Nobody ever worked as hard as my father. My father averaged maybe four hours of sleep at night, and when you're a kid, you don't realize that.

Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13.

According to the Social Security Administration, in 1945, 41.9 workers supported each individual retiree, while today only 3.3 workers support each retiree. This system cannot continue.

Optimism. It's not just a mind-set, it is behavior.

My dad was a Marine. He was one of the Montford Point Marines. Those are the equivalent of the Tuskegee Airmen for Marines. He's a tough, tough guy.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to.

Lower taxes, less government spending on domestic programs and fewer regulations mean a better economy for everybody.