A CALL FOR POLITICAL REFORM

Chris Gibson spent twenty-nine years in the U.S. Army, where he rose to the rank of colonel and commanded the 82^nd Airborne Division’s 2^nd Brigade. He served four combat tours in Iraq and was awarded four Bronze Star Medals and the Purple Heart. Raised in a working-class Irish-Catholic family in upstate New York, he was the first in his family to go to college. He enlisted as a private in the infantry of the New York Army National Guard in 1981 at the age of seventeen. Gibson earned an MPA, as well as an MA and Ph.D. in government, from Cornell University. He then became a Professor of American Politics at the US. Military Academy at West Point. He was a National Security fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University where he wrote a book on Civil-Military relations, Securing the State. He served as U.S. Congressman from 2010-2016. He describes himself as deeply spiritual and reflective.

RALLY POINT: FIVE TASKS TO UNITE THE COUNTRY AND REVITALIZE THE AMERICAN DREAM is his story: what he’s learned from the “School of Hard Knocks” and how he’s applied those life lessons during his service in Iraq and in Congress. It is a compelling and eye-opening story of the current political environment from a Christian and constitutional perspective. His Five Tasks are: 1. Practice Peace through Strength, 2.Restore Founding Principles, 3. Promote a Flourishing Life, 4. Keep Faith, 5. Unify and Grow.

He recommends the following for a reformed Republican Party platform.

1. Peace through strength. A strong military as a deterrent to those who would attempt to do us harm. The primary focus of our national security should be to protect Americans and our way of life, not regime change and nation-building around the world. He opposed the Iraq war.
2. Liberty and founding principles. He rejects the Patriot Act in its current form and stands opposed to the further consolidation of power in the executive branch to ensure separate but equal branches of government. He believes that the free market, with all its flaws, is still the best place to facilitate prosperity and upward mobility for all our citizens.
3. Local empowerment and home rule. He favors solutions that empower citizens and help local communities. He rejects the Common Core approach to education – federalizing and centralizing education policy and relying heavily on unfunded mandates and onerous high-stakes testing has not facilitated excellence. He favors approaches that empower students, teachers, parents and administrators.
4. Personal responsibility. He supports the dignity of work and the sanctity of the family because they help us become better citizens positioned to fulfill our commitments to God and our fellow citizens. He rejects bank bailouts and focuses instead on holding corporate boards responsible for their action with a safety net (like FDIC) for those individual investors who may be impacted by the reckless decisions of Wall Street executives.
5. Equal opportunity and justice for all. A quality education is essential to equal opportunity and upward mobility. He rejects crony capitalism and making bad trade deals. Finally, he believes that justice is blind and that no one is above or below the law. He supports political reform because he believes the current political system is rigged and corrupt, and demands action to clean it up.