Ownership Society Backgrounder

What does the President mean by an Ownership Society? Here are some resources to explore.

Read Defining an Ownership Society By David Boaz.

An ownership society values responsibility, liberty, and property. Individuals are empowered by freeing them from dependence on government handouts and making them owners instead, in control of their own lives and destinies. In the ownership society, patients control their own health care, parents control their own children's education, and workers control their retirement savings.

....Aristotle wrote, "What belongs in common to the most people is accorded the least care: they take thought for their own things above all, and less about things common, or only so much as falls to each individually."

Jack Kemp writes on this topic.

President Bush's speech at the Republican National Convention has created quite a buzz inside the Beltway and around the country - not just because of his strength in the war on terrorism or his critique of the opposition, but because of his vision of an ownership society worthy of the American people. The president's vision is perhaps the boldest domestic policy vision since FDR's "New Deal" or LBJ's "Great Society," but unlike FDR and LBJ, Bush's vision is consistent with individual liberty, free markets and entrepreneurial capitalism.

Three components of the ownership society, as articulated by the president, are Social Security reform, tax reform and Opportunity Zones.

What Bush Needs to Do: The Ownership Society

As Melloan pointed out, Bush's goal of an "ownership society" extends a long-standing American dream. It harkens back such historical examples as the Homestead Act, by which the very first Republican President empowered Americans by granting settlers 160 acres if they farmed it for at least 5 years. It is a principal argument for reelecting President Bush. Now he needs to articulate how he'll achieve the ownership society if we give him a second term.

Read more.

^The Ownership Society

• The Ownership Society David Brooks/NYTimes 12/20/03
• An Ownership Society fosters responsibility, liberty, prosperity Tom G. Palmer 2/04
• Speech to Republican Governors President Bush 2/23/04
• "Ownership Society" is Bush's aim The Hill 3/23/04
• Ownership Society, anyone? Michael Barone 5/17/04
• A complete urban agenda Jack Kemp 7/27/04
• America's Ownership Society GeorgeWBush.com 8/9/04
• Taxpayers cheer Ownership Society Americans for Tax Reform 8/9/04
• Bush pushes Ownership Society Talon News 8/10/04
• Bush to tout Ownership Society Washington Times 8/12/04
• Why liberals hate the Ownership Society agenda Dick Armey 8/17/04
• Pieces of Bush agenda add up to something big Los Angeles Times 8/23/04