Allen West: 'Governed by your inferiors'

In a letter to his supporters, retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West quotes Plato -- "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors" -- and talks about the problem of "impostors" in politics:

We are all quite familiar with the Bernie Madoff case which devastated many people here in South Florida, quite a few in Florida Congressional district 22. So many people placed their trust in what we now know was an elaborate “ponzi scheme”. The life savings of countless individuals was lost.
Just recently we have experienced another such case in the Ft Lauderdale area with a local lawyer named Scott Rothstein. The dollar amounts are not in the same strata as Madoff, only $1Billion, but that is still a pretty substantial number. One would think that we would be more attuned after the realization of what Madoff had executed.
But on an even greater scale we see the future and legacy of our Republic being stolen away by those who truly are our inferiors, impostors. . . .

Read the whole thing. You can also visit the Allen West campaign site. I first interviewed Col. West last year for the American Spectator. Given my notorious Hayekian tendencies, I was a fan as soon as the colonel started quoting Frederic Bastiat.

Last year's failure of the NRCC to spot West as a potential superstar -- they actually tried to recruit other candidates to run against him in the FL22 primary in 2008 -- was a harbinger of the problems that subsequently developed in NY23 this year. Small wonder that West singled out Doug Hoffman for praise:

The candidacy of Doug Hoffman in NY-23 portends the direction the elections of 2010, a true conservative providing an answer to the wasteful, arrogant spending of the Democrats in charge of Congress.

Fortunately, the NRCC has now awakened to the "Go West" phenomenon, so maybe things are moving in the right direction.

(Cross-posted at Hot Air Greenroom.)