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Washington, DC

This is the inaugural post for this blog, so it's only fitting that I'm posting it from out nation's capital. After landing at Reagan International (I still love saying that) I headed straight for our hotel and some media training I signed up for. I was the first Republican chair scheduled. The training consisted of a taped interview and critique. The first question out of the gate dealt with what the Republican Party stands for today, which I was more than ready for having just read the recent lecture by Mark Steyn published in Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College (thank you to former Gov. Kay Orr for lining up a subscription for me, and thanks to Hillsdale for providing a steady stream of solid conservative interns over the years).

It is my firm belief that the foundation of the GOP is built upon three things: responsibility, security and freedom. Steyn’s lecture, entitled “Live Free or Die!,” focuses on the latter.

Steyn rightly complains that while President Obama’s budget “adds more to the national debt than all the previous 43 presidents combined,” that’s not the biggest problem. Rather, the biggest problem is that the Democratic proposals “deform the relationship between the citizen and the state. Even if there were no financial consequences, the moral and even spiritual consequences would still be fatal.” Essentially, if President Obama has his way, the federal government will provide for all of our basic needs, we will then become increasingly comfortable with the government regulating our behavior, we will then grow indifferent to government regulation of our thoughts and eventually, dissenting opinion will be barred by the government. (Doubt that? When Scotland Yard has a Community Safety Unit for Homophobic, Racist and Domestic Incidents targeting “questionable” speech as it now does, everything is possible). According to Steyn, that’s where Europe is at, and sadly that appears to be where America is headed under the new Democratic regime in Washington.

I’ll likely post more from Steyn’s lecture in the days to come, but perhaps my time in DC is better spent at the Jefferson Memorial. Inscribed inside is one of my favorite quotes from Thomas Jefferson, which is as clearly applicable to our time: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility over every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Words to reflect upon during these trying times.