Conservative manifesto.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal that they are endowed by. their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the Governed."

--The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

HOWEVER many times these words are quoted, they still sound fresh. Thomas Jefferson's eloquence provided the spark for one of the most successful revolts against a tyrannical state in history.

The idea of the divine nature of the individual and his or her superiority to the state has not come easily or cheaply. The blood of millions has been shed in defense of this seemingly simple idea. But the idea of man's superiority to the state will not die, because it is grounded in the divine nature of man--not of kings. Man is endowed by his Creator--not by the state--with "certain Unalienable Rights."

From Hitler to Stalin and Honecker, Duvalier and Castro, Saddam Hussein and Milosevic, as the challenges to our creator-endowed freedoms have become clear, individuals have risen up to throw off the shackles of tyranny. It took seventy years in the Soviet Union, but the inevitable revolution occurred.

Sometimes, however, the threat posed by the state to man's freedom is not so clear. Sometimes it comes gradually, offered in tempting packages put forward by well-meaning people who believe with all their hearts that they know better how to improve the lot of all. All that is necessary is that we provide them with certain powers, and that we sacrifice only a few of our freedoms, to provide a better and more equal world for all. A better world, of course, as viewed by them.

The arrogance of the notion that an elite corps of the best and the brightest can make society better and more equal continues to be lost on the Left. So has the inevitable failure of their efforts and the suffering their suffocating ideology has brought to millions of its victims. But that has not deterred them.

Even in America, amidst the greatest success of political and economic freedom in the history of the world, generations of central social and economic planning have finally fostered a new culture--a culture of dependency, rampant crime, single parenthood, broken families, tribal-like group competition, and a turn away from personal responsibility.

Our political leaders preach a message of class envy and so demand collective solutions to our problems. They tell us we can individualize opportunity and collectivize risk; that we may enjoy the benefits of our society but have no responsibility for its costs; that the less than successful are helpless victims of unfairness. But they are wrong. The balkanization of society into competing ethnic or economic groups treads upon the dignity of the individual and it is only individual effort and ingenuity that will support a prosperous society. The fundamental bargain of a free society is that progress and opportunity require individual discipline and responsibility.

But if conservatives are to be proved right sooner rather than later, we must rise once again to the challenge of demonstrating that a course of personal freedom, moral responsibility, and individual opportunity will inevitably provide for a more bountiful, a more rewarding, and, yes, a more just and equal society than any alternative known to man.

The election of 1992 revealed a deep dissatisfaction among voters. Government is seen to be corrupt, self-aggrandizing, and disconnected from individual concerns and understanding. Reform is not enough. Conservatives must offer an alternative that is not just the opposite of liberalism--small government where they favor large, individualism where they favor group entitlements, free markets where they favor regulation-- but a profound and fundamental "re-visioning" of the philosophy of American government.

President Clinton's Administration has already embarked on a program of higher taxes and greater government involvement in our lives. To oppose that course is important, for reducing the power of government and concurrently increasing the power of the individual are essential tasks in reimplementing this conservative vision. But that is not enough. The conservative vision offers a government subservient to and reinforcing the spiritual and economic imperatives of the individual. We must reject outright the collectivism of liberal government and advocate the Jeffersonian vision of personal freedom, moral responsibility, and individual opportunity upon which the success of democratic capitalism rests.

Strong Foreign Policy

To protect our liberty, America must be the world's predominate economic and military force, able to project overwhelming military power anywhere around the globe. But that power must be used only to advance America's direct national interests.

THE FIRST DUTY of government is to protect the safety of its citizens. The traditional expression of this responsibility is a strong defense. Despite the end of the Cold War and the diminished threat of the former Soviet Union, military strength has not lost its relevance.

History teaches that rapid disarmament following a perceived elimination or reduction in the threat to freedom inevitably has tragic consequences. From the Congress of Vienna to the Treaty of Versailles, free nations have paid a terrible price for letting down their guard in times of diplomatic euphoria.

America stands poised to repeat this tragic mistake. The peace children of the 1970s are disarming the United States at a frightening pace. The Clinton defense program would have this country spend a smaller percentage of its GNP on national defense than at any time since Pearl Harbor.

In an age when missiles can traverse the globe in minutes, threats to U.S. security are unlikely to develop so gradually that incremental military build-ups are sufficient. The United States must be prepared, hour by hour, to defend its interests.

Threats to U.S. security are diminished, not removed. The Russian reforms have become paralyzed. Response to unrest in the boundary states of the former Soviet Union is increasingly a military response.

The Soviet transition is far from complete; so too is that of the People's Republic of China. Both may end where they began; it is too soon to be sure. But it is not too soon to ensure that America sustains the military capability she will need should the future turn out to be a reflection of the past.

Strenthening U.S. security in this uncertain world requires:

--Restoring our defenses to end of the Cold War capability. A defense budget of at least 5.5 per cent of GDP (compared to 4.7 per cent in FY93) will be needed to maintain the capacity to conduct a Desert Storm operation, deploy an adequate navy to protect the sea lanes, and develop a strategic defense.

--Having the United States unilaterally maintain command and control of U.S. military forces; the lives of American military men and women should not be put at risk for anything less than the direct national interest of the United States. America's security interests must not be subordinated to international consensus or UN supervision. The mirage of multilateralism has no place in national defense policy.

--Building a strategic defense capability to protect American territory and interests against missile attack. Tonight we sleep defenseless against a single missile launched from anywhere by unknown terrorists.

--Continuing to support economic reforms, but preparing to confront an expansionist Russia, for the passions of nationalism, totalitarianism, and economic expansion have not been extinguished. U.S. policy must oppose the use of Russian force in the former Soviet states and support the legitimate defense needs of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and the Baltics.

Safe Streets, Restful Sleep

The safety of our streets and neighborhoods is the first domestic priority of American society. It is achieved by removing from the streets the recidivists committing a large portion of crimes, and increasing the capability of law-enforcement entities.

THE GREATEST threat to the safety of American citizens today comes not from foreign enemies, but from domestic crime. Some 24 million people each year are the victims of serious crime. Crime has increased fiverold since 1960; violence has exploded. A young black male is more likely to die by violence than any other cause, and, as George Will has written, millions of our children go to bed each night to the sound of gunfire. Vast sectors of our cities are effectively controlled by criminals, while in too many neighborhoods crime overwhelms all else; school, home, and work environments are often helpless in its grip. This violence is imposing a terrible physical, psychological, moral, and economic cost upon society, in pain, suffering, trauma, and dollars.

Yet the perpetrators of much of America's crime freely walk the streets of our cities and towns. According to former Attorney General William P. Barr, some 30 per cent of all murders, 25 per cent of all rapes, and 40 per cent of all robberies are committed by men out on bail, probation, or parole. William Bennett's Index of Leading Cultural Indicators documents that the median prison sentence served for conviction of a serious crime is just eight days.

For thirty years the liberal response to the rising tide of criminal violence has been therapeutic: understand, help, and rehabilitate the criminal. It is a tattered vision, rent by the reality of intentional, repeated, and malevolent violence.

The conservative response is different: certain punishment for proven crime, compassion for victims, and prevention of crime by removal from society of its perpetrators and increased resources for law enforcement.

Conservatives also believe law enforcement is the constitutional responsibility of state and local government and should remain so. To make America safe again we must:

--Remove from the streets that small class of recidivist violent criminals--perhaps fewer than half a million of them who commit the preponderance of the criminal acts.

--Lengthen the time served in prison by convicted criminals, mandating life sentences without parole for multiple violent felony convictions.

--Restrict parole for violent offenders and prisoners testing positive for drug use. Increase the use of pretrial detention for dangerous and second-offense defendants. Try repeat violent juvenile defendants as adults.

--Strengthen law enforcement by constructing 500,000 new prison beds and training 100,000 additional police officers.

--Make sure that illegal drug use and sale remain criminalized. The Federal Government should continue its drug interdiction and seizure programs.

--Reaffirm our allegiance to the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Unilateral disarmament of law-abiding citizens in the face of armed criminals is as ill-conceived a policy as disarmament of a nation faced with international aggression.

Economic Prosperity

Encouraging a market economy--history's only mechanism through which ordinary citizens can benefit from rising living standards--is the nation's first economic priority. Lower tax rates, limited government regulation, and open international markets will encourage economic prosperity.

THE CORE of the spectacular success of the American experiment in democratic capitalism lies a market economy. The tragedy of the liberal hour has been its rejection of market economics and its embrace of the arrogant belief that the best and brightest at the helm of the ship of state can steer a more prosperous economic course than the market can steer for us. As we have witnessed, particularly in the decade of the 1980s, the millions of daily decisions made by free people in a marketplace of choices will maximize both opportunity for individuals and the prosperity of the nation as a whole.

To accomplish these goals, conservative economic policy is rounded upon six principles.

1. No economic program can be successful without low inflation and sound money. The marketplace is best served by a predictable growth of the money supply, tied to a commodity basket or some other stable indicator, that will rise only as the economy expands. Political manipulation of the money supply must not be one of the tools of government.

2. Tax policy should focus upon creating the greatest possible economic growth and collecting revenue in the fairest, simplest, and least economically distorting fashion. Current tax policy, heavily weighted against the successful, the productive, and the innovative, must be reversed. Repealing the Bush and Clinton tax increases and setting a top marginal tax rate of less than 25 per cent (fully indexed for inflation) are our immediate objectives.

3. Vigorous international trade must be encouraged by expanding the NAFTA concept beyond Canadian and Mexican markets. Protectionism is a statist policy; the government by tariff and quota both regulates and retards economic growth. Further, keeping foreign goods out of America is unfair to all of us. It reduces the choices we have in the market, raises the price we pay for goods, and costs us jobs in export and domestic industries.

4. Limiting federal and state regulation of enterprise to what is necessary to provide information to consumers and ensure transactional fairness will increase private-sector innovation and opportunity. Individuals are better served by a refereed marketplace than by politically motivated, centrally directed economic planning. Every industry, from airlines to trucking, that has been deregulated has become more efficient and offered lower prices to consumers. Deregulation of financial-services institutions will promote more customer opportunity and security; deregulating telecommunications services will provide higher quality and less expensive service. Market solutions to environmental challenges will provide a cleaner earth at a fraction of the cost.

5. Similarly, ending market-distorting production subsidies and price supports will reduce consumer prices and increase opportunity. An economic freedom, constitutional amendment in the Milton Friedman mold will guarantee these opportunities:

Neither Congress nor any state shall make laws abridging the freedom of sellers of goods or labor to price their products or services.

Such an amendment would end all sorts of collectivist tinkering, from New York City's (and other locations) rent-control statutes, to agricultural price supports.

6. Reform a legal system that is placing heavy burdens upon society through both litigation delays and liability costs. Placing the burden of legal fees on the losing party (as in Britain), assessing full cost for use of the courts for those who can afford to pay, and sharply restricting punitive damages would begin reform.

Less Is More

Government cannot fulfill people's lives; only the energy and freedom of individuals striving to excel can do that. Government policy must help them by reducing its intrusive role and reinvigorating federalist principles.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS after the rounding of the Republic, the Federal Government spent less than 3 per cent of GNP. Fifty years later, in 1937, it consumed only 9 per cent of GNP. Today the figure has reached 24 per cent. Hospital cost controls, mandated family leave, environmental standards, welfare regulations, are all enacted in Washington to limit authority in our hometowns. Federal courts decree the location of community public housing, regulate the disposal of municipal garbage, order the busing of young children to distant schools, and override state constitutions in taxing citizens to pay the bill. The idea of federalism and limited government, the philosophical under-pinning of our Constitution, is slipping away.

Much of the responsibility for the erosion of the Constitution's dual sovereignty compact lies with the Supreme Court. The surest opportunity to return to America's rounding philosophy therefore lies with the Court as well. It should begin with disapproval of federal gerrymandering of local legislative district boundaries to achieve specific racial or ethnic election outcomes, in contravention of Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution. The Court should overturn Roe v. Wade, an exercise in denial of state authority as abundant in political support as it is lacking in constitutional nexus.

But legislative opportunities to reduce the intrusive role of the public sector in private life are legion.

---A constitutional restraint to limit Federal Government spending to less than 20 per cent of GNP is the first step. In the meantime, fiscal policy should restrain the annual growth of federal spending to less than the rate of GNP growth, so that the public sector shrinks as a percentage of GNP.

---The marketplace should be used to provide the delivery of basic services to individuals and families. The problem in America is not that we do not spend enough alleviating our problems, it is that the systems we are using to alleviate them are wasteful, unworkable, and unresponsive to individual needs.

Health-care IRAs and tax credits for individual health-care expenditures offer a sensible, market approach to paying for health services; they permit greater individual choice and demand greater individual responsibility. It is a simple truth that until people begin using their own earned dollars to pay for health care, it will be overpriced and overused.

Nor should the Federal Government be providing retirement income for the vast majority of citizens capable of providing for themselves. There is an urgent need for a market-based retirement option that will increase benefits for the retired and avoid impending massive payroll tax increases that will destroy job opportunities for the young.

Finally, parents should be empowered to choose whatever school--public, private, or religious-is best for each of their children. Educational funding should follow the student to whatever school parents select, for it is adoption of market principles that will inject competition-driven improvements in our schools. The current system, with its lame emphasis on self-esteem, as opposed to substance, and its mediocre performance is a standing injustice to our children. It cannot be reformed. It can only by replaced--by a system based upon the market and responsive to the individual.

A series of federal statutes should be enacted to allow states to govern all matters which, in Madison's words, "extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State." Thus state employee wages, wetlands, and welfare regulation, for example, are left to state government. Uniform national rules, as proposed in President Clinton's health plan, for example, are not beneficial to society. They limit individual freedom, and retard both innovation and improvement in the quality of goods and services.

--Limiting the terms of elected officials will also serve to limit the power of government and thereby enhance the power of individuals. Upholding the power of voters to enact term limits will provide an early test of the Supreme Court's renewed commitment to federalist principles. No stronger admonition can be delivered to those abusing federalism than to empower their victims to limit their opportunity to do so.

Social Policy

America's social compact offers equality of opportunity to all and compassionate help to those in need. In return, it demands individual responsibility. We must erase from our laws preferences based upon gender, race, sexual orientation, or national origin. Our policies must support the primacy and authority of the family, the work ethic, and an insistence on civil behavior.

THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT, to use de Tocqueville's phrase, has created the most rewarding society in the history of mankind. It has offered the individual freedom and a virtually unbounded opportunity to excel.

The fundamental bargain of a free society is that progress and opportunity require personal discipline and responsibility, and this requirement extends to every individual, not just to the successful and advantaged members of society.

On the one hand, our social compact offers freedom to the individual, education to help people develop their skills, and compassionate assistance to weather the rough times of structural change, economic contraction, and poverty.

But there is a second half to the compact, too--the individual's responsibility to society. In return for America's opportunity, we are expected to accept responsibility for our own lives and to conform to social norms. Drug use is outside the pale; so is violent behavior. The ultimate responsibility of the citizen in the social compact is to be a law-abiding contributor to the whole, not an outlaw demanding entitlement to his or her own vision of ordered civility. If you want society's help, you work, you don't do drugs, have more welfare babies, rob, assault, or kill.

To strengthen this social compact:

--Reaffirm the two-parent family as the norm in American culture and respect the primacy and authority of the family unit. Government must defer to the authority of parents regarding the teaching and raising of children. Stop championing unwed motherhood as an alternative lifestyle, make divorce more difficult to obtain, and raise the child-care tax deduction to $7,000 in order to restore its value to postwar levels. Use the power of the law to enforce fathers' economic responsibility for their children.

--Replace the failed policies of the welfare state with the work ethic. The perverse incentives of liberal social policies, which reward illegitimate births, idleness, and family breakdown have destroyed families and devastated the social underclass.

The replacement of the work ethic by the welfare state has destroyed the opportunity, the dignity, and the cohesion of poor families in America. No marginal improvement in tax rates, no health- or daycare benefits or transportation vouchers can repair a system based upon the destructive premise of permanent welfare assistance. The work ethic is at the core of a healthy society, and the individual responsibility of doing a job, earning a living, and striving for improvement is crucial to restoring opportunity and self-respect to underclass Americans. We must replace welfare with work. For all able to work, America's social compact demands work; public compassion is balanced by private responsibility.

--Reaffirm the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws by erasing preferences based upon race, religion, origin, and gender.

Thirty years ago America turned a corner in race relations, acknowledging and repudiating the racism in its past and taking the first steps on the path toward equality of opportunity for all. But the civil-rights revolution soon abandoned its emphasis on individual rights, and embraced racial and ethnic identification as the talisman for rights and remedies in everything from jobs to jury selection to the drawing of voting district boundaries.

The quota system has become so pandemic in universities, businesses, and government today in America that an entire philosophy--multiculturalism---has had to be invented to justify it. The truth is that affirmative-action quotas are both unjust and untenable. They are unjust because they punish those who have done nothing wrong. They are untenable because they undermine the concept of merit and the individual pursuit of excellence.

The conservative vision must challenge the very basis upon which we help the poor and the underclass, rejecting the affirmative-action quota model outright, and returning to the concept of race-blind impartiality and fairness for each individual, to Martin Luther King's dictum that a man should be judged not by the color of his skin but the content of his character.

--Extend the social compact only to legal immigrants, and control our borders so that only legal immigrants enter. America owes no duty to citizens of other nations; excepting the occasional political refugee, our policy should limit immigration to the skilled and energetic, those individuals most likely to contribute to our society.

Finally, government must abandon the statist, utopian concept of equality of results, and emphasize instead the critical importance of individual opportunity and economic growth to assuage society's inevitable inequality of outcomes. For as Michael Novak has noted:

Real differences in talent, aspiration, and application inexorably individuate humans. Given the diversity and liberty of human life, no fair and free system can possibly guarantee equal outcomes. A democratic system depends for its legitimacy, therefore, not upon equal results but upon a sense of equal opportunity.

Confirming America's Culture

A cohesive society requires a set of shared beliefs that define the behavioral norms of all its members. Our governmental policies must positively reinforce the American culture; they must abandon moral neutrality in public policy and affirm such values as our common language, the role of religion in our lives, and the individual pursuit of excellence.

OUR COMMON language is the most obvious element of America's culture. More profound are our religious heritage, the subservience of the state to the individual, the two-parent family as the foundation of society, and the concept of merit.

That is not to say there are not Americans who, for example, believe in no God at all, speak languages other than English, or choose not to have families. But to be a part of America's culture one accepts that the state will not be neutral regarding every set of ideas, from incest to abortion. Our culture's values, customs, and beliefs must be reinforced by the institutions of our society.

Thus, disparaging the role of religion in our lives or undermining the authority of parents have no place in public policy. What does have a place is requiring that public schools teach in English, allowing an invocation before graduation, and encouraging grades on merits. Marriage is reserved for heterosexual couples, and affirmative action used in its original meaning-- that everyone is invited to participate in our society. Freedom of expression is guaranteed for the anti-religious or pornographic artist, but government funding is not.

Moral neutrality in public affairs has propelled us down the slippery slope of cultural decline. The climb back up requires a cultural renaissance in our families, neighborhoods, churches, and schools. But it cannot succeed unless the public sector abandons its indifference to moral choices and affirms the cultural values shared by our citizenry.

Confirming America's culture requires a fundamental shift in public-policy thought:

--Reject the neutrality of governmental institutions and policies regarding moral values. They must reinforce the fundamental values of American culture: diligence and self-discipline, honesty and virtue, compassion and respect for others. Our policies must lead people to choose marriage over single parenthood, encourage adoption and discourage abortion, and promote personal discipline as a higher value to society than libertine lifestyles.

--Reject multiculturalism, the belief that every cultural concept is of equal moral value and must be accepted as a valid lifestyle choice. It is undermining our values and endangering our society.

--Reward the pursuit of excellence. Both brain surgeons and bricklayers must be committed to excellence if our society is to prosper. Academic excellence must be the first priority of the public school classroom, and merit the basis of employer hiring and promotion standards. Race norming of test scores and adjustment of standards to equalize results among racial, ethnic, or age groups undermines effort, merit, and equality of opportunity.

Take the Offense

ONLY IN LIBERTY can nations and individuals prosper. The tyranny of the state over the masses struggling to be free is a sadly recurring twentieth-century theme. But if common men, ennobled by the divine spark of their Creator, are, in Winston Churchill's phrase, to "move forward into broad, sunlit uplands," they must do so one-by-one, striving to advance their individual progress toward that uplifting goal. There are no collective means to individual prosperity.

The collectivist, tribal, morally neutral policies of the Left will no more be successful in solving the nation's problems in the future than they have been in the past. They will fail to achieve the liberal promise; they will make problems worse, not better.

But conservatives cannot succeed in capturing the imagination and support of the American people by simply opposing the policies of the Left. We must offer a vision which speaks to the best in people, not the worst; to the hopes and aspirations of our citizens, not to their greed and their fears. Americans have historically understood that governments are a threat to personal freedom. They instinctively distrust policies which denigrate personal responsibility. They realize that too much of American life has been corrupted by political manipulation. Our challenge is to offer a conservative alternative to the liberal order, and nothing less than these fundamental reforms will do.

Several years ago, I served on the Blue Ribbon Commission advising post-Communist Hungary on its route to prosperity. The Commission's conclusion reflects the essence of the conservative vision:

Government cannot fulfill people's lives. What a wise governmental system can do is to create the trustworthy, confidence-inspiring institutions that permit individuals to fulfill their own lives.

Mr. du Pont, the former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Committee for American Leadership and president of the National Review Institute.

The Du Pont Doctrines

* To protect our liberty, America must be the world's predominate economic and military force, able to project overwhelming military power anywhere around the globe. But that power must be used only to advance America's direct national interests.

* The safety of our streets and neighborhoods is the first domestic priority of American society. It is achieved by removing from the streets the recidivists committing a large portion of crimes, and increasing the capability of law-enforcement entities.

* Encouraging a market economy is the nation's first economic priority. Lower tax rates, limited government regulation, and open international markets will encourage economic prosperity.

* Government cannot fulfill people's lives; only the energy and freedom of individuals striving to excel can do that. Government policy must help them by reducing its intrusive role and reinvigorating federalist principles upon which our constitution was based.

* America's social compact offers equality of opportunity to all and compassionate help to those in need. In return, it demands individual responsibility. We must erase from our laws preferences based on gender, race, sexual orientation, or national origin. Our policies must support the primacy and authority of the family, the work ethic, and an insistence on civil behavior.

* A cohesive society requires a set of shared beliefs that define the behavioral norms of all its members. Our governmental policies must positively reinforce the American culture; they must abandon moral neutrality in public policy and affirm such values as our common language, the role of religion in our lives, and the individual pursuit of excellence.