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My Point of View by Brad Kramer

On behalf of your Freeborn County Republican Party, I’d like to extend a warm wish for your family to have a blessed Christmas season. It’s a season for reflection and to come together as families and communities.

Our political views are reflections on how we see the world. For most of us, liberals tend to gravitate towards the Democratic Party, and conservatives gravitate towards the Republican Party. There is nothing inherently good or bad about being liberal or conservative. When everything is working well, a healthy combination of liberal and conservative people can work well together. It is not very different from how we are introverts or extroverts. Neither is better, and both bring valuable contributions to the table. If we made friends only by introverts or extroverts, there would be no balance.

My liberal-leaning friends bring a sense of compassion to our conversations, where they help connect the systems to the people. My conservative-leaning friends bring an understanding of building systems to benefit the people. If our political system were working well today, the conservatives would introduce the systems, and the liberals would adjust how those systems can better serve the people, and it goes back and forth until the system is perfectly balanced to serving the needs of the people and efficiency of the systems. Those systems are things like health care, economics, infrastructure, taxation, the military and much more.

Few are completely liberal or conservative unless that is the only lens through which they identify themselves. The more we listen closely to people with opposing viewpoints, the more we can find common ground and common purpose. On the contrary, shutting out the other viewpoints leads to a path of blaming another group for all the problems we see. This is neither a Democratic nor Republican problem, but a human problem.

Economics is one example of a system. An extreme conservative will blame people getting in the way of business. An extreme liberal blames business for the ills people experience, such as poverty and their own lack of economic success.

The beauty of capitalism is that, to work, it must constantly be improved. For the free market to thrive, whoever offers the most value to others will win the day, and that applies to how businesses are run, and capitalism improves. Simon Sinek is a well-known expert on understanding the people-side of business. In one particular speech I listened to, he speaks about the theory that led to businesses pursuing only the profit of their shareholders during the heyday of this principle in the ’80s and ’90s. Sinek believes in taking care of the people in the business first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of their customers, and when the customers are cared for, the shareholders are cared for. The businesses who learn from Sinek are growing.

This is a testament to capitalism. A model of operating businesses that only cared about shareholders was not serving the people and causes problems. Business who mastered the art of taking care of their employees are the least affected by the employee shortages because people desire to work for them. Companies who cling to ineffective ways of caring for their employees are left with fewer employees to produce and will go out of business if they don’t improve. Capitalism makes life better by self-correction because the free market demands you offer value…to customers, communities, employees, shareholders, and employees.

Extremist Democrats blame Republicans and capitalism for exploiting people and causing misery. And their demands of larger and larger amounts of paid time off, benefits, higher pay, etc. are not realistic because they don’t understand business as a system.

Extremist Republicans blame Democrats and the poor for not learning the system and being the cause of unnecessary taxes and strains on business to cover things like welfare and employee shortages. When companies who cling to extreme views do not practice free market practices we promote, they cannot connect with their people and will go out of business because people don’t want to work for them.

A balanced system brings the best of both worlds. Companies who practice capitalism and ever strive to bring more value to their consumers, will master both the business systems they implement, and will master the art of serving their employees and communities. Liberal and conservative principles come together for success. When Jen Vogt-Erickson blames capitalism and Republicans for society’s struggles, it demonstrates that she understands neither business nor capitalism.

My hope is we will come together. I am elated to see balance in our local party. Our local Republican board is made up of mostly fiscal conservative/social libertarians with balanced views who welcome people with passion who want to follow Rep. Peggy Bennett’s promises of “people before politics.” Merry Christmas, friends!

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