Guest Blog:Reflections on my Journey of Faith and Politics

Greetings from Cincinnati: Reflections on my Journey of Faith and Politics
By Local Guest Blogger: Mark Mnich
I didn’t start following politics until one night in December of 1981 when my father called me over to our
family’s 12” black-and-white TV to watch President Ronald Reagan speak to our nation about why it was
important that we as Americans support the Polish Solidarity movement led by Lech Walesa. President
Reagan spoke without fear about the dangers of the spread of Communism throughout the world in
such a way that even I, as a then-ten-year-old boy, could understand it. I have called myself a “Reagan
Republican” ever since. And as I watched the Berlin Wall fall in 1989 I thought, as many Americans did,
that Communism was finally placed on the “ash heap of history” as Reagan so boldly predicted.

I never got truly involved in politics until 2004 when I first signed up as a volunteer for the Meriden
Republican Town Committee wanting to help get the vote out for President George W. Bush because I
disagreed with John Kerry who believed that pulling our troops out of Iraq immediately was the right
thing to do. Even on that first day, I knew SOMETHING was wrong with our politics but I couldn’t quite
figure out what it was.

Then one day in 2008, a friend of mine told me about a TV program on CNN Headline News called “The
Glenn Beck Program.” So I decided to give it a fair shot and watch it for a full week before making up
my mind about it. On Friday’s show, he spent the entire hour interviewing Chris Gardner whose personal
success story inspired the film “The Pursuit of Happyness” which starred Will Smith.

I have followed Glenn Beck’s career (and much of his advice) ever since…because he made me realize
how wrong I was about a lot of things, both politically and personally. Not only am I more educated about
the cancer on our politics called “progressivism” but I also learned how to become a better man.

That’s why I drove from Connecticut to Cincinnati: to see Glenn Beck and many other freedom-loving
patriot activists at “FreePAC Ohio,” an event sponsored by FreedomWorks and The Blaze which is
Glenn’s hard news organization. When I learned the city’s motto is “Juncta Juvant” which in Latin
means “Strength in Unity” and that it was the gateway to the North for the Underground Railroad during
the Civil War, I understood why they picked it.