America Can Rise Again Under a President Commited to Common Sense

I just finished reading How America Can Rise Again by Fallows in the Atlantic. Despite the interesting insights, there is a failure to understand the dynamics of decision making and results. Individuals making great decisions are what makes America great. Individuals making bad moral and political decisions drags down the whole country. The more we hand off decision making to amorphous processes--the kind bureaucrats love, the less we will have of everything.

Aristotle's Four Causes (material, formal, efficient and final) provide a clear template for common sense thinking about goals--particularly national goals. First there needs to be a national goal that is not focused on such trivia as social activism and scientifically peripheral issues such as global warming. At the present time, we no longer have a national goal. We are in a reactive--not proactive mode as a nation. This has to stop and be replaced by a forward looking national development plan not tainted by the anti-Genesis crowd of the liberal left.

Visualize this: A Republican President (President Palin?) announces, as part of a national plan for overall national and moral development, the following:

1. A bureaurocracy-cutting plan of 40% across the board of the Fed Government
2. Immediate removal of oil drilling restrictions off US Coasts
3. National Plan for high speed rail
4. National Plan for development of nuclear power plants with a streamlined licensing process of not more than one year
5. The outlawing of abortion with criminal penalties for abortionists
6 The passage of a marriage amendment defining marriage to be between a man and a woman
7. Assigning of the status of moral disability to gamblers, alcoholics, homosexuals, pedophiles, drug users and the chronically violent
8. Re-establishment of supersonic aviation
9. National 80% tax credits for anyone who installs wind or solar and other alternative forms of power generation
10. Judicial and legal reform based on the Constitution
11. Tort Reform--particularly as it applies to the medical field
12. Creation of Federal Incentives to bring down the cost of health care
13. Revitalize the space program with advanced manned flight to Mars and beyond
14. Infrastructure improvement projects with streamlined procedures for fast implementation and freedom from EPA restrictions
15. Abolishment of the EPA: to be replaced with the Agency for Resource Management and Efficient Development ARMED
16. Establishment of a national flat tax
17. Reform of immigration laws to include the requirement to speak English
18. The immediate imprisonment of anyone who advocates the overthrow of the United States whether based on religious or political ideas
20. The timely trial and execution (within 90 days) of anyone who kills a police or law enforcement officer

All new projects to be seeded and funded, in part, by a national development tax on oil company revenues from newly opened oil fields in Anwar and other American oil areas--particularly off the continental shelf of the entire US.