Hi everyone, my name is Brady Butler. This is to announce that I have officially filed with the state election board to run for the Oklahoma state senate seat in District 26. I must say at the very outset that until quite recently, this is not something that I ever even considered. For most of my adult life, I thought the whole political mess was a big sham, politicians were a bunch of crooks, and that there was no hope of ever fixing it, but in recent years I have learned some things about our founding that have really given me hope, and with hope comes the will to fight.
I was raised in Hinton and attended high school at Lookeba-Sickles. Today I live near Fay with my wife Bethany who I met while she was at college at SWOSU. I did not attend college except for a few short weeks where I determined that college and I were irreconcilably different. After almost a decade working on the windfarm near Weatherford, I began working in the oil and gas industry and a few years ago had the opportunity to start a modest oil and gas company, which we operate out of our home. We have seven children and thoroughly enjoy a simple country life. Gardens, chickens, and calves are much tamer than Facebook, Twitter, and city traffic, and I am very content to live without the latter.
I was raised in church, but the things of God just did not stick, and I was the source of much worry, and the fuel for much prayer during my late teens and early 20s. When I was 22, a local minister named Jim Morrison knocked on my door and shared the Gospel with me. That was the first time I ever admitted that I had broken God’s law and that as a consequence it would be an act of holy justice for Him to sentence me to hell for my transgressions. Nothing happened that day, but ten months later I stood up my beer drinking buddy with whom I’d planned to watch World Series game six and instead accepted the invitation of another friend to go to church. I was born again that evening.
Just over four years ago we began attending Trinity Baptist Church in Weatherford and have been happily plugged in there. The message of God sending His own Son to bear my penalty and shame on a cross is more real to me today than it has ever been. I wish I could commend myself to you as a good man but that simply isn’t the case. God has granted me repentance and I fear Him, but at the end of the day my only boast is in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.
So, what could possess a man who is very content with his family and his business and who has no political aspirations whatsoever to run for senate? The answer is simple—TRUTH. “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” It’s clear to me that our governments are fundamentally broken and bear no resemblance whatsoever to what our founders intended. Why do people have so little faith in our republic? Because we have defied the principles of our republic to the point where it looks more like an oligarchy than a constitutional republic. When I began to learn of the intentions of our founders and read the writings of men such as Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison I was awakened to the truth that today our governments are broken because we have fundamentally forsaken the proper relationship between the individual states and the federal government.
The federal government runs rampant doing whatever it chooses with little resistance from the states. We must remember that the states created the federal government, not the other way around. In a creator/creature relationship, the creature is accountable to the creator. Because God created man, we are accountable to Him. Similarly, the federal government is accountable to the states to fulfill the role they delegated to it when they created it by ratifying the Constitution. No power exercised by the federal government is legitimate unless it is exercised pursuant to the powers delegated to it by the people of the several states by the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson said, “in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” Our founders, knowing human nature’s innate tendency to corrupt power, expected that the federal government would engage in mischief from time to time by attempting to assume powers not constitutionally delegated to it. The founders even told us what to do when this happens. Jefferson again says, “but where powers are assumed which have not been delegated a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.” The states are supposed to jealously guard their rights by resisting unconstitutional federal action. When the swamp creatures in Washington cross the constitutional line, the states have the right and the duty to interpose to protect the liberties of the people by saying, “NO.”
The question really boils down to who is in charge. If DC gets out of line, what are the states supposed to do? Are they supposed to sue in federal court? Are they supposed to wait for the next election and vote the bums out? I’ll let Alexander Hamilton answer this one, “[unconstitutional federal overreaches] will be merely acts of usurpation and will deserve to be treated as such.” Expecting federal courts to restrain the federal government is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. And no federal election in my lifetime has resulted in meaningful reform—the federal leviathan continues to grow and wax ever more menacing, whittling away our freedoms and sapping our prosperity, no matter which party wins. Beyond that, millions of Americans now rightfully wonder if our federal elections are even fair and immune to cheating. Looking to Washington to fix itself either by electing new people or hoping the federal judiciary will restrain itself or the other two branches is an utterly vain hope.
So, when the states fail to keep their federal government within its proper sphere the result is what we have today—weak states greedy for federal dollars that readily yield to a bloated, overreaching, and increasingly totalitarian government run by tyrants like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi , and Mitch McConnell . (Sorry, Republicans, at the end of the day there’s not a whole lot of difference between Nancy and Mitch.) And that’s not even to speak of the so-called Deep State behind them—a monstrous, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy of technocrats with immense power. Sadly, the blame for the swampy state of Washington, D.C. must be laid at the feet of the states for failing to fight to maintain a proper balance of power between themselves and the federal leviathan. It’s all well and good to be outraged when the federal government tramples on our liberties and destroys our prosperity, but we must begin to direct an equal amount of indignation at our socalled “conservative” state governments that have failed to interpose between the people and the federal monster.
I say, “so-called conservative” because the word conservative no longer has any meaning to those in government. Too many voters still entertain the naïve notion that if a politician is a Republican he’s a conservative (even if he scored a D minus on his conservative scorecard). Many, if not most, of the Republican members of the Oklahoma legislature claim this term who simply fail to meet the historical definition of the word. To be a conservative means that you are trying to conserve our government as founded, and not only that but the purpose for which our government was instituted. I was in a senator’s office a while back and he told me the purpose of government was to provide infrastructure. I couldn’t disagree more. The purpose of government is to secure your Godgiven liberty and protect your life and property, thereby maintaining an environment in which you may pursue what makes you happy. Our declaration says it like this, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.
In conclusion, I would like to thank my many friends and neighbors who are already supporting me in this venture. Also, I would like to say that if you are mostly content with your state government, then I am probably not your candidate. I would like to see vast and sweeping reforms to the way we operate our state government in Oklahoma. To be frank, I would much prefer to stay at home and run my business and spend time with my family. However, this moment, like many others in history, is one that cries out for people to stand up for the truth and not back down. Our governments are not fulfilling the purpose for which they were created, and “we the people” must rise up and take control once more. Brady will be speaking at the Fishes and Loaves Building in Anadarko on April 28th at 7pm. The address is 201 W. Main St. He can be contacted by phone at (580)-330- 3337 or by going to ButlerforOKsenate.com. operate out of our home. We have seven children and thoroughly enjoy a simple country life. Gardens, chickens, and calves are much tamer than Facebook, Twitter, and city traffic, and I am very content to live without the latter.
I was raised in church, but the things of God just did not stick, and I was the source of much worry, and the fuel for much prayer during my late teens and early 20s. When I was 22, a local minister named Jim Morrison knocked on my door and shared the Gospel with me. That was the first time I ever admitted that I had broken God’s law and that as a consequence it would be an act of holy justice for Him to sentence me to hell for my transgressions. Nothing happened that day, but ten months later I stood up my beer drinking buddy with whom I’d planned to watch World Series game six and instead accepted the invitation of another friend to go to church. I was born again that evening.
Just over four years ago we began attending Trinity Baptist Church in Weatherford and have been happily plugged in there. The message of God sending His own Son to bear my penalty and shame on a cross is more real to me today than it has ever been. I wish I could commend myself to you as a good man but that simply isn’t the case. God has granted me repentance and I fear Him, but at the end of the day my only boast is in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ.
So, what could possess a man who is very content with his family and his business and who has no political aspirations whatsoever to run for senate? The answer is simple—TRUTH. “And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” It’s clear to me that our governments are fundamentally broken and bear no resemblance whatsoever to what our founders intended. Why do people have so little faith in our republic? Because we have defied the principles of our republic to the point where it looks more like an oligarchy than a constitutional republic. When I began to learn of the intentions of our founders and read the writings of men such as Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison I was awakened to the truth that today our governments are broken because we have fundamentally forsaken the proper relationship between the individual states and the federal government.
The federal government runs rampant doing whatever it chooses with little resistance from the states. We must remember that the states created the federal government, not the other way around. In a creator/creature relationship, the creature is accountable to the creator. Because God created man, we are accountable to Him. Similarly, the federal government is accountable to the states to fulfill the role they delegated to it when they created it by ratifying the Constitution. No power exercised by the federal government is legitimate unless it is exercised pursuant to the powers delegated to it by the people of the several states by the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson said, “in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” Our founders, knowing human nature’s innate tendency to corrupt power, expected that the federal government would engage in mischief from time to time by attempting to assume powers not constitutionally delegated to it. The founders even told us what to do when this happens. Jefferson again says, “but where powers are assumed which have not been delegated a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.” The states are supposed to jealously guard their rights by resisting unconstitutional federal action. When the swamp creatures in Washington cross the constitutional line, the states have the right and the duty to interpose to protect the liberties of the people by saying, “NO.”
The question really boils down to who is in charge. If DC gets out of line, what are the states supposed to do? Are they supposed to sue in federal court? Are they supposed to wait for the next election and vote the bums out? I’ll let Alexander Hamilton answer this one, “[unconstitutional federal overreaches] will be merely acts of usurpation and will deserve to be treated as such.” Expecting federal courts to restrain the federal government is like asking the fox to guard the henhouse. And no federal election in my lifetime has resulted in meaningful reform—the federal leviathan continues to grow and wax ever more menacing, whittling away our freedoms and sapping our prosperity, no matter which party wins. Beyond that, millions of Americans now rightfully wonder if our federal elections are even fair and immune to cheating. Looking to Washington to fix itself either by electing new people or hoping the federal judiciary will restrain itself or the other two branches is an utterly vain hope.
So, when the states fail to keep their federal government within its proper sphere the result is what we have today—weak states greedy for federal dollars that readily yield to a bloated, overreaching, and increasingly totalitarian government run by tyrants like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi , and Mitch McConnell . (Sorry, Republicans, at the end of the day there’s not a whole lot of difference between Nancy and Mitch.) And that’s not even to speak of the so-called Deep State behind them—a monstrous, unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy of technocrats with immense power. Sadly, the blame for the swampy state of Washington, D.C. must be laid at the feet of the states for failing to fight to maintain a proper balance of power between themselves and the federal leviathan. It’s all well and good to be outraged when the federal government tramples on our liberties and destroys our prosperity, but we must begin to direct an equal amount of indignation at our socalled “conservative” state governments that have failed to interpose between the people and the federal monster.
I say, “so-called conservative” because the word conservative no longer has any meaning to those in government. Too many voters still entertain the naïve notion that if a politician is a Republican he’s a conservative (even if he scored a D minus on his conservative scorecard). Many, if not most, of the Republican members of the Oklahoma legislature claim this term who simply fail to meet the historical definition of the word. To be a conservative means that you are trying to conserve our government as founded, and not only that but the purpose for which our government was instituted.
I was in a senator’s office a while back and he told me the purpose of government was to provide infrastructure. I couldn’t disagree more. The purpose of government is to secure your Godgiven liberty and protect your life and property, thereby maintaining an environment in which you may pursue what makes you happy. Our declaration says it like this, “We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.
In conclusion, I would like to thank my many friends and neighbors who are already supporting me in this venture. Also, I would like to say that if you are mostly content with your state government, then I am probably not your candidate. I would like to see vast and sweeping reforms to the way we operate our state government in Oklahoma. To be frank, I would much prefer to stay at home and run my business and spend time with my family. However, this moment, like many others in history, is one that cries out for people to stand up for the truth and not back down. Our governments are not fulfilling the purpose for which they were created, and “we the people” must rise up and take control once more.
He can be contacted by phone at (580)-330- 3337 or by going to ButlerforOKsenate.com.
(Paid for by Families for Brady Butler 2022)