Broccoli and Cheese Sauce

Do you know what I can’t stand? Broccoli. I find it disgusting. I will eat almost any other vegetable, but I refuse to eat broccoli. I don’t even like to eat things that have touched broccoli. That is how passionate I am about this. But do you know what I love? Cheese Sauce. I wish cheese sauce was available at every restaurant. Cheese sauce goes well with just about everything….except broccoli. There is not enough cheese sauce in the world that you could put on top of broccoli that would make me want to eat it.
Now you may disagree with me on this. You may think broccoli is amazing, and you may think artificial cheese sauce is a lab experiment gone bad. But what neither of us can do is force our will upon the other. And this is not just about cheese sauce and broccoli. This is about everything we do day to day.
Some people dislike large retailers, but does that give them the right to pass laws to prevent a retailer from opening up a store or stopping people from shopping there. No! Do passionate vegetarians have the right to stop people from eating meat? No! Do people who dislike firearms have the right to prevent others from owning them? No! And do people of strong faith have the right to prevent people of the same sex from committing themselves to one another? Or do those who commit have the right to force people of faith to condone their choice? No! Neither have that right.
We don’t have to agree with each other to be neighbors, friends, or coworkers. But the current political environment we live in has created a “If you are not with us, you are against us” mentality. This is a frightful line of thought as it often results in divisiveness and the seeking of majority rule to pass restrictive laws. Our Founding Fathers had a name for this. They called it Majority Tyranny. They desperately wanted to create a nation that would not succumb to such an ideology, so they wrote a Constitution. A brilliant document that restricts the powers of the government and protects the rights of the individual from the majority. But our Constitution is under attack. The political elites have promoted an environment that pits us against one another. Rich vs. Poor. Gay vs. Straight. Religious vs. Atheist. Man vs. Woman. White vs. Black. They use these self created conflicts to pass legislation that takes rights away from all of us… all while using that classic campaign slogan, “I will fight for you!” The only person they are truly fighting for is themselves.
Do you want to improve this country? Start by supporting candidates that promote unity over divisiveness. Elect leaders that protect individual rights, not the one’s that try to restrict them. We live in a free country where we can live, work, and worship in anyway we see fit. And that means we won’t always agree on things, but that does not give us the right to tell others what they can and can’t do or what they must support.
You cannot force me to eat broccoli, and I cannot force you to eat cheese sauce. But that’s ok, because we live in an amazing country where there are lots of things on the menu that we can choose from. My name is Brian Heinrich and I am running for US Congress.