Conservatism gets a bad rap. That probably shouldn't surprise anyone who is, or has ever been, young. It is, by definition, the defense of the musty ways of generations past against the vigorous efforts to make a better tomorrow. So why are we, nonetheless, conservative? Why am I asking you to send me back to the NH House and restore conservative leadership to that body.

In his book Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, Roger Scruton identifies a core principal of conservatism. Conservatism is: "The conviction that good things are more easily destroyed than created, and the determination to hold on to those good things in the face of politically engineered change."

The left has been fairly successful, electorally, in recent years. In this last election, they have gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives and can sometimes muster enough votes to get their way in the Senate. In New Hampshire, the Democrats have easy majorities in both the House and Senate as well as in the Governor's Council. It has been entirely through the resistance of the chief executives "standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'" (William F. Buckley) that a fairly radical agenda has not come to pass.

Their agenda's failure has been a bitter pill for many progressive activists to swallow. Their response has not to temper their demands for change but rather to double down! The proposed policies of 2021 make the likes of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (not to mention a John F. Kennedy) seem positively right-wing by comparison."

The cry for change, however, goes well beyond policy. We all can accept that arguments over policy are at the very core of our representative democracy. The will of the people for change can and must prevail. That said, this year's list of demands go further still. The progressive wish to remake our society extends also to the very institutions that we use to facilitate the "consent of the governed." The left (and not even the radical left) call for an end to the electoral college, a revamp of the Supreme Court, and a wholesale redesign of elections themselves. Some call for the elimination of the U.S. Senate in its current form or, at the very least, a "packing" of the Senate by adding a half-a-dozen reliably progressive Senators from the likes of Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

Were that not bad enough, the insistence on action becomes ever more strident and ever more non-negotiable. "Meet every item on this list of demands," the protesters say, "or we'll burn down the city." "Leave that court seat empty or we'll start a civil war." "Elect our man to the presidency or we'll tear this country asunder." This is not Democracy. This is not enlightenment. This isn't even anything resembling liberal tradition. This is scary, but for reasons quite a bit bigger than the immediate impact the threats themselves.

By most measures, New Hampshire is the best place in the country (maybe the World) to live. Some of those measures are extreme outliers but others represent a perplexing balance between traditional conceptions of left and right. We love our life here and we want to keep it. The progressive wave in this country wants us to believe that hundreds of years of New Hampshire history and thousands of years of Western Civilization have all been wrong and would like to dismantle it all after November's election. We conservatives appreciate what we have and are loath to give that all up for a promise of a new utopia.

I again ask for your vote on November 3rd and as your Representative, I will continue to support smaller government, increased local control, and sensible government spending.

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The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English.