[promoted from the diaries. Dan Bongino is running against the incumbent Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin for the US Senate. Visit Dan's website to learn more about him and maybe leave a donation.]

The Dems’ new campaign slogan  – “Results are irrelevant, it’s all about good speeches”.

There is an old saying which states “liberal policies care about the poor in theory- it’s the real poor they have a problem with”. Never has this adage been so evident. Having spent many years in poverty as a child, I am intimately familiar with the pain of hunger and the burning desire for a better tomorrow. I will not be lectured by elites about their intentionally cryptic notions of “fairness”. It is my personal relationship with a past filled with painful memories of waking up hungry and the realization that it wasn’t just a bad dream that motivates my desire to confront this ideology that has imprisoned generations in an endless state of poverty. This sentence, imposed by decades of failed ideology, is marketed to the disadvantaged among us as a “gift” from self-anointed political philanthropists.

I refuse to accept the misguided notion, blindly propagated by institutional elites, that the political party best representing the interests of struggling lower income communities is the Democratic Party.

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[Promoted from the Diaries by streiff. Dan Bongino is running for Senate in the People's Republic of Maryland so Ben Cardin can spend more time with his family and less with his hand in your wallet. I've met Dan and he's the real deal. Drop by his website and contribute to his campaign.]

Politicians who reference the term “inequality” typically use it in a generic fashion intended to intentionally deceive their audience. It is far easier to sell failed economic policies with a basis in intentions, not results, to an audience eager to find a cause for our economic maladies when the target is non-specific. These same politicians speak as if the most successful members of our American family are the problem and not the solution. Can we all agree that the problem to be solved is not impoverishing those who have found prosperity, but improving the lives of those who continue to seek it?

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I am always amazed at how far career politicians will go to test the bounds of their dignity when confronted with the simple question, “where do you stand on the Second Amendment?”

More often than not, they will provide an abstract answer tailored to placate the audience currently in front of them. Nothing is more disingenuous than a politician with manicured hands standing in a duck blind trying to prove that he believes in the right to bear arms.

I believe that an honest man will never have to worry about remembering what he has said or who he said it to. I believe that the Second Amendment is crystal clear, “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The Second Amendment is a fail-safe woven into the fabric of our Constitution that ensures the God given rights and freedoms upon which this country was built. The Second Amendment isn’t just about preserving gun ownership, hunting rights, or target sports.

It is about each and every law abiding citizen having the right to play a role in ensuring our collective freedoms. It is the manifestation of our resolve to exercise our right of self-determination. It is a means to protect the lives and liberties of our families and to ensure that our Republic will endure.

Our government goes to great lengths to protect the freedoms of speech, of religion, to peaceably assemble, and frequently does so in situations that bear great public opposition. It defies logic for our government not to protect our right to keep and bear arms with the same zeal as our other Constitutional freedoms.

Sadly, we find ourselves in a society today where The Second Amendment is restricted by over thousands of state and federal regulations. America’s greatness is founded in personal accountability and community awareness. Unnecessary over-regulation does nothing to strengthen our communities, decrease crime, or to ensure our safety.  Overreaching firearms laws do however increase the chance that an otherwise law abiding citizen may overlook an obfuscated regulation and unwittingly become a criminal.

Imagine if the same standards applied to the rights protected by the First Amendment. What if the federal government required a permit to publish a newspaper? Would you pay a fee, and then endure a waiting period to go to the church of your choice? What if your state decided that it was simply going to outlaw public assembly?

To me, the words “keep and bear arms” means that every law abiding citizen is a vehicle through which we collectively preserve the means to protect ourselves.

Concealed carry permits should be issued without any unreasonable hurdles, exorbitant fees, or arbitrary justification. In my home state of Maryland, in order to obtain a concealed carry permit, I need to provide a lengthy application with a non-refundable fee and “documented proof” of threats against my life. A judge will then arbitrarily decide if I deserve the privilege to protect myself.

The years of street experience that I accrued as a law enforcement officer with both the NYPD and the Secret Service imparts a personal perspective regarding the responsibility that carrying a firearm implies. I was raised in the inner city. I didn’t grow up hunting and I had never fired a gun until I was on the police force.

While serving in law enforcement, I shot regularly to maintain a high level of proficiency. I carried a gun every day for 17 years while working. Although I may not be what you would call an avid gun enthusiast, I am a lover of freedom and I do cherish our civil liberties.

The arguments for restricting our Second Amendment rights on the grounds of public safety seem fraudulent at best. Perhaps the goal isn’t to eliminate guns, but is instead a pathway by which to silence the voices of freedom. Either way, the Second Amendment is the only one designed to ensure all of our freedoms and any encroachment upon them are unacceptable.

(Originally published in HumanEvents.com, February 24, 2012)

Dan Bongino is a Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate from the state of Maryland. He is a decorated Secret Service Agent who served under three presidential administrations, and was the lead security representative for the United States for foreign presidential visits.  Dan is a small business entrepreneur who has obtained graduate degrees in both Psychology and Business Administration. His wife Paula is a first generation immigrant and a successful business owner. Dan and Paula have two children, 8 year old Isabel and newborn Amelia.

Let’s take back the Senate and create some real change.

Promoted from the diaries

The time for real change and big ideas in the education arena is now. We can no longer afford to sit idle while a generation of Americans receive a second class education from a first class country. It is unfathomable that in the wealthiest country in the world our minority and low income communities have limited educational opportunities. There are some statistics that are hard to ignore and one that bleeds each time is this; of the nation’s 20,000 high schools, 2,000 are responsible for nearly half of the dropouts. If you are one of our nation’s black families you have a 50% chance of sending one of your children to one of these schools. This is not a partisan issue or a political issue but an issue which centers on the fundamental American belief that opportunity is not relegated to those winning the zip code lottery.

We can all agree that improvements can and should be made in our education system. Our system has been progressively moving towards a top-down, overly bureaucratic model which allocates funds based on models divorced from student results. We have doubled per-student funding over the past five decades and have seen virtually no noticeable improvement in test scores. These sad numbers belie the fact that bureaucratic top-down models have a sad history of failure and those who defend them are typically the very bureaucrats whose power is enhanced as a result of them.

I propose that the answers are in front of us if we are bold enough to accept them and put down our rhetorical arms in this ideological battle. We can make bold changes now by moving to a system where the parent and child, rather than a zip code, becomes the center of our education universe. Choice in educational facilities has enabled our university system to become the envy of the world, regardless of the zip code the facility is located in. Choice has the potential to rewrite our education future and redefine educational excellence. It is unfortunate that the arguments used to refute this simple proposition strain credulity. Stating that taxpayers should fund public education and yet be ordered where to send their children to school, regardless of the school’s record of success or their personal choice, is un-American at its core.

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