1999 (50 page)

The December 1987 agreement between the United States and Mexico deals with only a small part of the Mexican debt, let alone the entire Third World debt problem. But it points the way to deal with the whole problem. Western governments and banks should share the burdens of refinancing debts on a basis within the capacity of Third World governments to pay. To reduce the burden makes sense for creditors as well as debtors. An agreement guaranteeing some repayment is better than insisting on everything and ending up with nothing.

Political growth.
Throughout the Third World we see countries that have moved toward democracy once they have met their basic security and economic needs. We should not passively wait for this evolution to occur. Now is the time to support vigorously the cause of democracy in the Third World. To do so, we must first put aside two myths.

The first is that our relations with the Third World should be rigidly conditioned on the issue of human rights. However well intentioned, this approach is myopic and dangerous. The Mexican poet and commentator Octavio Paz has said, “Morality is no substitute for historical understanding.” Evolution to complete political freedom is always slow and arduous. Not until seventy years ago did the United States allow half of its adult population, the women, to vote. Blacks were denied full voting rights until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1957. But we cannot help a government move toward democracy if we refuse to deal with it because its political human rights do not match our own. If an authoritarian government fails at economic growth, its people may turn to the siren song of the communists. If the nation becomes communist, the issue of human rights will be closed.

The second myth is that the Third World should take its political direction from the United Nations. While the record of the past three centuries attests to the economics of wealth creation, the UN has focused consistently, obstinately, and blindly on wealth redistribution. While the record of this century attests to the bloody abuses and abject failures of state socialism, the UN has been a propaganda mouthpiece for state socialism while regularly condemning democratic capitalism.

We should not force our political values on anyone, but we
should never hesitate to proclaim them. This means articulating the principles of civilian government, the rights and responsibilities of the individual, the limits of the state in a democracy, the rule of law, and the proper role of police as apolitical professionals.

This is a task not just for government but for private organizations as well. The AFL-CIO has a Free Trade Union Institute that helps develop trade unions throughout the world. By showing the role the trade union plays in a free society—in contrast to the role it plays under communism as a means of extending the oppressive iron fist of the state—the FTUI is preparing workers of the Third World for democratic government. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a Center for International Private Enterprise that promotes another essential sector of a democratic society: private business. Colleges and business schools should offer more scholarships to promising students from Third World countries so that they can learn about free enterprise.

In 1982, President Reagan founded the National Endowment for Democracy to help spread democracy throughout the world. It monitors elections and funds pro-West think tanks, civic organizations, business conferences, newspapers, women's groups, unions, and political parties in the democratic and nondemocratic world. It is in the straightforward business of promoting Western and American ideals as alternatives to systems abroad that do not work. It is not popular with many post-Vietnam politicians who are ashamed to promote our ideals. As a result the NED must battle Congress for the pitiful $15 million it receives each year. If we are serious about bringing prosperity, stability, and democracy to the Third World, we should increase that amount every year between now and 1999.

Democratic government is an art that requires vision. It is not accumulating buildings and airlines and dams to feed immature national pride. We should exemplify not the buildings of democracy but the building of it, by promoting the spirit of democratic government based on human dignity, the rule of law, and freedom for all. We should offer the Third World national security and economic prosperity, but ultimately we also must find ways to emphasize those essentially spiritual values of political life that have enabled us to create security and prosperity for ourselves.

Those who doubt our true role in the Third World should consider the words of its most eloquent leader, Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew. In 1985 he asked the U.S. Congress, “Does America wish to abandon the contest between democracy and the free market on the one hand versus communism and the controlled economy on the other, and this at the time when she has very nearly won this contest for the hearts and the minds of people in the Third World?”

L
ike most great historical figures, Charles de Gaulle had the gift of prescience. Long before others, he saw the danger posed by the rise of Hitler, the awesome potential of motorized armed forces, and the possibility that France, defeated and humiliated in 1940, could recover and emerge from the war on the side of the victors. During his state visit to Washington in 1959, he turned his powers of insight to American politics. With the 1960 campaign only months away he told me, “I do not want to interfere in American politics, but my advice to a candidate for President would be to campaign for 'a new America.' ” He was right. As Vice President, I could not take advantage of that advice, for it would appear I was repudiating President Eisenhower. But John Kennedy did run on that theme, and he won.

I would give that same advice to a candidate for President in 1988. Like Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan has been a very popular President. The American people have supported his leadership. They are glad America now stands tall abroad and has experienced a long period of growth and prosperity at home. They admire the way he has restored respect for America and the respectability of patriotism in America. But Americans are never satisfied with success. A candidate who tries to be a carbon copy of President Reagan
and promises only to continue his policies will be left at the starting gate.

A call for a new America strikes a deep chord in the American temperament. Complacency is not an American characteristic. American history alternates between periods of quiet and periods of energetic change. But the quiet is always more apparent than real. A restless energy seethes beneath the surface. The status quo is at best a temporary rest stop on the road to greater endeavors—a pause to recharge our batteries before taking on new challenges. It is only a question of time before the other side of the cycle of American history bursts forth. For a great nation as well as a great man, true fulfillment comes not from savoring past achievements but only from embarking on new adventures.

With the beginning of the twenty-first century only twelve years away, there will be added appeal to call for a new America. A growing sense will develop that we need to gear up for new times, to prepare America for leadership in the next century. What we choose to do will profoundly affect what will become of the world. How we choose to lead and who is chosen to lead us are vitally important questions. What is at stake is nothing less than the future of civilization. Our actions will determine in large part whether the next century will be the best or the last one for mankind.

We have to ask ourselves what role the United States should play in the twenty-first century. Will the baton of world leadership pass to another nation after 1999? Is the United States—the oldest democracy in history—over the hill after two hundred years? To paraphrase Churchill, are we witnessing the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning of the great American experiment? All individuals go through the same experiences—birth, life, and death. Most individuals die when they no longer have a reason to live. Nations also experience birth and life. But for a nation, death is inevitable only when it ceases to have a reason to live. America has powerful reasons to live—for the sake of our posterity and for the sake of others.

To understand what is special about America, we should study our history. Without a shared vision of our past, we will find ourselves
without a true vision of our future. As we celebrated the two-hundredth anniversary of our Constitution, some superficial observers propagated the myth that the American concept of government sprang almost by magic out of the minds of the remarkable men who assembled at Philadelphia. Even some of the Founders spoke of creating a “new order for the ages.” But while the Constitution initiated a new order for the future, it was firmly grounded on old principles from the past. The ideas of English philosopher John Locke are reflected in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But as Paul Edward Gottfried has observed, “While Locke's teachings influenced both the American and French revolutions, other principles, Judeo-Christian, classical, even medieval, also contributed to the American government's founding and growth.”

The Founders had the advantage of painting on a new canvas. But while they were not inhibited by the dead hand of the past, they borrowed liberally from the great thinkers of the past. Putting together those great old ideas, they produced a new idea, superior to any one or to the sum of the parts.

They were idealists, but they were very practical men. They had no illusions about building a new utopia, where human beings would cease acting like human beings. They knew that while people should strive for perfectibility, they could never hope to achieve it—that they lived in an imperfect world, inhabited by imperfect people. They knew that idealism without pragmatism is impotent, and that pragmatism without idealism is meaningless. They wanted to build a solid structure that would survive after they were gone. Never in history have any men built so well.

While they had been revolutionaries, they knew that a violent revolution would destroy what they had built. They therefore provided a process whereby the goals of revolution could be accomplished by peaceful change.

One principle motivated them above all others. They might not have read the works of Baruch Spinoza, but their handiwork represented the practical application of his words: “The last end of the state is not to dominate men, nor to restrain them by fear; rather it is to set free each man from fear, that he may live and act with full security and without injury to himself or his neighbor . . . . The
end of the state is really liberty.” While praising the concept of equality, they rejected any system that would impose equality at the cost of stifling individual liberty, which is essential for the flowering of human creativity.

After experiencing the chaotic years under the Articles of Confederation, during which government was too weak, they wanted a strong government—one strong enough to protect the rights of people but not so strong as to threaten those rights. They had the genius to set up a system in which each of three strong branches of government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, would be a check on the strength of the others. In their wildest dreams they could not have imagined the megapower today of giant corporations, big labor unions, and media monopolies. But they would have been wary of any concentration of power that might threaten the rights of people because they believed that a free, strong people is indispensable to progress.