ScaifeNet because we can't let Soros have all the fun...

Yesterday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced the round 2 Race to the Top (RttT) winners. Nine states, along with the District of Columbia, will divide $3.4 billion in federal grant money.

The winners included D.C., Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. Delaware and Tennessee won grants in round 1 of the competition. Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, isn’t impressed:

New York? Recent revelations about dumbed-down Regents exams hardly make it seem like a paragon of honest reform. Hawaii? How did last year’s school-free Fridays help them stack up so high? Maryland? Fostering charter schools was supposed to be important, but it has one of the most constricting charter laws in the nation. And Massachusetts? Well, it’s easy to see how it won—it just dropped its own, often-considered nation-leading curriculum standards to adopt national standards demanded by Race to the Top.

McCluskey is right to point out the most concerning outcome of RTTT: that it’s possible that the burdens associated with the federal red tape could outweigh the benefits.

To be eligible for the money, states were required to indicate that they would adopt national education standards and tests. For some states, adoption will likely mean lowering education requirements. Massachusetts, for example, which has signed on to adopt the national standards, already boasts some of the highest education standards in the country. That the state is so quickly tossing out its much-lauded standards and testing program in favor of national standards is concerning to many, including Senator Scott Brown (R–MA), who yesterday expressed his uncertainty about the standards overhaul.

And rightly so. National standards are unlikely to improve education and will put more power into the hands of federal bureaucrats and pull power away from parents.

Besides watering down education standards, the amount of money it will take for states to overhaul their current standards will be significant. According to Robert Scott, Texas’s Education Commissioner, the price for their state to implement the standards would cost the state up to $3 billion. On the other hand, the average RTTT award to states in this second round is only $333 million.

Moreover, states won’t have any financial help with the standards implementation process, adding more costs to already overburdened budgets. Past examples provide plenty of evidence that when the federal government increases school funding, bureaucratic red tape grows. Red tape means more administration, which subsequently ends up costing schools, not to mention taxpayers. And for that reason, the non-winners could end up being the real winners in this competition.

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The government cannot wait until the next disaster strikes to meaningfully engage the private sector.

In December 2009, President Barack Obama delivered his long-awaited decision on the way forward in the War in Afghanistan and pledged 30,000 additional troops for the effort under the condition that they would begin to come home in 18 months. While praising the President’s decision to send more troops, conservative lawmakers blasted the President’s announcement of a deadline for withdrawal, arguing that it would undermine our allies and embolden our enemies. Yesterday, the President’s policy met with another high profile critic, retiring U.S. Marine Gen. James Conway, who told reporters that the July 2011 withdrawal date has given a morale boost to Taliban insurgents who now believe they can simply wait out NATO forces.

General Conway confirmed what Heritage Foundation analysts have been warning about for the last nine months, that the deadline is “giving our enemy sustenance.” Conway revealed that indeed the U.S. has intercepted communication of Taliban insurgents telling each other that they only needed to hold out for so long.

Conway is right. As we noted last year, the President’s decision to impose a timeline was purely a political one, meant to appease the leftist base of the Democratic Party, not to ensure the security interests of the American people. But there are signs the Obama administration now recognizes the damage the timeline has done to U.S. strategy and is seeking to walk it back. That’s good news for America as it fights a war we must win.

Last week, Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, indicated that any troop withdrawal would depend on the “situation on the ground,” and on Monday, he noted that next year’s deadline is “not the date when the American forces begin an exodus.”

Vice President Joe Biden, during a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Indianapolis earlier this week, also signaled the Obama administration is changing its message on Afghanistan. During that speech, the Vice President said, “We are not leaving in 2011, we are beginning a transition.” Biden also called for allowing the new strategy in Afghanistan time to succeed and gave a ringing endorsement of Gen. Petraeus. Biden said, “Don’t buy into that we have failed in Afghanistan…We are now only beginning, with the right general and the right number of forces, to seek our objectives…We needed the best general we had, and we now have him.”

Announcing a timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops even before they had deployed was bad policy. Hopefully the Obama administration now recognizes this fact. But in order to reassure our allies and signal our enemies of U.S. commitment to the war, President Obama must unequivocally revoke the timeline.

Succeeding in Afghanistan will require more patience from the American people. A summer of high casualty rates and reports about corruption of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration are casting doubt among Americans about the effort. A recent poll shows six in ten Americans oppose the war. But the United States and its allies cannot walk away from Afghanistan before the job is done. The military’s new strategy is sound, and our troops should be given the opportunity to succeed. As The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano writes:

Fighting terrorists in South Asia is not easy. But it is a worthwhile effort that offers the promise of a more enduring peace and a safer world for our civilians and allies. Now is the time to vanquish al-Qaeda and its affiliates, not give them a second lease on life. Running away would end nothing. Indeed, it would be but the prelude to more 9-11 style misery.

Maintaining that commitment won’t be easy, either. While President Obama is facing criticism for imposing a withdrawal deadline from the right, he is also facing criticism from the left for backing away from his withdrawal pledge. But there is more at stake for the President than scoring political points. Hanging in the balance is the future of Afghanistan, where failure would spell the return of the Taliban, a resurgent Al-Qaeda, a new wave of terrorism in South Asia, increased potential for conflict between Pakistan and India, and the makings of the next 9-11.

For the United States, failure is not an option, it’s a choice President Obama shouldn’t make, and it’s a result the American people should not accept.

Quick Hits:

• U.S. home sales plummeted by 27.2% in July to a level not seen in more than a decade.
• House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday called on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to resign.
• The leaders of the AFL-CIO and the SEIU have agreed to coordinate spending $88 million or more in the midterm elections to support pro-union candidates.
• According to data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Obama’s failed stimulus program cost more than the Iraq war.
• A new analysis of nearly two dozen papers finds no link between natural disaster losses and climate change.

Obamacare will affect the private practice of medicine and surgery and impact Medicare patients.

Heritage’s sister organization, Heritage  Action for America, recently released a video asking this very question. It is  a humorous video (starring veteran actor Clint Howard) that points to a more serious problem. Where are the congressmen in August? Are they holding townhall meetings to address constituent concerns? If not, what are they hiding? Are they ashamed that they did not pass a budget? Ashamed of the vote on Health Care?

We have written about all this Congress has done in the last two years, and the August recess is a time that Congress is supposed to take time to address constituent concerns over their performance over the last year. If townhalls are not held it takes away an important part of the democratic process. Congress works for the people and the people deserve to be heard.

If you do choose to attend one of the few townhalls his summer, remember to take a copy of The Heritage Foundation’s Solutions for America. With over 20 chapters and 100 specific policy suggestions, Solutions has plenty of ammunition to keep any congressmen on their toes.

Ten years into Hugo Chavez's Bolivarian revolution, Venezuela has become one of the most violent countries in the world. In fact, reports to the New York Times, Venezuela is now more violent than Iraq: In Iraq, a country with about...

This morning, the U.S. State Department announced that the U.S. had submitted its “Report of the United States of America” to the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights. This report was submitted as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) conducted by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC). In November, the U.S. Administration will formally present the findings of its report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Judging from the content of the U.S. report, that November presentation will consist of much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the inadequacy of America.

The U.S. report is revealing of how the current administration views the American people and America’s place in the world. The first section of the report (entitled “A more perfect union, a more perfect world”) begins by quoting the Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and Obama White House documents, including President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Though presented as coherent and harmonious thoughts, the intellectual inconsistency among these documents is striking.

Whereas the Declaration and the Constitution assert American independence and a realistic assessment of human nature, the U.S. UPR report declares that America’s international role is to help “build a world in which universal rights give strength and direction to the nations, partnerships, and institutions that can usher us toward a more perfect world, a world characterized by, as President Obama has said, ‘a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual.’” With this in mind, the White House, cannot be satisfied with imperfection at home in America. Addressed to an international audience, the report contains many statements of dissatisfaction with America’s record, including:

We are not satisfied with a situation where the unemployment rate for African Americans is 15.8%, for Hispanics 12.4%, and for whites 8.8%, as it was in February 2010. We are not satisfied that a person with disabilities is only one fourth as likely to be employed as a person without disabilities. We are not satisfied when fewer than half of African-American and Hispanic families own homes while three quarters of white families do. We are not satisfied that whites are twice as likely as Native Americans to have a college degree….

At our UPR consultations, including the meeting in Detroit, Michigan, Muslim, Arab-American, and South Asian citizens shared their experiences of intolerance and pressed for additional efforts to challenge misperceptions and discriminatory stereotypes, to prevent acts of vandalism, and to combat hate crimes. The federal government is committed to ongoing efforts to combat discrimination: the Attorney General’s review of the 2003 Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies (discussed below), as well as efforts to limit country-specific travel bans, are examples….

In addressing the war against Al Qaeda, the UPR report stated, the White House has “directed that individuals detained in any armed conflict shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and shall not be subjected to violence to life and person, nor to outrages upon personal dignity, whenever such individuals are in the custody or under the effective control of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by the United States. Such individuals shall not be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach that is not authorized by and listed in Army Field Manual 2-22.3, which explicitly prohibits threats, coercion, physical abuse, and water boarding.”

Disappointed in both America’s history and current situation, the UPR report declares to the world that the Obama Administration looks “to the future with pride and hope.”

When reading the UPR report, the salient words of Alexander Hamilton should come to mind. In Federalist No. 6, Hamilton warned Americans not to listen to “visionary or designing men, who stand ready to advocate the paradox of perpetual peace” and who wish to “soften the manners of men.” If someone can honestly believe that perfection and peace is possible through politics, then that person, according to Hamilton, “must be far gone in Utopian speculations.” It would appear that the White House is fundamentally dissatisfied with life on planet earth, and the United States of America, in particular. Yet, there are things government can do, and things government cannot do. The Obama Administration should focus on the former, and stop lamenting the absence of utopian peace on earth.

In early August, when the U.S. Senate earmarked $10 billion to recover lost jobs in education, supporters of the measure claimed the money would save thousands of teachers’ jobs. President Obama put the figure at 160,000 jobs across the country. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said it would save the jobs of 16,500 teachers in her state. And Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) claimed the funding would protect between 2,000 and 3,000 teaching jobs in Colorado.

But nearly three weeks after the vote, Bennet, at least, appears to have exaggerated.

According to Education News Colorado, the hard fact is no one knows for sure how many Colorado teachers’ jobs were eliminated or at risk this year because of budget cuts. The most specific estimate EdNewsColorado could find suggested budget cuts affected 1,825 Colorado teaching jobs — a number near the low end of Bennet’s range, but a far cry from his 3,000 figure. The EdNewsColorado estimate even included layoffs, attrition, position freezes and other staffing actions in multiple job classifications — categories not exactly equivalent to teaching positions lost.

So, why did Bennet recite that inflated estimate on the Senate floor Aug. 5 and include it in a news release the day before? Bennet’s communications director did not respond to phone calls seeking an answer, but, presumably, the senator must have accepted the U.S. Department of Education’s official estimate without question.

Bennet really couldn’t have gotten the number anywhere else. The Colorado Department of Education doesn’t have an official estimate, said Mark Stephens, director of communications. The Colorado Education Association, the Colorado Association of School Boards and the Colorado Association of School Executives don’t either, according to EdNewsColorado.

That’s fine if the federal figures are reliable. But the Department of Education seems to have used the same misguided math to make its projections as Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) did to claim the bailout would save the state of Washington about 3,000 teaching jobs — when, in fact, the number was just 445.

According to the Tacoma News Tribune, Murray simply divided her state’s portion of the bailout money by the average teachers’ salary to determine the number of jobs “saved.”  With that math, the more money the federal government allocated, the more “jobs” states saved, no matter the number of existing jobs, much less the number of jobs in jeopardy.

The Department of Education did not respond to phone calls, but according to EdNewsColorado, the federal agency used state budget information, school enrollments and average educator salaries — not actual pink slips — to determine its projections. That sounds a little too similar to Murray’s method to be completely reassuring.

Maybe that’s why several deficit-laden states, including California and Oregon, might opt to use the bailout money to pay down debt instead of to rehire teachers — because teachers’ jobs were never as much at issue as the federal government claimed.

It certainly seems that way. From 2003 to 2008, 38 states increased their teacher work forces at a greater rate than student enrollment, according to research by the Education Intelligence Agency. The same years, in Iowa and Kentucky, one new teacher was hired for every two new students.

Federal lawmakers might now object to states using the allocated money for real problems — and, indeed, they have. Boxer, for example, issued a terse statement that said, “This funding can only be used to save education jobs that serve our children in public schools — and nothing else.”

But perhaps Boxer and others who voted in favor of the education jobs earmark should have verified state needs before they devoted billions of federal dollars to an exaggerated problem.

When President Barack Obama’s own oil spill commission first met in July, they said that the President’s decision to ban oil drilling in the Gulf fell outside their mandate. But after a number of highly charged field hearing in the Gulf, the commission did a 180-degree reversal and promised to press the Obama administration about the ban.

The commission sent a letter to Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Michael Bromwich demanding to a detailed justification for the ban by August 23.

Bromwich did respond. And his message to the gulf: the ban stays. The AP reports:

The top federal offshore oil drilling regulator is telling the presidential oil spill commission that the temporary halt to deepwater drilling will remain in place for a few more months.
…
The nation’s top drilling regulator, Michael Bromwich, says he will propose a replacement for the moratorium by Halloween and leans against exceptions.

This comes just days after Bloomberg reported that Bromwich himself estimated that President Obama’s oil ban would cost the region 23,247 jobs.

Iran on Saturday began fueling its Bushehr nuclear power plant, a process that is likely to take many days. The reactor’s operations must then be tested before it starts producing electricity, which is expected in about two months. Russia’s Rosatom state nuclear power company, which built the reactor, has assigned Russian technicians to jointly operate the reactor for several years, as Iranian technicians gradually gain full control over the operations.

The startup of the reactor is another sign of Iran’s steady progress across many nuclear fronts. Although the Bushehr reactor is a relatively minor proliferation risk, because it will be monitored by IAEA inspectors and Iran has much better options for obtaining bomb-grade fissile material from other sources, the impending startup is one more nuclear threshold that Iran is on the verge of crossing. This has fueled speculation about the increasing likelihood of an Israeli preventive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Iran’s Defense Minister, Ahmad Vahidi, warned Israel against such an attack: “We may lose a power plant, but the whole existence of the Zionist regime will be jeopardized.”

Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also made an appearance on Sunday to participate in the ongoing war of nerves between Iran and the West. Appearing at a press conference to unveil the prototype of a long range drone aircraft, Ahmadinejad said that Iran should seek the ability to make preemptive strikes against an enemy. He said: “We should reach a point when Iran would serve as a defense umbrella for all freedom-loving nations in the face of world aggressors. We don’t want to attack anywhere, Iran will never decide to attack anywhere, but our revolution cannot sit idle in the face of tyranny, we can’t remain indifferent.”

Approximately 90 percent of America’s infrastructure is privately owned and yet the primary focus of homeland security educational programs in the U.S. has been directed toward local, state, federal government, and military employees. In addition, most of the homeland security educational programs on college campuses are located within the criminal justice or security studies degree programs. The challenge we must now face is how to best develop a culture of critical infrastructure preparedness within the private sector—one that will allow us to effectively mitigate, prevent, prepare, respond to, and recover from all hazards including acts of terrorism.

The question we must ask ourselves is: Who provides the leadership to direct the spending of resources of the multiple entities that compose our privately owned infrastructure? The answer of course, is the CEOs, CFOs, and COOs of American businesses and nonprofit organizations.

How have they prepared themselves for these traditional roles? Most have earned undergraduate degrees and advanced degrees/MBA’s in business, finance, accounting, IT, and marketing. These academic credentials help them develop the traditional knowledge, skills, and abilities required to succeed in leading a business or nonprofit entity. As an adjunct professor who has taught both business management courses and security courses for over 15 years, I continue to find it shocking to observe that it is still possible to earn an undergraduate or graduate degree in business without ever taking a course in business continuity, crisis management, terrorism, security management, or homeland security. Ironically, it is the graduates of these business programs who one day will be the senior decision-makers deciding on how the organization will use its resources and finances to protect the people, properties, profits, and assets of their own organization/segment of America’s infrastructure. How can they be expected to make the proper decisions on infrastructure preparedness without the proper education?

The Department of Homeland Security has attempted to address the issue of critical infrastructure preparedness by sending government liaison employees to the private sector. These employees endeavor to not only make organizations more aware of their responsibilities for emergency preparedness/infrastructure protection, but to discuss how they can best realize this goal. It’s always a challenging role for government employees without any private sector business management experience to advise private business leaders on how to best incorporate security practices into existing business processes and operations. DHS has also advocated the use of ICS/NIMS as the standard emergency response system for both the public and private sectors. The system emphasizes the strategic roles of operations, logistics, planning, finance, and administration. These are the exact elements traditionally addressed in business degree programs. Again, I would challenge anyone to find a business management course that incorporates ICS/NIMS into its course design or business curriculum!

In order to develop a true culture of homeland/hometown security and critical infrastructure preparedness within the private and nonprofit sectors, it is imperative that America’s colleges and universities re-imagine their business school curriculums by integrating business continuity, crisis management, and homeland security courses and modules into existing business courses. Additionally, these curriculums should require a basic understanding of critical infrastructure preparedness prior to graduation.

As an adjunct professor who has taught both business and security management courses I’m recommending that the following courses incorporate emergency preparedness and homeland security content:
1. Strategic management courses must include modules that address threat and vulnerability assessments. SWOT analysis would have a new meaning;
2. International business courses must address the impact of terrorism and all hazards preparation and response in their design;
3. Logistics and supply chain courses must have modules on supply chain security and compliance with U.S. and international security requirements;
4. Human resource courses must integrate security management issues into their curriculum to include workplace violence, domestic and international terrorism, and emergency management;
5. There should be mandatory courses in business continuity, crisis management, and the basic principles of homeland security to include ICS/NIMS. Business schools that do not have qualified faculty members to address these special topic courses should allow business students the opportunity to take these courses within other departments(criminal justice, security studies, and homeland security programs) located either within the university or at nearby educational institutions; and
6. In order to better protect business entities from cyber attacks, students should be required to complete a basic course in IT security/information assurance.

The benefits of requiring America’s business schools to take a leadership role in integrating critical infrastructure preparedness courses into existing business curriculums should be obvious. This return on investment will allow the private sector to develop a new group of leaders who are better prepared to make well-informed decisions on the allocation of corporate resources and monies needed to better protect the private infrastructures of the United States. Leading practitioners from the field of applied behavioral science and organizational development have estimated that it takes approximately 5 years to change the culture of an organization. If we could convince the deans of America’s business schools to take the actions necessary to re-imagine business management curriculums with the previously prescribed homeland security oriented courses we would be well on our way to developing a culture of critical infrastructure preparedness and protection by the year 2020.

Ed Piper is an Adjunct Professor Johns Hopkins University/Carey School of Business.

The views expressed by guest bloggers on the Foundry do not necessarily reflect the views of the Heritage Foundation.

Last week, the establishment media played up reports that China surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy as measured by gross domestic product (GDP). Contrary to the amount of attention it received, the development is not as important as it was made to sound. First of all, if the PRC reported its economic data accurately, China probably passed Japan several years ago. Second, after adjusting for different prices within economies —known as purchasing power parity— China actually passed Japan way back in 1995. In other words, this is old news. Lost in these GDP measures, however, is any measure of personal income or wealth. And by that measure the average Japanese citizen is roughly in 40th place in the world, behind the average citizen of Mississippi. China’s GDP per capita, by comparison, is still only about 15 percent of the U.S. level, about the same as El Salvador.

This is not to say the United States should be turning a blind eye to China’s rise. In another development from last week, this one virtually ignored by the establishment media, the Department of Defense released its annual Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China. According to the report, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) official budget, which has enjoyed double-digit annual increases for two decades, grew again by nearly 8 percent. This is compared to the reductions in defense spending called for in President Barack Obama’s budget, which reduced defense spending from 4.9% of GDP today to 3.01% by 2019. So while the Obama administration is cutting our missile defenses and giving the Navy the cold shoulder, the PLA is developing anti-ship ballistic missiles, building up its military industrial complex and achieving an anti-access, area-denial capacity that will further limit American commanders’ options in Asia.

More troubling, however, was what the report did not focus enough on: the threat to Taiwan. There is little discussion of the Taiwan military structure or its equipment. Indeed, it is striking how the 2010 report avoids making any overall assessment of how the security situation in the Taiwan Straits is developing. If anything, while this year’s report is perhaps the most extensive official discussion of the PLA and China’s security situation available to the public, it arguably underplays the threat posed to Taiwan.

Meanwhile, while the Obama Defense Department is ignoring the threat to Taiwan, the Obama State Department has gotten off to a poor start defending human rights in China. During her first trip to Asia as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton told reporters that pressing the human rights issue in China should not interfere with the Obama administration’s efforts to engage China on “the global climate change crisis.” That’s right: the Obama administration believes global warming is more important than human rights. And even when they do discuss human rights, the Obama administration’s priorities are highly suspect. After the May 2010 U.S.–China Human Rights Dialogue, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Posner told reporters that the U.S. side brought up the Arizona immigration law, presumably to put the Chinese at ease, even though the Chinese expressed no concerns about the law.

Every year for 34 years, the U.S. Department of State has undertaken to prepare the “the most comprehensive record available of the condition of human rights around the world.” Despite promises that economic gains would improve China’s human rights record, since 1989, none of these reports has characterized China’s record as improving. In fact, the most recent two, the 2008 and 2009 reports, indicate a worsening situation.

There is a disconnect between the marginal role that human rights currently plays in America’s China policy and the State Department’s exhaustive annual report that catalogs China’s human rights abuses. The Obama Administration should make defense of universal liberties, not global warming or berating Arizona, a central part of U.S. public and private diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Quick Hits:

• Colleges and universities say Obamacare could keep them from offering low-cost, limited-benefit student insurance policies.
• The first school in the D.C. area named after President Barack Obama, an environmentally friendly “green” school, opened in Maryland yesterday.
• Next month, the Los Angeles Unified School District will open its latest “Taj Mahal” of schools, a $578 million 4,200 student facility with deluxe amenities.
• Clint Howard, brother of director Ron Howard, is displaying his conservative stripes in a new video for Heritage Action for America.
• Leftist filmmaker James Cameron on Sunday backed out of a global warming debate that he asked for and organized.

It is foreseeable that by 2020 malefactors will have the ability to manipulate genomes in order to engineer new bioterrorism weapons.

The most interesting thing about this year’s DOD report on Chinese military capabilities is what it leaves unsaid.

The book event below should be of special interest for parents contemplating the start of a new school year. Leigh Bortins explains what parents can to do ensure their kids master the essential building blocks of knowledge: ...

One common way of thinking about foreign policy is that it exists in its own world, separate from domestic policy or the first principles on which a nation is founded. According to this view , the job of the foreign policy expert is to deal dispassionately with the world as it is, making no distinction between democracies and dictatorships, and shaping policy solely by cold-hearted consideration of the national interest.

The Heritage Foundation has never accepted this way of thinking. It believes that the first principles on which the United States was founded must guide its foreign as well as its domestic policy. Of course, the principles do not dictate precise policies, and they will not manifest themselves in the same way abroad as they do at home. That is because America is a nation of law, which assigns the Federal Government broad but limited powers. The world, by contrast, is governed not by law, but by strength, by treaty, and by custom. And that is one reason we must be guided by our first principles when we go abroad: We must respect the beliefs that made us—especially if we are to stand up for our interests and our values in a world that cannot be relied upon to defend them for us.

The fundamental principle that guides analysts at Heritage when they consider issues in foreign or domestic policy is simple: the United States is founded on the God-given right of self-government, and based on the consent of the governed expressed through elections and, ultimately, the Constitution. Therefore, government does not grant rights: it is created by the people to protect their inalienable rights. Because the U.S. government is based on the consent of the governed, is a nation of laws, and protects fundamental liberties, it is legitimately sovereign.

The concept of sovereignty is older than the United States: it is the foundation of the international state system. But Heritage analysts take sovereignty particularly seriously. In the realm of foreign policy, sovereignty is important for two reasons. First, because it is an expression of our right of self-government, it means that the powers the American people have delegated to the U.S. government can never legitimately be transferred, in whole or in part, to any international or supranational organization.

That does not mean that the U.S. cannot make treaties. On the contrary: properly negotiated and ratified treaties are a fundamental and respectable part of diplomacy, and carrying out diplomacy on behalf of the American people is one of the government’s most important tasks. But it does mean that treaties, because they are a contract that the American people make with other states, must be scrutinized with particular care, to ensure that we are not transferring powers or agreeing to an unverifiable arrangement with states that cannot be trusted to keep their word.

Sovereignty does not matter only for the United States. Because it is an expression of the right of self-government, it—like all fundamental rights—belongs to all men and women. The problem in international relations is that too many states around the world deny these rights and repress their people. Under American principles, these states are not legitimately sovereign, because they are not fulfilling their purpose. Even worse, many of the world’s international institutions have granted membership to these illegitimately sovereign states, and thus rendered themselves suspect and incapable of standing up for fundamental rights.

The U.S. has for over two hundred years led the way— by establishing itself, by defeating Nazism and Communism, and by resisting Islamism—in building an international system that belongs only to the legitimately sovereign states. The U.S. must continue to exercise leadership in this cause, which rests at the heart of American foreign policy. But the U.S. cannot fix the problems of the world in a day, and, regularly, it must still deal with states and international institutions that lack fundamental legitimacy.

With care, this can be done, just as President Reagan negotiated arms control agreements with the Soviet Union. But we should never be under any illusions about who we are dealing with, and should never stop reminding ourselves that in dealing with illegitimately sovereign states, we are not making friends or engaging our way to peace: We are simply doing what we believe is necessary in the world as it currently is to protect our values and interests.

Diplomacy is a wholly legitimate function of government. But it is only a tool, a means to an end. It cannot work unless it is backed by power. Diplomacy and strength are not alternatives: they are two sides of the same coin. Thus, Heritage’s analysts are as concerned to ensure that America provides effectively for its common defense, and for the defense of its allies and interests, as they are to protect its sovereignty. Indeed, defense, as the first duty of government, is the ultimate expression of sovereignty.

Providing an effective defense is costly—even if all wise efficiencies are sought—but that cost must not be grudged or shirked, because it is by our defenses that we maintain our sovereignty against external enemies. Heritage analysts are therefore concerned to ensure that our defenses are maintained, and that they are not undermined by unwise policies in the realm of the military, of diplomacy, or of domestic policy, where the unchecked growth of government will damage our economy and reduce our ability to pay for our defenses.

Ultimately, we believe that America’s principle of powerful but limited government that expresses the will of the people is the right one, and that it will prevail unless we ourselves forsake it. That is why we believe that, at home and abroad, we must live up to this principle, and must reject the false belief that American foreign policy can exist in a world of its own, unconnected to our policies at home or the proud yet prudent expression of our values abroad.  And that is why, at The Heritage Foundation, in both domestic and foreign policy, first principles matter.

The Visa Waiver Program is a key element of promoting a positive image of America abroad.

Getting maritime security policy right is undoubtedly a challenge for the next decade.

China’s human rights record is dismal and not improving. Successive editions of the U.S. Department of State’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices have documented China’s lack of progress in human rights, ranging from continued abuses in Tibet to imprisonment and harsh treatment of political prisoners to a general crackdown on religious groups that are not sanctioned by the government. The Obama Administration should make defense of universal liberties a central part of U.S. public and private diplomacy with the People’s Republic of China.

In October 1964, then spokesman Ronald Reagan stepped into the national political spotlight for the first time with his now-famous “A Time for Choosing Speech,” delivered in support of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

His words stand in stark contrast to those of many of America’s elected officials today, as this video by the Republican Study Committee shows.

In his speech, Reagan described the choice confronting Americans and laid out his own political philosophy:

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

As Congress and President Barack Obama continue to expand government’s reach into American life, it’s worth looking back on Reagan’s speech and recalling his warning about a government that grows beyond its constitutional limits:

A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

You can watch the entirety of Reagan’s speech here.