Huckabee Believes in Personal Ability/Responsibility
Gov. Huckabee met with approximately 100 people in Kingston New Hampshire to discuss his visions of where the country needs to go in the future. The recurring theme behind each of his positions seems to genuinely come from his belief in the American system.
When he discussed the economy, job outsourcing and executive compensation, I started to get the feeling that he was beginning to pander to the voters. I became very concerned when he started talking about how it was not right that executives receive 500 times the salary of the average working person. I feared he was going to fall into the old, let's pass a law like most candidates and politicians do. To my surprise, he said something so simple it shocked me. He said that it was our responsibility, society's responsibility to speak up against this kind of greed. Through a public expression of our condemnation of this type of behavior, we can correct this injustice and make it publically unacceptable.
This brought back a thought I had a few years ago. When corporate raiders like Icahn and Trump were taking over companies and slashing jobs and workers pensions, the average person was looking to them as role models to becoming rich. It struck home how much American values had changed. I remembered a 1950's movie called "Wheeler Dealer" with James Garner as the corportate raider. The movie opens with children jump roping to a ditty about how "bad" he was and the theme of the movie was how Garner sees the light and decides to build companies, not just enrich himself. Gov. Huckabee showed sincerity, like Ronald Reagan did two decades ago, and that he believes in the individual, and our country.
It is clear to me, in each case and on each issue, Gov. Huckabee truly believes that values come first, and in preserving our system of government and our economic sytem (capitalism) to provide opportunity for others. He strongly believes that this is the right direction for our country, and where he would lead us if elected.
I agree with his vision of how our country should move forward. He is now in the top 3 of my choice of candidates.
More details of what he said:
Being the first person in his family to ever graduate high school to becoming the Gov. of Arkansas to being a presidential candidate, he expressed that in American, anyone can acheive their dream if they dedicate themselves and work for it. The same is true for the country at large, that it is possible to continue to be the beacon of the world as long as we do not abandon the principles of personal freedoms, personal responsibility and a system of limited government designed to encourage personal acheivement.
On health care, he sees the need for change. Not the democratic call for additional socialization of our medical system through government takeover of the health insurance system, but a total revision of the existing insurance system to promote preventive care verses reactive care. He believes that a system that it is monetarily advantagous to the average person to take proactive behavior towards their own health, people will respond, thus reducing more costly medical treatments resulting from bad health practices.
On national security, he believes that the war on terror and the securing of our borders are one and the same. That Iraq is only a single battlefied in a new kind of war, without borders, by peoples that wish to create a theorcratic form of government for all of the world, allowing only the practice of their version of religion. As a result these people wish to destroy all existing forms of government and cultures other than their own. This is a battle he believes must be confronted with not only might, but with the assistance by America and other western nations to educate, aid and bring a higher standard of living to areas under attack by the radicals.
Specifically on the borders, he believes that it is necessary to stop illegal immigration, but to revamp the current legal system. This would then reward those that "play by the rules" and want to become americans, not just use the benefits of our monetary system.