I am wholeheartedly dedicated to smaller government, lower taxes (until we can overhaul the entire tax code), personal responsibility, and a return to our basic founding principles of virtually unlimited freedom. Freedom withers without liberty. Liberty, quite simply, means we all have access to the amazing opportunities that abound in this great country. Liberty also means that we are free to pursue success, and equally free to fail. Failure is nothing to be ashamed of, nor protected from. Failure shapes us, just as the mistakes we make inform our future choices. When any entity is artificially protected from failure, that intervention directly undermines liberty and, thus, freedom.

Outsourcing has squeezed out a large chunk of the manufacturing sector in recent years, which has had a particularly profound detrimental effect on the middle class. A lot of the reason for this has far less to do with corporations becoming so-called “Benedict Arnolds” as it does with them being pushed in that direction by taxing and regulatory agencies who routinely ignore the unintended consequences of their policies.

Our current economic troubles have been blamed on a variety of culprits, from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to Alan Greenspan. We’ve all seen the pointing fingers and heard the accusations shouted across the Congressional aisles. We may agree with some, maybe even all, of these assessments. I would like to propose that these recent economic troubles are merely symptoms, and alert you to the underlying disease that brought them about.

Rampant, unbridled, and even widely encouraged Consumerism. This unchecked "over-leveraging" has permeated all levels of government and has crept into the vast majority of individual households. I firmly believe that no other factors have contributed more heavily to this economic "perfect storm" than the 16th and 17th Amendments to our Constitution.

Quoting Frederic Bastiat from "The Law" (1848) - "...if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing."
"Under such an administration, everyone would understand that he possessed all the priveleges as well as the responsibilities of his existence... When successful, we would not have to thank the state for our success." (Emphasis added.)