obama regime takes shape, it is setting itself up to be perceived as pragmatic economic managers and sincere in its rejection of heavy handed, interventionist foreign policy. 

But what will follow the enormous injection of more government prescribed remedies for our economic woes?  Here's a sampling of opinion from some good thinkers around us and some ideas to ponder.  When you've sifted through it, from your own perspective, please share your own comments and thoughts.

Obama's "New" New Deal
By ckennedy
The world was greeted on Saturday with Barack Obama’s announcement of a massive public works program to “save or create at least 2-1/2 million jobs so that the nearly 2 million Americans who’ve lost them know that they have a future,” ...

United Liberty - Free Market... - http://www.unitedliberty.org/

Doing Hard Things: Rebelution is Here

Barack Obama was elected President with a popular vote margin of nearly 8 million votes.  That is nearly the identical margin he received from people under the age of 30.  In essence, the youth vote delivered this election as it had never done before.

This is an amazing thing.  The election of our first black President would not have been possible without a new generation of voters who think differently than their predecessors.  It is historic in every way, and it is a mark of America's greatness that we can put the negatives of our past behind and still focus on the positive hope of tomorrow.

But is this the whole story?  Is it the end of the story?  Is what you do that matters done when you leave the voting booth?  Is your one vote the best you have to offer?  If so, can you ever vote or do any better than now?

Champions of Freedom

Martin Luther King was very fond of a tract that was written in America in the middle of the 19th Century.  The tract was written by Henry David Thoreau. 

Thoreau was a naturalist - an early environmentalist from the 19th Century.  He was anti-slavery and opposed the Mexican American War.  He was his era's equivalent of a 21st Century liberal Democrat - but for one thing: Thoreau did not believe the solutions to these problems could be gained primarily through government intervention.  Rather Thoreau believed that all of the social problems he observed, were made worse by the use of governmental power, even when it was asserted with the best intentions in mind.

In Civil Disobedience, his 1849 essay, which provided a model for 20th Century leaders of the civil rights movement, Thoreau made the often quoted quip: "that government is best which governs least".

Which Direction for Change?

Barack Obama will be our next President.  Congratulations to those who supported him so vigorously and waited for this day - a day we can hope that the war in Iraq will no longer be the central focus of all our news and public interest, and a day when our country's leaders will not act as if economic turmoil can rattle a calm direction of leadership. 

For all the African Americans who thought this was an impossible dream, and for all the young people who may have a better reason to believe their siblings, friends and spouses may not have to die fighting a war in a foreign land – these are extraordinary things and they nearly bring tears to my eyes to think about how good it must feel for those people.

It seems appropriate and good to take a few days, even a few weeks to celebrate the good side of things this election means before the inauguration of the new President and the swearing in of a new Congress.