Dakota Beacon

The year 2020 had been a hard year for most folks. Personally, the COVID-19 pandemic claimed three close friends. All were professors at the University of Alabama who played key roles in my career as a historian. Additionally, in August my wife Grace was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. It has metastasized to her lungs and associated skeletal structures. This is her third and probably last bout with cancer. Surgery in October put Grace in ICU for days. There was no Thanksgiving because, due to radiation and chemotherapy, Grace couldn’t eat. Our daughter and her family cancelled plans to visit due to COVID restrictions that would have led to a two-week quarantine when they returned to Pennsylvania. That’s when I gave in to the current “cancel culture” by canceling Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It has been a dark time but if we look around there is so much that is beautiful.  

We are in a terrible crisis.

Today was to have been set for a peaceful protest in East Grand Forks in support of businesses struggling against government lockdowns.  It was cancelled.  Thank Antifa.  We must decide whether we want to be dictated to by a tag-team of domestic terrorists like Antifa and BLM, who hijacked the Million Maga rally in Washington and local tinpot dictator mayors and governors . . . or whether we will elect to conduct ourselves in peace and freedom.  Until we take a stand we will be the ones locked up.

Yesterday Trump did his fold and a hundred  twelve conservative pod-casters had to rewrite their next day’s scripts. The baddies got away clean and those of us who aren’t walking around wearing upside-down metal garbage cans and stumbling into walls can see pretty clearly there ain’t gonna be no election reform or draining the swamp on next time or nothin’ like that. Ron DeSantis can run if he likes. Or he can not run. Either or. So now what? Well, if we’re lucky the new regime will collapse within our lifetimes. Our long game is the dissolution of the New World Order. How about today, tomorrow, next week? Well, let’s look at some of the tactics the Left has used to bring us to our present state. One of them is to “other” your opponent. It’s time we get us some of that othering. The following article proposes a means of revenge. We don’t have a lot of pieces left on the board.

The Speaker of the House has, as her first act of the new Congress, imposed some language restrictions on House Members.  Tulsi Gabbard is objecting but she's not the only one.  Language is being used to distort our lives. --SM

Today, January 6, 2021, was supposed to be "D-Day" for our 2020 election - the final act of a drama that has played out for months now, with everything from sinister Chinese agencies communicating with voting machines in Georgia or Michigan via talking thermostats, vote flipping on a gigantic scale, mass mail-in, unsolicited ballots mailed out to the dead, to people's pets, to non-residents, to people who "live" in post office boxes, poll workers denied access so they could observe counting, counting stopping only to resume in the dead of night when the observers and the press had gone home, trucks, vans, sports cars delivering ballots in the night in boxes, suitcases, garbage bags, duffel bags, fake water main breaks, crooked secretaries of state, more crooked governors, compromised judges from the state court level all the way to the Supreme Court, the improbability of a senile, doddering career politician whose son's laptop just revealed everything from child abuse and porn to treasonous "business deals" with hostile foreign nations and a damning message implicating the Democrat Candidate.  In the background were monster rallies of proportions we have never seen.  So - today was the big day.  Trump had summoned his troops from across the fruited plain, Congress was awaiting the drumroll of the reading of the electors, Vice President Pence played hide-and-seek (would he be there at all?  would Chuck Grassley have to step in?  if he was there what would he do?).  It was like a child's top spinning wildly across the floor.

How long can two separate Americas co-exist in the growing tension generated by two different notions of America’s founding, two different ideas about how we should be governed, two completely opposite theories of life, and two different philosophies about how we should go about managing our personal affairs? How long will people tolerate two separate applications of the law – one for the elite and one for the rest of us? How long will people observe alleged transgressions followed by years-long investigations resulting in no prosecutions or convictions? Is there any overlap or middle ground between the left and the right upon which all may agree? Somehow, somewhere, something must give way.

THEY TOOK THE VIRUS SERIOUSLY; DICKEY COUNTY; AN OPPORTUNITY; ATTACK ON HOEVEN’S OFFICE; YEAREND PATROL; SANFORD’S BAD RUN; CARSON WENTZ; TRIBES WANT UND TO LEAD; MIXED VIEWS; FAMILY FARMS; DAKTOIDS

CORONAVIRUS; SANFORD LOSES ITS POISE; OIL PROVED SLIPPERY; CONTINUING CHALLENGES TO DAPL; COAL CREEK IS ON LIFE SUPPORT;

This book explains how identity politics have been progressively employed throughout the last century, culminating in the last decade's stampede to cancel traditional American culture. A culture that believes in natural rights (from God and nature) and values the work ethic, individualism, and individual property ownership of free market capitalism. A culture resulting from a constitution and bill of rights that has been a model for the world around us.

The brainwashing of college students by socialist/communists in higher education during the last century has resulted in the continual erosion of American culture, replacing ethics and morality learned from parents and houses of worship with atheism (the ultimate spiritual vacuum) and its fellow travelers, class envy, greed, gluttony, perversion, fear, laziness, substance abuse, self-loathing, and the ultimate wages of unrepentant sin... eternal death.

So, let’s clasp a hand of friendship and share a good drink for old time sake.

At year’s end, on December 31 after an evening of celebration, the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” drift across the room as sure as midnight bells toll around the world.

 In the midst of turmoil during an unprecedented year, remember to bind together with family and friends. The value of enduring friendships transcend time; the reservoir of reciprocal regard inevitably inspires and sustains the human spirit.

Happy New Year!

On August 7, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit allowed enforcement of a dismemberment abortion ban in Arkansas and thus every other state in the Eight Circuit.         As a result, Attorney General Stenehjem should immediately put House Bill 1546 into effect by certifying House Bill 1546 to the legislative council.

 Attorney General Stenehjem would successfully defend House Bill 1546 if challenged in court. He signed amicus briefs in support of dismemberment bans in Texas and Alabama.

Please thank Attorney General Stenehjem for his pro-life work and encourage him to certify House Bill 1546 to the legislative council.

2020 has largely been a year marked by media lies.  We have been lied to incessantly throughout the year, and perhaps it's a good thing that it has become this bizarre.  In fact, we have been lied to for a long time and many of us didn't realize it.  Now that it is this blatant we can begin to look at everything we hear in the so-called "legacy" media - the mainstream - with a jaundiced eye and a very critical frame of mind.  Honestly, you can't make this stuff up - COVID deaths, the main symptom being injuries sustained in a fall from a ladder, a skyline outlined in flames that is "fiery but mostly peaceful", an election with more obvious fraud than we have ever seen before in America, all of which we are supposed to shovel in like a baby's pablum.  It is therapeutic to see lies this flagrant.  

Maybe someone else out there is getting tired of the computer whiz, Bill Gates, posing as first a health care professional and now a qualified climatologist.  He also has himself confused with Napoleon . . . or God.  His latest poses a continuing threat to humanity for long after he is gone.  We need to do something soon to rein this nutter in.

SHOWING IMPROVEMENT; WARD COUNTY; WASHINGTON STATE; ECO-TERRORISM; DISAPPOINTING SALES TAX YEAR IN ND; SIX AIR FORCE BASES; WOES FOR CARSON WENTZ; ND SENATORS WILL NOT SUPPORT; "ELWYN WAS RIGHT. AGAIN"; FAMILIES IN DISTRESS; GIFT TO TRIBAL COLLEGE; THE REBEL; DAKTOIDS

Sometimes I think the anti-Christian forces take Christ more seriously than most nominal Christians do. The Western world, including many of those who consider themselves Christians, has turned Christmas into a bland holiday of mere niceness. If you don’t get into the spirit, you’re likely to be called a Scrooge.

The natural reaction to Christ is to reject him. He said so. In fact, when he was taken to the Temple as an infant, St. Simeon prophesied that he would be a center of contention. Later he predicted his own death and told his followers they must expect persecution too.

His bitterest enemies weren’t atheists; they were the most religious men of his age, the Pharisees, who considered his claims blasphemous — as, by their lights, they were.

Nice? That’s hardly the word for Jesus. He performed miracles of love and mercy, but he also warned of eternal damnation, attacked and insulted the Pharisees, and could rebuke even people who adored him in words that can only make us cringe.

Events that have been unfolding, whether we look at the violence in our cities' streets all summer, the unlawful lockdowns and closing of businesses by government, thus depriving us of our property and our right to earn a living or host friends or family in our own homes or visit loved ones - on sham excuses, our media that censors us and obliterates our First Amendment rights, or our courts which refuse to perform their basic duties to hear cases, it seems that we really are no longer a nation of laws.  We have become something else, something much darker.

It is Christmas!  With all my wishes for a blessed Christmas and all the cheer you can muster with your family and friends, I hope you will all remember the reason for all of this.  It is the founding day of the Christian religion.  The birth of the Son of God in Bethlehem.  It is also the anniversary of a harrowing event in our America history.  It is equally important to remember this and the kind of people who gave us the RIGHT to worship as we believe, we must remember the great sacrifice and struggle which forged our nation.  We have a great nation and a great heritage which is currently being stolen from our children.  I hope that you will find today's message worth a half hour of your day today.  It is truly dramatic and inspiring.  There is perhaps no better time to tell this story.

The joy of Christmas returns. Things to do. Places to go. Gifts to buy. Few are immune from the Christmas rush as the season marches forward in an unrelenting cadence. Take time, make time, to pause and reflect on the depth of the celebration amid the hustle and bustle. A story, a poem, a song inspires the Christmas spirit.

In our post-modern era as Christianity slowly wanes, a Biblical meaning of Christmas pleads to be told. Browsing through some old Christmas sermons, one in particular registered as representative of times past when people embraced their Christianity more seriously than they do today. Or so it seems. An old volume (1903) titled “Holy-days and Holidays” contained a succinct sermon written in the late 1800s by David Gregg, DD.

His quest? Where was Christ before Christmas? My interpretation?

GOOD JOB, BUT; LACK OF ANALYSIS; WHERE DED THEY GO?; THE CLARION HOTEL AND C ONVENTION CENTER; MOONSHOT; WHAT DOU COUNTRY MICE PREFER?; LIBERTARIAN; GLOOMY YEAR FOR OIL; WHEAT WIZARD; THE ND FARMERS UNION; THE EMBRIDGE LINE 3; DAKTOIDS

One of the things my grandmother used to say which has always stuck with me is "It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."  Our free press is the light we need.  More and more we find that light being snuffed out.  Censorship is one of our biggest issues right now.  And we can see what effect it is having on our inability to communicate with one another and to find out the truth.  One of the foremost seekers of truth in the West is Ezra Levant.  Right now he is struggling.

Last week the big news was that the C****-*9 vaccine is out and enroute.  While this has been a miraculous achievement, we need to remember that it has not been tested.  The demand for instant remedies for the Chinese virus did not allow for a testing phase.  There may well be a greater chance of dying of the vaccine than of the disease.  We will have to see.  In the meantime no one should take this against their will or wishes and no one should vaccinate children.  There are some red flags flapping wildly here.  Our economy and our social fabric have been largely destroyed by the response to this virus.  Now we are expected to donate our bodies for medical research.  No, thanks.  It is finally time to draw the line.

I

This is the last Sunday before Christmas this year.  It sort of crept up on me!  This week, a few thoughts for the holiday, what it means, how we might celebrate in these times, a look ahead with hope for the future.  I hope you enjoy the music at the end.

If you thought you were a business owner a few months ago, right now you might be lucky to be taking orders from bureacrats who never did a day's real work in their life. If you thought you had a steady job a few months ago, now you're probably collecting unemployment. (But for how long?) You're both wondering how much longer this can last. You don't need to be up on your Milton Friedman to know the economic situation you're in is untenable. And yet, everywhere you go, you are told to tighten your belt and "we're all in this together" while the politicicans and unelected "experts" telling you this are living fat off the land. You're supposed to swallow that your present penury is "due to Covid 19" and go along. "Just two weeks to flatten the curve." "Four more weeks and we can get this thing under control." So how long are you supposed to knuckle under till you can live a normal life again? When the vaccine is out? You're angry, frustrated and anxious, perhaps living one day to the next, afraid to look up, afraid to look ahead, hoping this will all just go away.  But it won't - until you understand what sort of people are up-ending your life, and for what purpose.  

Christmas ‘tis the season for giving! What better way to say “I love you” than with the gift of a book? The only prerequisite for the recipient is that they possess an intellect imbued with curiosity.

Of course, readers do not share the same taste in books. The following suggestions come from my own library and are meant to be edifying and not inconsequential.

The subject is China. Interest in China skyrocketed since President Trump broke the globalist mold and engaged China on trade and military issues. What should peak even greater interest, if the major media would cover it, involves China’s placement of spies in a never-ending intelligence gathering effort.