As a conservative, I understand that our rights are not free;  we pay for them every day.

The price of capitalism is that the vicissitudes of the market may leave good men down or line the pockets of the undeserving.  The price of free speech is that I must endure the discordancy of lies mingling with truth.  And the price of democracy is the ever-present possibility that the candidate I favor may fall before the candidate I do not.

And, having spent eight years deafened by the omnipresent din of untrue and unfair accusations against President Bush, I recognize that the price I pay for resenting those slings and arrows is the ethical obligation to give President Elect Obama a fair chance to prove himself in office.

All of these prices, and the many other prices I must pay for my freedom, I pay willingly.