Interview with Vernon Robinson
Winston-Salem Journal, July 11, 2004
Age: 48.
Address: 2713 Edinberg
Drive, Winston-Salem, NC 27103
Occupation: President, N.C. Education Reform Foundation; treasurer of the Carolina Educational Opportunity Fund
Education: Bachelor of science, Middle Eastern studies, Air Force Academy; master’s
in business administration, University of Missouri.
Q. What three specific things do you hope to achieve by working in Congress?
A. My immediate efforts will focus on securing our borders against illegal immigration and the terrorist threat; ending all racial quotas and government set-asides; and reforming the tax code by elimination of the IRS and the progressive income tax and replacing them with the FAIR tax (national retail sales tax).
Q. What are the values that shape the way you act in public life, and where can we see them?
A. “Courage under fire” is in short supply, and a value I take special care to demonstrate. One must have the courage not only to believe a thing, but also to be willing to act on that belief in the face of a hostile liberal media and a godless culture.
Q. Do you support a tobacco-quota buyout? If it includes regulation by the Federal Drug Administration?
Why is this issue important to your constituents?
A. I could support a version that does a better job protecting taxpayers and farmers, while still protecting American interests against unfair foreign competition. Like all governmental regulatory agencies, the FDA needs to be kept on a short leash and away from as much of American life as possible, including tobacco.
Q. Should a woman be able to choose to have an abortion while she’s pregnant? If she’s the victim of rape or incest? If her health is in danger?
A. Innocent life is a gift from God, and no person should be allowed to kill babies — for convenience, sex-selection or otherwise. The only possible ethical justification for victimizing an innocent child is for the protection of other innocent life, such as the life of the mother.
Q. Would you vote for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman? Would you approve civil unions for homosexual couples?
A. Yes, to hog-tie the liberal judges. In the Garden of Eden, God ordained the family as one man married to one woman with so many children as God should see fit to entrust to their care. God is wiser than man; it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that. No. It’s a slippery slope to complete paganism. They start with two men, but before you know it they’ll be demanding civil unions for three men, then four or five, then two transvestites, a pedophile, a lesbian and a partridge in a pear tree. That’s not a family.
Q. If you want to make government smaller, what agencies, departments or budgets would you cut? Please be specific.
A. Eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Education would be a very good start. I emphasize the word “start.” We have agencies and departments doing things nobody understands or needs, duplicating other agencies doing the same worthless, useless things. This must end.
Q. Do you support President Bush’s plan to give illegal immigrants temporary amnesty? Why?
A. Absolutely not. Amnesty rewards illegal, criminal conduct and encourages more of it. We have an immigration crisis in this country that threatens our national culture and our national security. Amnesty does nothing to help. Illegal aliens must be sped from entering and sent when they manage to slip through.
Q. How can a U.S. representative add jobs to his or her district?
A. Congressmen need to do what I have done as a city councilman — work to eliminate regulation, taxation and litigation that combine to crush the hopes of most entrepreneurs. These three things make it very difficult for American businesses to compete against goods from countries that are not plagued by them.
Q. What does “separation of church and state” mean to you?
A. It means the person asking the question doesn’t understand the First Amendment. I believe
in that amendment — properly interpreted as the founding fathers intended. Congress should not establish a national religion and force its observance, nor should it burden or discourage religious activity — public or private — short of that.
Q. Do you agree with Bush’s policy allowing federal funds to be used for stem-cell research only on already established lines of cells? Would you expand the scope of stem-cell research? How?
A. I am mindful of the hope that stem-cell research promises to those suffering from debilitating diseases, but I also fear that permitting human tissue to be used in such research will encourage the cultivation of human life and human tissue for the purpose of medical experimentation. That is unacceptable.
