By Brian Russell, SBOE District 10 Candidate
Where are we as a nation? (Are you ready for a little “tough love”?) We have a Congress that thinks its OK to trample our Constitution underfoot and “deem” a bill passed rather than voting on it because they are ashamed to have a roll call vote that puts their name on the bill.
We have an imperial President that thinks its OK for him to dictate to you what healthcare you are able receive.
We have a Supreme Court on which sit at least four justices can’t seem to read the text of the 2nd Amendment and figure out that WE THE PEOPLE have an individual right to keep and bear arms.
That’s bad news. But its not the worst news.
The worst news is that this is not an aberration, its a reflection. It’s a reflection of the American people, a majority of which voted into the Office of President of the United States of America an open socialist and fellow traveler with Communists and racists.
A man whose foreign policy experience prior to election consisted of traveling to European capitals that we freed with our blood and treasure to apologize for the United States. A man who passionately spoke on the floor of the Illinois Senate AGAINST a bill that would protect babies born alive from being killed by their doctors.
And this leads us to question: why?
How could that happen here? How did we get into this mess, and how do we get out?
There are many answers to these questions if we are honest. Certainly, we have to acknowledge a spiritual decline in our nation, or as Solzhenitsyn put it, “We have forgotten God.”
We must also look at the breakdown of the family unit and the consequent dependence on government as provider rather than family or church.
But we must not forget our neglect as a nation of education. Education begets knowledge, knowledge is power, and power diffused among the American citizenry is FREEDOM.
However, WE THE PEOPLE are losing our power to the encroachment of government.
Reagan rightly observed, “As government expands, liberty contracts.” In part, this is because liberty loving patriots have abandoned education to the left-leaning Edutocracy.
Consequently, students have been taught that we live in a Democracy (which the Founding Fathers feared) rather than in a Constitutional Republic.
Students have been taught that life arose on earth as a purposeless accident and is moving to a meaningless conclusion.
They have been taught that a grasp of math and science and basic literacy is beyond their reach and unnecessary in the confines of the future job into which their dreams are being fitted.
In short, our educational system has laid all the groundwork necessary for the current state of affairs to come to pass. But it need not be so.
Now is the time, and today is the hour, in which we are making our voices heard that WE THE PEOPLE will move in a different direction.
Here in Texas, we have the “Magnificent Seven.” Seven conservative members of our elected State Board of Education (SBOE), who care nothing for the sniveling criticism of the Austin-American Statesman and the New 
York Times, and who are willing, on our behalf and on behalf of the children of Texas, to endure the slings and arrows of the outraged Left as these seven stand for educational excellence.
In my race, I ask you to consider which candidate is equipped by strength of conviction and by battle-tested experience to take his place on the State Board of Education among their number.
By God’s grace, I believe I am that man.
Now is the time; today is the hour. I respectfully ask for your vote … for the future of our state … for the future of our nation … for the future of our children. May God bless you all.
Brian Russell is a Republican candidate for State Board of Education, District 10, which includes all of Austin, Bastrop, Burleson, Colorado, DeWitt, Fayette, Gonzales, Lavaca, Lee, Milam, Waller, Washington & Williamson counties, as well as portions of Brazoria, Fort Bend & Travis counties. The primary runoff election for SBOE District 10 takes place on April 13th. (Early voting takes place April 5th – 9th).