Mark Shepard
A message to New Hampshire: The path to freedom and prosperity
By Mark Shepard
Who doesn't agree that one of the biggest problems with our federal government is corruption? Elections are won with money from political favors on the taxpayers' dime. Bills so large nobody understands them become law, while loopholes protect Congress and those who feed their campaign coffers. The debt we are leaving our children and grandchildren is staggering.
Whether in government, business, or religion, concentrated power breeds corruption. Our constitution with its very limited government and checks on power recognizes that fact. However, today these concepts are not understood and Americans regularly elect people who ignore constitutional limits and checks. Let's do something different in 2016!
Monday night, Iowa Republicans said no to the political establishment, no to a campaign designed for a king, and yes for a campaign that embraced our constitutionally-limited government.
Indeed, just like the left, Donald Trump's solutions are all built on the "smarts" of certain gifted people and then empowering those people to navigate the world for the masses. By contrast, Ted Cruz' campaign is built on the strength of a set of ideas, where rights, power, and responsibility belong to every citizen, not just the gifted few. This is the self-governing model our nation was founded upon, which produced the most free and prosperous nation in history.
New Hampshire, it's your turn, and I write to you as a neighbor, who grew I grew up a mile west of the NH border where I got to see and feel the outcomes of two very different models of government. I have witnessed Vermont embrace any and every opportunity to grow its government, while New Hampshire stood alone in the region bucking that trend. We shopped and worked in New Hampshire, because the Vermont model shuttered economic opportunity. In 1993, I started my engineering business, and while I had Vermont customers in my early years, all but one eventually relocated to other states. Ideas do have consequences!
Like many Vermonters, I tried to make it work. I even ran for and served in the Vermont Senate, where for two terms I tried to push back against the socialistic ideas that were steamrolling Vermont and make a case for returning to the limited-government and free-market ideas that made America the envy of the world.
But in the end, like so many other Vermonters, we determined Vermont did not make sense for our family or my business. In the summer of 2011, we relocated four states south, where we are still raising our children in a rural setting, one with opportunity. I now have more customers than ever and several within about 20 minutes of our home. Last year, after only three years, my business experienced the best year ever, by far. And best of all is that our children are experiencing ideas that actually work with reality, instead of being bombarded with the host of unworkable big-government ideas based on half-truths. Just remember a half-truth is a lie.
Now the model that has broken Vermont has found its way to Washington, and federalism itself is on the chopping block. Indeed, our fifty star flag that represents fifty experiments in ordered liberty might as well be exchanged for a large white blob, representing heavy-handed centralized federal power and control.
America does not merely need "smart" people to try to run our unworkable government and guide every aspect of our lives; America needs to return to smart ideas. A great step in that direction would be teaming up with Ted Cruz who, more than any other candidate still running, has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to limiting government corruption the only way possible – limiting government. Unlike most candidates this election, Ted Cruz has never promised to be the savior of America, rather he always points to the ideas that made America.
© Mark Shepard
February 6, 2016
Who doesn't agree that one of the biggest problems with our federal government is corruption? Elections are won with money from political favors on the taxpayers' dime. Bills so large nobody understands them become law, while loopholes protect Congress and those who feed their campaign coffers. The debt we are leaving our children and grandchildren is staggering.
Whether in government, business, or religion, concentrated power breeds corruption. Our constitution with its very limited government and checks on power recognizes that fact. However, today these concepts are not understood and Americans regularly elect people who ignore constitutional limits and checks. Let's do something different in 2016!
Monday night, Iowa Republicans said no to the political establishment, no to a campaign designed for a king, and yes for a campaign that embraced our constitutionally-limited government.
Indeed, just like the left, Donald Trump's solutions are all built on the "smarts" of certain gifted people and then empowering those people to navigate the world for the masses. By contrast, Ted Cruz' campaign is built on the strength of a set of ideas, where rights, power, and responsibility belong to every citizen, not just the gifted few. This is the self-governing model our nation was founded upon, which produced the most free and prosperous nation in history.
New Hampshire, it's your turn, and I write to you as a neighbor, who grew I grew up a mile west of the NH border where I got to see and feel the outcomes of two very different models of government. I have witnessed Vermont embrace any and every opportunity to grow its government, while New Hampshire stood alone in the region bucking that trend. We shopped and worked in New Hampshire, because the Vermont model shuttered economic opportunity. In 1993, I started my engineering business, and while I had Vermont customers in my early years, all but one eventually relocated to other states. Ideas do have consequences!
Like many Vermonters, I tried to make it work. I even ran for and served in the Vermont Senate, where for two terms I tried to push back against the socialistic ideas that were steamrolling Vermont and make a case for returning to the limited-government and free-market ideas that made America the envy of the world.
But in the end, like so many other Vermonters, we determined Vermont did not make sense for our family or my business. In the summer of 2011, we relocated four states south, where we are still raising our children in a rural setting, one with opportunity. I now have more customers than ever and several within about 20 minutes of our home. Last year, after only three years, my business experienced the best year ever, by far. And best of all is that our children are experiencing ideas that actually work with reality, instead of being bombarded with the host of unworkable big-government ideas based on half-truths. Just remember a half-truth is a lie.
Now the model that has broken Vermont has found its way to Washington, and federalism itself is on the chopping block. Indeed, our fifty star flag that represents fifty experiments in ordered liberty might as well be exchanged for a large white blob, representing heavy-handed centralized federal power and control.
America does not merely need "smart" people to try to run our unworkable government and guide every aspect of our lives; America needs to return to smart ideas. A great step in that direction would be teaming up with Ted Cruz who, more than any other candidate still running, has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to limiting government corruption the only way possible – limiting government. Unlike most candidates this election, Ted Cruz has never promised to be the savior of America, rather he always points to the ideas that made America.
© Mark Shepard
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
