{"id":5376,"date":"2010-05-19T15:15:08","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T19:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5376"},"modified":"2010-05-19T15:16:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T19:16:00","slug":"the-best-political-speech-this-year-comes-from-a-liberal-democrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5376\/the-best-political-speech-this-year-comes-from-a-liberal-democrat\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Political Speech This Year Comes from a Liberal Democrat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Too bad Nick Clegg lives in England.\u00a0 This morning, the United Kingdom\u2019s new Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat Party made a powerful speech every American Tea Party patriot will instantly recognize<\/a> as the words of a kindred spirit.<\/p>\n

Unlike this country\u2019s \u201chope\u201d and \u201cchange\u201d president, Clegg is very explicit on how he and Prime Minister David Cameron plan to pass Britain\u2019s next \u201cGreat Reform Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are three main objectives of the Act.<\/p>\n

First, repeal all of the intrusive and unnecessary laws that inhibit a British citizen\u2019s freedom by ending the government \u201cculture of spying on its citizens;\u201d prohibiting an \u201cID card scheme;\u201d regulating the pervasive use of CCTV cameras; and asking citizens which laws should be abolished.<\/p>\n

Second, reform the political system to make it open, transparent, and decent by making the House of Lords an elected chamber accountable to the people, and presenting a referendum on adopting a fixed term parliament and equally balanced electoral districts.<\/p>\n

Third, radically redistribute power away from the center, into local into citizens\u2019 local communities, homes, and hands by loosening \u201cthe centralized grip of the Whitehall bureaucracy\u201d and dispersing \u201cpower downwards\u201d to citizens instead.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t enough space to elaborate on all of Clegg\u2019s proposals, but suffice it to say that he understands that political authority comes from the bottom up, not the top down.\u00a0 To wit:<\/p>\n

I’m a liberal.<\/p>\n

My starting point is always optimism about people.<\/p>\n

The view that most people, most of the time, will make the right decisions for themselves and their families.<\/p>\n

That you know better than I do about how to run your life, your community, the services you use.<\/p>\n

So this government is going to trust people.<\/p>\n

We know that, when people see a real opportunity to shape the world they live in, they take it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Every American angry at the state of our politics should read Clegg\u2019s speech in its entirety.\u00a0 Print it out if you have to; fix it to the refrigerator door so your family can read it too.\u00a0 The second most powerful man in Britain\u2019s new coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats is calling for more power to the people.\u00a0 As we prepare for the November midterm elections, and the next presidential contest, it would do we the people well to take Clegg\u2019s challenge and make it a litmus test for candidates seeking our support.<\/p>\n

This is a sterling way forward.\u00a0 Three cheers for Nick Clegg!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too bad Nick Clegg lives in England.\u00a0 This morning, the United Kingdom\u2019s new Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat Party made a powerful speech every American Tea Party patriot will instantly recognize as the words of a kindred spirit. Unlike this country\u2019s \u201chope\u201d and \u201cchange\u201d president, Clegg is very explicit on how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1295,926,62,1296,1294,614],"class_list":["post-5376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-coalition-government","tag-david-cameron","tag-england","tag-liberal-democrat","tag-nick-clegg","tag-tea-party-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5376"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5382,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions\/5382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}