February 13, 2006
Flag, faith and family; free markets and free trade; limited government, local control and individual responsibility are the ideals championed by Heritage Foundation president Feulner and Townhall.com chairman Wilson in this conservative manifesto on what's wrong with America and how we can fix it. Drawing on Heritage Foundation research, according to the foreword, they prescribe a litmus test for government policies that readers can employ on their own by asking the following questions of any proposed policy: "Is federal action necessary?... Does this measure promote self-reliance?... Is it responsible?... Does it make us more prosperous? Does it make us safer?... Does it unify us?" Censuring both "tax and spend" Democrats and today's "borrow and spend" Republicans, the authors are critical of the Bush administration and the mushrooming national debt—$7.7 trillion at the time of publication, they note. But their tally of federal waste (e.g., overpayments in tax credits for "the undeserving poor") and fraud to cut—$100 billion worth—comes nowhere near closing the huge federal deficits they decry, and their solutions (e.g., flat tax and Social Security privatization) will surely provoke partisan debate. Regardless of the reader's ideology, however, this book makes for a clear articulation of core conservative ideas.