To Renew America: on Principles & Values
Six challenges for a prosperous, free, & safe America
Let me outline the six major changes that I believe are necessary to leave our children with an America that is prosperous, free, and safe:- We must reassert and renew American civilization. Until we re-establish a legitimate moral-cultural
standard, our civilization is at risk.
- We must accelerate America’s entry into the Third Wave Information Age. Second only to renewing our civilization is making the intellectual investment necessary to understand these changes and harness them to our
lasting advantage.
- We must rethink our competition in the world market. We want our labor to add the highest value so that we can be the most effective competitor on earth.
- We must replace the welfare state with an opportunity society.
- We must
replace our centralized, micro-managed, Washington-based bureaucracy with a dramatically decentralized system more appropriate to a continent-wide country.
- We musty be honest about the cost of government programs and balance the federal budget.
Source: To Renew America, p. 6-9
Jul 2, 1995
Culture of irresponsibility began in 1965
We must reassert and renew American civilization. From the arrival of English-speaking colonists in 1607 until 1965, there was one continuous civilization built around a set of commonly accepted legal and cultural principles. From the Jamestown colony
and the Pilgrims, through de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, up to Norman Rockwell’s paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American. Our civilization is based on a spiritual and moral dimension.
It emphasizes personal responsibility as much as individual rights. Since 1965, however, there has been a calculated effort by cultural elites to discredit this civilization and replace it with a culture of irresponsibility that is incompatible with
American freedoms as we have known them. Our first task is to return to teaching Americans about America and teaching immigrants how to become Americans. Until we re-establish a legitimate moral-cultural standard, our civilization is at risk.
Source: To Renew America, p. 7
Jul 2, 1995
Our civilization is a shared opportunity to pursue happiness
We have gone from being a strong, self-reliant, vigorous society to a pessimistic one that celebrates soreheads and losers jealous of others’ successes. I came out of my two years of reviewing American history convinced that our first need is to
rediscover the values we have lost. In my reading, I found five basic principles that I believe form the heart of our civilization: - The common understanding we share about who we are and how we came to be
- The ethic of individual responsibility
-
The spirit of entrepreneurial free enterprise
- The spirit of invention and discovery
- Pragmatism and the concern for craft and excellence.
We stand on the shoulders of Western European civilization, but we are far more futuristic, more populist,
and more inclusive. American civilization is not merely a subset of Western Europe’s. We have drawn people and cultures from across the planet and integrated them into an extraordinary shared opportunity to pursue happiness.
Source: To Renew America, p. 33-34
Jul 2, 1995
We must choose between a future of freedom or decline
These are the best of times and the worst of times, as Charles Dickens wrote. On the one hand, America is the leading country on the planet, with the largest economy and providing the opportunity to pursue happiness. On the other hand, our civilization
is decaying, with an underclass of poverty and violence growing in our midst and an economy hard pressed to compete.It is impossible to know which of these tendencies--our great strengths or our great weaknesses--will prevail.
The choice between
these two futures is stark and decisive. Either we will pull ourselves together for the effort or we will continue to decay. There is virtually no middle ground. An America that arouses itself to replace the culture of poverty and violence and insists
that its children learn the core values of American civilization is an America that will find each challenge more invigorating than the last. But an America that remains passive and apathetic, divided and confused will be on the road to decline.
Source: Renew America, by Newt Gingrich, p. 3-5
Jul 2, 1996
Page last updated: Feb 22, 2019