COMMENTARY Conservatism

A Conservative’s Christmas Wish List for a Brighter Future

Dec 24, 2021 4 min read

COMMENTARY BY

Genevieve Wood @genevievewood

Counselor and Spokesperson, Donor Relations

Genevieve Wood is a leading voice for The Heritage Foundation as a counselor and spokesperson.

Key Takeaways

Is it too much to wish that our political leaders would focus on personal responsibility instead of oppressive government dictates?

School choice be available to everyone, not just the wealthy among us.

We are still a country where dreams and wishes can come true.

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When I was a child growing up in Texas, I would, like every other kid I knew, make a wish list for Christmas, give it to my parents (who were supposed to deliver it to Santa) and wait anxiously to see which would be granted. But, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, I grew up, and “I put away childish things.”

I still share Christmas lists, but when I talk with my family about what to get my four wonderful nephews, the conversation turns from the latest video game and Nerf gun to what kind of future we’d like to give them. So, in that vein, here are my six Christmas wishes for next year.

An end to COVID authoritarianism. Once upon a time, Joe Biden said, referring to vaccine mandates, that “I wouldn't demand it to be mandatory. ... I'll do everything in my power as president of the United States to encourage people to do the right thing.”

That was before Biden got a taste of presidential power. Now he is doing everything in his power to protect the tyrannical vaccine mandates he did issue, mandates that are threatening everyone’s liberty, exacerbating worker shortages, and sowing disunity in the country.

The Heritage Foundation filed its first-ever lawsuit to protect our employees from this gross abuse of power. So have many others. Is it too much to wish that our political leaders would focus on personal responsibility instead of oppressive government dictates?

Universal education choice. In the wake of all the COVID school shutdowns and critical race theory indoctrination, millions of parents decided they’d had enough of leftist bureaucrats who are more interested in teaching our children to hate America than reading, writing, and ’rithmetic.

It’s gratifying to see parents exercise education choice. But not every parent can because it means paying twice to educate their children—once in taxes and again in tuition. Several states are giving these parents a break by adopting an innovation Heritage helped develop called “education savings accounts.”

With ESAs, states put taxpayer funds they would have spent “educating” your child into a private account you control—for tutors, tuition, supplies, or other needs specific to your child. Eight states have so far implemented ESAs.

But public schools can embrace choice right now if they’d abandon their school-by-ZIP code model that dictates where a child must attend based on her home address, and which traps millions in failing schools.

Lindsey Burke, Heritage’s director of education policy, looked at today’s public-school boundaries and found that they almost perfectly overlap the Federal Housing Administration’s redlining maps from the 1930s that kept Blacks from getting mortgage loans. It’s time to end this racist policy. Open enrollment should be the norm in every school district.

My wish is that school choice be available to everyone, not just the wealthy among us.

Liberation from Roe v. Wade. The word “abortion” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, and the only way a gang of liberal Supreme Court justices found a “right” to abortion was—I am not making this up—in the “penumbras, formed by emanations” that they conjured up. That ruling was a far-reaching travesty, made worse only by the fact that it’s been left standing for 48 years.

Now, with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, there’s a chance that Roe v. Wade will end up in the dustbin of history, along with Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, and many other erroneous court rulings. Would that mean abortion is suddenly outlawed? No. The question of whether or when or how it’s OK to kill an unborn child would be up to the people and their elected state representatives to decide. Overturning Roe would let people once again engage in that debate.

An end to Big Tech censorship. Many years ago, Facebook, Twitter, Google and the rest of today’s tech behemoths all claimed to be forces for good. They’d be platforms for free and open discussion. They’d democratize information. Jack Dorsey once called Twitter the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party.” That was back when these companies were young and idealistic.

Now that they completely dominate online communication, these tech giants have transmogrified into dictatorial censors. Every day there’s a new case of Big Tech airbrushing out of existence those who don’t conform with whatever the woke dogma of the day happens to be. Or blocking information they don’t like. Or meddling in elections.

Kara Frederick, a former Facebook employee now at Heritage, recently testified before Congress that Twitter and Facebook censor Republican lawmakers much more often than Democrats.

I wish Big Tech would stop this abusive behavior on its own, but it’s more likely we’re going to have to fight for that to happen.

Fiscal sanity comes to Washington. I know, this is farfetched, but since these are wishes, they don’t have to be realistic. Of course, the danger from the federal government’s profligate spending is real enough. We’re paying for it right now in the form of high inflation. Our children and grandchildren will be paying for it when the $29 trillion in bills come due. President Biden’s massively expensive “Build Back Better” bill is in jeopardy, it’s true, thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin’s declaration that he won’t vote for it, but it—along with many other examples of Washington’s profligacy—isn’t dead yet.

Elections people can trust. Restoring the integrity of the ballot box should be on everyone’s wish list because without it this nation won’t last. Unfortunately, the left keeps pretending that election fraud is a myth while doing all they can to make committing fraud easier.

The only way to change the situation is with hard data. This month, Heritage published a first-of-its-kind Election Integrity Scorecard that ranks every state on 12 ballot security measures, from voter ID laws to accurate registration rolls.

This is a fantastic tool that can help make this wish come true by pushing states to improve and strengthen their laws and restore public confidence in elections. And considering the 2022 mid-term election is just around the corner, there is no time like the present for states to get this done.

While I might not believe in childish things anymore, I do still believe in America and the American people. We are still a country where dreams and wishes can come true.

This piece originally appeared in Detroit News

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