Confusing the Enemy: W's Latest Buzz-Phrase is "Social Entrepreneur"

March 1, 2002

Exhaustively, I debated every left wing kook on the internet. President Bush did not refer to the Axis Powers of World War II in his state of the union address. "Axis of evil" is not the same as "Axis Powers." A simple comparison shows that one phrase has three words and the other has only two. They can't be the same phrase. And I must insist that the word axis was defined before World War II. Look it up, you schmuck! And while we're at it, Al Gore did not invent the internet, the votes were counted, and George W. Bush was not appointed to the presidency by the United States Supreme Court.

Just when I thought it was safe to go to lunch, the president's speech writer threw yet another controversial buzz-phrase into the fray. In Tuesday night's speech on welfare reform, W thanked a whole list of social entrepreneurs. I can just hear it now. "It's social engineers!" they'll say. "This latest terminological faux pas is final proof of an uneducated, possibly brain-damaged president." But once again, they'll be wrong, and this time I want to situate the particulars on the desk-top before the fracas begins.

Welfare reform has become one of the most confusing issues in the history of politics. I pity the good-doers who stomp into the subject with sincere intentions and less than two years of laborious research. I expect that my opinion must seem paradoxical to some. The politicians make it sound so easy; a little personal responsibility here, some marriage there, and a job. If those people don't do what they are supposed to do, the government will force them to do it and they will be better off for it. The idea is so simple that one must wonder why it took so long for us to think of it. Now that it's out, it's an extremely popular idea.

Except for nearly insignificant differences in the degree of outward reckless impatience to increase spending, the welfare reform agenda has enjoyed full bipartisan support for almost twenty years. The major difference in the rhetoric between the most conservative sounding Republican in Wisconsin and the most extreme Marxist politician in some foreign state is the use of religion in developing a moral tone. One might wonder why we bothered with decades of conflict against nations with dramatically different views about the nature of the welfare state. Why has it taken so long for everyone to agree on what is simply obvious?

With global agreement on the general direction of change, the major political issue that remains is President Bush's word choice. Does the phrase social entrepreneur describe the special character of New World Order social planners, or is this a brazen attempt by the right to steal credit for the old leftist idea of social engineering, or was the president's speech writer unaware of the established term, or did the president himself simply screw it up? Even more questions could be raised. There are so many speculations and spins to be considered that if the president fails to introduce another semantic shock soon, this just might be the major issue of the 2002 mid-term elections. It might decide the balance of power between Republicans and Democrats for the next two years.

The term, I contend is correct. It helps bring perfect clarity to the character of the no-nonsense New Age iron-fisted compassionate progressive conservative agenda. I know what you're thinking now. This was no mistake. It must have taken months of slick political surveys and dozens of focus groups to find just the right combination of words. The masses will be thrilled with this new description of old ideas. They will gladly abandon those boring concerns over balancing the budget. What difference does it make if the policy of overspending on social programs combined with government coercion failed in so many other countries and already has a poor history in the United States? It sounded good when President Bush announced reductions in the welfare rolls, just as it did when Bill Clinton did it in 1996. No candidate for any office is expected to associate the reduction in welfare roles with the drop in general unemployment from over ten percent in Clinton's first term. The masses will never notice.

You will likely be surprised to learn that the field of social entrepreneuring has a great deal of history and substance and that it has been part of a growth industry in the United States for at least a quarter century. The welfare reform agenda, as we know it today, was born as part of welfare legislation in 1975. One of its champions was a Democrat, Senator Russell Long, the son of infamous political figure Huey "Kingfish" Long of Louisiana. The original idea was complicated but not beyond experience that had developed through generations of political chicanery.

The social engineers of the day did not like the idea. In fact, very few people liked it. Russell Long's reform passed only as an amendment to more popular social legislation. When signing the bill, President Ford said that it intruded too far into the personal lives of individuals and promised to propose corrective legislation later. But the event left an enduring legacy. A former Hollywood union organizer and promising liberal took the federal stage in the role that would be his most enduring — that of a conservative Republican with a talent for uniting traditional domestic foes. Fresh from instituting no-fault divorce in California, Ronald Reagan appeared before Congress with representatives from the National Organization for Women as the only people to speak in favor of Russell Long's get-tough-on-deadbeats agenda. Easy divorce and the promise of a pot of gold for every divorced woman would later help the presidential candidate gain important votes from "Reagan Democrats."

In the early 1980s, leftist propagandists were busy convincing the masses that welfare reform was being built on the solid foundation of traditional American values; work, family, and responsibility. Progressive welfare reform was transformed into a conservative issue. Who could possibly imagine that Communists had ever experienced intimate government involvement in family life or were ever forced to work in jobs assigned by government or that they ever had such an enlightened government that it could define and enforce personal responsibility? Those are ideas built on moral values that could only have been invented in America!

By the time Ronald Reagan took office as president, enough pork had been promised in welfare reform that supporters within politics and government abounded. Through the Reagan miracle the most enthusiastic champions were not social engineers, but true social entrepreneurs. The Reagan era saw the old-new development of government-private partnerships, which dramatically increased the role of profiteers in the welfare system. The billions of dollars in new spending did more than supplement increasing state budgets. The system was creating overnight millionaires who could easily match organizations like NOW in campaign contributions, and who were entirely dependent on the welfare system for their wealth.

The idea of allowing businessmen to run government operations became so successful that the entrepreneurs themselves began driving welfare reform. Who better to control government policy than people who profit from it? They wondered why non-welfare families could not be included so that billions more dollars could be pumped through the system leading to even more profits. So the welfare system was quickly expanded to include all families in which the parents are either divorced or were never-married. They even built a monstrous national database system for keeping track of the personal financial transactions of all Americans. You might not be divorced yet, but you could be some day.

The profit making idea was so compelling that it attracted one of the largest and most successful accounting firms as a lead manager of welfare reform and implementation; Arthur Andersen also became a household name due to its major role in such high profile business success stories as Enron.

So once again I must insist; President Bush chose the right word.


Roger F. Gay