Kyle Wingfield, a fresh conservative voice

Candidates for the AJC’s full-time conservative columnist job submitted answers to many questions. Here’s an excerpt from our top pick’s response to: “Why do you think you are the best person for this job?”

Enlarge this image

Georgia native Kyle Wingfield is the top pick to become the AJC’s conservative voice on our Opinion pages.

I am a native Georgian who has learned in its public schools, enjoyed its natural beauty, worked in its factories, written about its problems and policies. Yet I have also been blessed to have seen a bit of the world, and to have spent the last four years working beyond America’s shores, in places where the “solutions” now being discussed in both Washington and Atlanta have been tried, and often found wanting.

I have seen first-hand that when you subsidize something, including joblessness, you get more of it — and that when you try with laws to strengthen labor’s hand at the expense of capital, an unavoidable result is that capitalists will hire fewer laborers.

I have seen the segregation and inhumanity that result from being unable to stop immigrants from coming to your country, but managing to stop them from working in your country and integrating into your society.

I have seen that trying to turn government into a savior only cheapens church and breeds cynicism about state.

I have seen the way many popular environmental regulations, most notably carbon dioxide cap-and-trade schemes, are intellectually dishonest, economically harmful and ecologically ineffective ways of achieving the old political goal of enriching one’s supporters at other people’s expense.

In short, I know the ways of our state and its people, but also the fact that there is more than one way for people to live and for societies to organize themselves. I know that the American way is not perfect.

I know that, often, liberals and conservatives are too much at odds over methods to understand that they are seeking the same results. And so I know that, if the world truly has changed in recent months, it will be important for conservative principles to have a voice that speaks to this new era. I want to be that voice in Atlanta.