Dakota Beacon

In a recent article in The Atlantic, a Wharton School professor proposed a plan where every state would get one senator out of the senatorial seats available and the rest would be apportioned according to population. This plan would give states with higher population more senators. In this article, Constitutional scholar Dr. John Sparks examines the “Senate Reform Act” and argues why it is a bad idea that is bad for America. Sparks writes that this plan would, “deny the political wisdom of the Founders, the history and reasons for the Great Compromise, and one of the stunning bulwarks against the excesses of the tyranny of the majority—equal representation of the states in the Senate.”

This is the paradox of Paris; it is the best of Christian cities, it is the worst of Christian cities.

The people of Paris, a little more than 200 years ago, put the statue of “Reason” on the high altar of Notre Dame and turned the building into a pagan temple.

The blood of martyrs is still there to water Paris, but it will not do so as long as official and Paris-run France persists in glorifying Bastille Day, the Tricolor, “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality” and the Marseilles as national symbols, not as symbols of the Terror.

The revival of Notre Dame must be accomplished entirely by people who realize that they are working on a product of the Age of Faith, not the cynicism of the Republic of France.

Some of us will be good slaves as we are bidden.  Others of us will not let this rest because it won’t let us rest.  Better to get the truth out and deal with the consequences.

Easter is upon us and it is arguably the most important observation of the Christian calendar surpassing even Christmas. For those who grasp the full significance of Easter – Hallelujah for them! For those who might not, well, here’s the story. A bit of revelation from above might help.

A logical argument begins with a premise. The premise of Easter must be grounded in the Bible as a record of God dealing with His creation, specifically the pinnacle of His creation – mankind. Without acknowledging the Bible as God’s Word, there can be no further logical discussion.

In a very myopic view, Jesus Christ was brutally executed as a solution to a religious as well as a civil problem. The Jewish leaders wanted Him gone because He challenged the established religious order even claiming to be God. The Roman occupiers wanted Him gone because He was a threat to civil order and stability. They did not know who He was, why He came, and the cosmic plan at work far exceeding anything they could possibly comprehend.

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Can Yale Law School refuse to allow students who benefit from several financial aid programs to work at organizations that have a religious mission? In February, the Yale Federalist Society invited Kristen Waggoner—a lawyer from Alliance Defending Freedom—to speak on campus. The invitation caused opposition and a petition. In this article, Jeffrey Trimbath examines the situation and contrasts Yale’s response with a recent Q&A Waggoner participated in on the campus of Grove City College.

A man’s home is supposed to be his castle. But this is no longer the case in New York City, according to a Brooklyn man who says that Big Apple officials are aiding and abetting a next-door neighbor’s attempt to steal his property.

It has been a long ordeal for John Hockenjos, 62, and his wife Irina, one whose twists and turns include a false arrest by the NYPD. The problems started in 2009, they say, when the couple Argo and Elen Paumere “purchased the home next to them with plans for an ambitious overhaul. According to the Hockenjoses, red flags flew fast when they were approached to sign documents turning over a two-foot easement to their new neighbor,” as Bklyner reported in 2013.

Add a new term to the election vocabulary – “ballot harvesting.” Take note: As the 2020 campaign season heats up this term will be heard more often. Why?

This term is incendiary guarantying fights along party lines. Rule of thumb: Democrat-held legislatures and governorships generally advocate for ballot harvesting. Republicans oppose. Laws favoring ballot harvesting are on the books in California, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, and Nevada among others.

What is “ballot harvesting?” Ballot harvesting is the process where organized workers or volunteers, total strangers to the target audience, collect absentee ballots from voters and deliver them to a polling place or election office. Straight forward, right? What could possibly go wrong?

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Here’s to the faithful taxpayer, whose rewards will soon abound;

Beyond the April deadline, which will surely roll around.

Here’s wishing you more health and wealth and bonuses aplenty;

Happiness is – as happiness was – to keep just one more penny!

Earlier this week, Sate Representative Stephanie Borowicz opened the PA House of Representatives session with a prayer. The two-minute prayer that Borowicz offered immediately drew criticism from some. Why are so many people crying foul over a prayer? In this article, Mr. Jeffrey S. Trimbath looks at the controversy and argues that “the whole situation calls for is a renewed sense of true tolerance.”

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March 21 was World Down Syndrome Day. The statistics from around the globe are staggering: 67% of pregnancies in the United States end in abortion when there is a positive test result for Down Syndrome and it grows to almost 100% in Iceland, 98% in Denmark, and approximately 90% in Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, and Belgium. In this article, Dr. John Coyne looks at the troubling numbers and argues, “We have the medical technology and governmental policies that work together to create a genocidal situation for unborn babies who test positive for Down Syndrome.”

Men Without Women

This is the title of a reasonable essay published in 1978 by Michael Novak wrestling with the appraisal of homosexuality in society. I came across the essay in a volume of quaint and forgotten lore.

Novak passed away 02/17/2017. He led an active life serving as a diplomat, American Catholic philosopher, journalist, and novelist. His book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism offered a reasoned defense of capitalism as an ideal.

Novak wrote with a gentle heart the considerate essay “Men Without Women: Meditations on the Half-Life of the Homosexual.” His essay is straight forward and says nothing about the LGBT activism which would come later with the politicizing of the homosexual life style.

Tomorrow, all 30 Major League Baseball teams will participate in the long-standing tradition of Opening Day. To help celebrate this occasion, we share an article by our presidential scholar Dr. Gary S. Smith. In this book review that first appeared at Claremont Review of Books, Smith discusses Curt Smith’s “The Presidents and the Pastime: The History of Baseball and the White House” which details how many of America’s leaders were big fans of the game.

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In 1913 Congress believed that the Constitutional limits on what the federal government was permitted to do actually had meaning.

Fast forward to 2019. In the intervening 106 years, public education succeeded in dumbing down the vast majority of citizens. Today’s citizens have no idea there ever were any limits on government. This, together with our courts being filled with blueblood progressives (i.e. socialists), has effectively created a citizenry that believes there are few, if any, limits on government. And government is responding by acknowledging there are no limits.

It’s time our current political leaders reform or leave. Government must be put on a short leash at all levels. The income government can tax must be limited to no more than 10% of anyone’s earnings; the Federal government must be limited to its original constitutional tasks.

Free people can’t exist when government isn’t strictly limited. Today Americans are no longer free. America is being destroyed from within by excessive bureaucracy, leaders with a socialist mentality, and de facto bankruptcy.

March 26, 2019 marks the 40^th anniversary of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty. Many historians consider the Egyptian-Israeli peace brokered by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s to be an important and impressive diplomatic achievement. To commemorate the anniversary, Benjamin V. Allison recounts the historic meetings and argues that the treaty was a remarkable accomplishment by any measure. Allison writes that the treaty, “showed that even the bitterest of enemies can put their differences aside for the greater good, but only if they are willing to put forth the effort.”

Between 1789 and 1907 US presidents issued a total of 2,400 EOs. Since 1908 more than 13,700 Executive Orders (EOs) have been issued – Bill Clinton 364, George W. Bush 291, Barack Obama 276, and Donald Trump 92. Compare this with FDR’s 3,721 (from The American Presidency Project). Some very notable EOs were used for better or for worse. They promulgated Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. They were used by FDR to inter Japanese Americans in camps during WWII. EOs were used by Harry Truman to integrate the US Armed Forces and by Eisenhower to desegregate public schools.

If Congress does not act in a national emergency, and the Justice Department takes no action, the president could correctly address that emergency through EOs. Control over the US borders preserving America’s integrity as a sovereign nation free from a variety of threats may well be within President Trump’s purview. It can be easily argued that an endless tide of illegal immigrants flowing into the US across non-secured borders presents a national emergency. Perceived EO abuse can always be challenged in court. In the end, the courts may yet have to sort this out.

The Founding Fathers did not craft the US Constitution designating an executive with the power of a king. By the same token, they had every intension of securing America’s destiny through sound executive management.

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Many critics of President Donald Trump are quick to call him a nationalist. But what does that term mean? And is America a nationalist nation? In this article, Dr. Daniel Spanjer examines what it means to be a nationalist and argues that neither Trump nor America should be labeled as such. Spanjer writes, “Some of the liberal criticism of President Donald Trump since his election stems from an intellectual tradition that gained tremendous influence in the West during the 1960s, especially in American universities.”

 If you are a Tea Party kind of person you need to know that you have been shielded from her words of wisdom.  This is because the Tea Party movement was hijacked a long time ago.  The pro-"con-con" lobby is powerful.  This should tell you something.  Find out who is really behind it.  It was strong enough to shut down my discussion back in the days of the "New Americana" website. 

It will never happen to me. But it did. Twice. Identity (ID) theft is real, ongoing, and knows no bounds.

Thieves stole my name, social security number, and birth date.

The following may be concluded. First, my identity will never be retrieved. It’s gone forever. Second, my identity is being bought and sold as would be any commodity.

Ways to minimize the risk of ID theft include opening an account with the three credit bureaus. Order a credit report and check your information. Use passwords liberally. Secure personal information at home and work. Guard mail and trash. Limit access to your SSN. Scan bills for fraud.

The age of innocence has passed and vigilance is key. For safety’s sake, be aware.

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Let’s turn it around. With such expository insanity, why would anyone view, abide, support, or vote for any looney leftist journalist, entertainer, or candidate? Better still, why not reject the leftist premise, and not have the conversation at all?

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The real issue with the left is that they believe America was illegitimately founded and needs to be restructured or replaced.

This one should give these “conservatives” something else to think about besides throwing pies at Ocasio-Cortez.

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To the readers of the Dakota Beacon:  I originally submitted the following article to American Thinker, for the sole reason that it is actually a national issue of some importance which I feel has been more or less shoved in the closet in a feeding frenzy of criticism on a national level of the feckless Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  True, this woman has not said much that makes sense. However, attacking her because of the recent decision of Amazon not to locate in New York, whether it actually had anything to do with her leadership on the matter or not, merely because it is AOC, make less sense.   The basic principle seemed to have been lost in the flurry. Following is the response from J.R. Dunn of American Thinker.  I was really quite shocked.  One would be led to believe that the readers are “thinkers”, not mindless knee-jerk reactionaries   Perhaps they are, but because of the assumption of Mr. Dunn they won’t get the chance to think about my point on this issue.  So because I do know the kind of thinkers who read the Dakota Beacon, here it is, along with Mr. Dunn’s comment.

Sally:

I'm afraid we'll have to pass on this one. AT readers will not tolerate a piece expressing agreement with Sandy O on anything at all. They will get that far and no farther, and they will then crucify you. Sorry, but that's how it goes.

Best,

JR Dunn

Forty years ago I made the virtual acquaintance of Francis A. Schaeffer through his 1977 film series “How Should We Then Live?” It was based on his book of the same title and the production was given at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL. I was struck by how little I knew about the influence Christianity had on our culture -- education, science, economics, the arts, and our very form of government.

Schaeffer’s perspective may be summed up briefly. “I believe people are as they think. The choices we make…will mold irrevocably the direction of our culture…and the lives of our children.” He pursued the analysis of secular worldviews and how their secular presuppositions color the interpretation of the facts. Over an historical span of 200 years he illustrated how our supposedly neutral society ridicules, ignores, and rejects the Christian point of view about morality, truth, science, the arts, and most other areas of life. He effectively demonstrated the hollowness and modernism and postmodernism.

That was my introduction to the clash of worldviews. I became aware that this clash, over the past century, has had an exceedingly detrimental effect on Western Civilization, certainly in the short term.

Many recent polls show that Millennials prefer socialism over capitalism. One poll prior to 2016 showed that 69% of Millennials said they would vote for a socialist as president. In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump said “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” Many Democrats applauded this statement, but some did not—and some media outlets criticized the president. In this article that first appeared at The American Spectator, Dr. Paul Kengor examines the left’s reactions and argues that all Americans should renounce socialism. He writes, “The undeniable reality is that Donald Trump called out the ‘alarming’ trend toward socialism—with the apparent approval of some very top Democrats—because America is indeed, without question, facing an alarming trend toward socialism.”