America Is Liberty’s Best Hope
March 5, 2008 | By Nathaniel Ward
Featured video Heritage’s Brian Darling rounds up the latest on the surge in Iraq, federal spending, and consumer safety.
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Since its Founding, America has been committed to the ideals of freedom and liberty.
In his new book, Liberty’s Best Hope: American Leadership for the 21st Century, Heritage expert Kim Holmes outlines how America has drifted from these ideals and how the nation can once again lead the world with purpose and principle.
» Watch the video: Kim Holmes explains Liberty’s Best Hope
“Safeguarding liberty,” he writes in the book’s introduction, is “our moral claim to global leadership. Freedom-loving nations the world over have followed our leadership because they trusted us. And we in turn were happy to lead because we knew that we could best defend our freedom if we had the help of other nations.”
“Unfortunately,” he continues, “both this claim to leadership and the idea of safeguarding liberty as America’s central purpose have fallen on hard times.”
Holmes, Heritage’s vice president for foreign and defense policy studies and director of our Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, explains that we must return to the principles of Founding Fathers if we are to get back on track.
When Thomas Jefferson called America “the world’s best hope” Holmes argues, “he meant that out government , by its example and by its actions, represents the best hope for liberty flourishing for all mankind.”
» Buy your copy of Liberty’s Best Hope from The Heritage Foundation bookstore
A windfall for trial lawyers and bureaucrats
After a series of widely-reported incidents regarding potentially unsafe imported products, reports Heritage expert James Gattuso, Congress came “under pressure to ‘do something.’”
So now lawmakers are “pushing through proposals to expand regulation of consumer products.” Unfortunately, in their rush to “do something,” they came up with misguided legislation that Gattuso says “would make matters worse, resulting in a windfall for bureaucrats and lawyers without making products any safer.”
Gattuso suggests that lawmakers turn to private enterprise and individual incentives for a solution. “Far more than bureaucratic rules or litigation, it is consumers themselves who can most effectively punish those who sell defective products. There is a role for regulation, of course. But consumers, acting in the marketplace, provide the strongest, most effective protection possible against unsafe goods.”
Heritage legal expert Andrew Grossman explains in a separate analysis that the pending consumer product safety legislation would prove “a great boon for trial lawyers” by expanding criminal penalties, increasing fines and granting state attorneys general power to sue on behalf of their citizens.
The status quo wins in Russia
Last week, Heritage Foundation foreign policy expert Ariel Cohen made a prediction about the Russian elections:
The March 2 presidential elections will be anti-climactic as [Dmitry] Medvedev is the only candidate who stands any chance of winning. The elections have a democratic façade, but voters do not have a real choice.
Cohen’s prediction was right on target. Medvedev won with fully 70 percent of the vote, according to official tallies.
So what does the future hold for Russia? Cohen explains that “although Medvedev has voiced support for some liberal positions, [outgoing President Vladimir] Putin will continue to wield the real power as Prime Minister. The status quo in Russia, with authoritarianism at home and an assertively anti-Western foreign policy, is likely to continue.”
In other news
- Even the New York Times’ editors now recognize the very real unintended consequences of the federal government’s ethanol subsidies.
- “Voters in this southern Vermont town were deciding Tuesday whether to approve a measure calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney on charges of violating the Constitution,” the Associated Press reports from Brattleboro. The town clerk, though, says that no legal authority allows such a measure to be carried out.
- Venezuela’s populist left-wing despot, Hugo Chavez, has ordered troops to the Columbian border after the Columbian government staged a cross-border raid into Ecuador to kill a member of the FARC terrorist group.
- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has walked out of peace talks with the Israeli government.
- California’s Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about whether marriage is limited to a man and a woman. The justices should remember that it is not their place to legislate from the bench or to redefine institutions like marriage based on their own policy preferences.
- Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno reports that Iran continues to arm, train and fund Iraqi insurgent groups. For the latest on Iraq, visit Heritage’s Progress in Iraq page.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other events at Heritage please RSVP at Heritage’s website. Or you can view these events live online. All times are Eastern.
- On Thursday, March 6 at 11:00 a.m., David S. C. Chu from the Department of Defense joins a panel of Heritage experts discuss how America can maintain the all-volunteer military while meeting the force needs of the Long War.
- On Friday, March 7 at 10:30 a.m., Edward Sproat from the Department of Energy assesses the safety and viability of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste depot.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Chris Albright contributed to this report.
