An Open Letter to Newt Gingrich

Dear Newt Gingrich,

Yesterday evening, I received a call from your organization, American Solutions. It began with a recorded statement from you decrying the big-government tax-more-spend-more policies of the Obama administration, including the so-called "stimulus" and the takeover of healthcare. You asked for my support, and your telemarketer requested a donation. (Her suggestion started at $200.) I firmly refused to make a donation; instead I asked for your web address (americansolutions.com) so that I could first review your policies and make an informed decision. Although I wholeheartedly agree with your stated opposition to the administration, I cannot support you in general. I would like to explain why.

1) When Republicans held majorities in both houses, when you led the House, you had every opportunity to propose reforms that would benefit America. On healthcare, did you propose and enact legislation for tort reform, or removing government barriers to an interstate insurance market? No. And to this day, you advocate state-paid "health coverage for everyone"; well, that is socialized medicine, which I oppose.

Did your party act to repeal the many permits and often-contradictory regulations which greatly inflate the cost of doing business? Did you challenge the (false) principle that a businessman must first request the permission of a government bureaucrat, "Please, please, can I please do business in your zone?" Uh uh.

Did you, along with President Clinton, really "end welfare as we know it"? Nope, AFDC rolls have risen. What you needed to do was challenge the principle of wealth redistribution.

When your party could have returned this country to its founding principles — limited government, individual rights (to be left alone), individual responsibility (not so-called "entitlements") — it failed to do so. You had a chance, and you blew it. … But that's because you don't truly accept these principles. The reason why brings us to …

2) … your advancement of Christianity in the public sphere. You refuse to accept that our government "is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion," although a treaty with this statement passed the early Senate unanimously and without public dissent.

The central problem with this idea of the USA as a Christian nation is that Christianity is an altruistic religion where you are "your brother's keeper." In this view, you are morally obligated to provide for others, to place a stranger's welfare above your own. The concept of individual rights, as understood by our nation's founders, is the exact opposite. Rights impose a negative obligation on others, not just physically but morally. Rights say to others, "you have no claim to my life, (one second of) my time, or (one pennyworth of) my property." Modern "rights" to food, healthcare, education, etc., are a gross perversion of the original concept, sold to the public by the Christian moral code. Therefore, it is not too little "Christ" which is destroying America, but too much.

Also, one of the bloggers on your personal site newt.org opposes the Theory of Evolution, for which there is overwhelming evidence from multiple scientific disciplines, which no serious scientist discounts, which has huge explanatory power for the observable world, whose predictions have been tested and validated, and which is now relied upon in modern biological and medical research — in favor of a Myth of Creationism, of which there are many, each with equal evidence in favor (none), which explains no repeatably observable phenomena, which is un-falsifiable by its nature (like the theory we were created 5 seconds ago), and which bears no fruits for mankind. How can a rational person take you seriously when you endorse such nonsense?

Now you seek "Rediscovering God in America," not merely as an individual private practice, but as public policy. I think, in place of a socialist dictatorship, you seek to remake the United States as a Christian theocratic hegemony. Well, I'll have neither, thank you.

These are the main reasons I will not contribute to you or your organizations.

Sincerely,
Kulero

P.S. — The off-site hypertext links in this letter are for reference purposes and do not imply endorsement by the author.