Bingo.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, these days a repeated bestselling book author and multimedia star, has done it again.
This time, in Defeating Big Government Socialism: Saving America’s Future, he lasers in on Big Government and the “deep trouble” it poses for the United States.
Ever the educator and historian, he reminds of the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s adage that “first you win the argument, then you win the vote.”
And in these pages, the former speaker quickly gets about the business of showing how to win the argument against Big Government Socialism.
He writes that threats from this socialist craziness are real “at home and abroad”:
The core tenets of Big Government Socialism — wealth redistribution, woke thought-policing, and dictatorial government control — have become the core tenets of the American Democratic Party.
On the foreign policy side of the problem:
The rise of Communist China is an existential threat. Many of our elites refuse to even recognize the threat from Beijing. (For many, it is because they make so much money from China and put profit above patriotism.)
Then, of course, there’s the threat from Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Biden administration’s “effort to cut American oil and gas production,” which, in turn, increases “the value and profit of Russian production — and the leverage they get through Western European dependence on Russian natural gas.” And, oh yes, then there’s that small thing known as the invasion of Ukraine.
Then, of course, there’s Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons with “the North Korean focus on matching nuclear weapons with delivery systems capable of reaching the United States, and the steadily growing worldwide threat of Islamist radical terrorism, the dangers of a cataclysmic, America-crippling event compound.” He adds: “As the foreign clouds continue to darken and grow, the threats to freedom here at home are also expanding.”
Notably, the former Georgia congressman and speaker recounts a recent visit to the House floor, a place he had not been since his departure from Congress. The difference in the atmosphere from his days as a member was stark. While in his day members understood that they were all there to work together to do “the People’s Work,” the House under Speaker Nancy Pelosi has changed drastically — and not for the better. He writes:
The House floor I was visiting under Pelosi was a starkly different place. It is clear she runs a dictatorship based on fear and ruthlessness that we have not seen in any other Speakership in American history. She has turned the People’s House into Pelosi’s House.
The Capitol Police demanded his ID when he entered — something unheard of for a former speaker or any member of Congress. Representatives are now forced to be subordinate to Pelosi’s central authority. He describes Pelosi as a “willful leader who had contempt for the people and their representatives. She wants her will to be done, not the will of the American people.”
Gingrich gets quite specific about the arguments needed “to defeat Big Government Socialism.” He writes: “First, we must win the argument that Big Government Socialism is not working.”
Exactly.
Everything that Big Government Socialism touches turns into a disaster. Pick an issue — any issue — and the negative effect of Big Government Socialism is evident.
Infrastructure, public health, dealing with COVID-19, and, of course, education. In the case of the latter, he cites this from Baltimore:
In Baltimore, for example, in 2017 there were six schools in which not a single student had been able to pass the state exams. In thirteen other Baltimore schools the same year, no students were proficient in math. In 2019, only 10.7 percent of sixth to eighth graders in Baltimore were proficient in math, and only 9.2 percent of high schoolers were proficient in Algebra I. Yet the answer to this stunning failure (which hits minorities and the poor especially hard) has been for teachers’ unions to demand more power. They are placing students last while protecting incompetent, nonperforming teachers — and the entire system of failure.
As always in a Newt Gingrich book, there is more serious analysis here — oh so much more. The “Danger and Opportunity” facing America is discussed, and he also devotes entire chapters to “The Rot at the Top,” “Poverty and Despair,” “Opportunity and Hope,” and other topics. He ends with the hopeful encouragement of “The Patriotism of Persistence”:
Defeating Big Government Socialism will be a daunting task,” he writes. “However the American experience has been one of endless persistence…. No persistence, no free America. No persistence, no saved American Union.
Bingo.
Newt Gingrich will go down in American history as one of the greatest speakers of the House in American history. And those who have been blessed with the opportunity to watch him in action know, as his many books demonstrate, that he is nothing if not a fountain of energy, ideas, and patriotism.
All of which has understandably made Defeating Big Government Socialist: Saving America’s Future a must-read.
Followed by taking action.
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