Free Kansas

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 12/22/11

The “revolution in a corn field” that is happening today in Governor Sam Brownback's Kansas is potentially as important as what happened here in 1776. Because in the last two years the states have learned that they don't have to do what the federal government tells them to do. They can think for themselves and govern themselves, just as Dorothy promised. As the Washington Post reports with an excellent article today titled “In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback puts tea party tenets into action with sharp cuts”: “If you want to know what a Tea Party America might look like, there is no place like Kansas. In the past year, three state agencies have been abolished and 2,050 jobs have been cut. Funding for schools, social services and the arts have been slashed. The new Republican governor rejected a $31.5 million federal grant for a new health-insurance exchange because he opposes President Obama’s health-care law. And that’s just the small stuff.”

It is the essence of the Tea Party and it is the essence of Jeffersonian democracy. And in this election it was said here the other day it could go one of two ways: There is loud, boisterous and thoughtless Tea Party support for the ideas of Newt Gingrich that advance big government further and to the direction of totalitarianism. Then there is the original item advanced by Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, the Tenth Amendment Center and Judge Andrew Napolitano; states thinking form themselves and freeing themselves from an archaic historic overlord. But someone needed to take action and Kansas has. This could not have been accomplished by any president even one sympathetic to these initiatives like Texas governor Rick Perry.

Working with Arthur Laffer, former Reagan adviser, Kansas is developing a working strategy for self governance. It will be a model now for other states, states in the middle with similar economies which want to go the way again - the American way - of sound money, hard work and self government.

If Ron Paul wins Iowa - Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ who advanced Gingrich weeks back this morning declares Paul to be “the best-known propagandist for our enemies” (Surrender Dorothy!) - and he is doing well in New Hampshire, we will have a new party system. One a combo of Dems and Republicans (“No Labels”? Whigs?); Republicans such as George W. Bush and Dems like Obama with the same policies with cosmetic differences. The other a Jeffersonian party in the direction of Gary Johnson, Judge Nap and Ron Paul. Economically this might be seen as a shift in contention from the twins that have ravaged the world for 150 years Marx and Keynes to one between Keynes and Hayek. This returns us to our original nature: Hamilton v Jefferson.

Even today, thanks to Brownbach and Laffer it is possible to see a Jeffersonian century ahead.