When my students ask me what my political affiliation is, I tell them “I’m a small ‘r’ republican, and a classical liberal”. This opens the door for me to teach them what I am most passionate about in the classroom. The concept of Natural Rights. You might be surprised to find yourself in the same position as most of my students. We all grow up being told by adults in our lives that “it’s important to know your rights” or “you have to defend your rights” etc. As a teacher, one of the first things that you do when introducing a new unit to your students is go over the academic vocabulary. So the $60,000.00 question is this: If I asked you to give me the definition of “rights”, would you be able to? Most people whether they are in 8th grade or a full grown adult cannot! The concept of rights is not something that just appeared in 1776, it is a 2,000 year old concept that has evolved throughout Western history. The etymology of the word comes from the Greek word δικαιώματα (dikaiomata) and means “that which is morally just and upright”. You see, the word is right, as in the opposite of wrong. We have the right to life, if someone murders you by stealing your life from you, then that person is wrong. This is the most important thing that I teach my students, in fact I tell them if they don’t listen to anything else that I have to teach them, at least listen to that.

This is so essential to understanding that it forms the basis of the very nature and purpose of government in the first place. Everybody knows the opening of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But very few can tell you the next line, which reads, “that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.” We have lost the meaning of good government, because we have lost the understanding of its purpose. This is why I feel called to run, I want to bring back the true purpose of government, to protect the rights of the people. If the government were to get out of the way, and restore to the people their liberty, there is no telling what we could accomplish. The best place to do this is not Washington, but rather in Austin. We need to restore Federalism, and decentralize the power of the National Government. Consider this, anytime Congress passes a bill, and the President signs it into law, that is a law that affects every single American, all 320 million of us. How many laws every year does the National Government really need to pass? Only a handful, things like a yearly budget, and they can’t even do that without continuing resolution after continuing resolution!

Government does not grant rights to mankind, government is designed to protect the rights of mankind. Too often however, government is the perpetrator of the crime. Government is all too often guilty of abusing the rights of the people. This has clearly been demonstrated in the first week of the Biden Administration and the Democrats control over both chambers of Congress. More is to come as well, with the nuclear option of getting rid of the filibuster on the table, DC and Puerto Rico Statehood, and the potential of packing the Supreme Court with Leftist Marxist justices, to where can we appeal? It is our States that need to fight this, and protect us from the swamp. If that fails there is always an appeal to Heaven that can be made. The early colonists adopted the Pine Tree flag with this motto to symbolize their belief in Natural Rights over the idea of the Divine right of Kings. It served at the Battle of Bunker Hill as the Massachusetts Militia’s battle flag, and would go on to be the official flag of the Massachusetts Navy, and later 5 cruisers that General Washington had commissioned during the American Revolutionary War. But the Pine Tree flag holds deeper meaning, it reminds us of our founding principles, and the very purpose of government. As such, I could think of no better symbol for our country than it at these treacherous times.