Where are we headed?

How to Quit

How To Change Our Culture

We’ve been together every week for a meeting at your computer in-box to discuss what is happening in the State of Missouri for over a year.  Now that the campaign is over, I hope you have learned more about your state government and gained some insights into why someone like me would run for office.  Whether you called neighbors, displayed a yard sign or just voted for me, your actions affected the outcome of this election.  Thank you from the  bottom of my heart!

How do you know who to trust?

There are many voter’s guides floating around.  Some are trustworthy and others are not.  One that purports to be “family” oriented has a glaring mistake in it.  The purpose of most voter’s guides is to show who best resonates with the values of their own organization, but they can hide the agendas that are not always in line with your values.  When one is distributed in a church setting, there is an assumption that it should promote our values and help the parishioners discern which candidates possess the qualities most fitting with the Biblical standards.

I was driving through a neighborhood and saw what appeared to be a replica of a human figure hanging.  The hardest part about the Halloween season is that it flaunts our cultural obsession with evil.  Some of this may be designed to desensitize us to the negatives associated with evil.  A common expression is to vote for “the lesser of two evils” or “better to have the devil we know than the devil we don’t know”.  My question is: “Why vote for evil or the devil?”  We can do better than this.

While eating dinner, my 22 year old son asked me why some people think they are throwing away their vote if they give it to someone other than the presumed winner.  He said, “People throw their vote away if they vote for the one more likely to win because that vote isn’t necessary.  If you really want to make your vote count, vote for the one who best reflects your values, because that is where you will make the biggest difference.  Anything less would be disingenuous and would be throwing your vote away.”

What Lessons Did We Learn?

All families have occasional clashes, but there are few scenes more awful than hearing a couple having a fight in the parking lot of a public venue.  Something inside all of us wishes they would wait until they get home and close the doors.  The same should be said for the Republican Party.  Mitt Romney, Roy Blunt, Vicki Hartzler and many other prominent Republicans publicly called on Todd Akin to get out of the race.  The most civil and respectful behavior would be to pick up the phone and talk in private.  Todd could issue a public statement asking them to get out of their races when they make puzzling comments, but he doesn’t.  Additionally, I cannot recall when I have ever heard of Democrats asking their candidates to resign or step aside.

What does it cost to run statewide?

This past week brought me to Camdenton for a Tailgate Party with some great supporters!  Good friends in the Lake of the Ozarks area particularly understand the importance of having someone who is a champion of our property rights and our values.