The purpose of this research is to examine the ideas and beliefs of Newt Gingrich, vis-a-vis a variety of social commentary and analysis. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which Gingrich's views have emerged, as well as their general content, and then to examine these ideas with reference to the thesis, assumption, and evidence of books and articles that deal with the same subjects that Gingrich does.
The political career of Newt Gingrich is an important component of the structure and content of his thought. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Republican in the 1970s, Gingrich was elected as Speaker of the House after the national election of 1994 transferred majority control of the House from the Democratic to the Republican party. It is as Speaker of the House that the book To Renew America was published under Gingrich's byline in 1995. The book is an elaboration of Gingrich's ideas about the nature and extent of issues and problems confronting the United States, as well as Gingrich's prescriptions for resolving these issues.
To Renew America can be said to be simply brimming over with ideas, but the thread that runs throughout the work is nothing short of concern to "reassert and renew American civilization" (Gingrich 7). By American civilization Gingrich means a set of commonly held cultural assumptions, principles, and values that give meaning to life in the United States and that made the country great. His understanding of the content of those principles and values is the principal assumption that he brings to the task of describing the strategies he believes should be employed in reassertion and renewal; he describes the content as romantic idealism. A secondary assumption, though no less important to the book, is that from 1965 onward, the American culture has been in precipitous decline because of deliberate or irresponsible (or both) marginalization or rejection of the values, a...