They Think You're Stupid (19 page)

Reagan's hope and optimism in a 1987 speech in front of the Berlin Wall inspired the world that communism could be defeated and freedoms made available to all people who seek them: "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom."

A number of common themes permeate the words of Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, King, and Reagan. Among these are an enduring faith in God and an understanding that He created our great nation and all its promises and has charged its citizens with its protection.

President George W. Bush referenced this charge in a speech I heard him give in 2004 when he stated, "Democracy is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to the world, and our responsibility to protect it."

A second common theme is that these great men understood America's unique place in the world. We are not a conquering nation, but we will fight to the end against those who wish to bring us harm. We are a nation of individuals in pursuit of our individual dreams, but we are bound together by a love for the freedoms necessary to allow us to pursue our dreams and aspirations.

The third common theme in the words and lives of these great leaders is hope and optimism. Each one overcame extraordinary obstacles to achieve extraordinary goals. They were not always successful in each step along the path to success, but their hope and optimism allowed them to persevere and achieve their "calling." Hope and optimism allowed each one of these leaders to change the country and the world forever.

Dr. Robert Schuller calls this hope and optimism "possibility thinking." The late Don Clifton describes it as "positive psychology." The Apostle Paul calls it "faith." I call it "the key to happiness."

Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from the lives and words of Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, King, and Reagan is that there will always be a greater number of people around us who are consumed by doubt and defeatism who, for various reasons, want to stop us at all costs from accomplishing our goals. And yet, the most successful among us, those of us who will achieve the greatest successes, dream the biggest dreams and make them all come true, are those of us consumed by hope and optimism.

Those of us who are not afraid to challenge the status quo in Washington will be the ones responsible for forcing Congress to enact aggressive policy change. Those who demonstrate the initiative to start their own grassroots movement, grow that movement, and show members of Congress that their political futures rest on changing the status quo and on leading the nation out of problems instead of watching problems get worse.

This great nation was built on the shoulders of those filled with hope and those who believed in a better tomorrow despite the obstacles. We
can
force Congress to unshackle us from the chains of economic slavery and allow all citizens the opportunity to achieve economic freedom. As our nation's forefathers have shown us, it all begins with faith, optimism, and hope.

• The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, reminded us that we are a nation of individuals who share many of the same hopes and dreams.

• In a crisis we unite. In times of prolonged prosperity we fight among ourselves like cats and dogs. Terrorism is a crisis. The war against our economic foundations is a crisis.

Terrorists Want to Kill All of Us

• Support of our president and our military should not be partisan as they prosecute the war on terrorism. Otherwise, the terrorists will be victorious in their mission to instill fear, divide, and destroy our great nation.

• Democrats and the liberal media must not be allowed to plant the seeds of doubt that destroy hope in our abilities, weaken the morale of the public and military personnel, and divide rather than unite us.

Economic Slavery for All

• The "new slavery" is not the slavery of one man owning another as his property, but
economic slavery
--slavery to a tax code and Social Security system that are out of control.

• The federal tax code, Social Security, and Medicare, enacted in 1913, 1935, and 1965, respectively, are the three pillars that support our nation's economic infrastructure. All three systems are in a mess and have been for decades.

• The federal income tax code must be replaced. Several commissions over the last twenty years have all concluded that a replacement tax system should satisfy six criteria. The FairTax (a national sales tax) satisfies
all
six criteria.

• The Social Security system is nearing bankruptcy due to decades of mismanagement, a flawed structure, and a lack of leadership and the political will in Congress for meaningful change. It must be replaced by a system of personal retirement investment.

• The health care system in the United States is severely sick. It is unduly influenced by the federal government, federal regulatory agencies, state governments, state regulatory agencies, insurance companies, and trial lawyers.

• Some of us may have arrived to this nation on the Mayflower, and some of us on slave ships, but we all are in the same boat now.

The City of Doubt--Washington, D.C.

• The public is much more hopeful than members of Congress for the possibility of aggressive policy solutions. Veteran politicians have learned to campaign on hope and optimism, but then they go back to Washington and maintain business as usual.

• Most voters turn off their political antennas the day after the election. Veteran politicians depend upon most voters having short memories or no memory at all.

• It is no wonder why millions have lost hope in their government. Their government has forced them to lose hope in themselves and their ability to be a new voice for policy change. If the majority of the electorate does not express a new voice after election day, the City of Doubt will never become a City of Hope.

A Nation of Hope . . . We the People

• Our nation has been blessed with many leaders in its history who faced seemingly insurmountable challenges and legions of doubters en route to achieving political victories that have forever changed the world.

• Leaders like Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Ronald Reagan were not dissuaded by the doubters. A number of common themes permeate the words of these great leaders, including an enduring faith in God, an understanding of America's unique place in the world, and a sense of hope and optimism.

Chapter Six

There is an old wives' tale that says if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. But if you put a frog in a pot of cold water and add just a little bit of heat, the frog will adjust to the change and stay there. Then you add another little bit of heat, and the frog will adjust again. If you continue to add a little bit of heat over a long period of time, the frog will eventually boil to death without even realizing it.

Like the frog in that tale, the public has been conditioned since the enactment of our tax code (1913), Social Security system (1935), and Medicare program (1965) to accept incremental losses of our individual economic freedoms. Congress has gradually taken more and more of our money, and with it our economic freedom, through numerous forms of taxation to fund the federal government's entitlement programs and pork barrel spending. We the people have allowed it to happen.

When our Founding Fathers boldly declared "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as the foundation of what has become the greatest nation in the world, they also required us to "alter or abolish any form of government" which becomes destructive of those ideals. The tax code mess, the Social Security mess, and the Medicare mess are destroying those ideals
and
our economic freedom.

Our form of government was designed with a system of checks and balances to help ensure sound public policy. On the other hand, the system makes it difficult to change public policy quickly unless there is a crisis. Whenever there is a threat to our national security the president and Congress have historically reacted with a heightened sense of urgency. The attack on our economic security has been a slow boil, but most people do not yet feel the heat.

The inefficiency and unfairness of the tax code and the coming train wrecks for Social Security and Medicare are well documented. But the collective sense of urgency of the president, Congress,
and
the public has been absent. The general public has become conditioned to expect minimal changes from Congress, and Congress has perpetuated that expectation. As a result, our nation faces a growing list of other important problems, which are compounded by the new and different war on terrorism. But if we do not stop the gradual collapse of our economic infrastructure, the list of other
important issues will become irrelevant.

News and information overload has produced a society of incomplete information, unclear thought, and uncertain feelings about nearly all political issues and events. We have been bombarded with too many sound bites, not enough information, and too few facts. People's lives are crammed with too many things to do in the same twenty-four-hour day. As a result, many people are making critical decisions based on isolated factoids of data, which are often not any better than the flip of a coin.

This is why we have constant gridlock in Congress, more too-close-to-call elections, confusing public opinion polls, unsolved decades-old national problems, a declining moral conscience, and a growing lack of personal responsibility. The future of this nation will be determined by the degree to which the general public can better connect the headlines of the day to the facts and their lives and the degree to which government can accelerate its ability to address the big issues effectively. A new model of government is not required to fix these problems, but a new sense of urgency is long overdue.

This nation is richly blessed with
know-how
, but a deficiency of
right-now
. Solving the big problems is not a matter of having the
skill
to solve them. It is a matter of having the
will
to solve them. In order for aggressive solutions to rise to the top of the public's mind-set and the forefront of congressional action, we must systematically and consistently challenge the status quo with a passion for change, or we will continue to get more of the same. We must demand greater urgency from our elected leaders in Congress, and we must demand more intelligent participation from the general public.

Technology has dramatically transformed our nation and our lives and continues to do so at an accelerated rate. We must change public policy at an accelerated rate on the big three critical systems to create a new day in government and a new day in the economic lives of working citizens. To accomplish this will require
A
New Voice
.

A New Voice
is the voice of those voters who are tired of politics and politicians as usual. It is a voice of common sense and urgency. It is the voice of aggressive solutions to solve our nations' most pressing economic issues and to liberate working people from what has become economic slavery.

A New Voice
is not a political party; it's a purpose. That purpose is to inform, educate, and inspire motivated voters to leverage their collective voices to bring about more aggressive congressional action on the big issues.

A New Voice
believes that our government can work the way our Founding Fathers intended.

Our strategy is simple. Stay focused on a few big issues. Establish a highly motivated and mobilized base of voters. Make our voices heard in Congress clearly, swiftly, and consistently.

We will execute this strategy by maximizing the use of technology, establishing an interconnected network of voters, and maximizing media exposure to produce a new model for impacting public policy.

Soon, the politically homeless will have a home.

Maximizing Technology

In 1971 while studying for my Master's degree in computer science, one of the ongoing academic debates was about the future of centralized versus distributed computer processing. IBM was the largest computer company in the world and led in the manufacture and sale of large mainframe computers. It was not unusual for businesses and organizations to have large rooms filled with their "big boxes," as they were sometimes called.

Those who argued on behalf of more and more centralized processing were proved dead wrong. Computer processing power is everywhere now! Sometimes it is abused, but it is everywhere. We can see examples of computer technology every day, from our desktop computer to the car we drive to our cell phone. A typical cell phone has as much or more computer processing power than a typical big box mainframe of the 1970s.

Laptop and desktop computers are everywhere, and let's not forget the latest handheld combination phone and computer that fits in your pocket and is no bigger than a typical cell phone. I resisted getting one of these devices when I was running for the U.S. Senate but finally gave in to my staff's insistence and found it indispensable. I had to learn how to type with my thumbs, but I have gotten pretty good at it.

We are a technologically, 24/7, connected society. When you add snail-mail, e-mail, direct mail, junk mail, and incessant media madness on top of it all, it is easy to understand why many people suffer from information overload. In many cases, it is incomplete or misleading information overload. We are all exposed to more and more stuff, faster and faster, and it all started with the microchip.

Successful businesses have learned how to maximize technology in order to remain competitive. Government agencies have tried to keep up for the sake of improved efficiencies with the people's money. Political campaigns maximize their resources using technology to better target voters. Associations and advocacy organizations have embraced technology for communicating with their constituencies and releasing an avalanche of influence on Congress at strategic opportunities.

Helping to get candidates elected with views and opinions consistent with one's constituency is no longer enough to impact public policy. Effective follow-up between elections is also required using advances in technology, due to the plethora of political forces pulling on a senator or representative after they are elected. Election day is not the end of voter influence over the legislative process. It's the beginning, because too many veteran politicians campaign on hope and enthusiasm, then return to the status quo and doubt when they get reelected.

A New Voice
is your voice. It will maximize technology through the usual and some not-so-usual means to keep its voices engaged and inspired after election day. While many organizations have struggled to keep up with technology,
a New Voice
will maximize technology to develop a Vocal, Inter-connected, and Persistent (VIP) network of voters.
VIP Network

The information highway is loaded with reckless drivers. We cannot believe everything we see and hear on the Internet, and the trust many of us once put in the major television networks' newscasts was shaken during the 2004 election cycle with numerous examples of deliberately biased reporting and forged documents.
A New Voice
will counteract these reckless drivers with compelling facts, completed stories, and common sense observations. With these message characteristics and by focusing on a few big issues,
A New Voice
will be heard above the clutter more often with its VIP network.

During the 2004 presidential election, Senator John Kerry and Democratic candidates repeatedly called the U.S. economy failed or lousy because of President Bush's economic policies. They were repeatedly wrong! Using research compiled by the Media Research Center (MRC), one could easily observe that their campaign rhetoric did not match the facts of the economic situation.

Here are the
facts
. The following table provides a comparison of metrics for the economy during the 1996 reelection year for President Bill Clinton versus the economic metrics in 2004 during President Bush's reelection race.

As mentioned previously, the MRC research report show that news stories about the 1996 economy under President Clinton were positive 85 percent of the time. News stories about the 2004 economy under President Bush were positive only 13 percent of the time. Maybe there is something to this liberal media bias conspiracy theory.

I had several opportunities to debate Democrat officials or candidates during the 2004 presidential campaign on television and radio programs and I shared with them these compelling facts. They were not interested in the facts. They persistently stayed with the Democrat script of bash, distort, and smear. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson's character in the movie
A Few Good Men
, "They can't handle the
facts
!"

I was only one new voice of a few people aware of these facts. Just think of the impact when we have millions of new voices to counter all the junk scattered on the information highway.

Examples of incomplete stories can be seen all the time in newspapers and heard on television and radio news programs. Most incomplete stories are "sound bite" driven, and the media usually tries to personalize the stories by describing their version of a typical person or family, which was selected more for emotional appeal than any statistically representative situation.

Consider this example in the following table:

Compelling facts, completed stories, and common sense observations by millions of new voices are a powerful weapon against what Brent Bozell, President of the MRC, calls the "weapons of mass distortion."