Questions
1) What would you do different than the gentleman that is now in the position?
I would attempt to help bring this country back to the Christian roots that it started with 230 years ago with our founding fathers who when quoted, were quoted as saying something from the Bible 34% of the time, which is more than any other source. The original minuteman was a Reverend by the name of Jonas Clark and his deacons. This was our original militia. Many of the Brigades during the Revolutionary War were made up of no more than deacons following their Pastor into military duty.
A significant number of the major problems that we now have in society are due to the fact that the minority forced the majority to take the Bible out of the public schools that were developed to educate our future generations about the Bible. This is how it was set up by our founding fathers, of which 238 out of 250 were Christian men. The first textbook was the New-England Primer. It was taught to children when they first started school and was used up until 1900. It taught the children different things about the Bible. There is a reason why they didn’t used to have the discipline problems that we have today. Sure there was still a few that acted up, but nothing like today. When you only try to fix the symptoms the real problems don’t go away, they just come right back. We must fix the foundation not the symptoms.
2) What’s your stand on abortion?
Abortion is wrong in all circumstances, because in all circumstances were still talking about a baby that just hasn’t been born yet. Whether it’s a husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, a one night stand, a rape or it’s from incest its still a baby and it still deserves a chance at life. The Bible tells us, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” in Psalm 139:13. If God created us who should destroy us?
3) Do you agree with President Bush’s views on war?
Yes, I do. First, we don’t have all of the facts. We just hear what the media wants us to hear. We only hear part of the story. Secondly, I have heard from a fried that works with the SF (Special Forces) community that we indeed have found some chemical warfare materials, which President Bush’s Administration has told us were there from the beginning. Personally, I’d rather believe a friend that I know and won’t lie to me than to believe the media who rarely gives us the whole story, like how most Iraqi’s have been in favor of what’s been going on in their country the last few year’s as they’ve seen the difference in person. There will always be some nay sayers no matter what you do. It’s like Abraham Lincoln said, “you can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can never fool all of the people all of the time.” There is also a new book out, entitled, DISINFORMATION, “22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror” by Richard Miniter.
4) Why have you chosen to run?
This is something I’ve wanted to do for 15 years. I’ve been waiting until I meet all of the requirements in order to run for public office. This first happened in when I started to run for State Representative in District 117, while living in. I announced that I was running for State Representative in District 117 in July of 2003, but then I got deployed with the Missouri Army National Guard on November 16th, of 2003, to become a Military Policeman and was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This made it harder to run for public office in two ways. One, I was now in another state and two, because I was now a federal employee and meant that in order to continuing running I had to run as an independent candidate. As a federal employee you can not run for office, unless you run as an independent candidate or are running in a non-partisan election according to the federal code of regulations, Title V, Section 220.
Therefore, when I got deployed my unit told that I couldn’t run for office, but when I asked about this I was told this is what they had been told and that a Colonel had backed up this word. Since, this didn’t sound quite right I went and looked it up myself having not been told where this would be located and found that this wasn’t quite true. I’d have to run as an independent in order to still run, but I could still run. Therefore, I amended my committee to say that I was now running as an independent. This went on until about February when it became apparent that I was not organized enough to run from a different state. Being an independent candidate also meant that I had to get a certain number signatures on a petition in order to run for office. Therefore, when this didn’t happen by the end of June 2004, it was finally official that I was no longer running for State Representative in District 117.
Now having not lost the desire to run for public office I am once again running for State Representative. I’d like to take care of the problems that the government infrastructure is supposed to solve for us, but instead keep reappearing. That and because I’m supposed to be a Statesman for Christ is why I’m running for this office.
5) Why are you running at this time, against an incumbent of the same party?
I’ve wanted to run for public for 15 years and this is just the second time I’ve been eligible to run for this office, because of the minimum age requirement. Therefore, while I’m not running against the incumbent, I am running against the incumbent since I’m really not holding anything against Todd Smith, but unfortunately only one of us can be elected by the people for this office. I also don’t believe we should continue to allow our nation to go in the wrong while waiting for a particular time to run for office to make that difference.
6) How can you make a difference?
I can make a difference by passing new legislation that needs to be passed and taking laws off the books that we no longer needed. For instance, right now in our education system kids are mainly being taught about only one theory in Science class when there is more than one theory out there. I’m talking about the evolution theory. We also have the creation theory, the intelligent design theory, and other lesser known theories that are kids aren’t usually taught about for what ever reason. That’s why I’m proposing, that when I become your State Representative next year I will introduce legislation before the Missouri General Assembly that dictates that all school districts in the state of Missouri teach both the evolution theory and the intelligent design theory. Thereby, teaching both sides of the science creation issue. After all teaching both sides of the issue, is what learning, which we call education is all about.
7) What is your stand on the Medicare cuts in the 2005 State Budget?
These cuts were needed in order to our budget back in check and to have less people dependent on their government infrastructure.
8) What are your views about homosexuality?
I try to follow Gods Holy Word, the Bible in everything I do, including every decision I make. That being said and knowing that any thing other than male and female is not natural I must say that homosexuality is wrong in any form, always will be, and is an abomination.
9) How do you feel about taxes?
Our current form of progressive income taxes is unbiblical and therefore needs to change to be in accordance with the word of God, the Bible. Until 1913, here in the U.S. we had a capitation tax or head tax otherwise known as a poll tax for everyone 21 years of age and older. This is what we need to go back to instead of having over 65,000 pages on taxes in our federal code of regulations.
10) What is your stance on stem cells?
First of all, there are 2 different stem cell types. They are embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells is the type that the media keeps talking about even though it has never been tried on a human being any where in the world, because when they tried it with animals in the lab, it produces a tumor. Adult stem cells however, have shown great promise with break throughs in more than 66 different diseases.
11) How do you stand on cloning?
It’s wrong. It always has been and always will be wrong.
12) What are your thoughts on euthanasia?
It is not right for man to play God on either end of Life, birth or death. There was actually a model in a foreign country that was in her twenties and perfectly healthy, but because she didn’t think she had anything to live for she was allowed to end her life. This is wrong.
13) How are you any different from your opposition?
My opposition along with the rest of the current politicians do not understand what we need to do to rid ourselves of the majority of the problems our nation is currently dealing with. We need to get our nation back to a Biblical worldview which our country had up until the late 1800’s when Robert Ingersoll led us to believe that we need to compartmentalize the way we run our society. The media at the time beat up him. He was wrong. This is now what we do.
14) What is a Statesman?
This is a politician that is guided by a set of principles and does not compromise his or her principles for personal or political gain.
15) What is your Platform?
1) Education: Education is supposed to be the number #1 priority of our State Government and I intend to make it so. We need to look at the 49 other State Governments, see which state is doing the best job, and try to do the same thing their doing with their schools, in our education system.
2) Transportation: Our roads are currently the 47th worst in the Union of these 50 states that make up this great country. This is not acceptable! We need to develop a road plan in which all of the state roads are replaced every 15 or 20 years while repairing these same roads when they develop cracks and other things in the interim.
3) The size of the State Budget: Our State Budget is currently approximately $19 Billion dollars and has grown by about $10 Billion in the last 15 years, while approximately $12 Billion of that is from the Federal Government we still need to drastically reduce how our State Government spends your money as we need to stop wasting your tax dollars.
4) The size of the State Statutes: We currently have 471 chapters and more than 9320 pages of State Statutes. If we took just one line from each page we could literally reduce the statutes by hundreds of pages while getting rid of countless, useless or unenforced statutes.
5) The length of the session of the State Legislature. A constitutional amendment that extends the yearly life of the legislative session to the end of August and reschedules the work week for the legislators to be Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Currently the legislature is in session from January to the middle of May with the work week starting on Monday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon and going through Thursday with each day ending at 6 p.m. This is what is currently mandated by the Missouri state constitution and does not give the legislators enough time to effectively go through all the bills that are introduced before them each year. The legislature meets each year for approximately just 70 days, while getting paid approximately 30 grand for their work. If you ask me this really should be a year long job as the legislature has no small task in setting policy for the roughly 6 million people that live in the state of Missouri. You deserve more from your state legislature.
16) What is your message or theme?
Sherman for Statesman, Statesman for Christ, Statesman for the people. This means that I am running as not just a politician, but as a politician with dignity, honor, class, and integrity. A statesman is also one who does use politics for personal or political gain while being guided by a bedrock set of principles. This also means that once in office serving, I will first and foremost be serving my Lord Jesus Christ and secondly, serving the people.
17) Are you a Republican, Democrat, or something else?
I am a republican, but before that I am an unashamed Christian that will not be pushed around.
Sherman For Statesman
Statesman For Christ
Statesman For the People
18) Why are you supposed to be a Statesman for Christ?
I’m supposed to be a Statesman for Christ, because I know that is the career that God wants me to choose as there is no other reason I would have been touched in such a way, that I would still want to run for public 15 or 16 years later, as soon as I’m able to which has only recently happened as I have been waiting to fill the last and final eligibility to run for public office, age. I am now 25.
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