5. to solve the problem. Not enough of us are asking whether the government is capable of solving the problems or whether abandoning the problem-solving to government is the best solution. Because we are not asking the right questions, we are not getting the right answers. Because we are not getting the right answers, we are putting our future in jeopardy. Because too many are insisting that government do what government does badly, we are flying in the face of our history. I say that the time has come to remember who we are and how we got there, to say that we still are people who have the caliber and the quality to cross the deserts, to scale the mountains, and, on the sound foundations that are ours by inheritance, to build the greatest civilization that the world has ever known. But this we will not accomplish if we persist in sailing the course we are now on. Let me attempt to prove my point. Throughout most of our history we have functioned under a socioeconomic system that economic philosophers would describe as "liberalism" and it emanated from England in contrast to the nationalistic conception that emerged in France from such writers as Rousseau, Voltaire and Condorcet. Our system was predicated on the widely accepted belief that under a government of limited powers we could create a richer and more satisfying society than could be planned and administered by a central authority. We relied on free and open markets through which consumers freely expressed their preferences and producers elected where and how to make their contribution to the productive stream. The motivating force rested on the fact that each individual should have equal opportunity and that his material rewards should depend upon his individual accomplishment under the system rather than hereditary happenstance. The individual was the basic unit of society and was to be free to fulfill his destiny or to take advantage of his opportunities within a system of