Dakota Beacon

From the start, Americans have been divided between the visions and values of Founding Fathers Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. That intellectual and political debate continues undiminished today. In fact, during a recent radio interview, the host asked me out of the blue, ‘Whose side are you on, Hamilton’s or Jefferson’s?’” There is no definitive, indisputable interpretation of Hamilton and Jefferson here are a few generalities.

We can’t let our spend-till-we-drop Congress and Executive get away with this.  We can’t let them tell us we need to facilitate more spending “for our military and Social Security and Medicare recipients”.  It doesn’t fly.  We’re not children. This cynical shell game is over. Americans are ready to take our country back from the wastrels and bureaucrats we were told we couldn’t live without.  It’s time to just say no – no to more spending and no to raising the debt ceiling to accommodate it. And we must get away from fiat currency.  We need to return to money that is based on reality.

I speak from experience. My first bout with skin cancer culminated with surgery in 1977. I wish I knew then what I know now. I wish my physicians knew then what they know now.

Spring foreshadows summer days in the sun. Now is a good time to recount my own experiences with skin cancer as words of encouragement.

Experience is a great teacher and understanding skin cancer makes prevention a whole lot easier.

It’s critical to comprehend the Obama administration’s position. It needs to be understood. It represents not merely a policy or partisan divide but an ideological chasm over the very function of government and balance of powers.

The third state to vote to de-fund Planned Parenthood, following measures by legislatures in Indiana and Kansas, where the governors are Republicans and supportive, considered with the Obama administration’s reaction, reflect “the bitter fruits of a much longer march, pre-dating Planned Parenthood, to centralize power and control in a single government based in Washington, along with a corresponding removal of authority from states and localities. This is a debate as old as the republic itself.”

Some believe that the recent Brown Shirt tactics of the public employee unions in Wisconsin and the unfair labor practice charges against Boeing for daring to open a plant in a Right-to-Work state are the last desperate gasp of a dying union movement. Others believe that these tactics are manifestations of union boldness encouraged by a White House under the thumb of labor bosses. Although both propositions hold some truth, both miss a more important point: Violence and coercion are at the heart of the union movement.

That’s not how the President put it, of course. But then the delightful appeal of an Obama speech is the ever wider gulf between Speechworld and Reality. So in this instance he framed our retreat from the Hindu Kush as an excellent opportunity to stop wasting money overseas and start wasting even more in Washington.

In Realworld, political speeches would be about closing down unnecessary federal bureaucracies, dramatically downsizing or merging others, and ending makework projects and mission creep. The culture of excess that distinguishes the hyperpower at twilight would be reviled at every turn. But instead the “highly persuasive” orator declares that there’s nothing to worry about that even more government can’t cure. In Speechworld, “no hill is too steep, no horizon is beyond our reach”. In Realworld, that’s mainly because we’re going downhill. And the horizon is a cliff edge.

Minot’s June flooding was the worst in its history, “We’re no longer able to save the city.”stoic, trusting behavior, For many this was suspicion, This is an unnecessary outcome confirmed,“Hidden due to low comment rating", It’s time to reframe the argument, “The point is, when is enough enough?”, dysfunctional nature of the state university system, UND’s and NDSU’s new spirit of cooperation, Hoeven’s message: less regulation, less tax, more freedom, in ND it’s uniquely upbeat, important problem of lowering the lake, “We’re in a cruel false lull”, what higher honor can a clown get?

Liberals live in theory, ignoring endless disasters and pretending that the world actually operates as they imagine. Unable to stomach human nature’s dark side, ideology shields liberals’ senses and plays to their insatiable need to feel good—about themselves. Wishful-thinking ideology spawns a belief that behavior can be legislated, hatching countless “helping” programs which only intensify human failings.

Something subtle and disturbing is happening under parents’ radar. Growing numbers of progressive educators are twisting a four-thousand-year-old concept in order to induce schoolchildren to adopt amoral worldviews.  A trend gathering steam nationwide teaches conflict resolution based on “restorative justice.” Though traditionally applied in criminal situations, progressives are adapting the technique to the classroom.

If not stopped, school-based “restorative justice” will cast yet another generation morally adrift, but this time like 1960s flower children on steroids. America will have to deal with widespread societal implications.

The question is not whether the police should advise suspects of their rights, but whether the Constitution requires them to do so. It plainly doesn't, so the Court has had to offer hopelessly serpentine opinions to disguise its policy preferences as constitutional mandates, appealing not to the text of the Constitution but to nebulous "penumbras" and "emanations."

The rule of law is supposed to be predictable. The Supreme Court is anything but. The clearest proof that we live under the rule of men, not law, is that the Court has become an oracle. If you want to guess how it will rule in a given case, reading the Constitution will be no help at all in anticipating its whims.

I kicked off my summer reading program with “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin, Appleton, WI: American Opinion (1994). Seasons change but my reading never stops.

No, this is not a “B” novel. It is a very readable history of the creation and workings of the Federal Reserve System. The title refers to Jekyll Island off the Georgia coast where a clandestine meeting in Novermber 1910 attended by an elite group of financiers gave birth to the Federal Reserve. This is the unbelievable story of smoke and mirrors; pulleys, cogs and wheels that create the grand illusion called money.

One of the arguments for healthcare reform is that millions of Americans with employer-provided healthcare are underinsured. Proponents of this view are saying that people are underinsured if they are paying too many of their healthcare costs out-of-pocket. Quite the contrary, a little reflection on what insurance is and is supposed to do suggests that the problem is really the opposite: many, if not most Americans are overinsured—they have too much health insurance coverage!

Socialism’s barren arguments and addle-headed proponents offer an opportunity for capitalists to espouse the free market. As countries around the world watch their economies tank as a result of failed socialist policies, the field is ripe for a new evangelization of economic freedom. Because leftists refuse to present either socialism or capitalism fairly, we must teach those closest to us about capitalism. Anglo-French writer-historian Hilaire Belloc wrote that “to control the production of wealth is to control human life itself.” Unless the greatness of the free market is proclaimed often by those who know the truth, the paternalistic elitists will control every aspect of our lives.

Liberals don't like the constitutional plan; they regard it as a "reactionary" obstacle to "progressive" (read: limitless) government. So they have adopted a clever strategy of arbitrarily inflating a few pet phrases in the document to nullify the rest, thereby making nonsense of the whole and frustrating its purpose of preventing monopolistic government.

But conservatives - and honest people generally - ought to know better.

Last week was a great week for lesbians coming out of the closet – coming out, that is, as middle-aged heterosexual men. On Sunday, Amina Arraf, the young vivacious Syrian lesbian activist whose inspiring blog “A Gay Girl In Damascus” had captured hearts around the world, was revealed to be, in humdrum reality, one Tom MacMaster, a 40-year old college student from Georgia. 

You can learn a lot from the deceptions a society chooses to swallow. “Amina Arraf” was a fiction who fit the liberal worldview. That’s because the liberal worldview is a fiction.

U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, state had a 2010 GDP of about $35 billion, Governor Dalrymple and his wife, Sociologists will dissect the differences, Somalis in Minnesota and ND, base realignment and closure. Enjoy flooding!, Puppy Dog Coulee, a throbbing hangover, compensation of regional health care executives, Amtrak service in Rugby - Devils Lake and Grand Forks, school bus racing, UND Fighting Sioux nickname, People of ND “want the name”, Global Electric Motorcar

America no longer requires immigration (nor can afford the cost of its support) and the third-world immigration we are seeing today is not assimilating, nor, indeed, assimilable.  It is heavily weighted in anti-American outlook, in contrast with that of a century ago.  We don’t need this. It is destructive of America and if we don’t discuss it now, tomorrow may be too late.  We are fast reaching a critical mass of alien culture in many communities.  “Multiculturalism” is being substituted by our leaders for American values and our own law and Constitution.  Shall Americans choose “diversity” or freedom and American culture?  One must replace the other.  We cannot, by definition, have both.

Will Americans Exchange American Values and Freedom for “Multiculturalism”?

Thanks to Leon Malberg of Dickinson

Pop was larger-than-life. Born in Nebraska in 1904, he epitomized the strong, silent prototype of the era. As a father-figure, he was stern and strict—no touchy-feely stuff. Pop believed that the school of hard knocks is the best educator. Disdaining cautionary warnings, he stood aside while I took my knocks. Pops lived for duty. There was right and wrong, and it was his duty—and mine—to do right.

Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson—celebrates his Pop’s lifetime of service to others while recalling a few of his memorable encounters with celebrities, including: a young Mitt Romney and his father, George, then Michigan’s governor; the notorious Detroit-area mobster Santo “Sam” Perrone; and the only American gold medalist at the ’64 winter Olympics.

Jefferson is so often cited and embraced both by liberals and other assorted progressives as well as conservatives and libertarians. Yet, Jefferson held some beliefs that don’t square with today’s liberal progressive thinking. To illustrate, here are some revealing quotes by Jefferson suggesting his probable opposition to some contemporary signature policies if he were alive today.

This November the citizens of San Francisco will decide whether to ban circumcision, a practice that dates from antiquity and is embraced by at least three of the world’s major religions. Now, the fact that something stretches far back into human history is by no means a guarantee that it has social value. Slavery, human sacrifice, and arranged marriages for adolescents also have long histories, but, thankfully, are no longer accepted by Western societies. The question is whether circumcision belongs on this list. It doesn’t. The root issues are not medical, but political.

An Arizona State University professor wants to train physical scientists to be social engineers. Political science professor David Guston contends that “stakeholders” in academia and industry should work with consumers and the feds to manage the “societal implications” of “environmental health and safety issues” surrounding certain technological breakthroughs. Private sector engineers would team with government bureaucrats to fashion industry regulation. The approach would turbo-charge an existing culture of crony capitalism. Guston calls his concept “anticipatory governance.” Clear thinkers call it scary.

C.S. Lewis was alarmed by another development we now take for granted: state control of education. He wrote: "I believe a man is happier, and happy in a richer way, if he has 'the free-born mind.' But I doubt whether he can have this without economic independence, which the new society is abolishing. For economic independence allows an education not controlled by Government; and in adult life it is the man who needs, and asks, nothing of government who can criticize its acts and snap his fingers at its ideology.

The Right needs to watch its collective tongue and maintain the integrity of our language.  Why walk to the beat of the civilization destroyers’ drummer?  If the left wants to manipulate the language, we should let them descend into a parallel universe of linguistic insanity without us.

As for the subordination of Truth to agendas, to do it is to confess error.  For a man who cannot stand on Truth is one who is standing behind a lie.  It is a compulsion born of a very dark spirit, indeed.

The Americans that I respect understand that “a commitment is a commitment”; that honorable people do not just drop an engagement for a more attractive “mission”. We can’t just wave a wand and turn our fine military into Acorn workers! Thank God for the leaders in our military that understand that the words commitment, honor, and sacrifice mean something…and for the fine troops that sign up voluntarily to protect us from evil throughout the world. And as for left wing reporters…they can all just go to hell.