Interview With Senator Wallop, Part One
By Peter and Helen Evans (06/28/04)
Following is part of an on-going collection of interviews which will eventually be a book, America, The Great Experiment: What's America For?
Helen: Although we might use some current examples, what we'd really like to talk about are the foundations of America. Once someone is aware of those they can make more informed decisions about current events. Also, once someone gets to know America, they will probably learn to love her. When we love something, we cherish and protect it from harm.
It seems that everyone is aware of the terrorist threat, but not many want to think about the internal erosion of the values which America stands for. Internal erosion is as much a threat as terrorism. We hope this book and your contribution to it will help people to love and cherish America again. Not just to be voters, but to be citizens who guide and protect her.
It's appropriate to confront our opponents, but it's too easy to get stuck in the fight; beating heads and beating heads and getting nowhere. It's fun, it's jazzy, but we want people to go further... to loving America again. Sure, we may have to fight, both inside and outside our borders, to protect the country we love, but we shouldn't lose sight of the bigger picture.
Senator Wallop: For starters, I think you have to get rid of the hyphenated-American. Abraham Lincoln said it best. "When you become an American you become flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood of the Founding Fathers." If you are still a Mexican-American, a German-American or a Polish-American, you can't be flesh of the flesh and blood of the blood with the Founding Fathers. You'll only be that if you're an American-American. In recent decades we have spent so much time and money protecting the culture, from whence they emigrated, over the values of the America to which they came. However, there are some immigrants who are more dedicated to America than the Americans who were born here.
Helen: For example, we attended a seminar here in DC where we counseled a group of people who had immigrated from Sierra Leone about the process of home buying. At first we were a bit reluctant because we weren't sure if they knew basic stuff about contracts, etc. Yet, they amazed us by speaking about freedom, choice and the accumulation of wealth as knowledgeably as any college professor. We wish all the rest of Americans would think as much about their lives, and recognize that some things must be built and learned, rather than looking for an instant quick fix; usually, someone else doing the quick fix for them.
Senator Wallop: Yes, many immigrants cherish the value of choice and opportunity and the value of education more than 7th or 8th generation Americans. For instance, listen to Mr. Kerry talk. His whole purpose in life is to make government provide for the people, rather than what our Founding Fathers stressed, that government should provide the opportunity for people to provide for themselves.
Helen: Isn't that one of the big mis-conceptions about government? What it should and should not do for the people?
Senator Wallop: Well, if you go back to de Tocqueville, he warned us against what would happen when people learned that, by their vote, they could spend other people's money on themselves. By and large that's what we've done. If you look at the liberal tendency in this country and the tenets of modern liberalism, you'll see that it's to create constituencies that are dependants. The more you spend on people from other people's resources, the more they demand that those expenditures increase, and the more is the expectancy that the government 'owes' them. Thus "entitlements" were born.
One of the more fascinating things is that, if you look at charity these days - and Americans are extremely charitable people - the government is still involved in a big way. For example, if you look at the Catholic Church, which is very dependant on the government for Catholic Charities, you see what happened, in San Francisco and other places, where it had to agree to things that are totally against the tenets of Catholic faith, in order to get money from the government. For instance they are obliged now to provide medical insurance for abortions, even though that's totally against Church doctrine.
Government created a major dependency. They are not unique in that.
Peter: Right now we're reading a book by Marvin Olasky, "the Tragedy of American Compassion." Public discussions were going on, even back in the late 19th century, about the risks of creating a dependency on "the dole," and even during the Depression most people would try anything and everything before taking money from the government directly. They would much rather take a job from the government, rather than take money directly as welfare.
Senator Wallop: Yes, the Hoover Dam was built that way through a government job-creation program. These were people who took pride in working for themselves. In fact, that pride hasn't been lost on most Americans, but it's been lost on those who provide it. Look at the Welfare Reform program and the success stories that came out of that new process. There are stories of people who were on welfare and were welfare-dependent but had no place to go because the welfare system was structured so as to keep them dependent. The political power became support for dependent people. But that began to disappear when the welfare program was restructured so those dependent on it could go to jobs without losing too much, and then, gradually, as they could earn more were freed from welfare. There are lots and lots of stories of people who discovered the dignity of being freed from their dependency. That was the whole essence of welfare reform and why Clinton and others were so adamantly opposed to it.
Peter: How did it manage to struggle through, then? The legislation was changed in 1996, wasn't it?
Senator Wallop: You may recall that it was 3 separate times that welfare reform passed Congress before his veto was overridden. And of course, now Clinton takes credit for welfare reform.
The fact is that there are unbelievable stories of renewed and found dignity that came out of that reform. People who have emerged from the shackles of welfare to become productive citizens of this country.
Helen: Let's consider Iraq for a moment. People are saying, in effect, "How come it isn't a democracy already?" We need to remember America, The Great Experiment, where we're still learning how to be free; be it of welfare or of terrorists.
Senator Wallop: There's a wonderful quote by Jefferson, that I just used recently in a speech at Heritage. "We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed". In other words, it's not going to take place overnight. There aren't traditions of freedom in a place like Iraq. They're going to have to come to grips with a concept that they hadn't been allowed to conceive before. Then there are the other problems; you don't have the rule of law, you don't have the mechanisms of liberty in place. Therefore, people are unwilling to trust. You still have the same problem in Russia. For instance, they are allowed to have private property and those rights are guaranteed, but as soon as you declare your property as your own the government comes in and taxes you about 110%!
I have a friend who is a micro-surgeon in Moscow; one of the world's best. He lives in a building that looks pretty shabby from the outside, but once you go inside, it's very nice. They rent from the state I asked him why he doesn't own the property. My friend replied that, if it was just the cost of the property, he could certainly afford that, but he couldn't afford the government recognition of his owning property, as a so-called "wealthy" person. The taxes were what he couldn't afford.
What the world has not come to grips with is that the Great American Experiment is still going on. It's the quintessential revolution of the world, and as with any experiment part of it is going in the right direction and part of it is not.
Helen: Isn't that like life? We take a few steps forward, sometimes a few back, sometimes a detour. It's not always a forward progression. Life has it's ups and downs.
Senator Wallop: Oh we make mistakes, but by and large the country bounces back from them. Still, I think we're troublingly headed in a liberal direction.
Peter: Could you encapsulate what you think are the 'right' direction and the 'wrong' direction that are pulling in opposition to each other?
Senator Wallop: Michael Barone has just written a new book describing soft America and hard America. What he says is that, by and large America is heading in the hard direction, but the education system is not. If you take a look at people from let's say high school to the graduate school level, it's all soft America. But then if you look at people like Michael Dell and Bill Gates, that's the hard America. They're examples of the people whose genius has been freed up by being in this country. Mostly you find that hard America is from 30 years old and up. That's not to say that some never emerged from soft America, and that's not to say that some never were part of soft America. However, by and large it's the old Churchill statement that "if you're not liberal while you're young there's something the matter with you, and if you're not a conservative later you haven't lived yet." That's not an exact quote, but a paraphrase.
Peter: Something about the heart and the mind I think. "If you haven't been a socialist in your twenties you have no heart, but if you're still a socialist in your forties, you have no mind."
Senator Wallop: Our educational system is appallingly poor right now. Yet, somehow we're turning out some of the most intellectual and powerful sophisticated minds in the world. I think that's because we still have the opportunity here. Take look at Europe, now. Except for Britain and Ireland, Europe is not creating a new jobs. They haven't for decades.
Peter: They import their service sector workers.
Senator Wallop: It's because the population is too dependent on the state, even at the most minute levels of existence; be it health or energy or what have you. The government taxes the socks off them for gas and then subsidizes every other level of transportation. more to come
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