Dakota Beacon

Anyone who has not attended a performance of the Bismarck-Mandan Symphony Orchestra should seriously consider doing so. My favorite symphonic music is that which just rips my heart out of my chest through the funeral-like tones of the strings section. Other symphony-goers have other preferences. One thing I can promise… you will experience something that enriches your life. You will never know what you are missing if you do not experience at least one evening at the Belle before you pass through this life.

As the car door closes, you see the man’s eyes glaze over.

He drives away in his green Smart Car with a stylized blue and green logo on the door. Beneath the logo lay the words, “To protect and to serve Mother Earth.”

A physics professor once told me, “If you don’t ask the right questions, you won’t get the right answers.”

November 2 approaches and many political questions hang in the balance. So do the answers. The collective choice of the American voters on election day will sort out those answers.

The TEA Party movement represents something new in American politics. It represents a new kind of decentralized, democratic, leadership-by-consensus movement made possible by the Internet. It some ways it looks like some of the neo-tribal/Individualist Anarchist notions of social organization.

Where it will lead I don’t know, and I think it’s probably useless to speculate. I only know I haven’t felt this excited since I marched with the people of Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1997, when they took to the streets every night to demand their country back. 

Earl wants to force America to rely on expensive and inefficient alternatives produced by the government like wind mills and ethanol rather than cheap and abundant oil recovered by private companies. America doesn’t have the money to subsidize these failed experiments, but the fact that our nation is bankrupt has never stopped Earl from voting to borrow massive amounts of money before.

Who is Jack Dalrymple?, “Great Fire” of 1893, Isn’t hunting season fun?, “Drink, eat and be merry”, The Sioux nickname, the Olympic Lamoureux twins, NDSU President Dean Bresciani, North Dakota Mural comes home, Farming was Warren’s true calling, The ship is a casket, she didn’t have a welcoming face, suspicious condition, (about one person per square mile.

To emit or not to emit. To prosper or not to prosper. These are the questions. Warmists take a mind-bogglingly idiotic position: send gasses and jobs elsewhere. America's November 2nd results will influence how freely Obama's and "environmental justice" zealot Lisa Jackson's EPA will continue to create regulations that do the same.

You’ve probably seen the headlines about major banks suspending foreclosure proceedings to reclaim houses from borrowers who have defaulted on their mortgages. This has the potential to be hugely disruptive—a milestone development comparable to the failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008, after which all hell broke loose.

Some commentators insist that the problem is nothing more than a few technical glitches that can be easily corrected. Others assert that there has been massive fraud, perjury (attesting to facts without having ascertained those alleged facts), and forgery (creating documents after the fact to produce a fictitious paper trail). Apparently, the states Attorneys General feel there might be fire among all the smoke, because all 50 of them have initiated investigations, and many of them appear as though they are about to go on the prosecutorial warpath. If this situation continues unabated, then we are peering over the precipice at a potential breakdown of social, civil, and political order, too. That’s the nightmare scenario. Let’s get back on track before it’s too late.

For it is only when government imposes morals residing within its legitimate domain that laws are just; when it imposes merely values, they may be unjust.  But how can we ensure it will be the former?  Well, we must first be in touch with moral reality.  Only then will we understand when and what the government should be legislating.  But there is little hope society at large will understand something if a social-pressure gag order is placed on discussion of it.  This is why I emphasize understanding every aspect of this matter: the nexus between morality and just law; the immorality of excessive law; and, first and foremost, understanding what morality actually is.  Because to deny reality for fear it could be twisted is itself a twisting of reality — and the consequences are likely just as severe.

Dr. Steven Brigham's medical license was suspended on October 13 for transporting patients from New Jersey to Maryland for late-term abortions. Brigham's illegal scheme - which involved starting late-term abortions in New Jersey and finishing them in Maryland -- was discovered when a patient suffered a life-threatening complications in Brigham's Elkton clinic and had to be air-lifted to Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore for emergency surgery. As a result of his intervention, the patient's uterus and small intestine both ruptured.

Behold the conceit in the progressive psyche.

Progressives see themselves as sitting atop Mount Olympus and wielding wisdom turbocharged by omnipotence. The wealth of the masses is meant to be redistributed to people who really need the money. And the perfect candidates for deciding how the redistribution should proceed are indeed the wise, Olympian power-players.

These liberals were repulsed by the Soviet promise of an earthly utopia. The Bolsheviks created their own gods in their own image, repeating that first sin: Ye shall be as gods. This included John Dewey, father of modern American public education. Interestingly, Dewey was initially duped by the Soviets, who adored his educational work.... To his credit, the professor eventually saw the light, becoming a staunch critic of Stalin. It took Dewey a few years, but he came around. I think Dewey’s own earlier departure from the faith numbed his awareness of the evil staring him in the face.

Inside the know-it-all echo chamber, there is simply no legitimate reason for rejecting the know-it-all agenda. Opponents are assumed to be dimwits unwilling to accept creative ruling class ideas. Crook believes that the impending electoral rejection of the Obama agenda constitutes a "vote for paralysis" indicating a "system of government" that is "broken."

America has tried valiantly, as a nation, and with pretty good success, to be tolerant.  We aren’t perfect, but as a matter of policy we have striven to reach the goal of tolerance.  We permit, under our law, freedom of – and from – worship.  As a matter of law we do not discriminate.  We do, however, have the naïve expectation that these others, whom we tolerate, share our attitude.  

In the case of Islam we are deceived in this.  When you are told, condescendingly, that YOU are an “Islamophobe” because you feel insulted or feel the memories of the innocent lives lost to Islamic terrorism are defiled by a Hamas-linked mosque built within spitting distance of the site of one of the most horrendous acts of violence ever perpetrated against America, should you not ask where Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf was and what he and his fellows were doing as they watched the towers crashing down, entombing thousands of our countrymen?

In just two weeks, on Novembe ^,  what I believe could be the most significant election in my lifetime-maybe even in the history of this country- will be in the record books.  Some people would say I am over stating this fact.  I don't think so.  If things continue the way they are we are on our way to destroying this country. 

However, if we regain a voice in Congress, we have a huge task ahead of us.  I think most of us here would agree that the government  has to be turned back or we are on a collision course with disaster.

It does make a difference on which end you put the additional ‘0.”--The BENEFIT then multiplies to $9,307,286,685,600.00 TRILLION dollars worth of BENEFITS for American citizens, plus a few who aren’t.  His Most Honorable Senator Kent Conrad charts his way through this “web of deceit” with the syrupy comment: “The legislative estimate ‘disregarded’ the federal bill’s tax credits for health insurance buyers, improved Medicare BENEFITS and increased payments to North Dakota health care providers.”  

If you are covered by a typical health insurance plan which requires you to pay part of the cost of each doctor visit, Congress has not saved you money by passing healthcare reform. Instead, it has mandated that you spend more than you might choose to spend on so-called ‘preventative’ healthcare. If you don’t pay for it up front with co-pays, you will pay for it through higher premiums. The only way to keep premiums from rising is if the ‘free’ care is taxpayer funded, and then someone still pays for it. The fundamentally flawed line of argument for government healthcare.

Do you ever feel like Alice in Wonderland?  I know I do.  Everywhere we look we find evidence that nothing is what it seems, labels are misleading us, the behavior of some of our people in authority is - to say the very, very least - bizarre.  We have this in both parties, both as matters of personal conduct and accepted social function and as a matter of official public policy.

For instance, it must really be confusing for loyal Democrats these days.  What is a Democrat to do?

Like it or not, imposing values is what arranging civilization is all about.  And like it or not, you’re part of this process.  The only difference among any of us is in what and how much we impose — and in that some of us actually understand this is precisely what we’re doing.

So we can avoid talk about morality if we want, but it will do nothing to ensure that morality won’t be imposed on us.  It only guarantees a descent into error that, ultimately, ensures that immorality will be. 

The consequence of hate crime laws was entirely different from the intent. The intent was to prevent a crime based on the threat of severe punishment. The effect is to punish the perpetrator for the thought behind the crime.

The truth is that Americans have a choice. We can look at reality, facts like those presented here and in my two previous posts and realize that jobs will always be destroyed as other jobs get created due to progress. Or we can brood and demand that politicians "protect American jobs." One approach has always led to increasing wealth and income. The other approach always shuts down the engine of prosperity.

The sad fact is - there are far less speculative ways to kill a billion or so people than carbon emissions.  The trigger of the murder  weapon may lie  in the proposed cure  - the suppression of CO2. and its effect on world food production; and the victims will likely be the poor, not the rich .  Here’s how its going to work.

Nothing in Joe's writings justifies the abuse he has taken over the years. There is no greater proof of the nobility of his heart than the way he endured so much undeserved abuse with good humor. He remained faithful to the truth while others lied about him. Although he died of complications of diabetes rather than from a poisoned sword, he nonetheless died, like Hamlet, a noble and consistent friend of truth in a nest of villains.

The audacity and elitist arrogance permeating the "who is rich" debate screams from a comment made by, surprise, an academic. Observing that taxpayers who earn in the $200,000 to $250,000 range don't consider themselves "rich," UC Berkeley economics professor J. Bradford DeLong, a former Clinton Treasury official, says:

It is pathetic and embarrassing that somebody with five times the median household income, someone in the top 2 or 3 percent of the population, thinks of himself as just another ‘average Joe.’

Actually, what's pathetic is an academic who has never created a job or worked in a for-profit professional capacity in his entire life considering himself qualified to pontificate on the issue of rewarding achievement in the private sector.

“They cynically, contemptuously targeted the Religious Left. And it’s downright depressing to see the success they had. They knew these liberal Christians were trusting souls, who agreed with them on certain sympathies—workers rights, civil rights, wealth distribution. The communists exploited that trust…. So, the communists lied to liberals. And as the communists operated covertly, not openly admitting they were communists, they enlisted liberals in their petitions, marches, protests, publications. Without these duped liberals/progressives, the communists were dead in the water, exposed as the tiny fringe they were.”

In this latest e-publication from The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, “V&V Q&A: On ‘Dupes’ and the Religious Left” (789 words), the Center kicks off a series of weekly interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science and executive director of the Center, on his latest book, "Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century." This series focuses on a dominant theme of the book: the Religious Left.

History is clear on the track record of interference: Markets and economies grow much stronger over the long term when political interference is minimized. Keeping the "helping hands" of all-knowing libs out of the economy will spur a healthier and stronger economy.

Reality will then have made liberal interference look dumb--which it always does.

The three-day period from October 31 to November 2—All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day—used to be known as the time of the “Festival of the Dead,” and was commemorated throughout Europe.  A festival of this type has also been observed at or near the first of November by Peruvians, Hindus, Tonga Islanders, Australians, and Ancient Egyptians.  It is at this time, almost everywhere, that attention is paid to the appeasement of the dead. 

The larger public needs to be reminded that taking or regulating banks, health insurance, automobile companies, and (if the EPA has its way) nearly every pot, puddle, and breath of air in the country, is not in keeping with America's traditional understanding of constitutional boundaries. And yet, the ruling class, with its fits of labeling, launches into tirades against these Constitution-citing Americans, accusing them of fascism.

Excessive taxation generates negative feedback. As individuals' spending power drops, businesses sell less. Manufacturing output drops, followed by business income and tax revenue. Stated simply, when government confiscates too much income, the economy weakens and people grow poorer. Worse yet, increasing the rate of confiscation won't ever take in enough to eliminate the government debt nuisance to taxpayers.

But refusal to grasp such truth permeates the left side of the sociopolitical spectrum. Barack Obama dedicated an entire book to describing how his father's dreams, not reality, inspired a personal-turned-presidential agenda. Now most Americans see nightmares in Obama's dreamed-up schemes.