Conservatism

EDWIN J. FEULNER, Ph.D.
President, The Heritage Foundation

THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION 25TH ANNIVERSARY
LEADERSHIP FOR AMERICA LECTURES

WASHINGTON, DC
DECEMBER 8, 1999

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and good evening.

Sixteen times during the past two years I have stood before gatherings such as this all over America. And I thought I had become accustomed to Heritage 25 events. But this repetition did not prepare me for tonight.

I am delighted, as always, to be among so many good friends—conservatives who share our vision and our common purpose. I am also a little sad to think that this is the final event in our Heritage 25: Leadership for America campaign and celebration. These past two years have seen not only the boldest undertaking in our 26-year-history, but also the most successful.

As I listened to Ed Meese announce the outpouring of support we have received during this campaign, I felt both overwhelmed and truly humbled. My gratitude to you, the people of Heritage, who place such trust in us, is more than I know how to express. And I understand that we have a solemn responsibility to earn your trust anew in everything we undertake.

As I look back over this two-year lecture series, I am awed by the wealth of ideas and inspiration it has generated. These speakers include former prime ministers from Britain and the Czech Republic, a Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, three former Cabinet members, Ed Meese, Bill Bennett, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, a speaker of the House of Representatives, and distinguished scholars and writers from a variety of fields—all of them the very keenest minds in conservatism today.

As I thought about the daunting prospect of following that stellar lineup, it occurred to me that one topic was glaringly absent from our series—and that topic was conservatism itself. I decided that I wanted to speak about the future of conservatism, and how we ought to view that future. So, I specifically want to talk to you this evening about conservatism and optimism. I want to tell you why I am an optimist—and why optimism is the only attitude we conservatives can afford or justify.

Now, to give the pessimists their due, they can marshal plenty of statistics to worry themselves and their friends. They can cite a host of negative trends that began in the 1960s and ran into the ’90s: steady increases in crime, illegitimacy, welfare, juvenile delinquency, academic failure, broken homes and on and on—all accompanied by a sickening decline in popular culture.

They can point out that more recently, what looked like a conservative tidal wave in 1994 appears to be a conservative ebb tide in 1999. Now, I grant you, this is a picture of a troubled past. But a troubled past does not justify pessimism about the future.

Unfortunately, that fact has eluded some conservatives. During the past year, we’ve heard a few of them declare,

• our politics has failed,

• conservatives have lost the culture wars, and

• we should separate ourselves from the institutions now occupied by the forces of political correctness.

Well, my counsel to you tonight is precisely the opposite: Instead of becoming cultural isolationists, conservatives need to engage more aggressively—and more intelligently—than ever before with the institutions that have been captured by that ideology of political correctness. I say this for several reasons.

WHY OPTIMISM?

First of all, because the most fundamental grounds for optimism are found not in our institutions, but in ourselves—in our very nature as human beings. That theme was persuasively argued by Professor James Q. Wilson in his Heritage 25 lecture, in Los Angeles, on Human Nature. He said that the impulse of people to adopt moral standards arises "from within their own social nature."

People value families acutely; they dislike unfairness passionately; they seek temperate, prudent friends greatly. People, in short, are naturally revolted by the worst features of our culture and will search for ways to help set matters right.

In this century, culture became weaker; in the next, it may become stronger.

The impulse to reverse cultural decline is a positive inclination that stirs within us and is rooted in our nature. Now, I offer this as the first pillar that supports my optimism.

But this is not to say that we can relax and wait for nature to work its magic—because there is no magic. Reversing our cultural decline requires serious thought, rational strategies and deliberate action. People’s ability to devise and carry out such strategies depends critically on the kind of social order they happen to inhabit.

So, if human nature is the first pillar supporting my optimism, the second is America itself. As Americans, we live in a social order that affords us advantages unparalleled in human political history. In his Heritage 25 lecture on Leadership, George Will observed, and I quote, "we have been called—rightly, in my judgment—the only country ever founded on a good idea."

Abraham Lincoln articulated that idea at Gettysburg: Our nation was "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." President Lincoln was speaking at a moment when a great internal war tested whether a nation "so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." It was a terrible moment in American history, because we faced the very real prospect of seeing the world’s noblest experiment in human freedom demolished by internal conflict. But we, as a nation, did survive that test and we still endure.

The tests we face today seem as minor skirmishes when compared with the life-threatening challenges Americans have met and overcome in the past. And in every case, we overcame them—not in spite of our institutions—but because of them. The Founding Fathers designed our system so that our institutions could survive cultural pathologies of all kinds. Of course we must fight without reserve against the malignancy of moral relativism that besets our institutions today.

But I believe it is a mistake of the first order to confuse a malignancy with the body that it threatens. When a person suffers from cancer, we don’t abandon the body—we attack the disease. If we expect to reclaim and restore our cherished institutions, we must do so through engagement, not divorce. To engage effectively, however, we must understand the principles that make America the most resilient system ever devised for human flourishing.

Our Heritage 25 lecture series was conceived for just that purpose: to promote a better understanding of these basic principles—not as an abstract intellectual exercise, but rather as a practical necessity for confronting the problems we face today. What is it about America that has made us the envy of the civilized world? How is it that our unique way of life has released such torrents of creative energy?

These questions have many answers, and one of the most fundamental came from Nobel Laureate Gary Becker in his Heritage 25 lecture, in Chicago. America and Americans have thrived on competition. Because our nation was conceived in liberty, we are free—more so than any other people on earth—to choose between competing alternatives in every aspect of our lives. Excepting, of course, the IRS and the undertaker.

Competition in this broad sense is not just an economic concept. Gary pointed out, and I quote:

The "invisible hand" of competition is not simply the quaint musings of ivory tower economists who have known little about the real world. Competition is, indeed, the lifeblood of any dynamic economic system, but it is also much more than that. Competition is the foundation of the good life and the most precious parts of human existence: educational, civil, religious, and cultural as well as economic. That is the legacy of the intellectual struggles during the past several centuries to understand the scope and effects of competition, the most remarkable social contrivance "invented" during the millennium.

As we work to restore our cultural institutions, competition is one of our most potent allies, and it is the third pillar that supports my optimism. We can see the power of competition all around us.

EDUCATION

One of the most insidious blights on our culture today is the failure of public education. Over many decades, operating as monopolies insulated from competition, our public schools have been taken over by teachers’ unions, progressive technocrats, and self-serving bureaucrats. They would have us believe that they understand better than we do what is best for our own children. Through default, they have denied several generations of American children their birthright to a decent education. The worst victims are those who suffer the most—children of low-income parents in our inner-cities. And it is precisely those parents who are demanding school choice most emphatically today. They demand the right to determine how their children are educated, and they mean to have it.

In his Heritage 25 Lecture on Self-Government, Dr. Michael Joyce emphasized this brightening ray of hope. Parents in Milwaukee have fought for—and won—the right to choose an alternative to that city’s deplorable public schools. And the alternatives they typically choose are schools that nurture civility, discipline, and moral responsibility. In those schools, Mike Joyce noted, and I quote:

students are treated with utmost respect even, or especially, when being disciplined, because they are understood to be, not empty test-tubes ready for some social engineering scheme, but rather responsible and accountable creatures of God, endowed with all the dignity the Founders believed every American citizen to possess.

Today, school-choice programs are blossoming around our nation at an accelerating rate. And the more parents see the benefits of competition among schools, the more they will demand it. I submit to you that the growing momentum for school choice in America is a force that will not be stopped.

SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM

A second place we see the restorative power of competition is in the debate over Social Security reform. Conceived in the New Deal, Social Security is the crown jewel of the liberal welfare state. As recently as five years ago, no politician in Washington dared even touch the third rail of politics, Social Security.

Today, those same politicians in both political parties are actively designing legislation to begin privatizing Social Security so that American workers can benefit from the competitive marketplace of real investments. In the debates on education and Social Security—and in other debates like them—we can see an emerging choice between two principles.

On one side is the liberal principle of a caretaker government—the "nanny state"—about which Lady Margaret Thatcher, our Heritage 25 lead-off speaker, warned us. And on the other side are the conservative principles of freedom, self-reliance, and competition. Now, the public debates aren’t being conducted in such terms, but those are the principles at stake—make no mistake about that. At a practical level, the Social Security debate is giving Americans a choice between two systems. One pays them a government pittance after a lifetime of work. The other will let them invest their earnings, live out a secure retirement, and then pass wealth on to their children. Can any conservative seriously wonder which alternative Americans will choose when they are finally allowed to make an informed choice?

CONSERVATIVE INSTITUTIONS

A third place we see the restorative power of competition is in the growth and success of conservative institutions, particularly think tanks, like The Heritage Foundation. For many years, especially since mid-century, conservatives were all but shut out of the marketplace of ideas. The news media was dominated by liberals who presented conservative ideas—when they presented them at all—with an ingrained bias that was obvious to everyone but themselves. Book publishers showed little taste for conservative thought. In our colleges and universities, where research and intellectual ferment of the greatest consequence is carried out, conservative ideas have been even less welcome. But in our free, competitive system, there was nothing to stop us from creating new forums for developing and marketing our ideas. And that, in a nutshell, is why conservative think tanks have flourished. Their birth and growth is the work of conservatives who chose to compete in the marketplace of ideas.

The field of competition remains tilted against us, because some, so-called private think tanks on the left receive substantial support from the government. But rather than sit back and complain about the obstacles we faced in media markets and in the policy-making arena, we have gone out and earned a share of those markets. And, as you know, we did it without one dime of government support.

BUILDING ON SUCCESS AND FRIENDS

The financial report you heard from Ed Meese tonight was a report from one segment of that marketplace. The tremendous support we at Heritage have received during this two-year campaign is one measure—and a dramatic one—of how conservatives are competing and winning in the marketplace of ideas. Every dollar of that support could have gone to any of a thousand other causes. But they came to Heritage because you, our supporters, our members, our friends, trust us to promote your ideals. And during these two years, we have lived up to that responsibility.

• We opened our Center for Media and Public Policy, which is our commitment to develop new ways to compete more effectively in media markets still dominated by old-line liberals.

• We commissioned a comprehensive legal study that led to a congressional consensus in both parties on the proposition that this nation not only can but should build a missile defense system.

• We published study after study on the imperatives of strong foreign and defense policies—during a time when America was squandering its hard-won respect as the world leader.

• We hired a team of specialists to work full-time on Social Security reform. As a result of our work, tens of millions of Americans now understand that a free-market alternative to Social Security is a better alternative.

• We created a permanent program to help restore religion to its proper place in civil society.

• We expanded our work to build coalitions among conservatives. Today, Heritage is the nation’s leader in forging cooperative strategies to advance conservative principles.

• We established a program devoted to teaching young people the wisdom of our Founders and the genius of our Constitution. This is our commitment to help pass America’s heritage on to the next generation.

• We expanded our Center for Data Analysis and broke the federal monopoly on number-crunching. Today, your Heritage Foundation is a full competitor with agencies like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—agencies that have long obstructed conservatives by giving biased analyses of free-market proposals. Indeed, Heritage has become so effective in forecasting the impact of government programs on American families that the CBO is now scrambling to catch up with us.

What I want to underscore tonight is that all of these innovations are products of a competitive market. They are textbook examples of how conservatives are competing and succeeding in the marketplace of ideas. This did not come about by luck or by accident.

POWER OF OUR IDEAS

One of the core differences between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives are committed, on principle, to free, competitive markets.

• Faced with failing public schools, the left says: Give them more tax money. We say: Expose them to competition, and give parents a choice.

• Faced with a failing Social Security system, the left says: Give the system more tax money. We say: Open that system to competition, and give workers a choice.

On one issue after another, this is the great irony and the tragic flaw of modern liberalism: Rather than compete with our ideas, it offers an ideology that disdains competition. It is that flaw which has allowed conservatives to make enormous gains, and we have succeeded at this by building institutions like The Heritage Foundation.

Today the left is painfully aware of our success. Earlier this year, a self-appointed liberal watchdog organization called the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy issued a comprehensive report on the gains conservative think tanks have made during the 1990s. David Callahan, the author of that report, had this to say:

It is now beyond dispute that left-of-center funders have made a calamitous strategic blunder by underfunding public intellectuals and policy thinkers. This mistake is profoundly ironic. Who would have ever thought, thirty or forty years ago, that the right would come to believe more deeply in the power of ideas [emphasis added] than the left?

If that phrase rings a bell, it might be because the history of The Heritage Foundation’s first 25 years is entitled "The Power of Ideas." Another acknowledgment of conservative success came earlier this year—and came very grudgingly—from Kristin Luker, a professor of sociology at the University of California, at, yes, Berkeley. Writing in an academic journal about the success of think tanks, Professor Luker said:

The most effective in terms of shaping public discourse are the right-wing think tanks that are part of an increasingly self-confident and intellectually vigorous conservative movement. … [These institutions] can avail themselves of the benefits of shared passion, energy, commitment, and an overarching vision of society. …The future may be bleak. Academics cannot compete with conservative think tanks on their own terms.

And so my friends, the chickens come home to roost. Liberals who have treated conservatives as unfit for academia must now admit that they cannot compete with us on our terms. That is pessimism grounded in reality.

I believe my optimism is also grounded in reality. My three pillars again, are

• As human beings, our very nature embodies the God-given impulse to create a social order in which we can realize our full human potential.

• As Americans, we are blessed with a social order conceived in liberty, and our history makes it clear that as champions of freedom, we lose only by default.

• As conservatives, we are guardians of our nation’s founding principles and the foremost defenders of free competition. Recent history proves that when we compete with all of our heart and mind, we succeed.

I believe all three of these are good reasons to be optimistic. But the roots of my optimism run beyond reason and are nourished from a deeper place within our souls. This is our legacy, and our most valuable lesson from Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan showed us the nature and power of optimism.

Now when we remember his leadership with appreciation, liberals tell us we are living in the past. They remind us that the Cold War is over—and that’s true.

• They remind us that the economy is strong—and that’s true.

• They note that the center of political debate has shifted dramatically to the right—and believe me, that’s also true.

But they claim that because of these circumstances, the ideals that Ronald Reagan stood for are relics of the past and have no value in today’s world. And that is dead wrong.

OUR LEADING OPTIMIST

Ronald Reagan’s legacy to us transcends time, place and circumstance. His radiant example taught us what Kipling meant in the poetic lines,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run;
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Ronald Reagan was our man. He was "the Gipper"—the coach who came in when conservatives felt dispirited—he made us believe in ourselves. He told us to envision a shining city on a hill—and then inspired us to get on with the job of building it.

Too many conservatives today are wavering in their inspiration. Too many are complaining that we cannot succeed until another Reagan comes along to lead us. I have no doubt that Ronald Reagan himself would say that this is wrong. The will to succeed cannot come from another: It must come from within each of us; it must come from our own hearts.

President Reagan once remarked that "the history of our civilization, the great advances that made it possible, is not a story of cynics or doom-criers. It is a gallant chronicle of the optimists—the determined people … who dreamed great dreams and dared to try whatever it took to make them come true." I am an optimist because the alternative is—for me—unthinkable.

It is my great privilege to head an institution that is filled with optimists—the determined people. That is why we chose for our 25th anniversary theme: "Leadership for America." That is why we adopted a vision for America that is audacious in scope: "The Heritage Foundation is committed to rolling back the liberal welfare state and building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity and civil society flourish."

A vision of that scope challenges us to dream great dreams—to look beyond tomorrow, beyond next year, beyond the next election, and beyond the horizon. It has been said that the future is not something we enter, but something we create. Let us not enter a future that none of us would choose. Rather, let us create a future that all of us deserve.

Don’t wait for another Ronald Reagan—but do keep his legacy of optimism alive in your heart. Dream great dreams with us. And dare to try to make those dreams come true. Thank you.

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Leadership for America: The Principles of Conservatism. Edited by Edwin J. Feulner, Jr. In Leadership for America, seventeen shapers of contemporary political and intellectual life shed new light on the conservative principles that undergird the American republic. As the modern conservative movement ripens into maturity, Margaret Thatcher, William J. Bennett, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and other leaders remind us that its moral, intellectual, and political force is grounded on certain powerful ideas that must never be forgotten.

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Heritage 25: Leadership for America
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