What This American Patriot Believes

I was challenged by a self-described moderate: "it's time to stop it [purging the party of RINOs] if you really, honestly think of yourself as a GOPer."

It made me think: Why am I a Republican? The conservative movement built and sustained the Republican party for a generation. Reagan rebuilt this party in the ashes of Watergate and the Carter era, and I am a Reagan Republican who came of age at that time and saw the success of the Reagan policies. I am an American Patriot first, a conservative second, and a Republican third. I am a Republican because the party's main principles and overall policies align with my conservative beliefs.

I believe in freedom. I want a limited Government that plays the role expressed in our founding document - to protect our rights. I want that Government to recognize its limits under the Constitution. I further believe in individual responsibility and believe further that a society can be free only so long as it is moral, and can be moral only so long as it free.

I believe our Judges should enforce the law and interpret the law as written, understanding and using judicial restraint and original intent in their method of interpretation, rather than being activists who write law from the bench or rule based on political or personal passions.

Government exists to serve the people. I believe in democracy, but more importantly, I believe in a particular type of democracy where the best Government is that government which is closest to the people. The ideal Government is self-Government. I support Federalism and local control to the maximum exstent possible, as architected in our Constitution and expressed in the 9th and 10th Amendments. Conversely, the worst form of Government, least responsive to people and potentially most despotic, is global Government; I support American sovereignty against the encroachments of global-statism.

I believe in free enterprise, both because property rights are a conerstone of individual rights, but also because the capitalist free enterprise system is the best and most efficient engine for the creation of prosperity that is possible. History has proven that Socialism is a prescription for poverty. What government regulation is needed in our economy are those things that build up trust in the economy: Rules to lessen fraud, dishonesty, and abuses of monopoly power. Government regulations that fix prices, bailout failing industries, engage in "industrial policy" attempts to bet on industries are invariably failures. A recent example is the sure-to-fail attempts to push clean energy from the Government. We should oppose all such efforts as inevitable failures of central economic planning.

Government spends too much, taxes too much, regulates too much and does too much. I support low tax rates because the price of Government should be as low as possible. Low tax rates are simpler, fairer and less economically burdensome; cutting taxes helps the economy grow. I want a smaller Government. I believe the U.S. Federal budget can and should be cut, by cutting wasteful spending, eliminating programs that serve flawed purposes (like ethanol subsidies), non-working programs (like bilingual education), or unneeded giveaways (like CPB/PBS funding and farm subsidies). We could cut hundreds of billions in Federal spending and it would be a huge blessing to this country. I oppose earmarks. I oppose socialized medicine, bailouts, phony pork barrel stimulus bills, farm subsidies, and import quotas.

I support term limits for members of Congress as a way to keep the Congress closer to the people.

I am pro-life, because our rights our meaningless without the right to life. I am pro-Traditional Marriage, because family is a building block of civilization. I oppose attempts by cultural marxists to undermine our culture and replace a culture of responsibility with one of moral relativism. We were wrong to take religious expressions out of the public square; it is a violation of right to worship to deny public expression of religious sentiment, wether Ten Commandments at a courthouse or a valedictorian thanking God.

I conclude, from long study of the matter, that CO2 is harmless and the fear of climate change is massively overhyped. We should use more nuclear energy, drill offshore and ANWR. And we shouldnt have these Green-doggles - ethanol, solar subsidies, hybrid subsidies, wind energy subsidies, renewables mandates. The environmentalists are wrong on all of the above, which hurt the economy without helping the environment.

I am pro-choice: Pro-gun choice, pro-retirement choice (create social security choice), pro-healthcare choice (against 'single payer'), pro-school choice. I support a woman's right to choose - to raise her child as she sees fit, including where to send that child to school. I don't support her right to kill any human. Nor do I support having nursing homes or relatives decide to kill patients without their clear consent; I oppose ethanasia and the 'slippery slope' that it leads to, of killing undesirable patients out of convenience not compassion.

I support school choice because the goal of education is to support learning for children, and choice brings the parental involvement, accountability that is vital to student success. I support charter schools and support giving children vouchers to attend the school of their choice; let the schools compete to be the best centers of learning possible, if would make education more effective and efficient.

I believe in equality of opportunity and for that reason oppose affirmative action quotas and reverse discrimination type favoritism and tokenism. Let us be a meritocracy, an aristocracy of virtue and excellence.

I believe in the rule of law. I support the death penalty and tough penalties for violent crimes because deterrence works. Because I support the rule of law, I oppose amnesty for illegal aliens, which will incite further law-breaking. I support legal and controlled immigration as an asset to our economy and nation, but think the 'chain-migration' should evolve into a system that encourages the best and brightest to come here.

I support American sovereignty against globalist Government, and I support our Government's attempt to maintain our national security and defend our freedoms from foreign enemies. That includes supporting the fight against Islamic extremist terrorists.

Finally, I believe strongly that America is the greatest nation on earth. This is not a blind faith, but one based on the experience of living in another country and visiting two dozen other countries in my lifetime. We are the best nation on earth because of the greatness of our people, and our people are great because of our traditions of Judeo-Christian faith and morality, liberty, and self-reliant individualism. Should we lose those cultural traditions, or turn away from God, our national greatness will fade away. That knowledge motivates me to support the continuation of our liberty and traditions in our nation.

I am glad the Republican Party is around to represent these beliefs because, since the 1960s, the Democrats have become a party that is so alien to American traditions that they are opposed almost 100% to everything I believe is good for the country. During my lifetime, the Democrats and leftwing activist allies, some of them quite radical, have assaulted our moral traditions, our prosperity, and our long-standing freedoms.

Nobody will agree with every point I make 100%, but I am sure much of what I believe in is supported by most people in this country who would call themselves Patriot. Why is that? Because it is simply a belief in the goodness and rightness in the best political and cultural traditions - of this greatest nation on earth. That's what this American Patriot Believes.

Postscript: The moderate claims that "Elections are about winning." Maybe so, but politics is about more than winning elections. Politics is about how we live together and use political power/force to define and defend our community and nation. It's a Pyrrhic victory if you let opportunists who pay lip service but don't support your real values and issues. Let the other party run the panderers, they are better at it anyway. I am a Republican because I want to save American liberty and her best traditions for my children and grandchildren. If we don't have candidates who are patriots first and conservatives to at least some extent, then there is nothing for this loyal Republican to support in those candidates. That's the ultimate flaw in the moderate RINO arguments. Hollowing out our principles to chase popularity leads to the error of the man, the donkey and boy in the Aesop's Fable: Try to please everyone and you end up pleasing nobody.

The real lesson in the 2006 and 2008 elections is that the attempts by Bush to traingulate to a GOP majority via the oxymoron of big-Government conservatism failed. Let's turn away from that failure and revisit the success of the Reagan and Gingrich formulas of principle opposition to big Government. It's what the GOP base wants, becuase most Republicans are conservatives and most conservatives are Republicans.