I believe that my rights flow from my status as a human being, not because the government or any other human being or organization gave them to me.
I believe that the Constitution of the United States is a set of instructions and limitations aimed at the federal government.
I believe that the government cannot give anything to anyone that it does not first take from someone else.
I believe (paraphrasing Barry Goldwater) that a government with the power to give me everything I want is a government that can take everything I have.
I believe that government ought to be smaller, more accountable, and at the margin of my life, rather than at the center of it.
I believe that every individual should be held accountable for his own actions and that, although there are often mitigating reasons for those actions, there are no excuses.
I believe that some (although not all) things are black and white, and that there is no middle ground.
Speaking of black and white, I believe that no matter how hard I try, I will never fully appreciate what it is like to be black or female or Hispanic or a dozen other things in our society.
I believe that people who display or wear the CSA battle flag and call it their heritage are unbelievably insensitive to those for whom it is a symbol of hatred and pain and racism.
I believe that “a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin,” and yet I look at affirmative action in employment and college admissions and scholarship grants and wonder when that will happen.
I know that Ronald Reagan was right when he said that our modern "[g]overnment's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
I believe that those less fortunate deserve a helping hand but that the best possible helping hand is usually education, a job, and a work ethic.
I believe that any candidate who proposes to tax Peter to pay Paul will always enjoy Paul's support.
I believe that what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.
I believe in resolving differences through law and negotiation -- but only to a point.
I believe that D.H. Lawrence was spot on when he said, "“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.”
I believe, as John Stuart Mill said, that "[t]he person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
I believe, paraphrasing Ronald Reagan, that freedom must be fought for, protected, nurtured, and handed to our children, or someday we will have to look at our grandchildren and tell them what life was once like in the United States, back when men were free.
I believe, as Edmund Burke once said, that all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.