Solutions Day!

Newt Gingrich has always been an irrepressible, gushing font of ideas and information: "My name, Newt, actually comes from the Danish Knut, and there's been a major crisis in Germany over a polar bear named Knut," he told the crowd that had come to hear him debate global warming with Sen. John Kerry back in April. 

But now he's seeking your input. In just two weeks, Gingrich's group American Solutions will be hosting an online extravaganza called "Solutions Day." You may not be interested in Solutions Day, but Solutions Day is interested in you:

On September 27, the anniversary of the Contract with America, we will have the first annual "Solutions Day."

Solutions Day will be a day of citizen activism. It will be devoted entirely to positive solutions based on positive principles to enable us to transform government and public policy so America can win the future.

Solutions Day will feature an online workshop available to every American.

Since September 27 is a Thursday, we will repeat Solutions Day via the Internet on Saturday, September 29, so people who have to work can be involved.

Which is a smart move, lest we end up with a bunch of solutions heavily skewed toward retirees, stay-at-home moms, the unemployed, and day traders. After all, real change requires input from a broader cross-section of Americans. Real change requires the involvement of informed citizens. Real change requires..., er, real change. That's the slogan of Gingrich's effort: "Real Change Requires Real Change." And it has the virtue of being true both backwards and forwards.

Solutions Day will also feature a series of workshops, like "The End of Government... As We Know It" and "Space — The Race to the Endless Frontier." And if you miss it both times around, don't fret: "All events will be made available on-demand on the Internet."

Newt being Newt though, he's full of Big Ideas even now, two weeks before Solutions Day. He unveiled some of those ideas Monday in a war-on-terror speech at AEI.  

This isn't your typical right-wing stemwinder. It's classic Gingrich, chock full of chunky idea-nuggets, like peanut brittle for the mind. Here's Gingrich framing the debate fairly:

America is currently trapped between those who advocate “staying the course” and those who would legislate surrender and defeat for America.

Here he is making clear that the debate should proceed in sober, rational terms, without hysterical fearmongering:

 We need a calm, reasoned dialogue about the genuine possibility of a second Holocaust....   

and here he is taking a long view of the threats we face: 

The Iranian dictatorship had been at war with America for 22 years before 9/11.

That last point may confuse you. For instance, the first thing I thought was: that must be embarassing for them. At war with us for over two decades and we barely notice? Then I thought, wait: if Iran's at war with us, then why did we just topple their major regional enemy and clear the way for a country dominated by Iran's close allies? But that just shows I'm not a foreign policy expert, let alone a genius. These things are complicated. Real change requires real change. 

And this is a speech about real change. As in those alternate-history novels he's famous for, Gingrich presents a bold vision of "An Alternative History of the War since 9/11." The former Speaker's biggest ideas for ending terrorism center around continuously warning Americans that we may all be killed; among other things, he'd have us run "highly publicized simulations of two nuclear and one biological attack each year." 

Another key idea for Gingrich is that the U.S. should think seriously about launching wars with up to three additional countries. Risky? Sure. But as Newt puts it, "we must adopt a spirit that it is better to make mistakes of commission and then fix them than it is to avoid achievement by avoiding failure." Just imagine how different things could have been if the Bush administration had been animated by that spirit these last six years.