On June 8, AEI senior fellow Newt Gingrich gave the last of three major speeches on the challenges facing the United States today, from health care to national security. In this speech, he addressed the three principles that will define America's next governing majority: widespread consensus on values, successful and measurable government policies and performance, and a commitment to secure America and our allies--and defeat our enemies. Edited excerpts follow. For a video and transcript, visit www.aei.org/event1533/.

Newt Gingrich

Over the forty-two years since the beginning of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the increasing power of public employee unions, the emphasis on bureaucratism, the growth of lawyers, the development of complex regulatory legalism, and the rise of an elite establishment that imposes political correctness have created a system that does not work and cannot be reformed from within. Bureaucratism values process more than achievement, legalism values following the rules more than achieving defined and measurable results, and political correctness values avoiding embarrassment more than telling the truth about its failures.

All who are willing to bow to failure after failure have a current system they can work with. It will fail, and they can bow. But for most Americans, this is not an acceptable future. Most Americans believe that we hire leaders to change reality so that it fits our values, not to change our values to fit the newest failed reality. I say to my fellow Americans who know we must do better, who know we must defend and strengthen our values, who know we must defend our country: we will have to roll up our sleeves and prepare to replace government by special interest, government by an elite establishment, and government by overweening bureaucrats and lawyers with government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

This is not about a thirty second commercial. This is about the fundamental replacement of a failed intellectual structure, a failed interest group system, and a failed political process, and that is not something one handles glibly or briefly. In order to achieve the successful America that we all desire for ourselves, our children, and our country, an "American Solutions" movement must be clearly committed to three fundamental areas of change: first, from the politically correct values of our elites back to the fundamental values of the vast majority of Americans; second, from an increasingly ineffective and incompetent system of bureaucratic failure and destructive government policies to systems and policies that will work in the twenty-first century; and third, from uncertainty about danger in the world and confusion about the value of public safety to a clear recognition that the world is dangerous and that the first obligations of government are to defend America and our allies and defeat our enemies, and to enforce the key principles of the oath of American citizenship.

Part of creating an "American Solutions" movement has to be learning from American history and recognizing that for 400 years we have been developing a set of principles: work ethic, incentives, economic growth, personal responsibility, entrepreneurship, an effective market, limited government, and reliance upon science.

If we are going to survive in the short run, we have to defeat the irreconcilable wing of Islam. We have to fundamentally transform education, fundamentally reinvest in science, and fundamentally transform litigation, regulation, taxation, and our systems of health and energy, or we will not compete with China.

We are at the edge of a great national argument that we have to win about the nature of America, the future of this country, the challenges we face, and the scale of change required. If we win that argument, within a decade this will be a more energetic country with dramatically greater incentives, an enormous investment in science, a dramatic improvement in the learning system, and a capacity to lead the planet unrivaled by any country in human history.

If we lose the argument, we will continue to decay. We will continue to be governed by those who seek our tax money for themselves and by those who explain away failure and bow to a failed reality. Inventing solutions requires the development of an intellectual framework within which we can invent wave after wave of new solutions. It will not be the work of a week, month, or summer; it will be the work of a decade or more.