1. America, for all its faults, is a great country for three reasons:

a) The driving economic force is the profit motive, which is the "natural" one.

b) Honesty and integrity are still the most admired virtues of this country, regardless of race, religion, or ethnic background.

c) Just about every country the world over depends upon America to make its own economy run.

2. There's no such thing as no strings attached anything. The only accurate definition of an absolutely free society is a society of one isolated somewhere on a deserted island. With a world jam-packed with people as ours is, we are all, of necessity, our brothers' keeper. Tolerance, consideration, and at least some minimum effort at self discipline, are standards by which we must all learn to live if we are to survive.

3. I believe in capitalism - money is the best and most reliable tool to get things done. I intend to use the "financial gain mechanism", (a trait with which nearly all Americans come equipped from the factory), to try and solve environmental, sociological, and educational problems. Basic tenets here are, attach very big strings to government giveaways and, don't forbid activities that are costly to society, eliminate them, (or at least reduce their impact to tolerable levels), by education and taxation.

4. I intend to level the playing field in all directions. Capitalism functions best under such conditions. Today, it is often not the best companies that survive and prosper, but those with the best connections in the government. Any legislation placed before me will be subjected to the question, does it give any company in a particular business an unfair advantage over its competitors? If the answer to that question is yes, it gets vetoed. An exception to this is the energy related bills described later.

5. I believe in a government of the people that is simple and straight forward enough that it can be performed by just about any of the people. I believe in a government that does not require years of experience of a handful of self preserving, self styled experts. If it does, then it should be changed, because, just as sure as the sun comes up in the morning, human nature dictates that such "experts" will become dictators of the people, for the benefit of a few wealthy industrialists and/or special interest groups, at the expense of the majority. A clear example of this is the sad state of the environment of this nation and the world, not to mention the global financial disaster.

6. I believe that legal jargon is unnecessarily complicated. All you have to do to convince yourself of that is to read a simple foreclosure notice in the newspaper and try to figure out who is foreclosing upon whom. My redneck ignorance may be sticking out real badly right here, but I will have a natural tendency to veto any law that I cannot read and understand without translation by a legal "expert".

7. Race supremacy - In 20 years as a teacher I have seen no evidence of any races superior ability to learn math or physics over any other race. From my wife's 8 years experience teaching kindergarten, I am convinced that the same goes for all other aspects of learning. It is true that the cards are stacked against a lot of black, Hispanic and other minority kids, by a lot of folks, but from my observation of the evidence, you, their parents, are the number one stacker. It is true that many children from poor families of every race have almost no persistence, little self discipline, an inability to concentrate on anything for more than a couple minutes, and in general have difficulty organizing their lives. Traits shared by an increasing number of kids from white middle class families, because children have to be taught these things. Their parents have little or no idea how to do that, and no time if they did. I intend to change that, see the chapter on Families. In addition, kids learn this stuff best in the presence of a stable, ordered environment, a situation for which there has become no financial incentive. I intend to change that too, see the same chapter.