Liberals Surrender in Philadelphia

It was fitting that a military man, Gen. Colin Powell, organized the recent volunteers summit in Philadelphia. This was, after all, the largest public surrender since World War II. In this case, the vanquished foe was big government liberalism. The victor, of course, is us.

What we heard in Philadelphia was the federal government admitting that the schools cannot teach reading; therefore, we need volunteers to teach reading. We heard the federal government admit it cannot control gangs; so now we are going to have to control gangs. We heard that Washington can’t do much with inner-city poverty; so we are going to have to do something about it.

We heard how welfare policies have driven families apart, discouraged responsible fatherhood, encouraged single motherhood and bankrupted the core of what keeps this country together: families.

These weren’t accusations, they were confessions. Not by hardened conservatives, but by frustrated, defeated liberals.

The surrender came just in time. After 65 years, we have finally learned that substituting government for family, bureaucrats for neighbors and tax collectors for voluntary donations has created a mess of dependency, illiteracy, illegitimacy, crime, desperation and poverty that may take another 65 years to undo.

More than just laying the blame, Philadelphia also stripped away Big Government’s right to exist. Once liberals admit their programs don’t work, they lose the right to take our money to pay for them.

They handed us a golden surrender; the greatest news for conservatives in the past 65 years. Now we have to act on it.

This is no time for suspicion or cynicism or second-guessing. Now is the time to go back to Washington and put new backbone into Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich and tell them to stop rolling over for the rumored budget compromises. The talks are over, they surrendered.

We must tell President Clinton--now that he has admitted that his programs don’t work and he needs volunteers to make any kind of progress at all--that he must cut the programs and give us back our money so that we can get to work.

Big Government advocates no longer have any pretext to tax us until we choke; to interfere with our children, to meddle in our affairs. We should thank liberals for admitting that progress in any problem area is going to occur only when people in the neighborhoods decide to do it themselves. Conservatives have been saying that for years. Now we have to start doing it.

We had a problem with graffiti in my neighborhood a few years ago. A gang moved into a nearby park and one night spray-painted the public restrooms. The next day, I got a call from one of my neighbors, who said he was organizing people to fight this vandalism.

I donated paint and we painted. Of course, the taggers were back the day after that. We went back the next day with more paint.

Then we caught a few of the vandals in the act. We didn’t call the police; didn’t need to. Let’s just say that we had an open and frank discussion about how we would not tolerate their behavior in our neighborhood. There hasn’t been a single piece of graffiti on that restroom since.

Under the old way--the Big Government way--we would have put a tax on paint, created jobs for a director of graffiti removal, an assistant director, 14 deputy assistant directors and two guys to do the actual graffiti removal, both of whom are in the union and only work two days a week.

We who proudly call ourselves conservatives obviously are going to have to do more in the community. That means welfare reform is no longer a Washington problem but a neighborhood problem.

We can tell people to work, but we have to give them a chance. We can tell the teachers’ union that more money for schools is counterproductive, but we parents also have to redouble our efforts to get more kids reading.

That is what it means to accept this surrender. We won the war. Now we have to win the peace.