Letter to the Editor: Encourages support for government liberties

I read with interest the reaction in the press to conservative candidates selected by GOP delegates at a recent convention. Along with thousands of new voices in the RPV, I rose to my feet repeatedly during E.W. Jackson’s speech. This should be an easily understood response to the sharp turn to the left by our government, both federal and state.

Democrats have moved further left over the past 60 years and the GOP, attempting to stay in the center, has moved left also. Those who have studied the founding of this country, are alarmed at the encroachment of the government into every corner of our lives, the outrageous confiscation of the product of our labors, the disparagement of those who have been successful and the corruption of our very language through “political correctness”.

Supporters of current candidates for Governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General seek a return to the values of individualism, self-determination and liberty that was the vision of the founders; and the reason this country became the first nation in the history of the world where individuals born poor could become whatever they were willing to work to become.

Over the history of the world, if your grandfather was a peasant, your father was a peasant, you would be a peasant, your children would be peasants, down through the generations. With the signing of the Constitution, the old model was broken. A person could chart their own destiny for the first time in the history of the world. As government control has expanded, our freedom to chart our own course has been eroded over many years to a point where E.W. Jackson sounds outrageous in the context of our times, but makes beautiful, even elegant, sense in the context of the vision of the founders.

Let us move away from a government that provides “bread and circuses”, less freedom and less of the fruits of our own labor and back to a government that protects our liberty, provides an environment that promotes individual initiative, that supports free markets and broadens the tax base so that all pay a little, rather than punishing success. And while I am at it, let’s remember that the founders believed that our religion would, and should, provide the moral foundation of a free society.

John H. Phelps
Providence Forge, VA