Small Business Revolution published its founding principles as its way of celebrating Presidents Day and in particular Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln quite forcefully championed the connection between freedom and prosperity, recognizing the two were inseparable. He led the nation through our bloody Civil War, whose 150th anniversary we are in the middle of marking, to end slavery and make whole America’s promise of liberty and prosperity.
We stand at once the wonder and admiration of the whole world, and we must enquire what it is that has given us much prosperity, and we shall understand that to give up that one thing, would be to give up all future prosperity. This cause is that every man can make himself.
Over the past forty years we have tolerated the steady encroachment of the regulatory state into every corner of our lives, so none of us can any long “make ourselves.” And even though for the most part these rules and restrictions have had plausible rationales, no one paid any attention to either the accumulative impact they would have on our society and economy, nor to the corrosion they would bring to our commitment to our foundational principles.
Like the frog in the pot with the heat slowly but steadily turned up over time, we find ourselves in a tight spot. Our state economy is stagnant, our infrastructure is fraying, our debts are rising, our global economy is transforming at an increasingly rapid pace, and comity is but a distant memory. Our political leadership can only offer more of the same expensive, ineffective, and industrial-era government tarted up with the exaggerated and expensive chimeras of high-speed trains and “green” energy.
Small business owners know from first-hand experience that things are not going to return to the “good old days.” Unlike government, they have had to scramble and reinvent themselves by the hundreds of thousands over the past four years of economic downturn.
And they did it applying the fundamentals of business success to their moral fiber and passion for success. Now we demand that government transform itself to be a partner in the new economy. We will reinvent the California dream yet again only by returning to our founding principles and applying them to the enormous and unprecedented political economic transformation underway.
To keep faith with small business owners and the founders of our country, Small Business Revolution offers these as our founding principles. We will support candidates that embrace them and oppose those that will not.
- Freedom Wins.
- Limited Government Secures and Perpetuates Freedom.
- Free Markets Require Impartial Refereeing.
- Everybody Must Adapt to Accelerating Change—including Government.
- Time Is of the Essence.
- What Gets Measured Gets Done.
- The Only Way Out Is Forward.
- A Growing Economy Requires More Energy.
- There Is Only One Market in the New Economy.
- We Are Responsible for the Government We Get.
Detailed explanation of how we see these principles applying to today’s economy and political geometry are posted on our website, www.smallbusinessrev.com.
We aim to unite the voice of the state’s 3.5 million small business owners around these maxims, to change government from a relentless and careless constrictor of our liberties to what we promise ourselves in the preamble to our state constitution:
We the people of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do ordain this constitution.