The central political question facing Americans today is—
What is the proper role and size of government?

• …in relation to a person's responsibility for his/her own life?
• …in light of recent economic events?
• …in view of our unique American history and constitution?

Read on and you'll find my positions on issues and the political philosophy from which they come. 

I look forward to meeting many of you in person during the campaign.  Thanks for visiting the website.

Ken Nichols

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ISSUE POSITIONS

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

• Balance the state budget without raising taxes. Put 2% of the revenue projection in a rainy day fund, and spend no more than the remaining 98%.
• Do not rely on one time Federal money for operating expenses.
• Restore the will of the voters: require a supermajority to raise taxes.

ECONOMY & EDUCATION

• A vibrant profit-earning private sector is necessary for creating jobs and generating tax revenues.
• Educating students should be the goal of our education system. We should rely less on bricks and mortar and more on technological resources for a 21st century education system that is second to none.

POLITICAL BALANCE

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."   John F. Kennedy

"No American is ever made better off by pulling a fellow American down, and every American is made better off whenever any one of us is better off. A rising tide lifts all boats."   John F. Kennedy

I saw President Kennedy at Cheney Stadium in 1963. As the above quotes show, the Democratic Party has drifted far from the centrist party it was then. JFK would be out of place in today’s Democratic party. Democrats never mention the word liberty any longer. JFK championed tax cuts, not spending, to stimulate the economy.  Today we borrow money for a stimulus that doesn't stimulate and only leaves us deep in debt. As Ronald Reagan said about the party of JFK, “I didn’t leave the party, the party left me.”

This district has been represented solely by a Democrat for the last 40 years.  Should all three legislators from this district be liberal Democrats? Is one party rule a good thing?  I think not.  Look what one party rule has done for Chicago and for Illinois!  Shouldn’t there be a seat at the table for those with diverse political views?  What about those with minority political views—independents, Republicans, Libertarians—are they not entitled to be represented?  Democtrats have two of three legislative seats in the district.  Let’s set aside a seat for the rest of the rest of us.  If you believe in fairness, you’ll agree.

Now is the time to bring to the 27th district:

• balance
• new leadership, and
• representation FOR ALL

Declare your independence!  Vote for Ken.

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Political philosophy
The ability to elect those who govern us is a great privilege. How do we decide whether to vote for a candidate? By party label? By gender, age or looks? By the promises a candidate makes? By issue positions?

My approach is to develop a political philosophy and then to support those who will advance that philosophy. Developing a political philosophy requires some knowledge of American history and the constitution, some understanding of economics and some familiarity with current events. A correct diagosis of economic problems is essential in determining what steps may need to be taken. How similar problems have been dealt with historically, either more or less successfully, can help us avoid bad paths, or take good ones.

Liberty: the Primary principle
America’s essential founding principle was LIBERTY. This nation was not founded on security, but on liberty. In the writings of the independence and the constitutional period., the words liberty and freedom were central. In Patrick Henry’s famous speech, he valued liberty above life itself. The Declaration of Independence asserts that our Creator gave us the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The Constitution was adopted “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Our national hymns speak of a “sweet land of liberty,” and the desire to “let freedom ring.” One of the earliest national symbols was the Liberty Bell, which had inscribed on it the words “proclaim liberty throughout the land.” The French, recognizing that liberty was our primary national value, gave us the Statue of Liberty to mark our 100th anniversary.

Thus, to be true to our American heritage, maintaining and maximizing Liberty should be essential to any American voter’s political philosophy. Liberty’s related prinicples are personal responsibility, limited government, federalism, and the free market.

Personal responsibility
As voters, we are all familiar with the process of emancipating from our family of origin: learning a trade or getting an education, finding employment and becoming self sufficient. Those of us who are parents have attempted to train our children to also become self supporting and to take their place as independent members of society. As we know from those experiences, with adult freedoms comes responsibility for one’s actions.

Americans have historically believed that individuals should be as free as possible to make their own decisions about where they live, where they work, what they consume, with whom to associate, etc.

Limited government
In the government sphere, to maximize individual freedom, the Founders created a republic with a limited government. The Constitution was adopted “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Jefferson recognized that the natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield. We can see this happening over the course of American history. Jefferson would be saddened to see the current American government which has grown into a huge bloated system of bailouts and deficits, eating up the wealth of the common man, and threatening the futures of our children and grandchildren.

Federalism/Constitution
Federalism refers to the balance between the states and the federal government. The states predate the United States government, and ceded some of their power to the new government. That new US government, was to have specific, listed powers and any powers not delegated to the US were retained by the states or the people. The Constitution was committed to writing, like any other contract would be. However, the Supreme Court, armed with a philosophy of a “living constitution,” now acts like an ongoing constitutional convention and has stretched it almost beyond recognition. An analogy would be buying a home with a fixed rate mortgage only to find later that the bank decided you had a “living mortgage,” that times had changed, and surely it would be equitable to share the risks, so they were raising your interest rate and payment. No one at the time of ratification of the constitution remotely contemplated such an approach to constitiutional interpretation.

Free market
The system of freedom that we appreciate on the personal level, applied society-wide as to our economic choices is the free market. Indeed the Founders thought that a free market was the most effective social organization for the promotion of individual freedom. The market is a public forum where people vote, but using money rather than ballots. Success in the marketplace is made by meeting the wants and needs of others. Capitalism is defined as a system whereby individuals are free to pursue their own interests, so long as they do not violate the property rights of others.

The upshot
The founders gave us the best government of all time, based upon personal responsibility, limited government, federalism and a free market. However, we are in danger of throwing away our birthright—the American experiment. Will we as adults living in a free society accept the responsibility of taking care of ourselves, and meeting our own needs? Or, will we continue to rely on ever expanding government to take care of us, to solve our problems, to pay for that which we are unwilling to pay? Will we reduce the size of government and preserve freedom as the Founders intended, or will we continue to spend more than we can afford and thus fundamentally transform the United States of America? 20 years after America’s free market, peace-through-strength policies brought down the iron curtain and the Berlin Wall, we are succumbing to the myth of big government taking care of us, and we are becoming like an Eastern European country. That’s not the America I want to leave to my sons and grandson. That’s why I’m running for state representative.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.
Ronald Reagan, former Democrat