Dakota Beacon

On Thursday, February 23, the two-week-long, nonstop religious revival at tiny Asbury University in rural Wilmore, Kentucky saw its official end. Starting with about 20 students who stayed after a regular campus chapel service, tens of thousands had been drawn from across the country in that short span to participate in almost radically simple prayer, singing, and worship. By then, this “awakening” was reported to have spread to several other religious colleges.

In what even the most religiously cynical person must admit is a surprising coincidence, Jesus Revolution — a film exploring the genesis of the Jesus Movement that began among drugged-out hippies in the late 1960s in California and rapidly spread nationally and even internationally — hit the theaters the very next day. It has already quadrupled original box office expectations, grossing almost $33 million in slightly under two weeks. Not bad for a small-budget independent film with only one big-name actor.

The timing of the tragic Nashville shooting, in which a MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status, aka “transgender”) individual killed six at a Christian school, is a bit odd. National Public Radio had just recently done a piece on how MUSS and other “LGBTQ” people are buying guns because, the story goes, they believe they’re imperiled by conservatives. As one sexual devolutionary NPR quoted put it, “If the world is dangerous, then you have to be dangerous back, and that very much has pushed me into where I am now.

More guns or more dead bodies . . . it's the question that divides Americans, or, more precisely, keeps splattering them.  This week, in Nashville, another tragedy took place.  An unhinged shooter attacked a school and left six dead.  We have seen it all before.  Yet we keep strenuously avoiding the obvious solution to this and we keep seeing grieving families and traumatised kids . . . and the loss of precious lives.

Many share the sense that our republic slowly slips away like grains of sand through fingers. The voters have supposedly permitted a few powerful politicians with utopian visions to direct the lives of the many. Whether to control our health, wealth, or the climate around us, these powerful few seek to fulfill their vision of what is best for the rest.

So it is with immigration. The US open borders with millions of new residents having arrived over the past two years serves as a means to an end. They will soon become voters by hook or by crook.

Earlier this month, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Is the problem worse than just SVB’s troubles? Is the entire banking system in jeopardy? In this article, economist Dr. Jeffrey Herbener explains how the potential for moral hazard permeates the system. He writes, “What’s needed is fundamental reform. When will we abandon the foolish path of enacting policies that extend the scope of moral hazard?”

We need to stop this bill dead in its tracks ASAP.  In a misguided attempt to thwart the Chinese company TikTok, the U.S. Senate is considering a really ugly bill.  It would turn us all into slaves right here at home.  If we have a problem with China it is presumably because of their terrible human rights abuses.  In order to block them our own Senate would institute the same human rights abuses at home.  I hope people will abandon TikTok.  It is a waste of our lives.  However, we cannot fight back by turning America into a prison.

Recently, actor-cum-commentator Ben Stein was condemned in media for touting the “progress” the U.S. has made and saying that black Americans “never had it so good.” One website called his remarks a “racist rant” even though he was, in keeping with his personality, just calmly expressing his opinion. The worst thing about this story, though, isn’t that Stein may become a cancel-culture casualty.

There are several states which are now basically rogue territory - where children can be legally kidnapped from their parents and abused, mutilated and left to suffer . . . and parents are helpless.  There can be no worse torture than to see your child abused and be denied the right to protect him.  That is a parent's prmary job.  These laws are denying children their childhood, they are robbing parents of their fundamental right to care for and protect them and to impart their beliefs and values.  What will be next?  After physically mutilating children everything else seems anti-climactic, but any views or values held by parents that they wish to share with their own kids are now likely to become contraband as well.  It is the death of civilization in America.  And this does not affect merely the children in these states - it potentially endangers children anywhere in the U.S.  This legislation must be stopped.  Tomorrow, in Minnesota, there will be a vote on just such a bill - HB-146.  It must be stopped.  Whether you reside in Minnesota or not, this affects you and your rights.  We must all take action to end this abuse now.

Another Saint Patrick’s Day has come and gone and with it the frills and falderal of superficiality. However, for descendants of the Irish who know their history, Saint Patrick’s Day becomes a significant commemoration. Looking past the silly tales of leprechauns, shamrocks, and green beer exists the account of a people’s struggle and triumph. The Irish offer a superb example of how a persecuted people with a fighting spirit can succeed against all odds enduring centuries of mistreatment. Irishmen can thank their patron saint not so much for driving snakes off the island but for sustaining their faith through centuries of hardship.

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In an act of breathtaking arrogance and high-handedness, the Grand Forks City Council rejected a petition from Grand Forks citizens deeply concerned about its planned project to establish a supposed wet corn milling plant under control of Communist China, next door to the Air Base which has been a major sustaining element in the City for nearly 70 years.   When, belatedly, the Air Force finally bothered to look at the national security implications of this ill-advised project and gave it their thumbs-down, the City Council was left holding the bag.  They need to be held accountable.  A vote would have cleared the air and spread the blame around if the city had won the vote.  As it stands, the people were ridden over and their voice silenced in the city government's haste to satisfy their greed for this.  If a threatened lawsuit is undertaken by the Chinese-controlled company, justice would demand that those who said "no" to the vote really ought to bear the entire cost for this personally.  This is how we can make government responsive.

Last week, I spoke with a lifelong friend. He has lived in western Canada for almost 50 years, and he was in Phoenix staying at the home of another lifelong friend. Rick flew to Phoenix to arrange for knee-replacement surgery. This was interesting from the perspective that several decades ago, he had spoken enthusiastically about Canada’s government-run “free health care” system. (Note: Of course, the health care system isn’t free. It is financed via taxation. But the out-of-pocket expense for any treatment—what we economists call “the marginal cost”—is essentially zero, i.e., free.)

So, if Canada provides surgery for free, why would Rick fly all the way to Phoenix where, as he had been told earlier via telephone, he would have to pay $25,000 for the operation? The answer is obvious to anyone who understands Economics 101: If a price is held below the market-clearing price where supply meets demand, there will be an excess of demand over supply—in plain English, a shortage.

We are relentlessly being herded to the brink of nuclear war with Russia.  Why??  Who is making the big bucks on this?  Or is it just basically a path to more government power grabbing at the expense of our freedom here?  All we know for sure is that there is absolutely no good reason for one American dollar or one American bullet or one American life to be spent in Ukraine.

English long ago established itself as a rich, versatile, and descriptive language. I used to tell my granddaughter, “Play with words. But when you are done, clean them off and put them back on the shelf.”

Definition of farce: a comic dramatic work using buffoonery, horseplay, and typically including crude characterizations and ludicrously improbable situations. Synonyms include parody, mockery, and sham.

Definition of sham: a thing that is not what it purports to be. Synonyms include pretense, false, and phony.

Now, witness the coming together of two recent news events. Then invoke your verbal poison. First consider the piecemeal drip, drip, drip of the Twitter files released by Elon Musk.

“A pox on both their houses,” we may say, when wishing both sides in a contest could lose. I surely feel this way, too, with the “transgender” vs. feminist debate over men masquerading as female entering women’s sports and private spaces.

Oh, I don’t fence-sit. Not only have I likely written more pieces on preposterous “transgenderism” than most any other commentator, but I even reject the term and coined a more accurate characterization of the phenomenon — the MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status) agenda. Yet I also know this:

While leftists may call that agenda a men’s-rights-movement monster, the foundation for it absolutely was laid by feminists.

With a nation in obvious decline, reeling under unimaginable debt, crime and drugs out of control, hideous porn being pushed on our elementary school children, the virtual elimination of our own borders, warmongering and terrorist behavior undertaken by our own government, our people becoming injured and dying from experimental vaccines and their mandates, soaring inflation, record lows in military recruitment, our reputation on the world stage in tatters and the erosion of our rights as American citizens under our sacred Constitution before our very eyes, one would think that the time is ripe for the mother of all backlashes.  The Republican Party has never been in a better position to score and be the instrument of America's salvation.  The problem is that although the will to fight back is in the people, party leadership is running interference in the cynical belief that they know better - we just are too simple and unsophisticated to be trusted.   And the problem with that, is that their practices and policies have served no one better than their Democrat "opposition".

In June, members of the United Nations observe the International Day of Family Remittances. This day receives little attention in the United States—a day that recognizes more than 200 million migrant workers, women and men, who send money home to over 800 million family members. In this article, Dr. John Sparks details remittances and argues that governments in the countries of the recipient families must resist the temptation to tax the money. He writes, “Taxing and excessive regulation of these remittance providers will stall the engine of private, migrant-funded aid that will continue to help reduce poverty in many nations.”  

Daylight savings time (DST) represents a bi-partisan legislative effort providing for an artificial determination of time, a hodgepodge at best. In the US, DST begins the second Sunday in March and reverts to standard time the first Sunday in November. Exceptions: Hawaii and Arizona do not observe DST -- but the Navajo Nation in Arizona does.

If anyone should be held accountable for DST, Ben Franklin of kites-and-lightning fame must accept the credit or take the blame. Mr. Franklin conceived the idea while in Paris. One morning, rudely awakened by a noise at 6:00 a.m., he was amazed to find his room filled with light. Even more amazing was the amount of daylight lost to those traditionally arising around noon. His idea struck him like a bolt of lightning, so to speak. Whimsically he wrote of his idea in “Journal de Paris” going so far as to calculate potential monetary savings if people arose earlier and capitalized on existing daylight.

Graf Otto Von Bismarck famously observed that we should not see laws or sausages being made.  I would not disagree.  I would add to that. We should not see the machinations of the Minnesota State Republican organziation.  The people of northwestern Minnesota deserve better.

Between August 1964 and February 1973, during the Vietnam era, more than 1.8 million men were drafted. Currently, there is no draft. But, if there were a draft, almost all men aged between 18 and 25 who are US citizens or immigrants living in the US will be required to register with a few exceptions. To date, there has been little interest by Congress to reinstate the draft. BUT -- Congress can do so at any time.

The end of “universal” conscription in 1973 also ended military service as we knew it. Eliminating the draft in 1973 had little to do with national security and everything to do with domestic politics. It was a political ploy by the American Right against the American anti-war Left and the ploy worked. With the end of the draft, the anti-war movement collapsed.

Just how much economic ignorance is compatible with human flourishing? We may soon find out. In this article, economist Dr. Caleb Fuller details recent headlines that demonstrate a wide range of economic illiteracy. Fuller uses the example of rent control to highlight many fallacies. He writes, “You’ll search high and low before finding an economist who believes rent control exhibits a tight link between intentions and outcomes.”

A discussion of Milton’s classic “Paradise Lost” came to my attention simply due to providence. I had begun to write my review of Ibram Kendi’s bestselling book, “How to be an Antiracist”, but was jolted from that task by the Epoch Times article that perfectly set up the book review in a way that I never could have on my own. Devine Intervention has permeated my life so there is no reason it should not arrive abruptly at this endeavor.

This week I caught myself gazing lackadaisically out of the window with a cup of coffee in hand. Spring, the eventual conqueror, will soon break forth in all her glory. One of Robert Browning’s sonnets begins, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Forgive the personification, but that’s how much I love spring.

Life stirs in spring and the Great Outdoors takes on verve and vitality. Forgotten sounds of kids playing outside, lawn mowers mowing, and birds singing all signal the cycle of the seasons. All life displays a new zest for living.

In Part One, Grove City College Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Peter Frank ’95 detailed how Grove City College is expanding a commitment to the liberal arts as the foundation of the student experience. In Part Two, Frank examines Grove City College’s historic commitment to freedom and how this commitment is purposely conveyed to each generation of students through the unique core curriculum. He writes, “Freedom to act is a necessary condition for a prosperous society, but it is not sufficient alone for a virtuous one. The cultivation of a moral framework, enhanced by a Christian liberal arts education, is what will lead to the actions that build a thriving society.”

The tax man’s near, and soon is here, and all must pay their due;

From each his wealth will extract a pelf -- oh my, it makes us blue.

Some taxes sure are necessary, but many of them are not;

Each person stands as their own tax base, it’s really all they’ve got.

Taxes were spent, and where they went, were for entitlements;

Most were bequeathed on “entitlees” claiming impoverishment.

Confessions of Modern Day Patriot

I have a confession to make… I love history!

I had a conversation with a historian friend of mine and he shared with me the power of Calvin Coolidge speech given on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence... Please do me a favor and read this... could be one of the most powerful messages in the history of our Great Republic!

Every February, the nation celebrates Black History Month to honor the triumphs and struggles of African Americans throughout history. In this article, scholar Dr. Gary Scott Smith highlights one man who helped build a better America: Jackie Robinson. Smith writes, “Robinson’s legacy is extraordinary because it consists of a Hall of Fame baseball career, a pioneering role in promoting civil rights, and the creation of several businesses that benefited African Americans. Inspired by his Christian faith, Robinson helped smash racial barriers not only on the baseball diamond but also in politics, business, religion, and society.”

I'm not making any promises, but I thought it would be fun to return just this once to my Sunday specials.  I was inspired by a movie.

Once in a blue moon someone comes out with a movie that is really worth the time to see.  I'd say Puss in Boots "The Last Wish" falls into that category.  It's not only a colorful adventure story based on the classic fairytale character, it is a poignant statement about what is important in life - when you have only one to live.  There's a lot more along the way in terms of witty dialogue and clever supporting characters.  It's worth it just for Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  It ain't woke, quite the opposite - it's fun, with a moral to it, and great entertainment.  What's not to like?  A love story, an attempted heist, a really scary villain (or two) and some great swashbuckling action.  Go see it!  

To show partiality in judgment is not good. Proverbs 24:23

There is nothing more dangerous to authoritarianism than a principle applied impartially.

Authoritarianism thrives on group bias. Thus, one of the cures for authoritarianism is a willingness to be fair to your opponents, to judge both your own group and their group with the same lens. Like a fungus exposed to constant fresh air, authoritarianism simply cannot survive when a sustained principle is fairly applied to all sides. The danger of authoritarianism is one of the many reasons that to show partiality in judgment is not good.