So why do I do this.   Why do I want to be in the tea party and why am I involved politically.  Why did I take time and money away from my family for office.  I think it all really boils down to one principle.  Freedom.

When I was growing up I was told time and time again that we live in a free country.  I went to private school and I was not there to be indoctrinated by the public school system.  By the time I was in high school it was too late for me.  I was already a staunch conservative.  I remember during high school staying up late each night to catch the Rush Limbaugh show.  I grew up living a fairly free life, a life with few rules, but I had morals so I did not stray away from the proper path.

I went to the business school at NAU, and in business school they teach you to be creative and to be a business leader, they teach you that the world is yours if you just go out and grab it.  The funny thing is that in the management track of business school they never tell you about the Government and how they control business, how the restrict business.  I graduated and was eager to start being an Entrepreneur, start my own business and get the success that I was promised, and right away I was hit with Government.  Many pages of paperwork needed to be filled out and many different government offices.  And along with this paper came so many rules that they offered free classes on how to follow all of their rules.  I ran across a few rules when I was in school about running a business out of my dorm room but now I needed to file reports each month to 3 different government offices telling them about all of my sales, if I paid someone to do something for me then it was much more paperwork, all in this free country.

After a while I moved to Phoenix, and my business got larger and larger, I rented a store and started hiring people.  Soon the paperwork was so much that I started to just ignore it all, believing I lived in a free country I figured that the Government was not entitled to this information.  I still got larger, opened up a second store, and even had a huge area at the state fair.  And for this success I was rewarded by being audited.  Nothing much ever came of it but it shocked me at how much control our government has over us.  That you must do what they say, no matter how stupid or unproductive, or else they could eventually go so far as take away your freedom. All just for doing nothing more than seeking your happiness by offering a service that people want and giving people jobs, without letting the government be your business partner.

After all of this I was just depressed by it, burned out I sold my business and move on.  I had a friend who invited me to see the world with him so I did and left the united states.  Soon I was in the Philippines, and I saw a level of freedom that surprised me.  They have the freedom to do what they want to be successful with limited influence from the government.  The government is very weak there, with most of the power in local government not federal.   With the freedom to have success they also had the freedom to fail, and many more failed than succeeded.  It was not total freedom, there was still some fairly major places that the government made it hard, but at least you knew all of the rules, they were simple, and mostly fair.

Then I went to Hong Kong, you know, the former British enclave that is now owned by China, and for the first time I saw what I would call real freedom.  Success was everywhere, I never seen a place with so many nice cars and buildings.  By almost any measure it is the most successful city in the world, and they did it by making business easy.

I came back the US, and by that time the business I built was gone, so I decided to rebuild it, it was the easiest thing I could do to earn a living.  I started to educate myself more on Freedom, and what makes a culture flourish.  I quickly came to the conclusion that we have lost our freedom.  I became active trying to talk to people and try to wake them up to this fact that we don’t have freedom in the United States.  I watched the presidential race with passion, and I was always telling people who I would vote for.  I was very unhappy with the person that my party chose, but after seeing the other guy I was very afraid for our nation as to what would happen if he won.  I spent months talking about it and telling everyone I could of the dangers that our nation was facing.  The people then chose the worst of the two of them.  Who would blame them, it was able bodied, charismatic and most people never really knew where he stood.

Soon after this I was shocked at the direction he and his congress were taking the nation and I decided to become very active with the Republican party.  I was really inspired by Glenn Beck and I educated myself on the real history of this nation and about all the freedoms we once enjoyed. After a while the tea parties started up and I quickly joined them also.  And a bit later I found out that I could run in 2010 for city council in Peoria.  I figured that it was time for someone with my views to be able to win.  What I did not count on was an unemployed, charismatic and much more liberal opponent who would use my non compliance with our unconstitutional and overbearing government against me.  It was a very close race, and we actually technically tied the first time and had to run a second time.  I had 100’s of people telling me I was on the right track, and that I was just what was needed for this time.  My opponent took huge amounts of money from special interest groups and unions and was able to spend twice as much money attacking me as I spent on the entire race, by the end of it he spent over 20k to my 3.5k, and he won by a few hundred votes.  The unions and special interest groups bought him the seat, and I wonder who he will owe when he takes it.

I was depressed about this and how I felt that it was so unfair.  For all my work trying to make the city a better place I was rewarded a week later with an audit of my business by the city.  This made me almost lose hope in the system, there is no fairness in our government.  At least the guy at the city who was auditing me was nice and said he did not like this audit and would make it very easy on me.  It really made me feel bad about the future of our nation, that even if you stand up and try to do the right thing there are more people trying to preserve the status quo, and block you.

I decided that I needed to keep trying but on a much different level.  It will be very hard to change government, and I don’t see that we can go down this path much longer.  I decided that now is the time to talk to people about how to prepare for the future that is likely to come.   A week later the chance game, the leader of my tea party group got a job in a different state, and basically it was up to me to lead the group or the group would be disbanded because no one else would take the role. I took it, I am excited by what will happen.  I also decided to change my business and actually develop some ideas that I feel are really good.  And I decided to focus on services so that I don’t have to deal with any future sales tax audits.

From here I think the future for me is bright.  I have a great skill set, great connections and even if everything falls apart I am confident that my family and I will be able to endure it, even if we have to move back to the Philippines.