Dakota Beacon

On St. Patrick’s Day there is a bit of Irish in all of us. If Irish can eat lutefisk at Norsk Hostfest, why, surely Norwegians can eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day.

Celebrations? My, how the Irish celebrate. Any excuse for a party. Corned beef and cabbage. Green beer and Irish coffee. Bagpipes and the Chieftains. What more could you ask for?

In early days this feast commemorated Ireland’s patron saint, St. Patrick. Born in Britain a Romanized Christian, Patrick was carried off by marauders at the age of 16 and sold to a local Irish chieftain. Patrick drew heavily upon his Christian faith during captivity. He escaped and returned to Britain after six years. Thereafter, Patrick returned to Ireland in 432 AD, this time as a missionary of Pope Celestine I. He founded his first church at Armagh. Before his death Christianity was firmly established in Ireland.

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In an attempt to curtail carbon dioxide emissions the Environmental Protection Agency uses a metric called the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). Three integrated assessment models are used to calculate the SCC. Are these models helpful? In this article, economist and author Dr. Shawn Ritenour offers examples of some of the assumptions and projections that go into these models and warns, “Because of their grave, if not fatal, weaknesses we should be very circumspect indeed.”

Last week, President Donald Trump announced that his administration will impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. It is expected that the president will offer more details on the plan as early as tomorrow or Friday. Are these tariffs a good thing for American workers? In this article, economist Dr. Mark Hendrickson looks at the geopolitical and economic implications of tariffs and argues that there may be “more effective and less disruptive ways to boost the fortunes of America’s workers.”

Who rules America? Our rulers are Democrats and Republicans followed by Independent wannabes. Our rulers encompass a wide array including the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government at the federal, state, and local levels. They include elected officials, political appointees, bureaucrats, planners, academicians, and assorted “credentialed experts.”

What defines those who rule over us? Fundamentally, the ruling order is a bipartisan fraternal order defined by shared ideas, similar educational guidance, the same tastes, and the same habits. This ruling fraternity distinguishes itself as the arbiter of wealth and power by taxing and distributing almost half of what “we the people” produce. 

When we talk about taking drastic means to save lives and everything is on the table, if we’re serious  let’s not hold back.

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According to many gun-control advocates, 18-year-olds are too immature to handle guns — but are mature enough to advise us on gun policy. Thus we’re told we must “listen to the voices” of the young Parkland shooting survivors. Not only that, we’re not to question or oppose them because they’re young, they’re survivors and, by golly, because it’s absolutely devastating to the anti-gun agenda!

There’s something truly reprehensible about this situation, and it’s not conservatives criticizing the positions of activist Parkland students such as David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez. It’s that liberals are using the students as human props and human shields, letting them throw the punches and then condemning the assailed if they dare defend themselves.

Well, sorry, but as I wrote years ago in “The Grieving Activist,” if you want to grieve, grieve.  If you want to play politics, play politics.

Not long after Mitt Romney announced his bid for the U.S. Senate media pundits began criticizing him. Some writers began taking shots at his personality—suggesting that his “excellent character” is not fit for the American political system. In this article, Lewis Waha examines the dig against Romney and argues, “Perhaps at some point, a critical mass of the vulgar really did lose interest in being virtuous. But from the standpoint of the Constitution and democracy, that would be nothing to celebrate.”

As Jared Kushner is stripped of his security clearance, Donald Trump prepares to instigate a tariff war and suggests a life term for American presidents in emulation of Red China’s example, we continue to focus on gun control.  

The record of America as a Christian nation resides in the documented history of her founding. Unfortunately, this record has been deliberately obscured under the rubric of separation of church and state thus depriving individuals of their Christian heritage of individual liberty. Christianity has increasingly been excluded from the public square including public schools.

Many internal government concepts have been lost as Christianity is driven from the public square. The question becomes, “What is to inform the individual of the notion of internal self-governance?” All too often the answer lies in external governance. So many laws, regulations, and ordinances beset us now that undoubtedly we are in violation of some rule unknown to us on any given day. Every time some crisis besets us there are many who call for new laws and regulations even when older ones are not enforced.

External government knows no bounds when attempting to control human nature

In Germany, during the Weimar era citizens agreed to "sensible gun laws" which effectively disarmed them. It made it very easy for a rogue government to take advantage of short-sighted and panicked citizens. In the case of the Weimar example, in one of these emotional knee-jerk responses ("In Touch" would approve), this time to an attempted attack by the German Communist Party to take over in Berlin and elsewhere, the German people agreed to a sensible law which made ownership of firearms or ammunition punishable by death. This law made Hitler's takeover and ascent of his violent regime a slam-dunk. History repeats itself over and over.

The cowardice of the armed “resource officer”/sheriff’s deputy at Parkland demonstrates that an “armed guard” at the door or down the hall is not the answer, so what is?  Clearly someone armed and prepared to stop a killer at his destination before he is:  the teacher.

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Recently, Warren Buffett (leader of Berkshire Hathaway), Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of Amazon), and Jamie Dimon (chairman of JPMorgan Chase) formed a new company in order to develop innovative solutions to the pressing problems facing healthcare in the United States. Could this new enterprise offer a solution to healthcare in America? In this article, Richard D. Kocur reviews the company and argues that the success or failure of the venture rests on three key pillars.

The media believes everything they say about Trump and they believe that all of America does, too. Highlighting their own blindness they conduct poll after poll reinforcing their own misbegotten belief that America hates Trump not understanding their own disconnectedness from reality and the rest of America. CNN says that 6 in 10 people believe Trump should stop tweeting. Furthermore, more Republicans thought he should stop tweeting than believe he should keep it up. Then there was the NPR poll. Only 1 out of 5 thought Trump’s tweets were effective.

This begs the obvious question: If these polls, and others, were at all accurate about Trump’s tweeting, then why is the media trying so hard to thwart him?

The truth is that the President of the United States is leading the media by the nose every time he tweets. He tweets and they reflexively react. They do not understand that the Trump movement transcends Trump. And for the great American public that is saddled with a biased, partisan, and corrupt media, that is a great and vindicating thing. Trump thumbing his nose at the mainstream media is freedom personified.

Last Friday, President Donald Trump signed a major budget deal into law to avoid a government shutdown. The bill increased federal spending by nearly $300 billion above the already-rising limits stipulated by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Have we seen this before? In this article, Dr. Mark Hendrickson argues that this process isn’t new to the federal government and that the lessons to be learned are clear.

What started as a civil war in Syria nearly seven years ago may be escalating into a larger conflict that could have ramifications for the entire Middle East. Last weekend, tensions mounted between Israel and Iran and military force was used. In this article, foreign policy scholar Dr. Earl Tilford details the events and argues that the situation could get a lot worse—and it could happen quickly.

Grabbing the guns of law-abiding citizens will only skew the percentage of gun possession toward the criminals.

We don’t know the student’s name, but we do know that he hit a nerve — in fact, he hit a whole bunch of them. Identified only as a boy of Asian descent at C.K. McClatchy High School in California, the teen’s recent science-fair project, “Race and IQ,” propounded the thesis that differences in groups’ average intelligence influence their academic performance. He couldn’t win, though, because his project was removed after parents, staff and other students became “upset” and one girl said she felt “unsafe and uneasy.” The irony?

A project on evolution would no doubt have been well received — even though an assumption of racial differences is implicit in evolutionary theory.

The persecution of Christ does go on today, and if we’re talking about either scale or intensity we have to look first at the Communist world.

James Hitchcock has identified … the Dirty Little Secret of liberal Catholics: the perduring Communist war on religion.

Sergei Kourdakov used to kill Christians; then, revolted by his life, he fled the Soviet Union and became a Christian himself, trying to warn the West against the evils he had helped perpetrate.

Every generation must learn eternal truths for itself or lose perspective of its heritage. God, after all, has no grand kids.

The first and foremost concern of the American founders was not education, climate change, or health care. It was fear of the concentration of power in the hands of government.

Constraining power is the great challenge of any political system. Collectively, we may have forgotten our roots. Idiomatically speaking, we’ve come a long way baby but the question is, “In which direction?” It is as if there was no effort whatsoever to constrain federal power.

Individually and corporately we would benefit by re-grounding ourselves in the principles upon which our nation was founded. No original thinking is required. Mining the nuggets of our heritage might be a formidable task, but the rewards are timeless.

Yesterday, the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl. During the post-game ceremony, Eagles head coach Doug Pederson thanked “my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.” Tight end Zach Ertz, who scored the winning touchdown, and quarterback Nick Foles, who was named the game’s MVP, both gave glory to God. In this article, Dr. Gary S. Smith looks at faith in the NFL and argues that the religious commitment of many coaches and players will impact the league for years to come.

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With storied statues having come down from sea to shining sea the past year, it’s time for the same to happen with something somewhat newer: the socialist-born plaque in the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. 

Oh, don’t worry, I’m not proposing it be destroyed. To echo the opponents of Confederate monuments, it can be put in a museum — where it belongs. 

We live in challenging, even turbulent, times. Sorting out fact from fiction, truth from lies, adds to the challenge. Take health care for example. The fix is far from in. Here are some phony claims muddying the water.

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One view of a college education is that it leads to higher paying jobs. While this may be factual, should it be the sole purpose of attending a college or university? Today, many college seekers are shopping around to buy an education as a "transaction" to purchase a job. In this article, Dr. James Thrasher, senior fellow of career services at Grove City College, argues that there is much more to a college education than obtaining a piece of paper and a good job. He writes, “College graduates should not be viewed as round pegs to go into round holes, but as individuals who have the hearts, souls, minds, and skills to make a difference in the lives of others and the world.”

Regrettably some gullible Americans buy into liberals’ campaign rhetoric and mainstream media advocacy while nevertheless behaving conservatively in their personal affairs. This in spite of the discrepancy some politicians promise to “fix” but never seem to resolve “poverty,” “education,” “energy,” “health care,” ad infinitum.

The late William F. Buckley, Jr. stated his faith in American conservatism. He once remarked, “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the [liberal] faculty of Harvard University.”

That says it all. Conservatism lives.