Dakota Beacon

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.  

The FDA is a regulatory agency - the Food and Drug Administration.  Its job is to oversee the safety of our foods and our drugs, obviously.  It has all too often colluded with those it is supposed to regulate.  We have seen some very unhealthy relationships.  Dr. Peter Breggin, in his book, Talking Back to Prozac, investigated the approval of one drug and its attendant folly.  But this is not unusual and we have seen it in abundance throughout the "covid vaccine" process.  Trump, of course, was no help, in that he basically tore down the protections we should expect of such an agency.  But it is not just the FDA.  It is also a related insitution, the CDC - Centers for Disease Control - supposedly a research arm, dedicated, it claims, to finding the truth about the spread of diseases in our population, their causes, their treatment or cures, providing statistical evidence.  We have come to learn that we are being deceived by this entity, to our great harm.  It is as corrupt as any within the scope of our government.

Following the tragic death of U.S. veteran, Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021, by the hand of an officer named Michael Byrd, Kevin Cramer was a guest on the Jared Thomas Show on Grand Forks' KNOX radio.  When a caller asked him to name the shooter who killed her, Cramer had this to say:  “The person that shot her is a police officer shooting a criminal not complying with officers telling her, ‘Stop. Don’t come through that window. We have guns drawn. Don’t do it.’ They’re protecting people, and the officer was found to be innocent of any wrongdoing. So then what would be the purpose of releasing that officer’s name? What do you need to know the officer’s name for?”

I am a Goldwater Republican as opposed to a Rockefeller Republican. Most of you probably know the difference but for those who don’t let me clarify. A Rockefeller Republican tends toward a position of power and control where a Goldwater opts for principles which protect liberty and individual freedom. And the proof is in the pudding. 

A significant number of Republican leaders do not represent the latter viewpoint.

Why? I believe because many of those who we’ve elected to represent us aren’t listening.

For the five or so years leading up to the "covid 19" takover of the news outlets, the scandal in Britain, involving its mostly Muslim rape gangs and the plight of its defenseless schoolgirls, was capturing the attention of many throughout the West.  Tommy Robinson, crusader for the rights of these children to safety and protection, was repeatedly jailed for his efforts.  The constabulary was known for looking the other way - even when the rapers were caught in the act!  Raping a child in a car was okay with these "law enforcement officers", the courts ran interference for the upper-class tycoons and no one - certainly not the "royal family" said boo about it.  There is a problem for many Americans, however, when this mentality is imported to the U.S.  And there should be.  That is what 1776 was all about.  We are a different people.

The question in question won’t cut any ice (pun intended) with those emotionally invested in the doom-and-gloom global warming thesis. After all, “You cannot reason a man out of a position he has not reasoned himself into,” to paraphrase Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift. But with the more open-minded majority, the question can turn down the heat on the fear.

If you listen to the leadership of the Republican Party in ND you might think things are a lot worse than they are –or at least what’s going on calls for more radical and even ridiculous measures to “keep things under control.”  

What am I referring to?

For starters, name-calling and marginalization of some of the conservative voices of the party.  

It is downright disheartening to hear groups called “a clown show” or even “anarchists”!  

And if that’s not bad enough, having a "code of conduct" to adhere to which discourages disagreement and debate and calls for individuals to report “unruly” behavior to the chairman! 

This is not a scene out of some conspiracy—it’s actually happening and I want to publicly call these people out!  We’re not even going to get into a host of other questionable actions by the Republican leadership.

Some of us have been perplexed at the seemingly counter-productive and counter-intuitive behavior of our health care providers.  When a patient is being written off and his family is told that the plug is about to be pulled on his life support, why don't they try everything else?  What have they got to lose?  If a family member wants to try Ivermectin, why not?  Well, it turns out they have a hell of a lot to lose if they allow a good and useful drug into the picture in our hospitals.  That has been forbidden by your government.  That's right.  Last week Scott Quiner was barely clinging to life on a ventilator.  Aside from difficulty breathing there wasn't a thing wrong with him.  His wife wanted to try some traditional treatments, inasmuch as the hsopital protocols were killing the man.  Fortunately, public outrage shamed or intimidated the hospital into allowing Quiner to escape.  He had been held as a prisoner on death row there for weeks.  Now he is getting decent care in another institution out of state.  (Doctors there are quoted as saying they have never seen a patient so malnourished.  The intent was to kill him.)  Why??? we ask - why would a hospital and doctors want to kill their patient?  The answer lies in arithmetic, Watson.  Nothing happens without a reason.

Most of us hold an opinion regarding the state of American culture in the 21^st century. Many of us formed our opinion based on sources other than the dominant, albeit sinking, news media.

This week The Passing Scene was inspired by a piece appearing on a respected website, The American Thinker (https://www.americanthinker.com). Without debate, a decline in American culture may be measured. For the purpose of metrics, consider the following.

On January 17, we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. for his leadership in combating racial segregation and securing civil rights for African Americans. To celebrate Rev. King’s remarkable work, Dr. Paul Kengor examines a theory that is making headlines, critical race theory, and asks an important question: How did MLK do what he did without CRT?

It's time for dinner, Senator Cramer.  Would you like a little gravy with that?   

As 2022 begins chugging out of the station, we seem to be surrounded by an atmosphere of "broken-ness".  Things aren't working.  Our grocery store shelves are beginning to be bare.  Our kids are not learning anything worthwhile in school but are instead learning that they are "in the wrong body".  Our health care system is totally upside down and many are beginning to distrust even the motives of supposed "health care providers".  We have allowed "our" government to put Dr. Death, Anthony Fauci, in charge of our nation's health care.  Last week a Minnesota man, on life support in a Coon Rapids hospital, was about to be murdered.  Thankfully, he got a second chance - only because a regional independent reporter, Stew Peters, made it public and public outrage plus some timely legal intervention, forced the institution to allow this innocent prisoner to leave and seek better care somewhere else - that is to say, they backed away from murdering him once the spotlight was put on them.  We are engulfed, it seems, with various kinds of dysfunction.  Our police do not stop shoplifters but they do act to shut down businesses and fine owners.  People have been holding their breath as to whether they would have a job to support themselves, awaiting the pronouncement of the Supreme Court.  We all seem to be held prisoners but the prison is of our own making.

I have just finished reading Victor Davis Hanson’s new book The Dying Citizen. If you read only one book this year, this is the book to read. It was largely written between 2018 through early 2020 although the accumulated research extends much earlier. Hanson’s views cannot be dismissed as mere “conspiracy theories.” Nonsense! He is far too intelligent and well-read for that. As an eminent historian and classicist he authored several dozen well received books. They offer a range of material dealing with the comparison of historical and current demographics and cultural customs.

He begins his book with the history of the concept of citizenship and then explains the forces trying to destroy that idea today. Hanson summarizes hugely important historically significant events in an incredibly clear manner. His footnotes, short essays in themselves, document his assertions.

People seem to have become deeply invested in fear.  Fear and authoritarianism.  Because we have all seen screaming karens, their masks hanging under their chins while they abuse others for not wearing theirs.  We have heard about teachers taping masks to kids' faces, a mother - a schoolteacher, no less - stowing her young son in the trunk of her car for fear of covid because the boy "tested positive".  We have also seen people lining up and sitting for hours in their cars in order to get a stick up their noses to tell them if they are sick or not.  How weird is that?  Worse, we have seen our entire economy disrupted, first through shutting our businesses (at least our local, Main Street businesses) down and now through a ridiculous attempt at "mandating" unwanted "vaccines" on unwilling subjects against the Constitution and international law, resulting in mass exodus from services such as transportation of goods.  Yet we see the very people responsible for these draconian orders partying without masks - AOC at drag queen bars in Miami, Gavin Newsom at the French Laundry restaurant in LA, the exalted Obamas partying it up on Martha's Vineyard.  So we all know damn well that none of this has to do with "protecting" anyone.  It is entirely about controlling people.  The masks, the "vaccines", the shutdowns and isolation, the curfews, the censorship.  It is all a matter of a few elites attempting to control the rest of us.  It needs to stop today.  Right now.