Confusing the Enemy: W's
Latest Buzz-Phrase is "Social Entrepreneur"
March 1, 2002
Exhaustively, I debated every left wing
kook on the internet. President Bush did not refer to the Axis Powers
of World War II in his state of the union address. "Axis of evil" is
not the same as "Axis Powers." A simple comparison shows that one phrase
has three words and the other has only two. They can't be the same phrase.
And I must insist that the word axis was defined before World
War II. Look it up, you schmuck! And while we're at it, Al Gore did
not invent the internet, the votes were counted, and George W. Bush
was not appointed to the presidency by the United States Supreme Court.
Just when I thought it was safe to go to lunch, the president's speech
writer threw yet another controversial buzz-phrase into the fray. In
Tuesday
night's speech on welfare reform, W thanked a whole list of social
entrepreneurs. I can just hear it now. "It's social engineers!"
they'll say. "This latest terminological faux pas is final proof
of an uneducated, possibly brain-damaged president." But once again,
they'll be wrong, and this time I want to situate the particulars on
the desk-top before the fracas begins.
Welfare reform has become one of the most confusing issues in the history
of politics. I pity the good-doers who stomp into the subject with sincere
intentions and less than two years of laborious research. I expect that
my opinion must seem paradoxical to some. The politicians make it sound
so easy; a little personal responsibility here, some marriage there,
and a job. If those people don't do what they are supposed to do, the
government will force them to do it and they will be better off for
it. The idea is so simple that one must wonder why it took so long for
us to think of it. Now that it's out, it's an extremely popular idea.
Except for nearly insignificant differences in the degree of outward
reckless impatience to increase spending, the welfare reform agenda
has enjoyed full bipartisan support for almost twenty years. The major
difference in the rhetoric between the most conservative sounding Republican
in Wisconsin and the most extreme Marxist politician in some foreign
state is the use of religion in developing a moral tone. One might wonder
why we bothered with decades of conflict against nations with dramatically
different views about the nature of the welfare state. Why has it taken
so long for everyone to agree on what is simply obvious?
With global agreement on the general
direction of change, the major political issue that remains is President
Bush's word choice. Does the phrase social entrepreneur describe
the special character of New World Order social planners, or is this
a brazen attempt by the right to steal credit for the old leftist idea
of social engineering, or was the president's speech writer unaware
of the established term, or did the president himself simply screw it
up? Even more questions could be raised. There are so many speculations
and spins to be considered that if the president fails to introduce
another semantic shock soon, this just might be the major issue of the
2002 mid-term elections. It might decide the balance of power between
Republicans and Democrats for the next two years.
The term, I contend is correct. It helps bring perfect clarity to the
character of the no-nonsense New Age iron-fisted compassionate progressive
conservative agenda. I know what you're thinking now. This was no mistake.
It must have taken months of slick political surveys and dozens of focus
groups to find just the right combination of words. The masses will
be thrilled with this new description of old ideas. They will gladly
abandon those boring concerns over balancing the budget. What difference
does it make if the policy of overspending on social programs combined
with government coercion failed in so many other countries and already
has a poor history in the United States? It sounded good when President
Bush announced reductions in the welfare rolls, just as it did when
Bill Clinton did it in 1996. No candidate for any office is expected
to associate the reduction in welfare roles with the drop in general
unemployment from over ten percent in Clinton's first term. The masses
will never notice.
You will likely be surprised to learn that the field of social entrepreneuring
has a great deal of history and substance and that it has been part
of a growth industry in the United States for at least a quarter century.
The welfare reform agenda, as we know it today, was born as part of
welfare legislation in 1975. One of its champions was a Democrat, Senator
Russell Long, the son of infamous political figure Huey "Kingfish" Long
of Louisiana. The original idea was complicated but not beyond experience
that had developed through generations of political chicanery.
The social engineers of the day did not like the idea. In fact, very
few people liked it. Russell Long's reform passed only as an amendment
to more popular social legislation. When signing the bill, President
Ford said that it intruded too far into the personal lives of individuals
and promised to propose corrective legislation later. But the event
left an enduring legacy. A former Hollywood union organizer and promising
liberal took the federal stage in the role that would be his most enduring
— that of a conservative Republican with a talent for uniting traditional
domestic foes. Fresh from instituting no-fault divorce in California,
Ronald Reagan appeared before Congress with representatives from the
National Organization for Women as the only people to speak in favor
of Russell Long's get-tough-on-deadbeats agenda. Easy divorce and the
promise of a pot of gold for every divorced woman would later help the
presidential candidate gain important votes from "Reagan Democrats."
In the early 1980s, leftist propagandists were busy convincing the masses
that welfare reform was being built on the solid foundation of traditional
American values; work, family, and responsibility. Progressive welfare
reform was transformed into a conservative issue. Who could possibly
imagine that Communists had ever experienced intimate government involvement
in family life or were ever forced to work in jobs assigned by government
or that they ever had such an enlightened government that it could define
and enforce personal responsibility? Those are ideas built on moral
values that could only have been invented in America!
By the time Ronald Reagan took office as president, enough pork had
been promised in welfare reform that supporters within politics and
government abounded. Through the Reagan miracle the most enthusiastic
champions were not social engineers, but true social entrepreneurs.
The Reagan era saw the old-new development of government-private partnerships,
which dramatically increased the role of profiteers in the welfare system.
The billions of dollars in new spending did more than supplement increasing
state budgets. The system was creating overnight millionaires who could
easily match organizations like NOW in campaign contributions, and who
were entirely dependent on the welfare system for their wealth.
The idea of allowing businessmen to run government operations became
so successful that the entrepreneurs themselves began driving welfare
reform. Who better to control government policy than people who profit
from it? They wondered why non-welfare families could not be included
so that billions more dollars could be pumped through the system leading
to even more profits. So the welfare system was quickly expanded to
include all families in which the parents are either divorced or were
never-married. They even built a monstrous national database system
for keeping track of the personal financial transactions of all Americans.
You might not be divorced yet, but you could be some day.
The profit making idea was so compelling that it attracted one of the
largest and most successful accounting firms as a lead manager of welfare
reform and implementation; Arthur Andersen also became a household name
due to its major role in such high profile business success stories
as Enron.
So once again I must insist; President Bush chose the right word.
Roger F. Gay
