Why I voted the way I did

Well, the election is over. The people voted for change—the biggest increase of one party in the House of Representatives in over sixty years. I voted as a conservative on all issues as well as candidates and wanted to share six reasons for doing so.

I believe in common sense. Look at the Democratic Party. Its leaders are lawyers. In fact every presidential nominee since 1984 went to law school. Every vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Then look at Republicans on the national scene—business leaders, company starters, teachers, blue collar workers. I would trust this group far more to reach a common sense conclusion about how the world really operates, especially in this time of economic concerns. If more conservatives had been in charge, I think they would have seen the stupidity of pouring money into new-car rebates or huge stimulus plans that failed to deliver real improvements.

I believe in the existence of real evil. Barack Obama has downplayed the horrors of Iran, North Korea, China, and other miserable countries where human rights are neglected. He thinks, like so many liberals in the Democratic Party, that tyrants will change their ways if they are accommodated, smiled at, embraced, praised, listened to. That didn’t seem to work with Hitler, Mao, or Stalin, and I don’t see any reason to believe it will work now. Let’s go back to calling terrorism what it really is rather than “man-made disaster,” in the words of the current administration.

I believe in smaller government. A huge bureaucracy cannot respond well to individual needs. As I heard the other day, “A big government means a small citizen.” We are part of America, where freedom from bloated government has allowed for business to thrive, for people to become anything they wish, for self-reliance to flourish. Do we really want to become another Europe? Look at how they have reacted in France when the government has had to reign in all the goodies.

I believe in a strong family. There are way too many who, for the sake of social experimentation, have called for more abortion, same-sex marriage, and other attacks on the family, which is the place where the young learn to become civilized. A traditional family is where the next generation is raised, loved, and sent out into the world as complete individuals.

I believe in American exceptionalism. That’s not popular today in some quarters, including the White House, where Obama can’t bring himself to say there’s anything special about the United States. But it was our country where liberty, equality, the respect for laws, and religious fervor provided inspiration for the entire world. We have done more to make the world a better place than any other country in the history of mankind. I wish this was taught in our schools as it once was.

Finally, I believe in seeing the world realistically. The liberal view is one of wishes, utopias, dreams, and abstractions. They don’t seem to get it-- evil really exists, the world’s climate has changed many times long before the industrial age, business is not a dirty word, the Constitution shouldn’t be twisted out of shape to serve a current fad, school is a place for information rather than indoctrination, hard work needs to be rewarded instead of being penalized, the human heart is twisted so that cleaning up the exterior will not solve the problem, oil is necessary right now while we are switching over to alternative fuels, and the existence of God seems like a reasonable assumption, given all the evidence.

Now that the election is over, the hard part begins. Let’s make sure these new members of Congress carry out the desires of the people who sent them there.