governance principles
faith convictions
I am a broad-minded, critical-thinking, non-denominational Christian. My faith-compelled responsibility and pleasure is to love, respect and serve all people, including people of other faith traditions and of no faith tradition who comprise the populace of Gainesville. political convictions My trans-partisan political credo is as follows:
By "trans-partisan," I mean that my credo transcends conventional, partisan ideologies, positions, language and machinations that promote factionalism, discord, irrationality and antipathy and that impede sharing of information, admitting when incorrect, collaboration, compromise and agreement. I characterize myself as a sensible centrist. I have always been politically independent. I am not bound to any political ideologies, parties or figureheads. I am not invested in them; I am not limited by them. Political principles make good guides but not inflexible and immutable dogma. My political loyalties are to present and future citizens, not to parties, figureheads or defined--and thus abstracted and detached-from-reality--systems of thought. My concern is what works best for everyone and what maintains our resources so they can continually yield undiminished benefits to all future generations. Governments are instituted and perpetuated to manifest and protect the common good. Governments are among the few active agents that can balance the power and curb the abuses of powerful individuals, groups and entities in a society, so the roles of governments in the enactment and enforcement of laws and regulations are natural and beneficial. Society determines the levels of law enforcement, government regulation and social services that a government must provide. I generally prefer that individuals and entities in the private sector provide most social services. All forms of government can become oppressive and tyrannical--including nominal and once-exemplary "democracies"--when people fail to expect, demand and extract ethical behavior, treatment and public policies from those who govern them or, failing that, replace those who govern them. The cure for a "sick" representative democracy is not a change to a different system of government but to engage in principled, civil, rational, courageous and perseverant involvement in the political process to make them responsive to the public. The cure for "exploitive" capitalism is not a change to a different economic system but reasonable and requisite government regulation and judicious, focused and disciplined aggregated political action, localization, re-allocation of investments and shrewd and strategic consumerism to curb the abuses. I think that good governance is defined by:
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