Principle Over Personality

Define: Principle: “A fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.”

What are your principles? What is your fundamental compass of truth? What leads you and directs your actions? When presented with a hard choice or a difficult situation, what guides your decision?

These are vitally important questions in America today. Every generation has a choice - what principles will guide us as a nation?

However, often this choice is obscured through the distraction of individual personalities. A charismatic leader, a leader who talks a good game, a leader who promises everything, a leader who fails. Many people get caught up in personalities, while principles fall by the wayside.

The failure of a leader often reflects badly on the principles of a cause. Disillusioned by the failure of a highly respected leader, followers may completely abandon things they claimed to believe in. After all, if the leader didn’t believe in those principles enough to follow them, why should the followers believe them anymore?

But someone with true principles, principles that work, won’t have to worry about a leader. They will realize that failure did not come from the principles, but rather from the abandonment of the principles.

Say a yard maintenance business was run by a man who said his guiding principle was to sharpen the mower blades everyday before work. This resulted in his employees’ work being top of the line and success for the business as a whole.

Some time goes by and the owner strays from his principle, never quite having time to sharpen the blades. Having abandoned his guiding principles, his employees see the quality of their work decline and the reputation of the business impugned.

Was there anything wrong with the owner’s principle of sharpening blades every night? Of course not. The problem came when he abandoned his principle. If the employees had followed that principle despite their leader’s abandonment, the quality of work would have been maintained and the company would have continued to prosper.

Blame can be placed on a leader who fails. However, true principles, if followed faithfully, will not fail.

We look at elected politicians as leaders. These leaders are mere mortals who will fail. Even leader who strongly proclaim principles that we agree with, are always completely capable of going against those principles.

For these reasons, we cannot and should not put our confidence in people or personalities. I will never defend an abandonment of principles by any person, leader or politician whether I support them or not. But a leader who stands unmoving by our principles deserves, no demands, our support.

I know what my principles are:

Truth

God-Given Rights

A Government to Protect Those Rights

People Holding the Power Over the Government

The Ability to Alter Government to Fulfill its Real Purpose

These are my principles. These are the principles of the great men who founded this, the greatest country in the history of the world. Our Founding Fathers laid this out in our country’s charter, the Declaration of Independence. These were the foundations, there were our principles.

To millions of Americans, these still are our principles. And I believe these are also the principles of Senator Ted Cruz.

The recent National Enquirer story has attempted to defile the character of Ted Cruz, attempted to show he is not a man of principle, that he does not truly believe what he says. Cruz vehemently denounced these claims as utterly false and at this time there is absolutely no substantive proof whatsoever of their validity. It appears to be an attempted hit against the only viable opponent to Donald Trump.

Ted Cruz has a long, consistent public record of standing for the principles laid out by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Every indication is that he is a man of principle.

I don’t know if the Enquirer story is true or not, but at this time all the evidence says that it is not true. But even if these claims are found to be true (which is not the case at this time), my principles will be unshaken.

Because I have chosen to put my principles before people and personalities.  

“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” ~George Washington

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” ~Abraham Lincoln

The fate of the sacred fire of liberty rests in your hands. If we fail and that fire is extinguished, it will not be from without, it will be from within, by our own hands. Liberty is preserved through true principle, not through people or personalities that make us “feel good”.

Principle must be our rallying cry. Unity around principle is our only hope. Heaven forbid that history show the sacred fire of liberty lost forever because you and I did not stand unwavering on true American principles.

Principles over people, over party, over self. Stand on principle.

Jonathan Paine

@painefultruth76

painefultruth1776@gmail.com