Personal changes wrought by the recent CA recall election
20 November 2003 - Emailed to friends and family

My beloved family and friends, I'll try to keep this short and sweet. I registered Republican when I turned 18, but never really paid too much attention to politics until my dad started sending me articles from places like Reason.com and Mises.org, and some of them made pretty good sense. Thanks to his think-for-yourself upbringing, before long I found myself going against the grain and voting for Libertarian Presidential candidate Harry Browne. I came to the conclusion that I didn't belong in the Republican party anymore, and "voting with my feet", re-registered Libertarian when Kristi and I moved to Fullerton (changing districts in the process). I was of two minds at finding out that I already had a conservative republican as my congressman: pleased that he concurred with my emails about voting against U.S. funding of the U.N., etc., but almost disappointed that my most immediate chance of being a "squeaky wheel" would have to come elsewhere.

Through the political turmoil California's been through recently, I did my due diligence and devoured reams of information before I cast a principled vote for Tom McClintock (who by far was the only actual conservative in the race and who received the highest exit poll approval ratings of the top three). I was impressed to find that he was an advocate of many of the limited-government, liberty-focused issues that I've read about in various places (Reason.com, NationalReview.com, the Libertarian board at Fool.com), and it warmed my soul to recognize many of the quotes he used (such as Benjamin Franklin's "a republic, ma'am, if you can keep it"). I was most moved when he quoted John Adams in a speech about freedom on the floor of the California Senate (I highly encourage each of you to read it, if for no other reason than to better understand me and my motivation): "The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

This statement galvanized me and has given me a new mandate in my life: besides being a co-breadwinner for my wife and future family, I fully intend to use my life, energy, resources, and intellect in the service of, in McClintock's words from the same speech, "restor[ing] the liberty that our parents and grandparents expect us to pass on to our children and grandchildren." This is not to say that I'm running for Fullerton City Council next year, or anything quite so focused on the near-term - I mean this to be a much farther-reaching declaration, one that spans the rest of my days on this lump of granite we call Earth, and which will only just begin in the next few years as I educate myself, not solely about our government, but about our country and why it, in the form in which it was birthed, is the best one in the history of the world. Hopefully along the way I might be able to heed the exhortation of a former President of Embry-Riddle University and "make a difference". He spoke of the need for four things: Vision, Passion, Focus, and Balance. It's hard to think of a better prescription for this journey called life.

With fond hopes of renewed liberty,
Jason (or J-Train, Trip, or by whatever name you know me)