Address Delivered at the Republican House District 6 Kickoff Party, Tuesday, April 8, 2008 My name is Joshua Sharf, and I am delighted to be running as a Republican for House District 6! You know, one of things that makes it such a joy to be a Republican is that we're a coalition not of identities, but of ideas. We believe in low taxes to keep us competitive; We believe in less regulation to keep us innovative; We believe that free markets work wherever they are tried, whether that be in the price of corn, or in health care, or in energy; We believe not only in free economic markets but also in the free marketplace of ideas; We believe in school choice, whether that means charter schools or private schools; We believe in fiscal responsibility, which means spending less, not sucking the lifeblood out of the economy through higher taxes; We believe that property rights are indivisible from political rights, that the moment the government can arbitrarily confiscate your property, it can arbitrarily abrogate your freedoms; We believe that, in the words of Calvin Coolidge, "all liberty is individual;" We believe that our rights derive from God, not from some government bureaucrat, or from membership in some group; In fact, we don't even believe that our rights derive from the Constitution, but that the Constitution is the best safeguard of those rights, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "frames of silver around apples of gold.;" These are powerful ideas, ideas that appeal to the deepest roots of the American ideal. And part of their beauty is that anyone can buy into them. The holiday of Passover is coming up in a few days, and as most of you know, it commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. One of my favorite stories is about five rabbis who are spending the night discussing the slavery in Egypt. And the funny thing is that of the five, four of them were Levites and the fifth was the son of a convert, which means that their ancestors weren't enslaved by the Egyptians at all. But by accepting the story of the Exodus, they make it their own. And by accepting the American story, immigrants from all over the world make George Washington as much their founder as any member of the DAR. The other side likes to call themselves "Progressive." And I say they are. Progressively more expensive, progressively more intrusive, progressively more restrictive. Our ideas can stand up against anything the other party has to offer. But our ideas don't sell themselves, they need constant articulation, constant defense, constant promotion in the marketplace of ideas. They need skilled advocates, who can not only describe the dangers inherent in the Democrats' increasingly statist proposals, but to translate our principles into policy alternatives. In school, growing up near that company town, Washington DC, and more recently on the radio, in the blogs, I've spent my life making that case. I look forward, in the fall, to representing this party and our ideas, and carrying that debate against the other side. And I look forward, in the legislature, to helping to put those ideas to work for the people of Colorado and of this district.