Dakota Beacon

Take note of the number “2.1.” That is the fertility rate of live births per woman needed to sustain any nation’s stable population – no growth, no decline, just even. For many developed nations this number became critical decades ago and these nations are ageing fast.

More than a jest, the US has already reached this breakeven point. Other nations have fallen seriously below the number that would otherwise sustain them: US 1.62; Canada 1.48; Europe overall, 1.38; Japan, 1.32; Germany 1.25; Russia, 1.14; and South Korea, which has fallen below 1.0.

Demographers note a correlation between a deterioration in the post-Christian era’s values and a drop in the birthrate in Western civilization. The Apostle Paul spoke of faith, hope, and love as Christian virtues that must endure. Where these qualities have declined in the face of a more secular society, so has the birth rate. 

It is interesting, isn’t it, that so many of the same people who are calling for “reparations” for today’s black people who might be descendants of enslaved blacks 150 years and more ago, are also demanding that we allow more migrants because we “need” their labor?

Pierre Poilivre had a challenging task but without Trump’s interference and premature imposing of devastating tariffs, he stood a very good chance of success - the best chance in decades. 

Whether it’s a nuclear equation or a chemical reaction, it all comes down to power. Plain and simple. Either Jesus Christ had enough power to put down the enemy’s attempts to thwart his demonstration of the power to overcome death and hell or he didn’t.

Period.

Easter offers a time to reflect on the reality of Christ and the blessings flowing from a Christian culture. You may find the following instances refreshing to ponder. A Christian culture spawned these blessings.

This rich endowment comes from the impact of the Gospel spread by those who believed in, lived by, and sacrificed for that Gospel. They accepted Jesus Christ for who He said He was. Collectively and corporately over the centuries they formed a culture.

Today, whether from naiveté, historical illiteracy, or the voiding of traditions and conventions, western culture has become separated from an awareness of its own roots. Even Easter has become a casualty. Faced with mounting criticism and reproach, the Christian significance of Easter morphed into something rather secular.

Implications persist from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was not raised to institute a social welfare system or establish a university of wellbeing. The scripture record makes clear that God’s Son, Jesus Christ, came to restore and preserve a relationship with His creation. No preaching or theological diatribe here. Just recounting the written record, the New Testament, pointing to a mystery being revealed within believers every day.

As we traveled across America, I couldn’t help but think of the mothers of a trucker praying that their son or daughter gets home safely from that trip. While I drove many miles in those two trips, truckers do that every week, every month, every year. 

Whether it is fresh produce from California, steel to a manufacturing plant, gasoline to a fueling station, water to a frack site or wheat from a field to an elevator, we as Americans or North Dakotans would not have food to eat, gas to drive or products to sell if that trucker didn’t deliver the goods. We live and die by that trucker traversing across this great land we call America.

“From the mouths of babes and infants You have established strength....” (Psalm 8:2). A conversation overheard last week reminded me of the Psalmist words. What comes from the lips of children may be more riddle than wisdom. Even so, what children utter innocently and in ignorance may strengthen our own understanding and wisdom.

Everyone appreciates a good riddle now and then. Solving a riddle requires careful attention. In the wording, in the logic, or in both exists the key to solving a riddle. Sometimes words may hold a double meaning; sometimes the logic may “slip a cog.”

Kids sometimes speak in riddles. Imagine for a moment that you were with me last week when we overheard two kids talking. A teenager (Billy) waxed eloquently trying to impress his younger brother (Joe) with his wisdom of scant years. What I heard posed a riddle as the conversation went something like this:

The kicker is that anti-discrimination law doesn’t even eliminate all unjust discrimination—only discrimination the government doesn’t approve. That is, the law establishes “protected classes”; ergo, there are also unprotected classes, in what was meant to be a classless society. So if you don’t want that drag queen working at your daycare center, a costly lawsuit may be nigh. But if someone refuses to serve or hire you because you’re conservative (or liberal), unattractive, poor or a multitude of other things, well, tough luck. In other words, the government itself is discriminating—among types of discrimination.

Some may say that anti-discrimination law was at one time necessary (debatable). Even if so, however, those days are long past. Forced association is not free association, and coerced service likely won’t be good service—and does a disservice to the causes of liberty, fraternity and market-choice clarity.

Today Americans stare wide-eyed at the largest US internal migration -- ever. People leave the so-called “blue states” and move to “red states”. Some prefer the political climate of the red states. Others move in search of a more favorable social atmosphere.

Social and political reasons certainly count. But ultimately reasons can be traced to poor governance. People are sick and tired of the blue state economic environment – specifically the high taxes and the frittering away of their tax dollars. Bad economic policies drive cost of living higher, raise housing prices, and restrict job opportunities.

Tonight, the Duke Blue Devils will take to the hardwood in a Sweet 16 matchup against the Arizona Wildcats in the NCAA D1 March Madness tournament. It is an annual basketball event that generates billions of dollars. As often is the case, when money enters the equation, things change. Case in point, the NCAA and the relatively new NIL money and transfer portal for athletes. One of Duke’s players reportedly receives $4.8 million in NIL money.

In this article, Dr. James Thrasher examines the current state of college athletics and argues, “Amateur sports used to be played for the love of the game and devotion to the logo on the front of the jersey. But now it has devolved into chasing titles and worshipping the idol of money.”

$100 bills stacked to the same height as the earth’s circumference.

To visualize that amount of money, consider that 366,461,400,000 $100 bills (each 0.0043 inches thick) would be 24,870 miles in height, just under the earth’s circumference of 24,901 miles.

It seems as if almost a third of our fellow citizens are afflicted with a self-worship mentality. A diverse arrangement of dis-functional “Values” that bear no resemblance to actual Virtue or Virtuousness.

A lack of belief in something larger than one’s self leaves these misfits with an overly inflated ego and a perverted sense of right and wrong that is an open invitation to either Marxism’s army of useful idiots (DEI, CRT) or a room with bed only in the Perversion Motel.

Lower tier federal judges are inserting themselves into the executive policy making process. Federal judges who ruled against President Donald Trump’s recent executive actions are notably Democrat appointees.

Some have been activists, others steeped in Democrat politics, and one clerked for then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor. They have something in common. These judges have issued rulings to block Trump’s policies on immigration, federal spending, the Department of Government Efficiency, and other efforts.

After an early retirement from Falkirk Mine and several years in Airports at KLJ, my lifelong interest in politics was about to blossom in 2004. With over 60 of 100 Senators in Washington, D.C. distilled (like cheap moonshine) from the legal profession, my first inclination was Shakespeare’s “The first thing we have to do is kill all the lawyers.” Replacing some of them in the Senate with “productive members of society” was my initial motivation.

Awhile back a headline proclaimed: “Conservatives Still Outnumber Moderates, Liberals.” At that time, a Gallup poll showed 43% Americans describe themselves as conservative, 35% moderate and 20% liberal. What caught my eye was the labeling of the categories as “ideologies.”

This announcement coincided with something I was reading. Specifically, I discovered one of the finest descriptions of conservatism I’ve ever seen. This was in a chapter of a book by British author Michael Oakeshott (1901-1991). He was among the most notable political philosophers of the twentieth century. The chapter “On Being Conservative” is contained in his book of essays titled “Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays” (1962).

They were fighting for their families, children, grandchildren, for their futures and their freedom.  This was the steel of the American cause of independence.  Where some of the eastern seaboard elite of the American colonies, Washington’s own class, had little respect for these poor and foreign Irish, Washington himself rejected these prejudices out of hand.

Take a break from the routine and enjoy this oldie but goodie.

It was autumn 1949. A family drove north from Cheyenne across Wyoming headed for South Dakota and the Black Hills. To the right-front, just off the right-of-way along US Highway 85 south of Chugwater, Wyoming, a series of small wooden signs bore the message of the first brushless shave cream.

The over-60 crowd will remember Burma Shave. Younger generations may need help. Back when the highways were just two lanes, and there were no Interstate Highways, the white and red signs were a welcome sight. Jingles offered safe driving tips concluding with “Burma Shave.” Here are some samples:

The North Dakota state budget has doubled in the past decade from approximately $10 billion to $20 billion. Based on my calculations we could easily spend $30 or $40 billion.

While the Legislature has built up fund balances (some required by initiated measure, like the Legacy Fund), it is critical it strikes the right balance between supporting current citizens and future generations with this once-in-a-lifetime pot of gold found beneath our feet. It will take courage for legislators to say no to all the wants.

To quote C.S. Lewis, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.” North Dakotans must speak out and hold their legislators accountable for their spending frenzy.

If we don’t, the handwriting is on the wall. Not if but when the commodity market dips and agriculture and energy take a hit, we will find ourselves in the same predicament as the federal governmen.

To reassure my non-believer friends, and remember I once was one of you, yes, I know the vast majority of you are not psychopaths. As I’ve illustrated, however, this is because you don’t truly live your atheism and all its implications. And even insofar as a few of you might have thought matters through and concluded we’re just “really cool robots,” you (thankfully) don’t feel this on an emotional level. You don’t live down to your beliefs.

 So, then, what of my article’s title? After all, some who don’t recognize God then do in practice have respect for human life. The answer lies in a twist on a George Washington saying about morality. To wit: “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that national morality respect for life can be maintained without religion.” (Of course, respect for life is part of morality.) As is said in commercials, “Individual results may vary.” But the national (collective) picture is clear: The more we mainstream godlessness, the more it and its corollaries will permeate not just minds but hearts. This is why a very sober atheist, whose thoughts I read decades ago, expressed concern over his creed’s wider embrace. He grasped its implications.

A new sheriff in town holds pro-sanctuary government officials and their activist disciples liable for harboring and protecting criminal illegal aliens.

Three categories of anti- Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) proponents include federal agency leakers, pro-illegal alien activists, and state and local pro-sanctuary government officials. They identify as hindering operations that target the illegal alien criminal population.

The Sioux name ascribed commonly to the self-named Dakota tribe represents an evolution from the Algonquinian word Nadowessiwag, meaning the “snakelike ones” or, in other words, the “enemies.” This Agonquinian term was erroneously transcribed by French explorer Jean Nicollet (1598 - 29 October 1642) in 1634-35 as Naduesiu, and again erroneously transcribed by Franciscan missionary Louis Hennepin (May 12, 1526 – 1701) in 1683 as Nadiousioux.

Two points, then, are to be made. First, any attempt to honor the tribe should reference its preferred name, Dakota, not necessarily the name that evolved from the name it was called by the Algonquins of Canada that references snakelike ones or enemies.

If we took a map of Ukraine and Russia and the two parties drew lines to show what they wanted you would probably see exactly what is on the map today with no changes.  Yet more than half a million innocent people have died, the nation’s economy and infrastructure and cultural heritage have been destroyed and worse, yet, the institutions of free speech and all that go with it have died there.  Perhaps never to return.  All for nothing.  At least nothing on a map.  But all for some foreign special interest, schemes of kickbacks and whatever else it takes to entice people to kill for it.

Should we really be cheering for Karoline Leavitt's $1 billion lawsuit against The View and Sunny Hostin et al just because we don't like The View and its panel of crazy ladies?  And just because Leavitt is on "our" side?  If we really want an end of lawfare and an end of the malignant cancel culture that has stifled debate in America in recent years, we should not applaud Leavitt for her tactics.  Sure, the View women insulted her, but for someone in her position this is a compliment.  Instead of ham-handed lawsuits, why not wit instead?  Karoline Leavitt is beginning to give off a smart-aleck schoolgirl vibe right now.  Maybe a little less of Karoline would be a blessing.  Mark Steyn, another victim of endless lawfare, has said, "The process is the punishment."  Should we, as conservatives, as constitutionalists, desire to shut down The View?  As a practical matter, they have done the right a world of good as representatives of the thinking of the left.  It would seem that the First Amendment ought to trump Leavitt's ego.

In the end, what the drafters of the 14^th Amendment intended is what matters. Ancient rules of statutory construction with roots in English common law mandate that, if a statute’s words are ambiguous, you must look to the drafters’ intention.

The 14th Amendment need not be repealed, nor must the Constitution be amended. However, the Supreme Court must revisit and clarify the 14^th Amendment regarding birthright citizenship. It would then be for Congress to codify the Supreme Court’s decision into law – if they are up to it.

Some years ago, during a brief social/political discussion with an older woman I ran into in a store, she said something to the effect of, “I don’t care what people do in their bedroom.” She made the statement reflexively, clearly confident I’d agree. Doesn’t everyone today?

Imagine her shock when I replied passionately and without missing a beat, “Well, I do!”

That pretty much ended the conversation. Really, though, it also can be a good conversation starter — for the truly inquisitive.

I find intriguing the role of the Dakotans in the Trump agenda. First and foremost is Sen. Cramer’s close relationship with Trump since 2016. Never has a North Dakotan had such access to the White House.

Burgum’s new role as Interior secretary will be instrumental in the development of our natural resources but even more telling will be his role as chairman of the newly formed National Energy Council. Burgum chairing this committee alongside Chris Wright, the new Energy secretary, will be exciting to watch. Burgum and Wright are both very pro-environment and yet pro-energy, which will pay dividends for all citizens of the world.

Pamela Jo Bondi, an American attorney, served as the 37th Florida Attorney General and now serves as the 87th United States Attorney General. Born November 17, 1965 in Tampa, Florida, she grew up in Temple Terrace, Florida. Bondi received a Bachelor of Arts with a major in criminal justice from the University of Florida in 1987 and a Juris Doctor from the Stetson University College of Law in 1990. She was not always a Republican. Like President Trump, she affiliated with the Democrat Party. In 2000 she switched parties to become a Republican.