by Scott Ott
[Audio Version Available at ScrappleFace.com]

When it comes to his "fellow citizens", President George Bush has two words: Trust and empower.

The refrain of the first half of his State of the Union address called on Congress to "trust" the American people, and yet to spend a lot of tax money to "empower" them in almost every area of life. The president professed to trust in the "collective wisdom of ordinary citizens", but through his proposals he portrayed us as moderately wise, but ultimately helpless. In other words, we Americans know what to do to secure the blessings of liberty, but we cannot do it without government intervention, taxpayer dollars and a federal safety net to protect us from failure.

He told Congress to trust us with our own money, our own health care choices and to trust our children to learn if given a fair chance at decent schools. He said Americans are smart, skilled, innovative, creative, financially-savvy, hard-working and good-hearted.

Flattered as we are by his assessment of our gifts and abilities, we might wonder why such bright, industrious, thrifty people can't manage our own lives in a free-market economy, in the greatest harvest field of opportunity the world has ever seen. If we're so clever, why do we need so many new injections of government-controlled redistributed wealth, which is exactly what the president repeatedly proposed.

For starters, President Bush believes we need the short-term shot in the arm of tax rebates, because we suffer short-term economic "uncertainty", ostensibly because we don't understand the cyclical nature of markets.  We need a new $300 million Pell Grant for Kids to "help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools," as Congress continues to flood those same public schools with cash under the guise of 'No Child Left Behind' reforms. We need to bail out people who make bad mortgage choices, rescue and retrain those who cling to jobs in declining industries as they ignore the obvious, pump more money into our struggling university laboratories for research that private industry apparently won't fund, and we must make sure that faith-based charity groups have a place at the public trough alongside their godless counterparts.

By his own description of trust, if President Bush trusted you to ride a bicycle, he would never let go of the back of the seat. It's his hand on the seat that empowers you. Without it, you would fall, never to rise again. We've finally discovered what's connected to Adam Smith's "invisible hand" -- it's the long-arm of the federal government.

"We believe that the most reliable guide for our country is the collective wisdom of ordinary citizens."
-- President George W. Bush, January 29, 2008

It's an odd turn of phrase for a man who professes faith in the superintending grace of God, and who regularly reads the Bible. But odder still, since, in all of our "collective wisdom", we've still made such a mess of the economy that President Bush and Congress must ride to the rescue, bearing bags of our own cash to empower us.

This Neo-Market Capitalism is "compassionate conservatism" in full bloom. In a word, it's cruelty.

From his first presidential campaign, then-Gov. Bush established a dynamic tension, and embraced the false dichotomy, between conservative principles and compassionate living. His misunderstanding of conservatism and capitalism leads him to believe that something must be added to each, in order for them to be loving, gracious and kind.

Conservatism doesn't need an adjective to complete it. Properly understood, conservatism is the most compassionate, and empowering system of government ever devised.

Conservatism empowers because...
-- It champions liberty and respect for law, without irony or contrast.
-- It acknowledges man's responsibility and God's sovereignty with equal vigor.
-- It preserves the dignity of man by allowing him to feel the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, without government scraping off the proceeds of success, or pouring on the pity when prospects seem dim.
-- It recognizes that risk, reward and failure must all exist for the achievement to be worth the toil.
-- It fosters charity at the community, church and individual levels where money changes hands with more accountability, and where benefactor and recipient get to know one another as persons.

President Bush, if you trust us, stop trying to empower us. We have all the power we need from a source beyond the beltway.

Your well-intentioned meddling can only foul the propeller of our progress. And the people all said, "Mr. President, sit down. Sit down, you're rocking the boat."

[Audio Version Available at ScrappleFace.com]

Scott Ott is editor in chief of ScrappleFace.com, the family-friendly daily news satire site, contributing author of the forthcoming book "The New Media Frontier" (Sept. 2008, by Crossway), and a dynamic public speaker available through Premiere Speakers Bureau.