Failing on Principle _ BW Nov 2013

Bill W before 2012 Presidntial Election


We have an election coming up in a few days. This message is not for people who are going to vote for Mitt Romney, and if you are determined to vote for Barack Obama there is nothing more I can say about that, either. This message is for people who are standing on principle and making a protest vote for either Ron Paul, or Gary Johnson… and those who have decided, out of principle, simply not to vote at all.

I try, as hard as I can, to be a man of principle, which is not an easy way to live as evidenced by how frequently I fail to live up to my own standards. So I am not here to dishonor you, or myself, by trying to convince you to abandon your principles. In fact, all I wish to do is to appeal to your principles.

I came to Conservatism late in life, and I have tried my level best to understand, then explain and persuade people of the benefits of limited government, personal freedom and personal responsibility. I think I understand as well as anyone how far short of these ideals the Republican Party falls, and how it seemed that candidates like John McCain, and all the rest, prevent Republicans from becoming the champions of these Conservative values time and time again. I understand this. I do.

But what brought me to a place where many of you have stood your entire lives was my willingness to look at life as it really is, not as I wish it to be. So let me present to you now not an opinion, but rather the actual reality of the world as it exists in this final week before the election of 2012:

Either Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama, will be the next President of the United States of America. Your vote for Ron Paul, or Gary Johnson, or any other candidate – or your decision not to vote at all – will not change the fact that Mitt Romney or Barack Obama will be the next President. No rational person denies this, and I know you don’t either.

So. The question becomes: will your third party vote, or lack of a vote, do more to advance your most deeply held principles, or will it do more to hurt them?

Some people will try to tell you that a vote for Ron Paul or Gary Johnson, or even no vote at all, is a vote for Barack Obama. I may have even said that myself once, and for that I sincerely apologize: because that’s offensive, and it’s not true.

But what is true is that while mugging a person is a crime, standing by idly and not stopping an assault you had the power to stop may not be a crime in itself, but it is hardly a principled position to take. And if what you love are the principles of limited government, personal freedom coupled with personal responsibility, and a life where you can simply be left alone, then this election is not value neutral.

Both Romney and Obama may be Big Tax and Spend Liberals in your eyes, but one of the only two men that will become President has placed a marker by selected a running mate with a realistic plan of entitlement reform that can return us to fiscal sanity, while the other has made it a campaign promise to spend more, grow more, and tax more. You cannot pretend there is no difference between these two positions.

But put aside whatever problems you may have with Mitt Romney. You hold in your hand a gift that was paid for with the blood of men from Bunker Hill to Missionary Ridge, a gift that has been transmitted to you by men who did not come home from Mount Suribachi and the Normandy Beaches and the Chosin Reservoir… who did not ever get a chance to use that gift because they gave their lives in Khe San, or Bagdad, or Kandahar so that you could hold a ballot in your hand.

When you boil my personal principles down they actually become very simple: I love this country will all my heart – and I cannot and will not live with myself if I don’t do the one and only thing within my power to stop a man who offered to sell our nation’s missiles defenses to the Russians in exchange for some peace and quiet until after he was re-elected. A man that arrested an American citizen for the crime of speaking his mind, and who stood before the United Nations and handed the savages that killed our Ambassador our First Amendment – the First Amendment! -- in order to calm them down and protect his re-election chances. A man who abandoned two
 Americans who on their initiative ran to the sound of gunfire in order to save their fellow citizens … who left them to die out there, alone, naked except for their indestructible sense of honor, their matchless skill and their unimaginable courage. And there is no protest vote, or lack of vote, that I can cast or imagine casting that will make up for my shame and horror if I ever have to stand in front of an office that looks and feels like the Department of Motor Vehicles and plead for the medical treatment that will save my mother’s life, or my children’s, or my own against an all-powerful, state-run health care system that only coming but that is here. Now.

Mitt Romney has sworn to repeal Obamacare, and I am going to take a chance on believing him. If he doesn’t, I will support any primary action against him in 2016, up to and including the destruction of this Republican Party to clear the way for a Conservative one. But think about this: if you decide to vote for the only person on the ballot that can actually stop this, it would be the first time in history that we didn’t just slow these Progressives down, or even stop them. It would be the first time ever that we actually pushed them back, that we retook a hill, that we restored freedom that has already been lost. That outcome is what appeals to my principles, and that is why I am voting on Election Day: voting for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

My fellow Conservatives and fellow patriots, given the corruption and rampant voter fraud that this administration supports through ACORN, Union intimidation, Justice Department lawsuits against Voter ID laws and all the rest – if we do not win this election – this one – then I believe that they will so corrupt our electoral system during the next four years that we will never win an election again.

Ever.

American conservatives outnumber American liberals two to one. And you may not like hearing this, but you need to face the same truth I have had to face: the destruction of our country -- the hope of the world and all she stands for – is not the fault of Barack Obama and his army of so-called Progressives; that’s their mission – that’s what they live for. And it’s not the fault of the Conservatives who go to the polls every four years to try and stop them. We are not out numbered. If we lose our freedom and our country it will be because we could have stopped them and we didn’t.

To those who think their vote is just one vote and doesn’t matter: well, with respect, you are dead wrong. No single raindrop determines the size of a river, but whether raindrops fall or don’t fall does.

I will not see this country I love fall because my standards of perfection or even preference have not been met. And whether we win or lose, I will be able to face the next four years knowing I used all the power I had to do all the good I could in this flawed and imperfect world.