Having served in the General Assembly for the last eight years, I can count on two certainties: The political expediency of the Republican Majority and the courage of Sen. Lee Bright.
Our democracy requires courage and courage demands sacrifice – a sacrifice of personal income, of friends, of time spent with family, of the respect of your peers. Sometimes courage demands the sacrifice of the very office that you hold if you stand against the prevailing winds of expediency.
Lee Bright has consistently made this stand, this stonewall against the powers that control our state capitol, against their collusion with groups that would enrich themselves at the expense of the common citizen, against their cynical promises of conservative reform to advance their own political careers, against their ready abandonment of the very ideals that have sustained our republic since its founding, the ideals of life – we know that Lee fights to protect life at its very inception and to reduce the number of abortions in South Carolina – the ideals of liberty – we know that Lee fights the ever growing need of government to expand and expand while it devours our individual freedoms bite by bite.
We know that Lee fights to repair the foundation that sustains our life and liberty. The foundation of a Christ-haunted Western Civilization that now crumbles under us as we fall into a pit of cultural transience.
We know that Lee fights to protect and honor the sacrifices of our citizens both past and present. He fought the idea that we should forever memorialize the 9 gracious South Carolinians at Emmanuel AME Church who made the ultimate sacrifice for their Christian charity by dishonoring the 17,000 South Carolinians who made the ultimate sacrifice for their courage while serving under the confederate banner.
We know that Lee fights the tyranny of the transient majority, a majority driven by fleeting passion and not by logic. A majority bent on the replacement of proven traditional values with transient confusion.
James Madison once asked how do you fight a majority “adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community?” You fight it by minimizing the possibility. Or to use the language of Lee’s political opponents, by being an obstructionist.
We need Lee Bright in the South Carolina Senate. We need his courage and his voice.
Now we must have faith that the citizens of Senate District 12 will not condemn Lee for his principled stands but will reward him for his courage on June 28th.