- Gingrich, Newt.
Real Change.
Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2008.
ISBN 978-1-59698-053-2.
-
Conventional wisdom about the political landscape in the United
States is that it's split right down the middle (evidenced
by the last two extremely close Presidential elections), with
partisans of the Left and Right increasingly polarised, unwilling
and/or unable to talk to one another, both committed to a
“no prisoners” agenda of governance should they gain
decisive power. Now, along comes Newt Gingrich who argues
persuasively in this book, backed by extensive polling performed
on behalf of his American
Solutions organisation (results of these polls are freely available to all
on the site), that the United States have, in fact, a centre-right
majority which agrees on many supposedly controversial issues
in excess of 70%, with a vocal hard-left minority using its
dominance of the legacy media, academia, and the activist judiciary and
trial lawyer cesspits to advance its agenda through non-democratic
means.
Say what you want about Newt, but he's one of the brightest
intellects to come onto the political stage in any major
country in the last few decades. How many politicians can you think
of who write what-if
alternative history novels?
I think Newt is onto something here. Certainly
there are genuinely divisive issues upon which
the electorate is split down the middle. But on the majority
of questions, there is a consensus on the side of common sense
which only the legacy media's trying to gin up controversy
obscures in a fog of bogus conflict.
In presenting solutions to supposedly intractable problems, the
author contrasts “the world that works”: free
citizens and free enterprise solving problems for the financial
rewards from doing so, with “the world that fails”:
bureaucracies seeking to preserve and expand their claim upon
the resources of the productive sector of the economy. Government,
as it has come to be understood in our foul epoch, exclusively focuses upon the
latter. All of this can be seen as consequences of
Jerry Pournelle's
Iron
Law of Bureaucracy, which states that in any bureaucratic
organisation there will be two kinds of people: those who work to
further the actual goals of the organisation, and those who work for
the organisation itself. Examples in education would be teachers who
work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who
seek to protect and augment the compensation of all teachers,
including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases,
the second type of person will always gain control of the
organisation, and will thence write the rules under which the
organisation functions, to the detriment of those who are coerced
to fund it.
Bureaucracy and bureaucratic government can be extremely
efficient and effective, as long as its ends are understood!
Gingrich documents how the Detroit school system, for example,
delivers taxpayer funds to the administrators, union leaders, and
unaccountable teachers who form its political constituency.
Educating the kids? Well, that's not on the agenda! The world
that fails actually works quite well for those it benefits—the
problem is that without the market feedback which obtains in the world
that works, the supposed beneficiaries of the system have no voice in
obtaining the services they are promised.
This is a book so full of common sense that I'm sure it will be
considered “outside the mainstream” in the United States.
But those who live there, and residents of other industrialised
countries facing comparable challenges as demographics collide with
social entitlement programs, should seriously ponder the prescriptions
here which, if presented by a political leader willing to engage the
population on an intellectual level, might command majorities which
remake the political map.
July 2008 