Dakota Beacon

1. Embrace God

Believe in a virtuous life of hard work and muster the courage to reject evil.

2. Expect Only Security from Government

500,000 copies of Thomas Paine’s 40-page pamphlet Common Sense were printed in a fledgling nation of three million.

“Wherefore security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”

3.  Demand that no law favor one group or one generation over another

The French economist and journalist, Frederic Bastiat believed that all human beings possessed the God-given, natural rights of “individuality, liberty, property.” Bastiat was alarmed over how law had been “perverted” into an instrument of “legal plunder.” Far from protecting individual rights, the law was increasingly used to deprive one group of citizens of those rights for the benefit of another group, and especially for the benefit of the state itself. In Bastiat’s classic The Law he further extended his definition of legal plunder to include law used to deprive one generation of those rights for the benefit of another generation.

4. Vote Yes on Measure 4 to abolish the Property Tax

The State of North Dakota is blessed with abundant revenue from its God-given natural resources that should benefit ALL of its citizens, not just those that receive the Farm Residence Property Tax Exemption or similar business-related temporary or permanent property tax exemptions. A farmer or rancher with a half million-dollar home should not be treated preferentially to the city dweller who works hard to make a living for the family.