Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

My Point of View by Brad Kramer

A close family member lost a loved one to old age, and as we spoke as a family, my mother in-law looked at me and said, “imagine that people were going through this, isolated and alone, one year ago.” We have come back to life over the past few months, going to social gatherings, letting businesses start to recover, and some thrive, while others pick up the pieces from an untimely demise. Families hug each other. Festivals come to town and bring us back to life.

Just as we start to regain normalcy, the threats of lockdowns, mask mandates and mandatory vaccinations are starting to look like the path the Democrats are going to push upon you again. You are selfish for wanting your freedom, you’re told. America has tremendous opportunity. And locking down its citizens and telling the struggling business owners that you don’t count, while landlords are getting ready to maybe take possession of houses they know tenants have trashed while the landlord is left holding the extensive remodel cost, is the Democrat’s response.

In her last column, Jennifer Vogt Erickson wagged her finger at Americans because we could support sending a billionaire into space while blasting out greenhouse gases, rather than pay their “fair share.” We are constantly being told the sky is falling and lectured that we (Americans) are to blame. The Democrats’ column is a string of dire warnings that the Earth as we know it is going to end, people are being massacred by cops, racial inequality is rampant, COVID is going to kill half the population, and Republicans are going to legislate your uterus and send trolls out your bedroom door to steal children’s toys and dreams. Ok, maybe the last one was a (slight) exaggeration.

Let me share what our values lead us towards. We built a system where a billionaire figured out how to build a rocket to blast into space and do better and cheaper what NASA has struggled with for years. He is propelling us forward. And speaking of Elon Musk, he has also built a company that propelled clean energy forward faster than any government legislation or bureaucracy could have ever done. All the while opening his patents for competitors to use to advance humanity. That evil capitalist! Mrs. Vogt would tell you that was an example of socialist principles at work, the giving of capital (in this case knowledge) to society. The key and remarkable difference is that Elon Musk does it with no force or coercion whatsoever. He made the explicit choice based on his values and vision.

Americans are waking up and going back to work and becoming a community again. Fourth of July celebrations were abundant. Businesses are getting their bearings, and some even become very profitable again. There is new excitement and optimism, as if we are emerging from our basements to a post-apocalyptic world. This is certainly not due to President Biden or any feigned enthusiasm that anybody has that he’s president, or a feeling that politically we’re moving in the right direction. And it certainly won’t be because Donald Trump is no longer president. It’s rather that Americans are starting to appreciate their rights. I’ve had very left-leaning friends confide in me that the Democrat reaction to COVID and the war on police has them rethinking their beliefs and having a renewed appreciation for our liberties.

Let’s rush towards something that is possible rather than away from some “sky is falling” event. We have a deep capacity as people to accomplish something without overbearing laws mandating it. Gov. Walz’s clean car mandate is a finite and red-tape laden fiasco that will have limited success with a big price tag and was rammed through with little support of the governed. A committed capitalist with a dream and an ideal burning a fire in his or her belly will spur the big developments. And the world will beat a path to their door because of free market principles. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that there are faults in the green car industry, but it is only by pushing through the barrier of issues like mining the rare metals for batteries, that an innovator will find the answer where everyone else saw barriers. And the only system that brings that out is capitalism. Elon Musk sends rockets into space with a goal of advancing humanity. I work and interact with business owners on almost a daily basis and see how their big-picture vision is changing the world and I mentor men and women as a business mentor and help them give substance to ideas that might not change the world but will change a part of the world for the people they can reach. That is hope, my friends. That is hope.

Brad Kramer is a member of the Freeborn County Republican Party.