Dakota Beacon

The City of Grand Forks, together with the blessing of North Dakota's Governor Doug Burgum, is about to embark on a very risky game with China.  Although the people have been told that the Fufeng Group, an agribusiness enterprise based in China, is like any other big business and it would be a feather in the cap of Grand Forks to nail this deal for a many-multi-million-dollar investment, the people are not convinced.  That has made little difference in other decisions by the council, but one thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as a business in China that is not controlled by the CCP government.  In case you want evidence, the project is billed as part of China's "Belt and Road Initiative" (formerly known as "One Belt One Road"), which is part of China's long-range, over-arching strategy for its intended world domination.  Nations that have partnered through this program have rued the decision.  China has the ability through its strategic use of "economic development" throughout the world to steal our soul.

Dubbed the JR-15, the AFP relates that it’s “marketed by maker WEE1 Tactical as ‘the first in a line of shooting platforms that will safely help adults introduce children to the shooting sports.’” Clearly aghast, the news organ further reports that the “company’s website says the rifle ‘also looks, feels, and operates just like Mom and Dad's gun.’”

Unsurprisingly, the AFP reminds people in its commentary masquerading as hard news that the AR-15 “has been used in multiple mass killings in the United States…” while quoting only anti-Second Amendment activists in its piece. Yet is mixing kids and guns really anything to fear? Let’s examine the matter.

Like the prophets of old, Sobran had nothing new to offer. He was not an innovator. He could see no “root causes” as understood by the secular experts, at least none ameliorable by their generic prescriptions. The society that spawned the teen killers was a negative residue: it’s “what’s left when you subtract Christianity” from civilization.

Sobran’s cultural and historical memory informed him that the permanent things are never finally won or forever lost. The battle continues, and those who reject the miserable truce are entitled to a warrior’s exuberance. Nothing said here will resuscitate this great talent from the general amnesia. But those happy few who read Joe Sobran will be better armed against the armies of dissolution.

His point? 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 skipping the costs while reaping the benefits.

In the end, “The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall;…” but under Marxism, Communism, and Socialism “…[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.”

O’Rourke holds the dubious distinction as the most quoted man in “The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.” (“Giving power and money to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” “You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.” “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”)

Happy Birthday Mr. Washington and Mr. Lincoln. I have a confession to make. I never liked the birthday gifts we made for you in elementary school.

I would have rather been taught something true and important that carried a message of your contribution to the political process or to the Presidency.  Something that may of helped us do what Mr. Franklin alluded to when he answered the question after the Second Continental Congress adjourned,

“What have you got for us??” to which he quickly replied, “a Republic, if you can keep it.”

Correction!

There are different ways to identify an enemy within, but one is quite simple. Anybody who’d cancel George Washington should be considered a fifth-column member fit only for scorn and ostracism.

We’ve seen attacks upon Washington take many forms, with San Francisco’s 2021 decision to rename a school bearing our first president’s name a prime example. It’s a red flag because it reflects hatred of America’s very foundation, of everything she truly represents.

George Washington is unlike any other American figure. His arch rival, King George III, knew this well. Responding to news that with the Revolutionary War’s conclusion, Washington would relinquish power and return to his farm, the monarch exclaimed, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."

An article titled “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” authored by Edward Schlosser, perfectly captures our current situation. Redefining truth through the politics of personal testimony and identity, through critical race theory, and through cancel culture has unleashed a monster. Even the professors that have propagated the errant philosophy of “be your own truth” are now petrified of the practical realities. Students are turning on their mentors. Their students, based on classroom material, are formally charging them, claiming “grievous harm” at their own institutions. Their professorial campaign to radically change America is coming around to bite them in their own ivory towers. The monster is devouring its own.

The monster is no match for absolute truth. This truth reflects actuality and is tethered to reality. God is the source and author of truth. This truth is absolute, singular, objective, authoritative, and unchanging. Honesty and truth-telling are ultimately grounded in the character of God. The truth stands independent of feelings, preferences, emotions, biases, human knowledge, and wisdom or experience. A fundamental expectation and the glue which has kept a semblance of order and trust in our lives is people speaking the truth. When truth and honesty are removed from daily genuine interactions, there is turmoil, resulting in individual and societal chaos. All authentic communication and sincere respect for one another begins with truth-telling. Truth-telling is essential for a thriving society. All human experience depends on your yea being yea and your nay being nay.

A psychopath can be engaging, charming, charismatic. He can appear easy-going, casual in attitude. But a psychopath is very controlling and arrogant beneath the veneer. Manipulative. Dishonest, exhibiting total disregard for the safety or rights of others, could care less about what is right or true.

Our leaders in the West, especially those of the formerly free Anglophone world, are psychopaths. There is no other way to describe them. They – Dan Andrews of Australia, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, Justin Trudeau of Canada, Boris Johnson of Britain and Joe Biden of the United States, are displaying all of the attributes of a psychopath. I looked it up. Here is what we should look for:

socially irresponsible behavior

• disregarding or violating the rights of others

• inability to distinguish between right and wrong

• difficulty with showing remorse or empathy

• tendency to lie often

• manipulating and hurting others

• recurring problems with the law

• general disregard towards safety and responsibility

Other behaviors that may be signs of ASPD include a tendency to take risks, reckless behavior, and they are abusive, remorseless and sometimes violent. In the case of Dan Andrews and Justin Trudeau, they are vicariously violent at least

You be the judge. When you look at the behavior of late in these leaders, the description fits. No one is safe when our leaders are psychopaths.

History has recorded countless episodes of repression and violence against helpless people by armed thugs.  We had the assault on peaceful protesters in Moscow which ushered in the beginning of the end of the Romanov Empire.  We had Tienanmen Square.  We have seen a lot of ugly tyrants attempting to cut down the people they pretend to serve throughout history.  Our era is obviously no exception.  We had January 6 last year in Washington, where an unarmed patriot was brutally killed in cold blood, and her attacker is still defended by "conservatives" such as Kevin Cramer.  No doubt he would approve of Trudeau's response to a massive, nation-wide people's protest - that is, with violence and oppression.  Canadians are known for their manners and their peaceful behavior.  They have shown this attribute now for three weeks as the "law enforcement" people have vandalized their costly equipment, beaten old men and grandmothers, threatened parents with abduction of their children and euthanasia of their beloved companion pets.  They have remained peaceful, never raising a hand, when their fuel was stolen.  In Alberta, the RCMP broke into trucks and stole winter survival gear and then destroyed valuable excavators.  For a year now they have been persecuting pastors and owners of local coffee shops.  Tonight they have crossed a line.  How many people will remain with the cops now?  None that have a soul, a conscience or a scrap of decency will be able to remain.  

“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.” – Frederick Douglass

Justin Trudeau, in an act of combined arrogance and desperation, proposed to seize absolute power this week, including the power to freeze and seize personal bank accounts, compile financial and other private information on Canadian citizens, commandeer their equipment and services to effect his will, effectively shut down free speech and freedom of movement, revoke peoples drivers' licenses, both commercial and private, and further restrict their freedom - this after two years of unprecedented tyranny.  As some provinces began to drop their restrictions and mandates, Trudeau, refusing to even talk with demonstrators - millions of them - decided to double down, undoubtedly egged on by his kindred spirit south of the border in the US - Joe Biden.  This bodes ill for Americans as well as Canadians.  Let us hope that Parliament humiliates this would-be strongman and sends him back to his bunker in shame.  As for the rest of us, eternal vigilance, as Jefferson noted, is the price of freedom.

Time marches on and getting old is a fickle fact of life. A person can accept that fact. But one does not have to give in prematurely to the ravages of Old Man Time. I am not talking about physical aches and pains, bumps and strains. I am distinguishing between the physical brain versus one’s mind, i.e., attitude and mental state.

Many my age have taken the advice offered by Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Harvard Medical School, and other professional groups on staving off the effects of aging on the brain. Active brains seem to be the key. Reading, solving puzzles, learning a language all exercise the gray matter. For me, math was never my forte. I was an average math student. Yet, I am still fascinated by the beauty, the precision, and the symmetry of math. Today I still dip into math books and logic in my library.

My recent brain workout focuses on blockchains, bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies – how they are constructed, why they work, and when they will become true stores of value and a fully accepted medium of exchange. Seeking answers to these questions keep the synapses firing in my brain.

It has been 40 years since the year over year inflation rate has been this high—currently 7.5 percent. What produced the explosion in prices? In this article, economist Dr. Mark Hendrickson identifies the causes and offers two important lessons. He writes, “The culprits are obvious: Uncle Sam and the Fed.”

For quite some years now, the term “narrative” has been common in political circles. It generally has a negative connotation as it’s used to reference a story line — an often largely fictional one — advanced by some ideologically driven entity for political gain.

This is why I saw a red flag Friday when, while writing an article on how leftist indoctrination permeates even conservative states’ schools, I read a line about what a common modern pedagogy dictates was necessary to be a “culturally responsive educator” (read: an educator responsible for cultural revolution). Two prerequisites for it, related the Federalist, are “the rejection of colorblindness and replacing instruction about facts with narrative stories.”

In an address he gave in Fargo, North Dakota in 1962 Reagan said this:  “This war was started 50 years ago when Karl Marx made the statement that capitalism and communism can’t exist side by side.”  Reagan was quick to point out the USSR as an evil force that denied the very existence of God.  Reagan made no distinction between socialism and communism.  

By definition, a socialist democracy cannot exist.

Reagan often quoted the following:

“A nation no longer under God is a nation “gone under.””  There was no confusion about the socialist/communist agenda with him.

When we think we have seen everything, we turn a corner and are shocked to see something new.  It seems that there is no end to the victims of this "pandemic".  Not only our businesses and economy, our kids' education, our freedom and our health have been affected, but now our most cherished institutions are falling victim to this insanity.  Our medical establishment will likely never recover in our lifetimes.  Our doctors and medical staff have earned a reputation as abusers - kidnappers, murderers and people now avoid seeking medical treatment at all costs, not wanting to go anywhere near these purveyors of death.  Meanwhile, the police, whom many proudly support with their little blue porch lights and find themselves indignant at "defund the police" efforts in our cities, are now finding that these people they once enshrined, are no better than mafiosi.  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been an institution for a couple of hundred years.  They ride in their horse shows, they dress in colorful costumes, they have inherited a storied, legendary history.  Today they are more aptly described as the Royal Canadian Mafia Police.  But they’re not your grandad’s Mounties - not Sergeant York, nor your dad’s - Benton Frasier.  Now their daily duties involve vandalism and assault.  Destruction of property, ruining people's livelihoods.  Sometimes it is necessary to take swift and brutal action to punish such people.  Lawfully, of course, but brutally.  We need to start at the bottom and inflict such punishment as will deter others from "just following orders".  We establsihed this after the Nazi horror.  We cannot spare these underlings - they must go first, because if we let them off the hook we are doomed.  They must know that they are the captains of their souls, no one else.

For a couple of weeks now the world has watched the truckers of Canada finally taking up the cause of their freedom with their oppressive government.  While Trudeau has poked his head out from his cover to call these people names and try to label them "terrorists", the mayor and chief of police of the capital city and epicenter of the peaceful demonstration, Ottawa, have embarked on a career of crime, stealing fuel, assaulting people, now attempting to sabotage and destroy millions of dollars of private property.  Today our disgusting president* has given Trudeau orders to put a stop to the peaceful protests throughout Canada.  This is the guy who is buying drug addicts new crack pipes.  The same one who has opened the border to permit anything and everything to flood our country.  This is the same president* that is currently doing all in his power to violate our Bill of Rights.  CNN has a commentator who is calling on Trudeau to slash their tires.  Our "leaders" have called upon the rogue "crowd-funding" agency, GoFundMe, to steal money sent to support these truckers and "redistribute" it to groups that Trudeau likes and President* Biden likes - such as BLM, Antifa, maybe eventually the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Anyone but who it was intended for.  (As this is written, the alternative, "GiveSendGo" has crowd-funded over $9 million and counting.)

There is a problem here.

Spend-aholic insanity is a lot like alcoholism. There is no question the US is financially bankrupt with a debt of trillions of dollars. We’re just not ready to admit it. To ease the pain we lapse into denial. A dose of reality would shatter that denial. The risk is not default on our national debt. Default would only occur if Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen chose not to pay the interest to creditors holding our debt. We barely have the monthly tax revenue to pay that interest. Besides, the US could always print more money – or raise taxes even more.

The real risk is the downgrading of the US’s financial rating by Moody’s and by Standard & Poor’s, the major credit rating agencies. If the US’s debt ceiling continues to increase but Congress and the president do not show a willingness to restrain the skyrocketing spending, the US’s credit worthiness becomes worthless. Downgrading the US’s AAA rating would ruin our financial standing around the world and the dollar would no longer serve as the world’s reserve currency. Decline in this status would take years to regain, if ever.

Since I left the scene of ND politics about three years ago, I have tried to stay out of the fray.   But as often as I’ve tried to make politics a thing of the past, it seems something happens to draw me in.

And I have a confession to make.  I went to a non-sanctioned district GOP meeting (something I haven’t done in awhile) and what I was confronted with was a full-blown case of Deja vu!  Roll back the calendar to an experience I had on the North Dakota State Capitol grounds.  The Tea Party “movement” had started to organize, and I attended a rally as an onlooker.

I’m not sure what I was expecting to find on either occasion, but what I experienced last night had an impact on me and I think it’s worth sharing.

What is privilege? Is it an economic advantage or perhaps and educational advantage? What makes a person privileged? In this article, Dr. Gary Welton examines these questions while offering examples from his family tree as well as his own upbringing. Welton writes, “I did not have some of the opportunities that my classmates had, because of our economic challenges, but I was a privileged person, not particularly because I was white or because I was male. Rather, I am a privileged American, with the opportunity to support freedom for all (whether they look like me or not).”

When Joe Biden’s earpiece expresses, through his mouth, its firm intention to nominate a black female Supreme Court candidate, critics will say that race and sex shouldn’t matter in such things. Well, don’t worry — they won’t.

Whoever Justice X ends up being, she’ll almost assuredly vote in lockstep with white Elena Kagan and Hispanic Sonya Sotomayor. She’ll almost definitely vote just the way white ACLU baby Ruth Bader Ginsburg did. This just underlines, too, how superficially made any “diversity” choice would be.

Biden’s earpiece’s SCOTUS pick could be a white man. He could be Asian-descent. The nominee could be purple with pink polka dots, a “transgender” primordial dwarf, an acromegaly sufferer with a watermelon-size head or an extraterrestrial who looks like Alf. It wouldn’t matter. He, she, ze or it would vote as today’s Democrat picks generally do: as a rubber stamp for the leftist agenda.

Browsing the New York Post (NYP) on January 27 uncovered an opinion piece by Peter Schweizer. Do you know the name? Schweizer is founder and president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI). GAI comprises a team of investigative researchers and journalists committed to exposing crony capitalism, misuse of taxpayer monies, and other governmental corruption and malfeasance. He published in 2018 “Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends.” Earlier in 2015 he published “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.” Both discuss the accrual of wealth by long-serving politicians through connections and conniving. These are two of several books Schweizer authored focusing on his specialty – questionable acquisition of personal wealth through political power. Neither political party is spared scrutiny. Surprise! Surprise! The NYP piece amplifies the same theme in the Biden administration. More on that story in a moment.

“You’re a racist!” We’ve all heard that often enough. In fact, as was once said in saner times about opportunistic patriotism, it’s now racism charges that are the last refuge of a scoundrel. But there is a way to counter these scoundrels and seize the advantage.

No, the answer isn’t to explain yourself. It’s virtually always the case that racism-charge hurlers don’t care about Truth, anyway, but simply want to hurt you and win. The actual remedy?

Remember that the best defense is a good offense and hit them back — hard. And the following short response should become standard when accused of racism.

 Recently, the Supreme Court rejected the OSHA vaccination mandate for private sector employees but upheld the Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services mandate for healthcare workers. In this article, constitutional scholar Dr. John Sparks reviews the decisions and warns of possible future administrative excess. He writes, “The decisions are not merely about vaccinations and pandemics. What is at stake is the rule of law versus administrative abuse of authority.”

As most know, there’s a contentious debate over whether it’s fair to let men who claim they’re female compete in women’s sports. It’s a debate driven more by emotion than reason, as so many things are.

If a fellow claiming female status trounces woman athletes in a fairly high profile competition — as University of Pennsylvania swimmer “Lia” Thomas (birth name “Will”) did recently — the story makes headlines and raises ire; if such a man falters, as Thomas did quite suspiciously and conveniently even more recently, the story disappears. And each side in the debate often claims vindication based on the most recent result. Yet there is a way to definitively and irrefutably (within the realm of reason) prove that one side is correct.

Dominant print and electronic journalism tanked in recent years. That comes as no surprise. Fewer people consume the media “product,” and for good reason.

When journalists lose their reputation as objective reporters of news, they lose the respect of the public. And that is exactly what is happening. Government agencies no longer view journalists as unbiased actors serving as deterrents and honest brokers “speaking truth to power.” Government officials sense they themselves are no longer held accountable by journalists and that journalists can be enlisted as allies, or at least played by the officials.

Our medical establishment is in trouble.  Never in our lifetimes has a profession lost so much respect and fallen so much in the public's confidence.  It was once thought that lawyers were lowly in the public's perception, but the doctors and hospitals are now not only dreaded by feared by a growing portion of the public.  It's no wonder when you hear the real-life experiences of people in hospitals since the covid hysteria broke out.  It has only been escalating.  Our hospitals and most doctors and staff are as if in a feeding frenzy to deny patients' rights once they walk through the door.  Nothing happens without a reason.  This is no exception.  Each covid death is worth $100,000 to these institutions.  

One thing we know now is that the Truckers' Freedom Convoy is rattling a few cages in Ottawa.  The latest symptom of a government up a tree is the effort in the Ottawa City Council, led by member, Mattheiu Fleury, to literally commit highway robbery of the truckers and of the people who have sent their hard-earned money to GoFundMe to support their cause - an end to mandates and illegal restrictions on the people of Canada.

This is a two-part but closely related post.  We are in the midst of an on-going revolution - one brought about over the past two years by unprecedented encroachment on our basic human rights.  We have seen unthinkable abuses by our government, by formerly trusted healthcare providers, by a thoroughly corrupting and corrupted pharmaceutical industry.  Now we are searching for ways to take back our freedom.  No one wants to commit violence.  No one wants to hurt others.  Finally the truck drivers of Canada have taken action.  They are peacefully gathering to make their point.  That they have had enough.  That they are not willing to sell their freedom for convenience.  For this they have been insulted by the leader of their government - Trudeau, from his safe hiding place, has called them "racists", "misogynists", he, like Biden, loves to find ways to be divisive.  But it's not working - the people of Canada are gathering along the route to cheer, to wave Canadian flags, to display signs supporting these truckers.  The protest is spreading.  Now there are truck convoys in Australia and New Zealand and it is expected that U.S. truckers will soon be doing the same.  The reasons and roots of this protest deserve our attention.  

Readers are aware that I have communicated with Senator Kevin Cramer about his unfortunate comments on KNOX radio last summer regarding the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt, an American veteran, in the US Capitol building on January 6.  At the time there had been no meaningful investigation of the event or of the shooter's - Michael Byrd's - conduct, nor of how Babbitt came to be inside the building at the time.  Cramer erred in making a public statement of a conclusion he had jumped to absent any findings of fact in the matter.  While we all make mistakes, most of us are not too small to admit this and try our best to make amends.  Supporting Cramer, for example, was one of my own mistakes and I apologize for this.  But when I asked Cramer about this he sidestepped the question.  He doubled down on his wrongful condemnation of an American citizen who, after all, is entitled to the presumption of innocence.  Cramer is a small man.  He is far too small to sit in the US Senate.