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The BIRCH BARK BBS / 414-242-5070
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America's Future, Inc.
December 1994

               VOTERS SAY "NO" TO BIG GOVERNMENT
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  Years from now, history books reflecting on major events of the
late 20th Century may record a couple of landmark events of a
different sort but similar importance. Both happenings involved
individual freedom.

  At least one conservative friend of ours has likened the fall of
the Berlin Wall five years ago to the Democrat Party's loss of
control of the U.S House of Representatives in the November
election. While this may be overstretching the imagination a bit,
our friend makes the point that both events came about because people
wanted more freedom - especially freedom from government.

  Behind the Iron Curtain, of course, the stakes were much, much
higher. The oppression of communist governments had killed
tens of millions of people who dared protest. And at the same time,
apparatchiks were trying to socially engineer the workers'
paradise, and failing miserably.

  Individual Russians and Poles, Czechs and Hungarians, were forced
to wait for hours just to buy a loaf of bread and a few
potatoes. Yet, members of the ruling elite, the nomenklatura, had
all the food they could eat, lived in villas on the Black Sea and
smuggled in Western goods denied to the rest of the populace. 

  Despite these hardships, individuals behind the Iron Curtain
never lost hope. The efforts of Poland's Solidarity union,
America's intelligence services, and Pope John Paul II and the 
Vatican helped keep that hope alive. Indeed, these and other groups 
helped chip away at the foundations of communism, so that in 1989, 
the symbol of communism - the Berlin Wall - fell.

  Americans, while certainly not subject to the same hardships,
have had to deal with the ever-growing burdens of big government.
These include heavier tax burdens to feed bloated bureaucracies,
regulations which generate tons and tons of paperwork, and laws
which deny property owners the use of their land. 

  The Republicans finally succeeded in pinning the blame on
Democrats precisely because they had control of the House for so
long.  Democrats were in charge when the Great Society exploded the 
size of the welfare state. Democrats were in charge when bureaucracies 
started enacting regulations intruding on almost every aspect of daily 
life. And Democrats in the House blocked Republicans when they tried 
to roll back the size of government during the 1980s. 

  President Clinton's agenda didn't help congressional Democrats,
either. A government takeover of health care, pork-barrel
spending disguised as a stimulus package, and favoritism for
special interest groups - all contributed to the voters' anger at
government. As a result, Democrat control of the House has come to
a crashing end.

  The incoming Speaker of the House, Republican Newt Gingrich, who
was a history professor at a small Georgia college before
he entered politics, has spelled out what the political change in
Washington may mean to him. "As a historian," he told a Heritage
Foundation audience last October, "I'm looking forward to a chance
to go to any campus or any venue in the country to defend the
following statement: It is impossible to maintain civilization with
12-year-olds having babies, 15-year-olds killing each other,
17-year-olds dying of AIDS, or 18-year-olds getting diplomas they can't
read. It's just impossible. So we are really in a crisis of our
civilization.... It is a grand irony, because we managed to contain
the Soviet empire for half a century, win an enormous victory for
freedom, and in the same cycle begin the process of decaying our
civilization."

  What remains to be seen is whether House Speaker Gingrich's stark
appraisal will now be changed for the better.

[end]

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Behind the Headlines, written by Philip C. Clarke, is a syndicated
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