Endorsements Rescinded for Reconsideration (Updated)

Posted October 3, 2008, 2:42 p.m.

I hereby rescind for reconsideration any endorsement of any candidate who supported the socialist Wall St. bailout. This, unfortunately, includes essentially every endorsement I had made this year:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ), previously endorsed as my preferred Presidential candidate, voted in favor of the bailout in the Senate.
Former Governor Mark Warner (D-VA), previously endorsed as my preferred candidate for U.S. Senate from Virginia, has stated that he would have supported the bailout had he been in the Senate.
Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA 10th), previously endorsed as my preferred candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia’s 10th District, voted in favor of the bailout in the House.

I will be reconsidering my choices in each of these races and will post new or revised endorsements as soon as possible. I am extraordinarily disappointed in each of these candidates; they have betrayed the constituents they claim to protect and, indeed, the very ideals of limited government and capitalist society.

Update 10/9/2008: I have re-posted my endorsements. While I have endorsed the same candidates I had originally, I have modified my reasoning and added caveats to each in light of their support for the socialist Wall St. bailout.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.

Quotes

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

The capital resources of the nation are not increased by using the tax collector rather than the stock market to mobilize them.

Competition does a much more effective job than government at protecting consumers.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

People who understand economics can more easily spot hoaxes because money drives human behavior in predictable ways.

If we knew how often we were wrong about our understanding of just about everything, it would be deeply demotivating.

If any one refuses to obey what we say in this letter, note that man, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. Do not look on him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.

I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.

Protest without serious consideration is dangerous. You have to back up what you say.

No honest man becomes rich overnight; he has to wait for the reward of his labors.

No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.

Artists must be contending with something they do not understand, or they are not artists.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity.

Like Judaism, but unlike most other religions, Christianity is not mythical, in that it is based on events that took place not in a timeless realm but within human history itself.

We have certain standards of life that we believe are best for us. We do not ask other nations to discard theirs, but we do wish to preserve ours.

The more I see the better satisfied I am that I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.

While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case they are answerable.