My name is Benjamin Lambright, and I am Intellectual Takeout’s new director. I’m here for my family, for my father, and to help change America. We are already at work on some exciting projects for the future of Intellectual Takeout, which you can read here.
But as excited as I am, it wasn’t an easy decision to take this job.
I live just a few minutes south of San Francisco, California, in an area not known for its kindness to conservatives. I’ve been yelled at by strangers for my views. My wife and I are expecting our first child. Did I really want to bring more trouble? What if the day comes when someone won’t let us sit at our favorite restaurant because they found out we don’t believe what they believe? What if it makes her work more difficult?
But then again, my family is exactly why I’m doing this. If I don’t stand, who will? What will life be like for my family for the next 20 years? Furthermore, we live in an area where the crime, homelessness, and drug issues that are plaguing San Francisco haven’t quite reached. Who will fight against the ideology that is allowing them to spiral out of control so that my home remains a safe place to raise my family?
I am also here for the family I come from. My father preached in the Midwest nearly every Sunday of his adult life, and now that he’s retired, he’s still preaching and teaching the Bible at a small Christian school in Indiana. I’ve never seen him compromise his values, not even once. He is a man deserving of great respect. However, I’ve watched American culture turn on a man whom I know to be filled with love and kindness, trying to paint him as hateful or bigoted. For what crime? Putting up a traditionally minded candidate’s sign in the front yard? If we lose respect for men like my father, we lose respect for the core values that formed America and kept America strong.
It reminds me of an Edmund Burke quote: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Evil will always be at work in this world, and so we—those who choose to hold the line against crime, assaults on religious freedom and free speech, and an all-out onslaught against the family unit—must come together, or we will fall, one by one.
That is why I am here, at Intellectual Takeout, to provide good men and women with a place to unite under the banner of our shared beliefs and ensure our sacrifices lead to change in America.
Will you join me?
