I keep my political life relatively quiet here. I don’t necessarily keep my opinions about issues quiet, but I haven’t talked much about my day-to-day political activities. I have friends across the political spectrum, and I mostly don’t want to drive wedges based on labels.

So many of you may not even realize that, for the past four years, I have been an officer of the Howard County Republican Party, and, for two of those years, its Chairman. 

A few weeks ago I resigned from the Republican Central Committee, with apologies to the over 4,000 voters who put me there. I could not do what they elected me to do. The committee and I, indeed, were just in each others’ way. 

But my conscience forced me to share with the voters—all the voters—my concerns about the state of politics and government in Howard County, Maryland and the U.S. I wrote a brief Op Ed for the Baltimore Sun, and that led me to be interviewed by the insightful Claudia Barber, Esquire for her Being Well Informed podcast. I wanted to give everyone a chance to read and hear what I said. My most-used social media platform, no doubt trying to improve user experience by sheltering users from hearing things that would make them think, seems to have kept my post about this off of most people’s feeds. So here it is again.

A lot of people are already angry, and no doubt more will be when they hear what I have to say. But some, like Claudia, might be pleasantly shocked at this Republican’s words. Please keep your minds open. Of course, if you’re a friend of mine, I know you’ll do that anyway.