Dakota Beacon

One evening about a month ago Fox commentator Tucker Carlson featured a guest named Alex Berenson. Berenson is a former New York Times reporter, the author of several thriller novels, a book on the harmful effects of marijuana, and a book on corporate financial filings. Carlson interviewed Berenson about his views as a Covid contrarian and lockdown critic reflected in his booklet “Unreported Truths about Covid-19.”

During the interview Berenson repeatedly mentioned that Amazon had refused to list his booklet although they had listed all of his several other books. The reason? Berenson’s Covid booklet did not comport with Amazon’s “journalistic standards.” (Take that to mean that Amazon did not like the tact Berenson took in questioning the established Covid narrative.)

I don’t know Gorsuch personally, but he wouldn’t be a very pleasant person to associate with if he were a Timmy the Textualist in everyday life. Would you thus conduct yourself, parsing every friend’s words to seek a loophole and essentially punishing him for not being a seer who speaks like Mr. Spock? You’d have few friends and deserve none.

Interestingly, Gorsuch and his fellow travelers aren’t the first textualists. Two-thousand years ago they were called Pharisees, a group of pseudo-intellectuals whom Jesus excoriated for following the letter of the law, but ignoring its spirit. It’s tragic that we’re back to that, but convenient for today’s Pharisees.

It is ironic, though, that in order to avoid abiding by the intent of laws from a half century ago, some today are resorting to a mistake from two millennia ago.  

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Last week, Winston Churchill’s statue in London’s Parliamentary Square was defaced by a protestor who spray-painted “was a racist” across its base. Protestors have called for taking down the statue, which has been boarded up to protect it. In this article, Dr. Gary S. Smith evaluates Churchill through historical contexts and argues “without Churchill, Britain might have capitulated to the Nazis as France did and that world history would be radically different.”

Economist Benjamin A. Rogge referred to the statue Lady Justice: “The blindfolded Goddess of Justice has been encouraged to peek and she now says, ‘First tell me who you are and then I’ll tell you what your rights are.’” So it is with “social justice,” a contemporary oxymoron.

A generation gap denotes more than a mere age difference. It also represents a difference in non-shared values, especially values instilled beyond the home. For parents this means children schooled in ideas leading to behavior not embraced by the parents. For grandparents and grandchildren the disparity may be even greater.

As statues again come down as our culture is further torn up, something goes unsaid and often unnoticed:

Notable Western historical figures are being condemned as immoral — by the most immoral, decadent, degenerate people among us.

As G.K. Chesterton put it, “It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.” Our cultural revolutionaries, with their corruption-catalyzed cocksureness, are the ultimate bigots.

The world many of us grew up in is fast disappearing.  Not the least of what we are losing are the beloved commercial icons which have come to be part of our vocabulary ("anthimeria") like Kleenex or Xerox. This week we have another raft of announcements of famous names that will be consigned to the proverbial dustbin of history.  We are much the poorer for this, just as we are for each statue that was created through incredible skill and artistry and is rendered dust and rubble by those who would "improve" our society.  This week we bury Aunt Jemima.  Sad to see her go - and with her passing, her story will die with her.

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The two destabilizing events recently occurring back-to-back, the response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and the George Floyd rioting, illustrate well how America is now institutionally incapable of making decisions in her own best interests. That is, the overreaction to the disease and under-reaction to the rioting reflect a country long demoralized.

Moreover, if that’s not troubling enough, know that this is a state of being that usually leads to tyranny.

Thus far, 2020 seems to be a madhouse.  Is anyone in charge here?  As a borderline libertarian myself, I have had more than enough of lawlessness and the acceptance of unacceptable "values".  This arrogant contingent of ignorant "revolutionaries" using George Floyd as a mascot, have taken it upon themselves to destroy most of our national monuments and memorials (they are now calling for toppling the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial), in addition to statues of historical figures of whom they know absolutely nothing, and merely vandalizing the rest.  They have undertaken to secede from the Union, which has not happened since 1861, and that ended badly for the whole country.  The soy boys who have taken over Seattle dealing with Mayor Jenny Durkan, and President Donald Trump, however, not President Abraham Lincoln.  You can  just tell.  But wait . . . there's more!

Do black lives really matter to protestors, rioters, and Antifa? Apparently not. Black and minority-owned businesses were looted and burned to the ground in many cities. Black lives don’t matter for the black police officers killed and injured during the riots. Just hyperbole and hypocrisy.

Here’s the conundrum. Make the US Constitution work for all. Or, change America into something unknown with liberal and progressive authoritarians in control.

Dismantling the police, a measure already proposed in Minneapolis, makes about as much sense as eliminating doctors or farmers and would likewise lead to pain and death. But if there is method to the madness, and I suspect there is in some Machiavellian quarters, it’s perhaps this: Certain leftists want to eliminate the police because they want to become the police.

Or, at least, they want their foot soldiers to fill that role.

Oh, there are other motivations, too, ranging from raw, misguided passion to formulaic devotion to a perverse leftist creed to wider efforts to destabilize the country. Remember, though, if you’re a power seeker, you attack those whose power you want for yourself. And upon attaining police power, enforcing a political agenda becomes much easier.

Contact tracing, as a way to battle COVID-19, has been widely discussed in the media, by the medical community, and by politicians. But how does it really work? And what do we do with the information the tests gather? In this article, Dr. Joseph Horton considers how to make use of the information that contacting testing generates. He writes, “To make good decisions we must consider the consequences of wrongly classifying a person either as having COVID-19 when he does not have it or of classifying a person as not having COVID-19 when he does in fact have it.”

The idea on the front burner in Minneapolis now is to seek to model their brave new world on the example of a much smaller citiy, roughly the size of Bismarck (not including Minot).  There are obviously reasons why this is an inappropriate way to address the issues of law enforcement in a city the size of Minneapolis.  There are other forces at work, not very pleasant ones.  

In 1969, the world was full of turmoil but the moon landing on July 20 by the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins was a wonderful respite. Last Saturday, amid the turmoil of 2020, another historic launch occurred. In this article that first appeared at National Catholic Register, Dr. Paul Kengor reflects on both space launches and what was happening in the world when they occurred. He writes, “The world is on fire in 2020. It was in 1969 as well. It’s easy to focus on the negative. And we should rightly call out injustice. But we should also pause to reflect on what is good.”

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Since the wanton murder of George Floyd on Memorial Day we have been treated to a display of violence which rivals the French Revolution.  Like consumate magicians, the perpetrators of this violence have herded the mindless millions into chanting and marching, calling out President Trump, blaming everything from slavery (which 600,000 Americans died to end here) to fake "fascism", while employing the time-honored fascist tactics.  No one stops to demand the truth from them, everyone seems too eager for these thugs' approval.  But we are missing the truth while we are tuning our ears to the insupportable claims of these hypnotists.  So who really IS to blame?

It's a much-needed Sunday!  We deserve a treat.  I found one.  Her name is Andrea Motis.  I like her kind of jazz - in fact I can't get enough.  I hope you will too - it's just the thing to go with a tall, cool drink of something.  Enjoy somethng very special.

It is Saturday.  A gloomy, dark Saturday in Grand Forks today, but still it's June.  After a disorienting spring season, with everyone in masks and gloves, standing unnaturally apart, cooped up indoors, chided for wanting to get back to life, we now need a break from both virus and violence, as our streets exploded across the nation for the past week-and-a-half.  Before we can process the economic crash from the weird shutdown situation we are hearing rumblings about abolishing police departments as an answer to crime.  Well, it's time for a break.  It seems June is the inspiration for a lot of romantic musing, so I will indulge.  I hope you enjoy poetry.

The past week has been a nightmare for America, with our cities burning and our businesses destroyed - just when people were about to re-open after the shutdown.  Minneapolis was the epicenter or at least the first epicenter of the violence.  Things, we thought, could not get much worse.  News flash.  They might be about to get much, much worse in Minneapolis.  What do you do when you have allowed your police department to become sloppy, corrupt, incompetent and abusive?  Simple.  You just abolish it.

Thirty-one years ago tonight, the world witnessed the massacre of some 10,000 students in Tiananmen Square.  Their parents and loved ones dared not mourn them - after all it was the Chinese government that mowed them down and they are incapable of error, right? Well, at least that is what they impressed upon the people of China.  In most of China that morsel of history has been scrubbed.  But in Hong Kong, with its tradition of freedom and free speech, the Tiananmen Square victims and heroes have been memorialized every year on June 4.  Until this year.  This year the memorial is banned.  Because this year China is rolling into Hong Kong as it did into Tiananmen Square 31 years ago.  The people tearing up our cities have no excuse.  They have the freedom to speak out.

The third book by scholar and China expert Michael Pillsbury offers a very readable and quite insightful book published in 2016 titled “The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower.” Of the three books, Pillsbury’s book was most practical and explicitly written.

Michael Pillsbury’s speaks with authority. He serves as the director of the Center for Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute and has served in eight presidential administrations. Educated at Stanford and Columbia, he served as an analyst with the Rand Corporation. He held senior positions in the Defense Department and on the staff of four US Senate committees. Pillsbury speaks, reads, and writes Mandarin fluently.

“The Hundred-Year Marathon” delves into the critical issue of who is making policy in the Chinese government and what is the basis for their thinking. Hawks within the Chinese government have been advising their leaders as far back as Mao Zedong. They seek to avenge a century of humiliation. Advice to their leaders has been to replace the United States as the economic, military, and political leader of the world by the year 2049 (the one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Revolution). This plan has become known as “the Hundred-Year Marathon,” thus the title of Pillsbury’s book.

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After a week of violence, during which paid activists whipped up mob violence to terrorize our cities and lay them waste, the president is beginning to make some threats.  While we might applaud someone, somewhere, who is willing to face these terrorists down, his proposal to send the U.S. military in to sort things out is not a good idea.

Most corporations have pro bono publico funds.  They're handy at tax time.  They look good to customers and the rest of the public - great PR.  But the e-corporation Etsy is making a huge mistake.  They are donating a million dollars to two organizations who are deeply connected to the perpetrators of violence we have seen take over our streets and neighborhoods this week.

It is time for us to stop seeing police violence and the ensuing protests in such a black and white way – too many see these incidents and immediately conclude that either the police are always right and criminals are “asking for it,” or that all police are out to get them and any action, however, violent, is justified.  Police have a right to protect themselves, but they also have a duty to protect us.  Similarly, African-American communities have a right to protest, and reason to, but they ought to seek to do so in way that does not cause more violence and destruction. 

Some of our state officials and officers need to remember that their job is to protect us, not instill fear.

From Paint Your Wagon to A Fistful of Dollars, from The Bridges of Madison County to Any Which Way You Can to Play Misty for Me to Richard Jewel, Clint Eastwood's career has been all over the map and his involvement has ranged from score composer to singing leading man to tough war heroe to gritty western outlaw.  And he's still planning new projects.  Wish Clint Eastwood a happy 90th birthday today!

These revelations were eye-opening… the media in general has been promoting the idea that extreme poverty due to discrimination among some minority groups is at the root of Covid-19 disparities between minorities and whites. In actuality, it appears, from CDC summary information, that all women and highest-income black men are more obese, along with the obesity-accompanying heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer, and thus are at greatest risk. Low and high income hold greater risks than medium income for white and Hispanic men.

With final construction of the border wall with Mexico and its associated near 100% southern border security, we can expect new immigration laws that ends the discriminatory practices of both political parties and consumers. Agriculture will finally be forced by markets to pay a fair wage for Hispanic labor, unions will accept Hispanics into their ranks, and consumers will pay a fair price for food and other goods and services.

It is worth noting also that the steady downward trend of life expectancy in the U.S. from 2013 to 2018 (78.94 to 78.81) has been reversed from 2018 to 2020, rising from 78.81 in 2018 to 78.93 in 2020. It is not surprising that more people working makes for longer lives? Covid-19 has certainly proved that less jobs go along with shortened lives..

We need to find alternatives to violence and it needs to begin with better leadership and more freedom of speech.  People who felt they had no other forum took to protest demonstrations.  This lawful exercise of our First Amendment has been subverted to give cover to organized, paid "activists" (read: rioters).  We can't allow our cities to be burned to the ground and we also need to hold our law enforcement accountable.  Acts like the murder that took place on Memorial Day in Minneapolis cannot be tolerated just to preserve peace in the streets, nor can we allow equal violence in out-of-state professional rioters to destroy our homes and businesses.  There needs to be a better answer.  Perhaps a citizens' advisory committee with legal standing to review in these issues of accountability.  In the meantime let us hope that the process of law against the perpetrator, Derek Chauvin, is allowed to go forward unsullied to arrive at justice for all concerned and for the future accountability of our public servants.  

Last week, the world lost popular author and Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias. He was 74. To honor his life and work, Dr. Gary S. Smith pens a tribute to his contributions. Smith writes, “In his numerous books, hundreds of radio programs, and dozens of lectures on college campuses and to religious organizations, Zacharias insisted Christianity provides the most compelling explanation of the origin of the universe and humanity, the meaning of life, morality, and human destiny. He used arguments drawn from logic, emotions, and morality to cogently defend God’s existence and respond to the most challenging philosophical attacks against Christianity.”