Many of you have written to me to ask why I recently taped an advertisement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for The Alliance for Climate Protection, a group founded by former Vice President Al Gore.

I completely understand why many of you would have questions about this, so I want to take this opportunity to explain my reasons. First of all, I want to be clear: I don't think that we have conclusive proof of global warming. And I don't think we have conclusive proof that humans are at the center of it.

But here's what we do know. There is an important debate going on right now over the right energy policy, the right environmental policy, and making sure we do the right things for our future and the future of our children and grandchildren. Conservatives are missing from this debate, and I think that's a mistake. When it comes to preserving our environment for future generations, we can't have a slogan of "Just yell no!"

I have a different view. I think it's important to be on the stage, to engage in the debate, and to communicate our position clearly. There is a big difference between left-wing environmentalism that wants higher taxes, bigger government., more bureaucracy, more regulation, more red tape, and more litigation and a Green Conservatism that wants to use science, technology, innovation, entrepreneurs, and prizes to find a way to creatively invent the kind of environmental future we all want to live in. Unless we start making the case for the latter, we're going to get the former. That's why I took part in the ad.

"And [these small towns] fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not..."  Obama reportedly continued. "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
-Senator Barack Obama April 2008, San Francisco

If you go to the most expensive private school in Hawaii and then move on to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, you may not understand normal Americans. Their beliefs are so alien to your leftwing viewpoint that you have to seek some psychological explanation for what seem to be weird ideas.

They can't really believe in the right to bear arms.

They can't really believe in traditional marriage.

They can't really believe in their faith in God.

They can't really want to enforce the law on immigration.

Therefore, they must be "bitter" and "frustrated."

This is the closest Senator Obama has come to openly sharing his wife's view that "America is a mean country". Not since Governor Dukakis have we seen anyone so out of touch with normal Americans. It makes perfect sense that it was in a fundraiser in San Francisco that he would have shared the views he has so carefully kept hidden for the entire campaign.

On ABC’s This Week yesterday to discuss my new book Real Change, I said “the era of Ronald Reagan is over.”  I want to explain my statement because it seems to have caused some confusion. 

The fact is that if Governor Reagan was faced with the world of 2008, he would be trying to develop new solutions and be an advocate of real change.  He wouldn’t be suggesting that we could go back 28 years and adopt a program that was totally appropriate for a world that had the Soviet Union, hyperinflation, Jimmy Carter’s policies of weakness and the challenges of 1980.  He would say we need to face the challenges of 2008. 

That means America has to find solutions that will work in a world in which China is much bigger, the world market is much more competitive, our dangerous reliance on foreign oil owned by dictators is much greater, and the challenges to America, whether from immigration, from the secular left seeking to drive God out of public life, or from those who would undermine English as the language of America is a different set of dangers than the those of 1980.  Today’s challenges require new solutions and new approaches.

The whole purpose of writing Real Change was to begin to outline the scale of “real change” it is going to require for Americans to succeed in the next quarter-century.  We have to be in the business of inventing 21st century, intelligent, effective, limited government in a post-bureaucratic, information-age system.  We have to be committed to developing policies that let us compete with China and India and win so that our children and grandchildren live in the most prosperous country in the world.  We have to be committed to reasserting English as the official language of government and American history as a topic worth mastering by every immigrant and every American child. 

The fact is these are new challenges with new opponents and new competitors - they require new solutions. 

I believe that in order to succeed, we must learn the lessons of Ronald Reagan just as we have to learn the lessons of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.  But those lessons have to be applied in our lifetime.  This is the only way we can create a generation of prosperity, freedom, and safety for our children and grandchildren and for our country. 

Also, there has been some speculation that I have endorsed a Republican candidate or that I am supporting a particular candidate “behind the scenes.”  Nothing can be further from the truth.  The fact is that I have offered my advice to any candidate that wants it and have had personal conversations with several candidates on a number of issues.  My goal is to help every candidate be the best they can be.  I want the strongest possible field because ultimately that will lead to a stronger America. 

I've been touring the country this week for the launch of my new book, co-authored with Terry Maple, "A Contract with the Earth".  Tuesday in Atlanta, Terry and I talked about how entrepreneurs and science are the keys to a better environmental future at the “Forum on the Environment: Restoring Planetary Balance”.  You can view pictures from the event here.

Over at www.ContractWithTheEarth.com I recorded a new message about why "green conservatism" is really “mainstream environmentalism” and how important it is for conservatives to articulate this vision as part of our repertoire of solutions for America’s challenges. 

You can listen to my message to you right on the front page at www.ContractWithTheEarth.com

Also, for you premium members, I’ve recorded a new podcast giving some highlights from the tour and a preview of the week ahead.  Click here.  

I’m in New York City right now and will be meeting with some editorial boards to explain A Contract with the Earth as well as stopping by the Fox News studios for The Big Story with John Gibson.  Tonight I’ll be at the New York Public Library to have a dialogue with Jeffrey Sachs (Director of The Earth Institute and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University) on how to best get to solutions for our environmental challenges.  There are still a few tickets left at the New York Public Library website.

Overall I’ve been thrilled with the reaction Terry and I have received.  The crowds have been enthusiastic and people of all ideological and political persuasions have been open to dialogue.  It gives me great hope that America is about to break through the partisan gridlock on the environment and move forward with common-sense solutions that the whole country can get behind.

Newt

I'm putting the finishing touches on my weekly newsletter right now.  In it, I'm offering my take on Pete Stark's utterly outrageous comments about funding SCHIP, our brave soldiers, and President Bush, which you can watch below.

Look for the newsletter in your email box soon.

Sunday's stunning Washington Post article by John Pryor (a doctor who served in Iraq now serving as Head of Emergency Services for the University of Pennsylvania Hospital) makes the assertion that more Americans are being killed in the drug and gang wars here at home than in Iraq. 

The rise of international gangs in our cities and the spiral of increasing violence (11 shootings in Washington, DC in one weekend) could lead to an urgency that would also lead us to meet the challenge of the very poor very uneducated and very alienated here in America.

I'm preparing for a speech right now - one of many I've given the past several months.  As I continue to hone my message I think it really comes down to three big facts.  Everything else is just working out the impelementation: 

1. There will be a 4 to 7 fold increase in science in the next 25 years.
2. We must return government from the world that fails to the world that works.
3. American civilization works and government should strengthen it rather than undermine it. 

Lynne Olson's Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England is a superb study of a younger generation of courageous activists who took on the Chamberlain Machine and ultimately brought Churchill to power.

Every republican who wants to create an idea-oriented Republican Party worthy of becoming a majority again should read this book and think about its application to the mess we are currently in.

Every conservative who wants to find a 21st century path to do for our time what Reagan did for his should read this book.

And every moderate democrat who knows the left wing of their party is a dead-end and incapable of solving ’s problems should read this book.

Amity Shlaes: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression HarperCollins, 2007, 433pp

This is a remarkable book which will forever change your understanding of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's role and the lessons to be learned from government intervention.

Amity Shlaes makes a compelling case that Hoover and Roosevelt actually lengthened the Depression. They did this, Shlaes argues, by following bad monetary policy, which further deflated the currency, and by raising tariff barriers, which broke up world trade and reduced economic activity everywhere.

Shlaes makes the best case I have seen that business confidence is the key to economic expansion and that each step of the New Deal was a further blow to business confidence.

She also explains the view of the pre-government control entrepreneurs and investors who had created an extraordinarily successful country prior to 1929.

This is a superb book well worth reading, studying and then thinking about for a long time.

The shootings at Virginia Tech are a tragedy.  Words can’t express how something like this could have happened.  

I have several friends who have relatives in Blacksburg — one of whom was one floor down during the shooting in the dormitory.  It was very personal for me.

I also gave a speech at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA the day of the shootings and I had the opportunity to sign a mural with a message of condolence to the Virginia Tech community.

My heart and prayers go out to the families of the people that were killed and those that were wounded.

The current system of earmarks is fundamentally broken.  Politicians are spending taxpayer dollars in dumb, wasteful ways and with little or no transparency.  We as citizens should be outraged at some of the indefensible earmarks by today’s politicians. 

The problem with earmarks fits in with the Whig critique of corrupt government in 18th century Britain; it is also one of the reasons why Jefferson constantly returned to limited government because he was convinced that too much power in the hands of the politicians and bureaucrats was inherently corrupting.  As citizens, we have the freedom to restrict power from those to whom we loan it and limit the politicians’ ability to buy us with our own money. 

The issue of earmark reform is also a clear winner.  According to a 2006 Gallop/USA Today poll, 82% of Americans support doing something about the practice of earmarks by either significantly restricting them or by requiring full disclosure. 

Because it fits our values and 82% of Americans favor change, it is exactly the type of issue we should focus on and embrace at every level of government.

Testimony: France in the Twenty-First Century
By Nicolas Sarkozy

Newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy has written an extraordinary guidebook that applies just as well to America’s challenges as those of France. Every presidential candidate in both parties should read it.

Sarkozy’s opponent, Segolene Royale, should have won the French Presidential election and become the first woman President of France.  After all, the center-right had held the French Presidency for 12 years. The incumbent President was tired and unpopular. In a normal year the outcome would have been obvious.  The opposition left should have won. 

Two things stopped the left:  an idea and a man.

The man:  Nicolas Sarkozy.  The idea:  France needed profound fundamental change and the left was the party of reactionary defense of a failing old order.

The scale of the French challenge is stated bluntly by the then candidate and now President of France:  “I am convinced that the French now want their leaders quickly to undertake reforms that will make it possible to encourage work, improve education, make government more effective, better integrate minorities and restore France’s full global role.”
 
Using a web-based campaign to avoid the filter of the French media, Sarkozy hammered away for three years on the need for change. He distinguished himself from President Chirac and in the end it was Sarkozy who stood for a new future while the socialist Royale was defending the reactionary past.

Ironically, Sarkozy has more faith in American reform and renewal than do American politicians and commentators. He asserts: “Beyond all these characteristics of American society, what I admire most is its capacity to recognize its own weakness and to start correcting them right away. America’s strength is that it was able, in each case, to identify its own weaknesses, and decide together as a society to remedy them, and then to take action without useless nostalgia about the past.”
     
Every presidential candidate should read Testimony to have a better understanding of the scale of leadership that is possible.

And every American citizen should read Testimony to have an understanding of what they should demand from the candidates in 2008 and expect from them in 2009.

The news that the left had blocked democrats from going on a fox debate is a little frightening. 

Note the intimidation tactics.  Look at the worker intimidation bill that coerces workers and strips them of the right to a secret ballot.  Look at the thuggery about Iraq and the joy over convicting Scooter Libby. Then add the report today of the union leadership supporting the hard left on cutting off funds to Iraq. 

All this suggests a left-wing machine - a George Soros/John Sweeney alliance of coercion and intimidation - that will be an extraordinarily aggressive effort to coerce Americans into limited discussion and passive acceptance of the left’s bullying.

This is going to be a very vicious left wing group and if they win next year they are going to try to drive the country to the left as hard as they can and with whatever intimidation and muscling they think it takes.