Every now and again, when debating the federal budget, I hear or read a statement similar to this:

“How can conservatives claim to be Christian when they want to cut government benefits to the poor? What would Jesus do?”

Such comments demonstrate their ignorance of the generosity of conservatives vice the stinginess of liberals when it comes to private charity, a gap that is well-documented and empirically defensible.

It also highlights a fallacy that is increasingly prevalent in modern American society, that charity is a primary function of government. In this excerpt from my book, SELLOUT: Musings from Uncle Tom’s Porch, I address this fallacy head on.

(more…)

Note: This article appeared in the April 2011 edition of Tea Party Review magazine. Click on the link to the right to order your annual subscription to the nation’s first and only magazine for the Tea Party movement.

If I had to choose one word that defines the foundation, motivation and objective of the Tea Party movement, it would be this: liberty. It is the one word that stands out in speeches, book titles and public pronouncements related to this grass-roots movement of everyday Americans.

Ask any number of Tea Party participants what liberty means to them, however, and you’re likely to get more than one answer. Liberty to a self-described libertarian may not be liberty as defined by a social conservative.

Outside of the conservative/libertarian ideological spectrum, even so-called “progressives” believe they have the answer to the question of liberty, viewing it as they do mankind in general, namely from a material perspective.

It is critical going forward that we arrive at some common understanding of what liberty means to us. Ultimately, it will not be specific policies or programs that benefit America, but our consistent adherence to the principle of liberty as the wellspring from which our ideas come.
How we perceive liberty will shape and guide every decision we make in our exercise of self-governance, to include holding our elected officials accountable. So this is one thing we’ve got to get right.

(more…)

I saw the news reports about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s appearance on Face the Nation, and I regret that he wasn’t really facing the nation, especially me. Had he been in front of me at that time, I would have shut him down within minutes of his uttering the following comment about the GOP’s proposed FY 2012 budget:

(more…)

As I write this, it’s 1:35 am in Solomons, Maryland. It’s a bittersweet time for me because some of the races in which I was personally invested didn’t turn out as I’d hoped, but the overall outcome was historic, and a repudiation of the radical direction in which President Obama has taken this nation the past two years. It remains to be seen if he has the humility of a true public servant and accepts the verdict of the people as a directive to change his current course.

Frankly, I’m not hopeful. He has already indicated he thinks we are bitter, misinformed, angry and therefore not thinking clearly, incapable of grasping the complexity or appreciating the goodness of his agenda – he’s stopped just short of calling us ignorant, uneducated hillbillies. If he attempted to process the fact that Americans do indeed understand his policies and reject them, I believe his brain would short-circuit.

(more…)

SUBJECT: George W. Bush Has Left The Building

ATTN: Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Majority Leader, U.S. House of Representatives

Rep. Hoyer:

It’s pretty clear that you never spent any time on active duty. You and many of your fellow Democrats have a difficult time accepting responsibility for – well, anything.

When I was in the U.S. Air Force, If I had started babbling like you do about how the current deficit spending and the voter’s anger over it is everyone’s fault but your own, my commander would have stopped me and said, “Lieutenant, are you making excuses?” The right answer? “No excuse, sir.”

I heard your voice on the radio a couple of days ago, talking about voter anger and how it’s justified. Just when I thought I might run off the road because His Highness the Majority Leader was about to speak the truth, you snapped out of it and blurted out the same tired line about “the depth of the recession inherited by the administration and by this Congress.”

Enough already, Mr. Majority Leader. If you think the voters are mad at you now, just keep that up. We’re not stupid or blind; we can see who’s spending what and when.

(more…)

The national discussion on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s racially charged comments about then-Senator Barack Obama is still going, but I chose to wait and think about it before publishing my thoughts.

I’m currently writing a book on race in America from the perspective of a conservative who happens to be black, and Reid’s comments dovetailed nicely with a topic that’s at the forefront of my mind.

(more…)

In William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It, the character Jacques utters these famous words:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

What Jacques doesn’t tell us is who’s directing the play or who’s in the audience. As Christians, we believe that God is the Director and the Audience, and we perform for Him.

We’re not trying to win His favor with our performances – by repenting and accepting the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as payment for our sins, and making Him the Lord of our lives, we’ve already got the part. We’re performing for two reasons – to show our gratitude to Him for His gift of salvation by being fully obedient to Him, and to show others the way to Him.

That leads me to – the National Football League. Huh? Hang on – you’ll see my point.

(more…)

It’s been a tough and trying year, hasn’t it? The global recession is the deepest and broadest in recent history, and people are frustrated with the government’s responses to it – either it’s too much or it’s not enough. The national and state credit cards are nearly maxed out but our elected leaders want to do more with phantom dollars, an accounting trick we individual consumers can’t use.

We are still a nation at war and will be for the foreseeable future, and some say it’s too much and others not enough. Ordinary citizens are called racist, “un-American” or worse for exercising their First Amendment rights, and the divide between elitists and ordinary Americans, statists and libertarians, liberals and conservatives, has become an ocean that’s too stormy to cross. (more…)

I am a second-generation military veteran, following in the footsteps of my father who served over two decades in the U.S. Air Force as a munitions maintenance specialist, loading weapons on our nation’s warplanes. I was honored to carry my father’s legacy forward, and proud to serve my country.

(more…)

(more…)