At a Heritage Foundation luncheon Friday in Chicago, Edwin Meese III was drafted to run for President on a third-party ticket. The speaker condemned Bush as an inadequate free-markets candidate, calling the administration's war in Iraq the biggest market distortion in the history of humankind and crony corporate welfare on a truly gigantic scale. Meese, Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, was in attendance but did not immediately respond.
On Thursday night Meese presented the Heritage Foundation's Salvatori Prize in American Citizenship to Virginia Walden-Ford, Executive Director of DC Parents for School Choice. Ms. Walden-Ford, a mother from Washington DC, successfully led a local battle to provide private school vouchers for students, including her own son, trapped in gutted public schools. Her son is now serving in the US Marines.
The luncheon concluded the Heritage Foundation's 27th annual Resource Bank meeting in Chicago. This year's event celebrated the 60th anniversary of The Road to Serfdom, a seminal free market treatise by Friedrich Hayek. The conference focused on limiting "market distortions" such as Medicare, and on ending "corporate welfare" including protectionary tariffs.
Edwin J. Feulner, President of the Heritage Foundation, declared, Too many conservatives lose hope. They doubt that the liberal welfare state can be brought to collapse.... In short, they doubt that The Heritage Foundation's Vision for America can be achieved.
