Dakota Beacon

Economist Dr. Thomas Sowell’s broad research and deep intellect effectively strikes down long-prevailing assumptions and conventional wisdom about slavery, black education, ghetto culture, and much more in his heavily documented book “Black Rednecks and White Liberals.” His work is a collection of six long essays each comprising a chapter. In a sense, Dr. Sowell offers an historian’s minority report by contradicting contemporary “multicultural” silliness.

The underlying premise of his book asserts the similarity of human nature across cultures. We are all subject to the same flaws that have dominated humanity since the fall of Adam and Eve. We are all subject to envy, hatred, and prejudice and are all capable of cruelty and injustice.

Today is the 46^th annual March for Life in Washington, DC. Thousands of people will walk the National Mall today as they remember the 60 million unborn children who have died from abortion in America since Roe v. Wade. In this article that first appeared at The American Spectator, Dr. Paul Kengor highlights a grim practice at abortion clinics across the country: Escorts. Kengor writes, “The ‘escorts’ work outside abortion clinics. Their duty is to ensure that every pregnant mom who approaches the door doesn’t get deterred or change her mind … They strive to guarantee that every potential customer with cash or credit leaves with an abortion under her belt.”

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The point is, you can’t fiddle with freedom by allowing a little here and a little there while retaining your favorite restrictions. Likewise, you can’t fiddle with the free market by skipping the costs while reaping the benefits.

PJ concludes with his typically concise insight designed to inspire a chuckle. “The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there’s nothing in the mall and if you don’t go there they shoot you.”

Watch carefully the approaching encroachment of socialism and the demise of capitalism – along with freedom. In the meantime, pick up a copy of “Eat the Rich” and mourn the good ol’ days.

THE F-M FLOOD DIVERSION; THE MOST IMPACTFUL WEATHER EVENTS; RISK IN SPECIALIZATION; YOU’RE NOT SURPRISED; EXCESSIVE DRINKING; CAN DEMOCRATS WIN IN ND?; HE’S A PEST; WISH LIST; WHOSE COUNTING?; DEATHS INVOLVING CHILDREN; PENALTIES FOR TAMPERING; SKYSCOPES; THE DAKOTA GASIFICATION CO.; SOUTH DAKOTA NURSING HOMES; DAKTOIDS

From all appearances, increasingly the mob is a tool of the left in forcing their issues. It is also apparent that there is no equivalent tool on the right. The very idea of a community organizer is to stir up a mob as a means to a political end. The Kavanaugh hearings were the zenith of the premise that the mob is organized and controlled by the left. Democrats issued hearing tickets to disrupt. To the left, any speech or ideas they don’t like must be silenced. They are not interested in competing ideas. That is the Democrat mob mentality.

One thing the 600-plus examples have in common – they are left of center on the political spectrum. The 10/18/18 Investor’s Business Daily has it right. “What happens when men physically assault female politicians…? If those women are Republicans and the attackers are leftists, Democrats greet them with silence, excuses, or worse. So left-wing violence grows.”

In the end, liberals’ use of the mob in creating unrest is more about acquiring power than it is about seeking justice.

Sorry, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez.  Hate is okay. It is time we quit being cowed by people who exploit our desire to be fair, to be generous, to be kind.  

SOMETHING'S HAPPENING; LUCKY TO STAY EVEN; HESS CORPORATION; NEW PROJECTS WILL REDUCE FLARING; CLIMATE CHANGE; IT AIN'T GOING TO BE A VED OF ROSES; GOV. BURGUM; MORE FOR LESS ND; DANIEL SEMINOL; WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS QUOTE?; SMALL OBSERVATION; DER SPIEGEL; BOOZE ON THE REZ; SKEPTICISM ABOUT AG; DAKTOIDS

Another year gone by and with it the hours and days of 2018 have passed forever. A new year dawns and with it comes another chance to redeem our time in 2019.

Mom used to advise not to wish time away. Our days are numbered and will soon be complete. The end of time will come soon enough for every person. Wishing away time is poor stewardship of a valuable resource.

Horace Mann expressed the passage of time eloquently this way. “Lost yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.”

Let the pundits recap the year. We can gain a better feel for the magnitude and speed of change by viewing the past fifty (1969) or one hundred (1919) years in context. Change and the passage of time go hand-in-hand. Examples of events become points of reference measuring the tempo of our lives.

They can sense it. They can feel it. Something is seriously wrong in our civilization, and many people know it. This is why despite the relatively good economic times, most Americans polled say our country is on the “wrong track.” Yet many are like a gravely ill man who knows he’s not well but can’t precisely identify his ailment. Most often, Americans have only a vague sense of cultural malaise, or they “self-diagnose” wrongly.

Years ago I had a brief “state of the nation” discussion with a very fine, older country gentleman. While no philosopher, he did offer the following diagnosis. Struggling for words and gesticulating a bit, he said, “There’s…there’s no morality.”

“Ring out the old, ring in the new” even today still rings true. The annual cycle is complete and a new cycle begins.

Among one of our favorite poems is one by Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Ring Out, Wild Bells.” It is part of a larger work, “In Memoriam A.H.H.,” written in tribute to his dear friend and brother-in-law Arthur Henry Hallam upon his early, untimely death.

This poem superbly marks the passing of the old year. Tennyson captures the nostalgic passing of the year together with hope for the future. He expresses everything that needs to be said. His words are worth sharing to help us bid a hearty farewell to 2018 and hale the dawning of 2019

HISTORIC RUN; CARSON WENTZ; A ND NDSU POLICY GUIDE; SOYBEAN FARMERS; OUT WITH THE BOOKS; PENNY PINCHING; LET THE POLITICAL BATTLE BEGIN; LEGISLATORS, HEAR OUR PLEA; THE EERC; THE F-M DIVERSION; THE BLOOM IS OFF THE ROSE; PARCHED IN THE BADLANDS; DAKTOIDS

Jesus Christ is central to western culture. That doesn’t mean everyone will embrace Him for who He says He is. It does mean that His influence is such that no other individual has shaped lives and behavior worldwide and over time in a manner as has Jesus.

He preached a message of love, peace, life in the Spirit, and life everlasting. We even count our days by His appearance on earth. And, for His efforts, He was killed.

From the French revolutionaries to the Stalinists to the Maoists to the Khmer Rouge, the Left has never brooked dissent — it’s the only tradition it perpetuates. Savage is the anti-establishment guy who made it big in radio, but none are safe. The demonic Left won’t even tolerate a lowly Christian baker unwilling to violate his conscience through his profession, and it won’t tolerate you. It’s our time’s pacification effort, courtesy of the Ideology of Peace. 

You will find that Republicans will continue to get away with doing nothing when they are in power and will use excuses of not being in power when they are beaten at the polls as they were this time - for lack of doing anything when they had it.

This won’t cost you a cent, but it might mean the difference of life or death to this Christian woman.  Her only crimes were to a) be a Christian in the Islamic state of Pakistan, and b) to offer a cup of water to a Muslim woman.  For these unspeakable crimes she has spent the last 8 years in prison, away from her children and her husband, under threat of execution.  She was sentenced to death, you see, for these crimes.

JACKRABBITS; WHY WOULD HE DO THAT?; GOV. BURGUM'S BUDGET; MUSICAL CHAIRS; THEODORE ROOSEVELT LIBRARY; WHY UAS?; SILENT DETRACTORS?; BURGUM'S BUDGET PRIORIITES; OH, OH!; INDIAN ACTIVIST WINONA LADUKE; NEW POLICY IN MINNESOTA?; DAKTOIDS

Recently, many tributes and praises have been spoken about President George H.W. Bush. Not to be missed is the fact that Bush was one of the unsung heroes of the end of the Cold War.  In this article that first appeared at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Dr. Paul Kengor recounts a discussion about President Bush with a reporter from the Russian newspaper Pravda.

The left pretends to care about the environment.  It sounds like Bernie Sanders is going to make this faux interest in protecting the environment a salient point of any 2020 presidential run.  In fact, leftism – both economic leftism and social leftism – are the primary cause of environmental problems.

Conservatives – Free Market Conservatives and Social Conservatives – ought to reclaim an issue which was originally something which only conservatives cared about, the environment.  This would win for conservatives votes from those deluded into trusting the left with environmentalism and it would force the left to justify its outrageously un-green positions taken by green parties in the affluent democracies. 

The federal deficit is more than $21 trillion. By 2023, the Congressional Budget Office projects it to grow to over $27 trillion. This is without factoring in the cost of the proposed “Medicare for All” plan—a single payer, government run healthcare system. In this article, professor Richard D. Kocur examines the proposal and what it would do to the national debt.

This week, many tributes and praises have been spoken about President George H.W. Bush. Not to be missed is the fact that Bush was one of the unsung heroes of the end of the Cold War.  In this article that first appeared at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Dr. Paul Kengor recounts a discussion about President Bush with a reporter from the Russian newspaper Pravda.

Exalting equality is another example of conservatives conserving yesterday’s liberals’ liberalism, playing the caboose to their engine of entropic end-times change. But what once was “progressives’” mistake is now ours, and, if the West is to survive, we must stop preventing that mistake from being corrected. 

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a flagrant lie. At an event earlier in November, she had made a statement about being willing to sit in the front row at a public hanging.

The press did not say that she meant this statement literally. That would have been too implausible. Instead, it invented the lie that a “public hanging” means a lynching. I find the idea of a front row seat at a lynching extraordinary. I am not sure whether Northern reporters believe that the Ku Klux Klan rents local high school auditoriums for its lynchings or that it sets up a few dozen folding chairs before lynching anyone.

  “Left-wing groups funded by George Soros and other major Democratic donors hand out cash to protester arrested for disrupting Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings….A coalition of activist organizations including [CPD]…have scheduled the near-constant disruptions…as part of an effort to derail the confirmation process.” Protestor funding comes through crowdfunding accounts. The Daily Caller, 9/18/18.

Interestingly, the same people have been running and funding other far left organizations for years. It is their occupation; it is their means of support. Search for, or Google, Ady Barkan, Ana Maria Archila, Maria Gallagher, and David Hogg’s to see the parade of their crowdfunding activities.

Crowdfunding has been a wonderful innovation benefitting great causes. But, like so many other good things, it also attracts the hideous and the thugs.

The final words of President George H. W. Bush tell us a lot about the kind of man he was, and especially the kind of father he was.

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The amicus brief addresses the following argument:

After retiring from engineering work, I needed to work with my hands. Carpentry came easy and building small structures is as rewarding as it gets for me. My latest project has consumed me for the past three summers… the construction of a 21' by 31' boathouse with a 9' ceiling and an “attic room” built into the roof trusses. On over a dozen occasions during those three summers I faced the amazing realization that I had in my possession the exact amount of nails, screws, or other fasteners required to complete the several phases of construction. Rather than mere coincidences, these tiny “miracles” were Jesus' way of reminding me that He too was a carpenter and was pointedly and incrementally blessing my work!  So after the second of these “miracles”, I tuned into a local Catholic radio station and, at 2 PM each day, listened to a beautiful piece of music called the “chaplet of the divine mercy” that brought me to my knees in thanks to God for a safe day of work. An important secondary benefit was an extended physical and spiritual rest period of from ten to fifteen minutes.

In the Autumn of life, the music that I took for granted in grade school is now cherished; when I have the opportunity to hear very young children sing “Jesus Loves Me”, “Silent Night”, or other songs that reveal their preciousness, the tears flow as easily as when wonderful symphony strings rip my heart out of my chest. From the love of Christ Jesus and the knowledge that His love can easily be spread to those around us if we just become the conduit, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!