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What’s The Republican Vision?
I am currently teaching an entrepreneurship class to middle school-aged women. One thing that I keep bumping up against is the difference between the concepts of vision and planning.
All the girls are bright, ambitious, and they are all about “doing,” and they all have plans. I keep trying to tell them that plans will work and fail — but without a vision — there is little motivation to go on. On their own, plans can only take you so far; the equivalent of 100 miles or so. Coupled with vision, however, and they can take you across the galaxy. That’s why elevator pitches to raise money, hire people, or make sales are more matters of vision than planning.
I’ve asked a few times here on Ricochet what the Republican vision is.
I feel that while we focus on plans, we still need visions to motivate people, to enroll people. People don’t buy into global warming because of numbers, but are moved by “the vision of saving the planet.” People want to be a part of something bigger. Especially people who are too busy with their lives and do not have time for science, numbers, and research.
Libertarian publisher Jeffrey Tucker’s essay “Capitalism Is About Love” is a perfect example of what’s missing from Republicans and conservatives:
[F]or centuries, the whole point of capitalism has been missed. It is not about material greed much less exploitation and exclusion. Its fundamental theme is love… That is its driving energy and ethos. This love permeates every aspect of its operations. It requires love. It rewards love. It elicits love. It lives on love.
Think of the fundamental unit of capitalism: the exchange. You own and I own. We could keep what we possess. But we are attentive to bettering our lot. We discover something remarkable, namely that if we cooperate we could both be better off. I want what you have and you want what I have. You value mine more than yours and I value yours more than mine.
We come together in trust. We exchange, out of choice. Though nothing has changed about the material world, we have created value and wealth, something we know by reflecting on our inner sense of well being. It’s an act of love.
This act of love takes place trillions of times a day all over the world. The act can be as simple as exchanging money for a cup of coffee or as complex as a multi-billion dollar company changing ownership. In substance, these are the same acts. It is all about the giving spirit: you give me value and I give you value. We discover that in our mutual association, in the act of giving to get and getting only when giving, that our lives are improved.
Where is the love in the conservative rhetoric? Where is the inspiration? Where is the vision?
Image Credit: “Jeffrey Tucker Freedomfest 2013” by Gage Skidmore – https://www.flickr.com/photos/22007612@N05/9275586897. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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Republicans definitely need to learn the art of storytelling from Democrats. Enough with the PowerPoint campaign rhetoric.
Among current Republican pretty boys, Rubio is probably the best example of someone offering a vision of America.
This is a beautiful thought, and you are wonderful to teach these kids about entrepreneurship. And you are right.
Barkha,
You are so right!! I think this is what Arthur Brooks at AEI is trying to promote.
Off the type of my head I would say the difference between a plan and vision is the difference between “making out” and “raising a family/making a home”. People need inspiration. To used the oft quoted “Man does not live by bread alone”. “Bread” will fill your stomach or your bank account but it in itself will not make you fulfilled. This is on the fly too. Plans fill things but visions fulfill things.
I wonder why the Republican Brand is so bad at selling the Good Life. Is it because we are allowing are opponents to define ourselves?
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Well, I have set out to make my “little” difference. The way I look at it, even if I change one mind, win one heart and one soul, I am ahead. So I continue with my vision, it’s not about winning the next election but creating the new generation.
What I’d like to do is inspire a few more of the grown ups – most more influential, clever, accomplished and capable than me.
While I love AEI and support it wholeheartedly, I have gotten no where with them when it comes to younger kids. IMHO, it is more important to start young. The finishing will take care of itself given a good beginning. And I speak from experience.
I would love to see more people working with younger children. The way I see it, if 3 and 4 year olds can care about global warming, they can care about liberty.
Barkha, you might be wrong since “the most capable” does not do anything. It is “the inept” that get things started and are the capable ones through error and trials.
Barkha, how about financial independence for a motivational goal? Although I applaud your efforts, I’m not so sure I approve of entrepreneurial classes for women only.
I was brought up to make the donuts because that is what ‘winners’ (regardless of gender) just do.
The vision should be establishing America on a firm foundation so that the new grandchild born tomorrow will be able to enjoy the blessings of liberty.
If some Republican policy prescriptions sound like tough love, it is because that is what it takes to help the family get to a stable place where the grandchildren can thrive.
Financial independence is a motivational goal, not a vision.
As for the gender discrimination, my vision is to take back feminism. I have no issue with others pursuing gender neutral visions.
How many 4-5 year olds can you enroll with “establishing America on a firm foundation so that the new grandchild born tomorrow will be able to enjoy the blessings of liberty”? (And – that sounds like a plan to me)
Policy prescriptions will be swallowed very easily if they were for an inspiring vision.
While “Victory” and “Success” are valid visions (loose interpretation of the two offered), but they still are not life changing, world changing. They are more of the “Our team should win” caliber.
They will work on partisan people or as game day strategies. To inspire a nation, a generation, we must look for something bigger.
If you are only looking to inspire “your team”, then you have nailed it.
I want to inspire more than my team. I want everyone on board.
I’m sorry, but I got completely distracted by this opening sentence. You mean girls, right? Middle school girls?
When the article got promoted to the front page, it got heavily edited. Apparently my articles are good enough to show up on the front page but my prose is not :-D.
Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but me, too. I think girlhood is too short and under-rated (although boyhood may be too long and over-rated).
But with regard to your main point, yes, the “vision thing” is important and Republicans do not do it well, and in addition are up against opponents who are always handing out goodies and punishing their enemies hard. The immediate reward is the enemy of the long-term one. Jeffrey Tucker’s argument is an interesting one, although my first reaction, I have to say, was “ugh.” Maybe that’s because I am a conservative and the love I really love is tough love. It’s a little hard for me to imagine how a progressive might hear this.
Barkha,
First, I’m SO jealous. I wish I had experienced something like this in middle school. Also, if you look at the demographics, it’s girls achieving, girls in leadership, girls making the grades –you’ve got to intervene with them because they are over-represented in school activities and leadership.
Second, and more to your global point, I agree with your distinction between plans and vision. Our church used to say you marry the mission and date the strategy–which I think reflects that. Vision keeps you and others inspired when plans are failing.
Our party has a communication deficit-we approach communication as if we can “logic” someone into conservative beliefs. We aren’t trying to woo them. The other fundamental mistake we make is to focus on what’s important to us–if we really wanted to engage people – we’d be polling them on their issues and priorities – tailoring our stories and strategies to what is important to them in the language they use. It would look different than when we talk to each other, because we’re addressing a different audience.
The Republican Party would do well to adopt what has become popular with many pastors and church leaders, which is Will Mancini’s Vision Frame. It’s been a helpful tool for pastors and lay leadership of churches unify and optimize congregations in order to maximize the effectiveness of its ministry. I have found the Vision Frame helpful in also impacting the health and growth of my business. If you apply its tools to the GOP and even the government itself, you can see why neither are successful.
The basic argument is the Vision Proper only comes into focus after an organization like a church frames, or agrees upon, the Mission, Values, Strategy, Measures.
I would argue that this is essentially what the GOP did in 2004 with the Contract with America, and the GOP (and country) was rewarded for a clearly framed vision. Until the GOP coalesces around a single candidate or small group of GOP leaders who can get the party to embrace a something like the mission frame, the GOP will continue to wallow.
This essay by Jeffrey Tucker mirrors much of George Gilder’s introduction in Wealth and Poverty. Capitalism is not better because it works, it works because with capitalism wealth begins with giving not taking.
Barkha, first, bravo to you for teaching entrepreneurship to youngsters. I’m curious as to how you got this group of girls together – is it through a school, or did you just spread the word among friends that you were offering this? Also, thank you for this intro to Jeffrey Tucker, I’d never seen that article and found it very interesting and also, after googling him, applaud his efforts to bring some traditional sacred music back to Catholic Masses, I’m all for that.
Could the Republican vision be something like, ‘restoring the American Dream’ – that idea of social and financial mobility, regardless of your beginnings in life? Of course it would be optimal if many people could be polled to confirm it, but my initial sense is that many Americans feel ‘stuck’ whether it’s because the economy is stagnant or they are locked into a repeat cycle of welfare, poor schools etc. Maybe ‘mobility’ could be a catchword, since it subliminally connects to mobile devices, which an awful lot of people use now.
I didn’t mean to infer that your vision was discriminatory. Young men seem be lagging behind women in so many areas of education, it appears is if they could benefit from your guidance as well!
Also, financial independence is the springboard to vision.
I got distracted by that phrasing, too. Middle school students who are female can be called “girls,” right? Are you suggesting that your Main Feed Fairy changed it to “women”? We need to have a talk with your Main Feed Fairy.
I think the Republican vision should be embodied in the answers to the following questions:
Are we citizens or are we subjects? Do we ask the government to do things for us, or do we do what the government asks of us?
The Republican answer should be: We are citizens, not subjects, and we may ask the government to do things for us.
As subjects, we are supposed to be grateful, as Obama and Elizabeth Warren have asserted, that the government has provided for us: roads, education, etc. As subjects, we should accept that the Redskins name should be banned, along with super-sized sodas, and we should not complain at the more healthful food virtually required in our school cafeterias. More seriously, we should accept what the government, via bureaucrats, tell us should be required in our health plan. As subjects, we cannot change the public-education system by our own actions — through choice — but we must change it through collective action through the tiers of government that control our schools.
The vision, then, should be one of citizens acting out their own personal lives and collectively asking the government to do certain things for us, probably at the closest level to the people themselves.
Freedom is the vision. I am disheartened that so many younger voters seem not to understand that any longer, but that’s the result of decades of undermining by the Left. No matter: Freedom is still the essential vision of this country, and I believe it can still be the inspiration for renewal here and elsewhere.
Freedom is the reason why conservatism is better than liberal fascism, and it should be at the core of the message put forth by Republicans.