MR.
KNOLLENBERG: Thank you, Roger; thank you, Avis, very, very much. Your
testimony I believe that gives a solid impression that this thing does
work.
And thank you, thank you very much again.
In moving this program into the second phase, I want to bring on well-known
lecturer, author, broadcaster, Arianna Huffington, who will be the moderator
and chairperson of this next panel.
So, let's welcome Arianna Huffington.
[Applause.]
PANEL
I: WHAT WORKS?
EXPERIENCE
OF PRIVATE CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS
MS. HUFFINGTON: Thank you all very much, thank you all.
Thank you, Congressman Knollenberg; thank you, Senator Coats, and Congressman
Kasich for making this happen today.
I spend my life going around the country praising you and now I'm here
in front of you. And I feel a little bit like Clare Booth Luce, who was
a convert to Catholicism and she was awarded an audience with the Pope.
And she went in and she said to the Pope how great Catholicism was and
how helpful it has been to her. And after she went on like that for 10
minutes, the Pope interrupted her and said, But Mrs. Booth-Luce, you forget,
I'm already a Catholic.
[Laughter.]
MS. HUFFINGTON: So, fully cognizant of the fact that I'm speaking in the
presence of many converts to this cause, I would like to start by setting
the scene and identifying the political climate in which this charitable
tax credit and the whole attempt to renew America and renew civil society
is taking place.
I want to make three points and keep my remarks short, so, that then I
can introduce the panelists.
First of all, there has been an enormous amount of talk about the vital
center. Last night, the President, speaking to the Democratic Leadership
Council, spoke again about the need to establish a vital center. Well,
a vital center is not the middle of the road. It's not a kind of compromise
between two extremes. The middle of the road is only for yellow lines
and bad armadillos.
[Laughter.]
MS. HUFFINGTON: If we really want to define a vital center, let's realize
that it is a center around which things revolve. For the last 30 years
all solutions to our problems in this country have revolved around government.
Big government, boutique government, reinvented government, but government.
Here is an opportunity to say that all the problems that we are facing
as a country--and there are many-- need to revolve around a reinvigorated
civil society, citizens who, once again, personally become involved in
the solution of those problems in their own communities. This is what
the charitable tax credit ultimately will do, reconnect citizens to those
most in need, to the least among us as the Bible puts it, in their own
communities.
And what is ironic is that if you go back and actually read Arthur Schlesinger's
book, The Vital Center, you realize how far we've come as a culture and
as a society since 1948 when he wrote that book.
And I would just like to quote on short paragraph. "The hope for
free society", he wrote, "lies in the last resort in the kind
of man it creates. The social welfare state is not enough. The sense of
duty must be expressed specifically and passionately in the hearts and
will of men, in their daily decisions and their daily existence."
So, this is what we have lost. The public conversation right now still
revolves around government. Is the welfare reform bill going to cut services
for many people? Are children at risk? Should the government do more?
We need to change that. But we are not going to change it if we simply
continue to say the government is not the center without offering alternatives.
Imagine if Copernicus has arrived on the scene and said to everybody,
the earth is not the center around which everything revolves and then
went home? It would not have been enough to start a whole new theory of
navigation and produce new maps.
That's why tonight and today and the whole day is so vitally important
to the definition of this real vital center and to the end of this totally
futile debate about more government or less government without a clear
identification of who should be doing more.
The second point I want to make is that is where leadership comes in.
As, Senator Ashcroft says very poignantly, you ask a cab driver to take
you where you are going. Leadership is not just about looking at polls,
deciding what the people want to hear and then telling them which is what
so much of political leadership has been reduced to. Leadership is about
identifying where the country needs to go and then going out there and
creating the consensus for this new direction.
Do you think there was a consensus for the end of slavery, when Abraham
Lincoln took the cause up? He went out and created it. In his case, there
had to be a civil war before that consensus emerged.
Right now there is no consensus in this country about the need to make
citizens the center of solutions. Leaders will go out and create it even
if the pollsters tell them it is the wrong thing to do because the public
is against it, this is the true function of leadership. And this is what
this country needs more than anything today.
In a similar time in history in England, when England was falling apart
and becoming two nations, Benjamin Disraeli said "that before I become
Prime Minister I need to capture the public imagination." He did it through
novels. He captured the public imagination and convinced his compatriots
that England was falling apart.
Well, here, we are falling apart. We are becoming two nations. Over 50
percent of Americans did not even bother to vote in the last election.
So, this is why the crisis is so imminent and this is why the urgency
is there and this is why today is so important.
And the last point I want to make is that as well as all these legislative
proposals that are going to be introduced here in the course of the day,
we need to awaken citizens to get involved in their own communities, even
before any of these legislative proposals have become Acts.
And specifically, we need to challenge the media to begin to talk about
the problem solvers in all the communities, about Roger and Avis, who
we heard here today. I would like to see the equivalent of C-SPAN 3, in
the same way that we have two 24-hour channels, discussing legislative
solutions and what about having another channel discussing community solutions,
so, that at any time of the day or night we can switch our television
set on and see what works, as opposed to constantly being bombarded with
what is not working.
So, I want to thank very much, Dan Coats and John Kasich for making this
happen today. It really is where hope lies and I'm now delighted to ask
the rest of the panel to come up and take their seats.
Thank you.
[Applause.]
