My father was born over a century ago in a small, second floor apartment on the main thoroughfare of Tampico, Ill. The town’s population in 1911 was little more than 800, and my grandfather worked at the variety store across the street.

These were humble beginnings for a man who so profoundly altered the course of human history. What made such a rise possible were firm beliefs that he spent his life championing. The view that each human is an individual; a respect for law; the vigilant defense of traditions; an understanding that man’s rights are not a gift from government, but from God; and that the state serves the citizen, never the other way around.