Dakota Beacon

Nearly 45 million Americans owe over $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. That number is roughly $730 billion more than the total credit card debt in the country. More and more Americans are burdened by student loans than ever before. While these numbers are staggering, the problem is deeper than just dollar figures and amounts. What are the moral and ethical issues involved in this crushing debt? In this article, Dr. James Thrasher looks deeper into the student loan crisis and argues that there are numerous players involved.

The fervent prayer of the Democrats and Never-Trump Republicans would be to get rid of Trump once and for all and to never allow him to enter the political scene again. Fat chance. President Trump accomplished more for America, the middleclass, and conservatism than any president since Ronald Reagan as articulated by Howie Carr in last week’s column. And seventy-five million people know it.

No congressional business to see here; no democracy in action. The entire charade smacks of political theater with a heavy dose of hatred, vengeance, and vitriol. Congressmen and senators deem the impeachment and conviction of a non-sitting US President of primary importance. These elected officials believe they are taken seriously as “doing the people’s business” when in fact they are promoting a political farce. We voted for them. Live with it.

May the farce be with you.

Last week, several independent investors made national news when they caused a Wall Street hedge fund to lose billions of dollars. In this article, Dr. Mark Hendrickson looks at the developments in the GameStop short squeeze and how this relates to the 2008 Wall Street bailouts. He writes, “When small investors lose their shirts by placing unwise investments, do brokerage firms, hedge funds, big banks, etc., come to their rescue? Not a chance. Yet when the big boys were losing their shirts, their Wall Street pals rushed to their aid.”

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Is Justice really blind in America today?  We will watch the final decision in the case of the shooting of Army veteran Ashli Babbitt.  How this is handled could provide a clue.   We should demand equal justice for all Americans on either side of a shooting.  Until we can all believe in this the wounds will fester.

As we have come to expect, aother of Trump's favored picks to dictate to the rest of us got in front of a microphone on CBS's "Face the Nation" last weekend to slam the former President.  In the course of doing this she revealed a lot more about herself, her views and the nature of the "science" of COVID-19, and maybe a bit about ourselvces and our expectations as well.

In 1848, the Communist Manifesto was published in London by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It's manifestation as the “Soviet” system of the USSR represented a far more radical innovation than it would if it were concerned merely with ownership. The nationalization of the means of production involves a radical shift in the power structure, especially in the eminence accorded to the central planning bodies. A “Soviet” system enables the party machine to have a monopoly of power, for they have all but the legal attributes of ownership. Above all, it allows a few who are the new elite to seek to control the total lives of the masses.

It is precisely these “elites” with “monopoly power” that have applied “central planning” in revoking permitting for the privately funded Keystone XL pipeline (projected to transport 830,000 barrels/day) that was approved by the United States and Canada to transport crude oil from the Bitumen Sands in Alberta Canada to markets in the United States, Latin America, and Europe.

Kudos to Howie Carr for publishing a “Thank you” to President Trump in the Boston Herald, 1/18/21. His eloquent words speak for millions of Americans. They are worth quoting.

Many Americans are almost on their knees as our governors and mayors relentslessly shut down our businesses and throw us out of work.  We are set up for juat about any relief we can find.  Now instead of the $2,000 we were promised as a "stimulus", to help us survive until we are allowed to work again, some of us have received $600.  Most of us have been essentially unemployed since last spring.  The $600, however helpful in the shortrun, is really not a serious attempt to help us survive.  The other $1,400?  Well, good question.  Ohio Congressman Steve Stivers thinks we should make guinea pigs of ourselves in order to get it - sit up, Fido!  If this is supposed to be a joke, it's not funny.

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Later today, an article of impeachment against President Trump is expected to be delivered from the House of Representatives to the Senate. This will set the stage for a historic trial. In this article, Dr. John Sparks reviews the current situation through a half-century-old case—Brandenburg v. Ohio—and the First Amendment free speech clause. Sparks writes, “Operating within the framework of Brandenburg, the senators today sitting in judgment of Donald Trump should ask two fundamental questions. First, what did the former president actually say in his rally speech?  Secondly, do his words show his intent to incite imminent lawless action? 

Tomorrow, January 25, people around the world will be celebrating the memory of Scotland's greatest poet, Robert Burns.  His message rings true in all eras, the message of the worth of man, the songs of the heart, bittersweet partings, and patriotism and man's failings - his hypocrisy, his pride, his treachery.  This year, as we look around at the disarray in our own country, its traitors, its heroes and its ordinary, honest men, he seems to speak directly to us today.

Words mean things. The 2020 elections dubiously swept Democrats into total power now controlling all branches of government (one party rule). What better reason to generate an amended lexicon for the 21^st century (not to be confused with Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary”)? These are old words revived.

President Ronald Reagan warned, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction... It must be fought for, protected, and handed on…[to our children]… or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children…what it was once like in the United States where people were free.”

The “Author Q&A” is an e-publication from the Institute for Faith & Freedom at Grove City College. Each issue will present an interview with an author of an intriguing new book that we hope will prove illuminating to readers everywhere. In this latest edition, we sit down with Dr. Gary Scott Smith to discuss his new book, “Duty and Destiny: The Life and Faith of Winston Churchill,” which is available as a print book, a Kindle book, and an audible book narrated by Richard Perry Turner.

What's that rank miasma settling in like a fog so thick you can't see through it? It's the New World Order! While some of us cling to the hope that the republic will return, like Madame Butterfly watching for a ship that ain't comin', and others of us learn how to put ketchup on a stink burger, Edward Morris is going third party this time. He's done with the news. There's a clock running before the deep state arseholes hunt him down in some spiderhole, either a metaphorical or a literal one, and he doesn't have time or mental energy to waste on irrelevant details. Here's his testament to screwing the news.

A dark curtain seemed to fall over the world in 2020 - a devastating virus was unleashed from a Chinese research lab.  It has literally transformed the world in the space of a year.  It has altered the behavior of people toward each other, it has destroyed civility among us.  It is real - people have gotten sick.  A lot of people have died.  But its physical effects are minor compared to its social, psychological, economic and political effects.  There is the real damage.  Over centuries we have had waves of epidemics.   Many died, most survived, but until now we have never reordered our entire society, around the globe, in such a drastic way.  This damage may be difficult to undo.  It may be nearly impossible to undo it all.  The sooner we recognize what is happening to us the more likely we will be to survive it.

The presidential term coming to an end this week has brought us quite a lot - some promised and some totally unexpected.  We got a large portion of a wall built.  We rebuilt our economy and confronted the communist Chinese.  We have suffered through a virus attack by these same communist Chinese which has exposed some of our worst as well as our best governors and their beliefs as to our basic human rights.  We have seen enormous growth in respect for the United States abroad where it counts - among world leaders.  We got out of the WHO because it was acting as a surrogate for the communist Chinese government.  We have forged strong alliances in the Far East to counter the aggression of China, we have exposed and condemned to all the world the slave labor and the genocide being perpetrated in China against minorities as well as political dissidents.  We have achieved peace in the Middle East among long-term rivals and enemies while isolating Iran as a purveyor of world-wide terror.   But perhaps the most important legacy of this term of President Trump is that he has been instrumental in lifting the veil and revealing to the world exactly who our leaders are in government, the media, entertainment, sports, the military and all other aspects of public life.  We have learned who has unshakable principles and who is for sale.  That has been his greatest accomplishment thus far.

Each January, we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. for his leadership in combating racial segregation and securing civil rights for African Americans. However, critics lately have charged that King’s legacy has been “whitewashed,” or remembered selectively. A 2019 Guardian editorial laments that Americans have “Disneyfied” the reformer, saying that we recall his earlier, comforting successes while overlooking his later frustrations and political radicalism. Psychologizing the critique, a 2020 NBC News opinion piece decries that King’s memory is abused for the purpose of cultivating “complacency” and a sense of “absolution.”

As bracing as these correctives seem, they miss the mark. It’s true that King’s desire that black Americans escape disparate poverty and violence remains frustrated. But it would be a mistake to suppose that this unfinished work necessitates anticapitalism, antimilitarism, or the psychologizing antiracism of the whitewash narrative. Rather than being a self-serving power move, sober remembrance of King’s reliance on Christian ethics and the American Founders recovers a radicality befitting King’s ultimate vision of “the Beloved Community.”

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There is a lot of negativity in America today.  However, there are some very positive outcomes of Trump's presidency and there are lessons we can all take away from four years of success against all odds.

It’s no small thing for a black Baptist preacher to write that America’s Founders furnished great wells of democracy. Although laid down by mere mortals, America’s founding documents, “dug deep,” are moral resources blessing a people for generations.

King echoed his confidence in America’s founding when he spoke of the “bank of justice” and “great vaults of opportunity.” In his “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963, he asserted that the Founders had signed “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” Of course, lament was built into his message: for African Americans, that note, like a bounced check, came back marked “insufficient funds.” Yet he did not stop at the point of grievance. He continued, “we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”

How ironic.  BLM spent the summer destroying every vestige of our arts and culture they could find.  They left minority-owned business in rubble throughout Minneapolis.  They are now deeply implicated in the recent Capitol riot which derailed an important function of Congress and ended with five or more dead.  The McKnight Foundation is funding this.  The NWMAC is responsible for its choice of theme.  I don't know about anyone else, but I have had enough.  Small-time functionaries are selling America in bits and pieces and we are supposed to tolerate it.  I'm done with this.

These are important reasons to unplug the television. But greater justification exists. The mainstream media no longer presents “news you can use” expecting the public to reason through the “facts” and draw their own conclusions. The media in general, and television in particular, has become another form of entertainment, a business venture, advocating one line of thought. True journalism is dead.

Enter a classic media critique by sociologist, teacher, and author Neil Postman (1931-2003) and his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” (1985). He argues that TV as a medium expressing ideas primarily through alluring visual imagery reduces politics, news, history, education, and Christianity to merely entertainment. Inevitably, this leads to the trivialization of public discourse.

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