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Clintons, Baby Bonds, and Dropouts

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Let's Talk -- Like Women

by Christopher Chantrill
October 07, 2007 at 8:58 pm

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A NUMBER of conservatives are appalled by the prospect of a President Hillary Clinton. Think what she will do to health care, they warn. Think of three or four more liberal justices like Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg!

We cannot allow that to happen! There must be no retreat: Not one step back!

It is such a guy approach to politics, like the sophomores at Media Matters taking a Rush Limbaugh remark out of context and trying to blow it up into a national scandal.

Moreover it is too limited. After all, the Democrats will get back into power sooner or later, if not in 2008 then surely in 2012.

We want an America in which Democrats no longer want to create huge once-size-fits-all government programs that create widespread dependency on the government. We want an America where no liberal would think of proposing a nominee like Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the United States Supreme Court.

In our vision of America, when someone says: “But people have needs,” liberal women like Larry Summers’ tormentor Nancy Hopkins will faint away in disbelief if anyone suggests a government program as a response.

The future is not won by elections and Supreme Court decisions; it is won by changing the culture. We are talking about a national conversation.

“Let’s talk,” said Hillary Clinton.

Last week the British Conservative Party decided to start a national conversation at their annual conference. The result was a sudden 10 point jump in the opinion polls. The week before all the experts had written Conservative leader David Cameron off as a light-weight and a loser.

So how did David Cameron and the Conservative Party come back from the dead?

First of all they proposed a little tax relief, raising the exemption on inheritance tax to one million pounds: no death tax for anyone who isn’t a millionaire. All of a sudden the experts realized that inheritance tax was deeply unpopular—with women. Wrote Anatole Kaletsky in The Times:

[M]iddle-aged, middle-class women, eager to maximise the legacies that they can leave to their children and grandchildren, will vote for any party promising to relieve them of inheritance tax.

Let’s talk.

Then there was David Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party conference. It was a speech that covered a lot of the same ground as any Republican presidential candidate, starting with lower taxes and broken windows policing. Then Cameron called for radical choice in education.

[W]e need to open up the state monopoly and allow new schools... So we will say to churches, to voluntary bodies, to private companies, to private schools come into the state sector... [W]e can have those new schools so we can really drive up standards.

OK, it was not that radical. It was just calling for an education system similar to Sweden. But try suggesting it to Randi Weingarten of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City.

It was Cameron’s attitude towards the Labour Party and its welfare policy that was truly radical.

Labour’s great passion was tackling poverty but in many ways its been one of their greatest areas of failure... They’ve put the money in... but it hasn’t worked. Why?

I believe it’s because they relied too much on the state organisations that can treat people like statistics rather than like human beings.

With this approach he gave credit to the left for its good intentions. But then he invited his audience to wonder why it didn’t work.

Instead of the normal method of the political platform speaker with its clanging accusations and exhortations to victory Cameron used a more feminine approach.

He came out from behind his podium and abandoned his prepared speech and teleprompter.

I’ve just got a few notes so it might be a bit messy; but it will be me.

Instead of indicting the other party he tasked them for not listening. You know how it goes: They meant to end poverty, but they just didn’t know what they were doing and they didn’t listen, bless their hearts.

“You know the best welfare system of all,” Cameron concluded, “It’s called the family.”

Political insiders like William Langley report that Cameron’s wife, Samantha, is a prime driver of this woman-friendly conversational format.

What do women want? Do they want a government monopoly education system that doesn’t listen to them and doesn’t respond to the special needs of each child?

Do women want a uniform single-payer health care system, designed by Hillary Clinton and her experts, that is incapable of responding to the specific needs of each family?

We already have a system that delivers every kind of house that women want. It delivers every kind of clothing that women want. It delivers every kind of food that women want, and cars with every kind of cup-holder that women want.

How about a system that delivers every kind of education and health care that women want?

Let’s talk.

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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 TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate. 
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”  —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

presented by Christopher Chantrill

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