June 29, 2009 07:32 AM UTC

Announcement of My Candidacy in HD 28

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• by: Steve Harvey

(Lame duck promotion at its best – promoted by redstateblues)

We are often drawn to our differences, but politics can and should be the art of finding our common ground. There are certain things almost all people want: We all want to live well and we all want to live free. People of good will want to be fair to others, and most people want to be safe. We want these things for ourselves, for our loved ones, and, if we are reasonably generous, for our neighbors and friends as well. In our noblest moments, some of us want them even for our enemies. We dream, we strive, we aspire, we work, we play, we love, we hope. We share more that binds us than that divides us.

I am running for the Colorado House of Representatives, House District 28 in South Jeffco, because I believe that we do not just do these things as individuals, but also as members of a community, of a state, of a nation, and of a world. This dichotomy of our existence, that we are both autonomous individuals who cherish our freedom and, at the same time, interdependent members of a larger society bound together by mutual responsibilities and shared consciousness, is the source of our vitality, the essence of what it means to be human.

I have spent my life studying, experiencing, and exploring this dichotomy in a variety of ways, as a soldier, as a teacher, as a student, as a novelist and essayist, as a father and husband and son and brother, as a friend and neighbor and colleague. I believe that reasonable people of good will can transcend the narrow ideologies at the poles of this dichotomy, and can instead seek the arrangements most conducive to the real human liberty that is not mere freedom from society, but rather freedom supported and facilitated by a well-formed society.

Having researched, written, and published a novel that explored these themes; having taught, among other subjects, U.S. History, World History, U.S. Government, World Geography, Social Problems, and Complex Organizations; having studied economics (as a sociologist) and now having turned to the study of law, I have rediscovered the passion that was even more fundamental to me than my literary goal, and was the driving force behind it: the passion to participate intentionally and purposefully in a world we are forever in the act of making.

I have striven in my life to cultivate knowledge and wisdom in myself and others. Now I want to serve this great human enterprise in another way, by helping to channel our disparate and disparately informed wills into the shared endeavor of maintaining an intelligent, effective, and responsive state government.

I am focusing my campaign on three interrelated themes: My commitment to high quality public schools and affordable access to higher education; my commitment to continuing to develop and maintain a robust economy in Colorado, emphasizing the new energy economy; and my commitment to ensuring that the legal environment is ever-more conducive to the success of small business owners and entrepreneurs, who are the backbone of the state economy.

While, like any applicant in a job interview appealing to the judgment of my prospective employers, I have emphasized why I am well suited to this position, no one can doubt that I believe deeply in “the genius of the many,” as my signature line has long proclaimed. I desire, as I always have, to be a servant to that genius, cultivating it in our young, and heeding its counsel as it finds expression through the various processes, both systematic and chaotic, by which it is formed. I do not seek to impose a single will on others, but rather to participate in the formation of the aggregation of our individual wills, which emerges most effectively from the combination of passionate debate and a shared commitment to the common welfare. This process is vital, robust, and productive.

We are, individually and collectively, forever a work in progress, honed by the challenges we face and the solutions we forge. I believe that the human mind and spirit is one of Nature’s greatest wonders, made more wonderful by every generous deed, by every disciplined thought, by every collective effort, and by the mutually responsible pursuit of individual success and fulfillment.

I would be honored by the opportunity to participate in this shared endeavor of ours as the representative of House District 28 to the Colorado General Assembly, working diligently and faithfully to enact your will in our ongoing shared effort to produce an every more robust, sustainable, and just economy, and to provide our children and young adults with the opportunity to learn and become productive and prosperous participants in that economy. I ask for your support.