The Party and Vision of Lincoln

A society has an obligation to care for those in need. How we help the most vulnerable members in our midst is not simply a private matter, though it is surely that. It’s also a public concern. Securing justice for the poor and upholding the cause of the needy comes in many different forms, starting with our individual lives and including the good work of communities, civic associations, and places of religious faith and worship.
These institutions are the lifeblood of American society. They touch us all, one by one, where we live, and they offer the needy and the vulnerable not only generous material help but also the priceless gifts of human compassion and a path to dignity, responsibility, and hope. These are the institutions that, along with families, nurture human beings and shape human character. They are indispensable and irreplaceable.
Government also has an undeniably important role to play when it comes to helping those in need. While it can't offer the kind of personal loving support that lifts people out of misery and trouble, it can help to secure some basic material necessities and protect people from the risk of depravation and loss, and it can help to secure the environment in which our institutions of compassion and uplift can do their crucial work. Above all, government can put itself on the side of lifting the poor by putting itself on the side of economic growth and prosperity.
And this needs to be said as well: when it comes to the able-bodied, assistance that comes in the form of government benefits should be temporary, not indefinite and not endless. Whenever possible the goal should be to help people transition back to work and productive lives, not only because it's good for a society but also because it's good for individuals.
Work is important for people because it creates a sense of independence, self-reliance, and dignity. It allows people to exercise greater responsible for their lives and for those whom they love. And the true measure of a society's decency and compassion isn't, as Governor Romney says, how many people are on welfare or receiving food stamps; it is how many people are moving from government dependency to good paying jobs.
The goal here is a deeply American one: upward mobility, greater opportunity, and the chance to rise in life and better our condition. It is to provide every American, in every station in life, with what Lincoln called "an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations."
America at its best has thrived by remaining in that middle ground between two extremes: a sink-or-swim, you're-on-your-own society on the one hand and an egalitarian, redistributive, and government-centered one on the other hand.
The best way to maintain the right balance is to provide people with opportunities and the skills they need to seize them -- to provide them with the tools they need to shape their lives.
The on-ramps to upward mobility include a good education; strong, intact families; and neighborhoods and communities that provide children with safety and a sense of belonging. But the core argument Governor Romney has made is that opportunity and social mobility depend above all on a strong, growing economy. Instead of a stagnant economy that makes it too hard to find a job and pushes more and more people into poverty and on to food stamps, we can have a vital, robust economy that lifts millions out of poverty, that strengthens the middle class, that makes possible philanthropy and charitable giving, and the encourages self-reliance and achievement.
When we look beyond the horse race component of this campaign, it's clear, I think, that this election isn't simply a contest between two men; it is a contest between two profoundly different visions of America and our future.
We know what the Obama vision is because we know what the Obama record is: economic stagnation, increasing dependency, and the expansion of the Nanny State -- one that (in the words of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) “takes too much from you to do too much for you.”
The Romney/Ryan vision for America is fundamentally different: economic growth, limited government, less dependency, greater self-reliance and more upward mobility – a beneficent society that provides people with the skills they'll need to succeed in a free economy and that provides a safety net for those who cannot care for themselves.
It is a society that is dynamic and decent, that is prosperous and generous, and that is marked by excellence and achievement and human flourishing. A society -- which is something different from a government -- that flourishes because it understands that individual accomplishment is not the opposite of mutual responsibility. Americans have always grasped that one without the other is impossible, and that the combination of the two adds up to the American dream.
Not surprisingly, it was President Lincoln who expressed that dream better than anyone: "The progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and resolute man raises himself, that he may work on his own account and hire somebody else... is the great principle for which this government was really formed." Lincoln went on to say this:

I don't believe in law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else…when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.

As it was then, so it is today.

 

Peter Wehner Senior Adviser for Romney for President, Inc.