Dakota Beacon

Recently, former President Jimmy Carter went on record saying that the U. S. "no longer has a functioning democracy." Had U.S. leaders, both in the government and media, honestly pondered the serious implications of such pronouncements by seasoned diplomats and politicians, they would have been in less of a rush to condemn Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, or Julian Assange.

The astute reader might wonder what these results mean. Perhaps it is those parents who have established good relationships with their teens who find it easier to speak with them about drug use. These parents see very positive results, not because they dialogued about alcohol, but because they had already established positive relationships. Are the good results dependent upon the dialogue or on the positive relationships?

Walter Williams, the respected black economist, argues, "If we put ourselves in the shoes of racists who seek to sabotage black upward mobility, we couldn't develop a more effective agenda than that followed by civil rights organizations, black politicians, academics, liberals, and the news media. First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and racism."

The road from "rid the world of evil!" to "have we learned nothing?" is a long, hard slog. And Cal still has a ways to go: his piece fails to mention the terror, exile, and death that Bush's wars have visited on Christians throughout the Middle East. Nor does he allude to the virtually unanimous opposition among Christian leaders there to Obama's proposed support of the rebels allied with Al Queda in Syria.

The Kennedy administration’s first priority was plausible deniability. The result was total failure.

 The Syrian situation illustrates the deficiency of international leadership  the US offers the world with an unvetted president like Obama.

Few in today’s civil rights community will admit it, but the Reagan administration rescued civil rights law from the political and constitutional dead end of quotas and racial redistribution.

. . . Tempest in a teapot? the evil festering in Leith; AFBs in the region are going through a rough patch; reversal of business that flowed to China; Northern Plains Nitrogen; Alcatraz of the Rockies; a 3-car crash on Hwy 52; Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments; stop the MCAs; The tribes operate under their own banking laws; The water is not fit to drink; Orton was a member of the “Greatest Generation”. . . .

Progress toward a good thing is good. Progress toward a bad thing is bad. Progress for the sake of progress is one of the worst superstitions of the modern world. For six days, God made progress in his creation until he created his best creature. On the seventh day, God rested.

Of course, things will get worse, not better - because everyone is afraid to ask the forbidden question:

Do freshmen seem to know less with every passing year because of the decline of public schools they come from - which have been under government control for decades?

Clark loved that moment. He and Reagan met with John Paul II in June 1982, where they discussed their mutual goal of taking down the Soviet empire. Clark used to tell me that he once heard that no words in Scripture are repeated as often as “Be not afraid.”

They look for the right euphemisms to conceal their true beliefs. They explain and reassure and attempt to assume a conservative mantle in order to identify with most Americans.

But the first part of that speech, wherein King speaks of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, is not as well-known but deserves to be. That portion demonstrates King’s commitment to the conception of justice held at the American founding.

We must realize that the doctrine of the faith is not democratic, that the struggles for religious freedom and accommodation in America are not universal, and that the secular Protestant conformity demanded by the triumphnt Republican Party in the late nineteenth century is unhealthy

. . . the state’s students are actually average and dropping; 36th in the nation; Otto Bremer Foundation; fast-food workers really do earn as much as $15 an hour; I know why, though I'm not willing to explain it; the country’s moral values are declining; Bully Pulpit golf course in Medora; was it Curtis or Carl? Gen. David C. Jones (92); crash of a B-1B bomber from Ellsworth AFB; DAKTOIDS . . . .

The debt and unfunded liabilities at the federal level are simply astronomical. The debt is more than $16 trillion, or $50,000 for every citizen. This does not count unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare. We are on the precipice of becoming the next Greece, except that no one will be there to bail us out.

Riley's down-to-earth poetry, written for common folk, earned him the reputation as the most popular American poet ever.

For over a century, textbooks have labeled it the turning point of the Civil War. Not surprisingly then, it is the most visited Civil War battleground. But, none of this was known to the participants at the time. To understand the battle from their perspective, one must imagine oneself back into their shoes.

. . . “State coffers are overflowing”; large sums are also being saved; the gap is closing fast; the "Dutch disease"; “If the farm bill leaves me alone, I’m OK”; tax increases in every nook and cranny in Minnesota; scathing evaluations of certain college presidents; sleight of hand used by the GF School District; Jacobs “plans to step down at the end of March”; A ND obituary can be short and sweet; "When I think of North Dakota I think of perseverance. . .”; “Semper Fi”; outlaw motorcycle gangs; The reservation wants the profits from those alcohol sales; a “boom-bust” cycle; Score one for the Forum; His strategy now is to tap discontent in western counties; DAKTOIDS . . . .

Who, by the way, ARE our “enemies”?  Would they be people who would deprive us of our freedom and our Constitutional rights and laws?  Would it be those who want to destroy the nation founded by Jefferson, Adams, Washington? 

He really did mean what he said. Barack Obama has unilaterally declared war on America's standard of living; he has decided what he will allow Americans to have and not have.

Young people were raised in schools that make little distinction between "education," "indoctrination" and "training." Today's understanding of education is to prepare young people for the work force, an abstraction inherited from the former Soviet Union via UNESCO. Education for the purpose of producing functional, moral citizens is a forgotten concept. What passes for education places young people further behind their counterparts from second and third world countries in math and science. This is where "The  Myth of the Rational Voter" cued my interest.

I never met anyone who didn’t like and come to respect Bill Clark. Think about this: Could you name another person, in the Reagan administration or out, praised by figures as diverse as Edmund Morris and Cap Weinberger, Edwin Meese and Lou Cannon, Maureen Dowd and Michael Reagan, Human Events and the New York Times, Time and National Review, and even Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush? As to the last pair, when we prepared the biography of Clark for publication, it wasn’t a huge surprise when we got endorsements from both Carter and Bush. Only Bill Clark could inspire something like that.

. But reality is quite different: there are, practically speaking, “good” people and “bad” people, the well-meaning and the self-serving. And possessing discernment enables one to distinguish between the two groups.

. . . Tribal Consultation Conference at UTTC; ND had a special role in the appointment; unusually permissive; Bravos and Buffalo Chips; carried away by enthusiasm of the moment; expanded ND Heritage Center; Another story that may have a bad ending; ND’s rural school history and the hardships of the Depression; DAKTOIDS. . . .

. The first and most ordinary question of public policy – how does this proposal serve the public good? – is not even germane.

So, as we now stand, Americans are gathering in opposition to Obamacare much as the Scots gathered around William Wallace.  If you saw Braveheart you will likely never forget that scene . . . the one where the nobles were prepared to abandon them when they saw Longshanks’ legions, but the people of Scotland would not let them.  Thus was born the reign of Robert Bruce.  He was finally moved to become a leader rather than the “wait-and-seer” his father hoped he would be.  The leaders are what we are missing here.  We have a few – Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and a handful of others- but we need the others to join them.

Unless something changes -- and quickly -- the economic stability of our society does not appear to be promising. Today, the chickens of past policy excesses are coming home to roost, as they always do. What were these politicians and union leaders thinking?