...guns do more than protect us from criminals; more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government.

One other thing I think a conservative believes is that the parents, not government, are and should be responsible for the upbringing and behavior of their children.

As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom.

To me, conservative means believing in a minimum amount of government and a maximum amount of freedom - and keeping government out of people's lives and business - and leaving people alone.

I think the American people have become more reliant upon government and less reliant upon themselves and that they now tend to put security ahead of freedom, but I think freedom is the most important aspect of our lives.

Government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.

That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.