Published - Idaho State Journal, 1/23/11

Fifty years ago this week newly elected President John F. Kennedy delivered his Inaugural Address. Written mostly by Ted Sorensen, who passed away last year, the speech was a memorable one, not only for its content but for the youthful enthusiasm and energy in delivery, by the youngest elected president. Reading through it, and listening to it anew causes one to consider the probability that JFK wouldn’t have the same party affiliation if he were alive today as he did in 1961.

The most frequently cited line from that speech was, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” This aphorism was immediately engraved on the American psyche, collectively and individually, and has become timelessly and indelibly impressed in our minds.

As truthfully as it rings to us all, we’re obviously far removed from that mentality today. Either through control of purse strings or by regulation, the country now does much more for us than we do for it. It provides our education, owns the entire student loan industry, controls the banking and financing industry, controls health care delivery and the health insurance industry, owns much of the auto industry and controls the rest of it, controls much of our energy apparatus, controls much of our food production system, and manipulates our currency value by printing more of it. It is indeed difficult to find any aspect of our lives that is not controlled, owned, or affected by government.

Increasingly the only thing our country asks of us is our acquiescence to their expansive statist objectives of cradle-to-grave control, and an increasing share of our paycheck to fund it all. The corollary to his truism could well be, “The more our government does for us, the less we do for ourselves or our country.”

Another notable line from that memorable address was, “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Sounding much like George W. Bush, we can’t help but realize how far removed we are today from that conviction. “Oppose any foe,” but we can’t profile or identify the religious orientation of those of our enemies who are motivated by their extremist Wahhabi ideology. “Support any friend,” which among nation states typically refers to allies, but seemingly less and less applied to our staunchest ally in the Middle East, Israel. Hardly a week goes by without someone prominent in our government or that self-proclaimed bastion of human rights, the United Nations, for one reason or another castigating, criticizing, or condemning our “best friends” in that region of the world.

Kennedy’s idyllic line calling for a united world to “explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths,” has newfound meaning when we come to terms with more current verities. “Explore the stars’ is now unlikely with the discontinuation of the Shuttle program and no replacement in sight, and a newly stated primary objective of “Muslim outreach.” Much disease has been eradicated since that time, and we’re still working on conquering the deserts, but we can’t “tap the ocean depths” if we’re looking for oil, per Obama’s Executive Order.

Unlike many of his fellow alumni from Harvard, JFK understood economics. A short time after his Inaugural Address, the President said, “Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased -- not a reduced -- flow of revenues to the federal government." And on another occasion, “Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort -- thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”

And on another occasion, “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now… And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy, which can bring a budget surplus.”

Words have meaning, and composed as they are in the lofty, historical settings of Inaugurations, they are designed to inspire, motivate, and provide direction for a country. If they are as timeless as we assert they are, it is incumbent upon us to review and recommit to those timeless ideals and principles. And given JFK’s ideology of individual responsibility, self-help, fiscal soundness, and of America’s courage to lead the world, it would be hard to conceive of him being a Democrat today. 

Published - 1/16/11, Idaho State Journal

Jared Lee Loughner, the Tucson killer and would-be assassin of a sitting congressman, was not a “right-wing extremist,” or motivated by conservative commentators, or a product of the “Tea Party” mentality. Yet within minutes of the attack outside a grocery store last week, political and media ideologues were alleging that he was. When those allegations proved false, they ramped up their diatribes by ascribing blame to the very groups they could not link him to, for creating a culture of violence through “hate speech.”

Still smarting and licking their wounds from the historic thumping they took in the polls in the November elections, there is obviously no limit to how low these ideologues will stoop to attempt to invalidate or demonize their political adversaries, or as President Obama has called them, their “enemies.” Without even a hint of evidence or credibility, their immediate knee-jerk reaction in blaming Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, or the Tea Party movement proves they have no shame, and need have no evidence, to blame their opponents in an attempt at self-validation after their ideology was rebuked and rejected last Fall.

Immediately after the attack, Markos Moulitsas, who runs the DailyKos tweeted, “Mission Accomplished, Sarah Palin.” To Moulitsas and many of his ilk, Palin had caused the tragedy by producing a map with “crosshairs” over targeted districts, including that of Giffords. Palin’s map, however, used surveyor symbols, not crosshairs or bullseyes. But the Democratic Leadership Conference and DailyKos created maps with bullseyes — in the latter’s case, against Congresswoman Giffords herself, and later ran a column in which the columnist called the shooting victim “dead to me.”

To the contrary, we learn that Loughner was, according to one of his classmates at Pima Community college, a “left wing wacko.” Another called him a “left-wing pothead.” And according to his YouTube profile, two of his favorite books are the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, and Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler. The most likely causes of his violence were his mental derangement and drug abuse, and likely had little to do with his political leanings.

Regrettably, there are the gullible amongst us who blindly accept the punditry’s nefarious explications. Someone I consider a dear friend posted on my Facebook page this week, “give guns to the conservatives and will shoot liberals, just like in arizona. Stop the hate!!”

I couldn’t concur more that we need to “stop the hate!!” But we need to make a distinction between logical and historical arguments against the ideology that has ruled Washington for the past few years and real “hate speech.” I hear much of both, but it appears to me libelous level of “hate speech” is coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum from Governor Palin.

Here are just a few examples for you to consider. Twitter users quickly responded to allegations that Sarah Palin was somehow responsible for the attack with violent, hateful speech: “I hope Sarah Palin dies.” “So…will everyone be satisfied then when Palin is assassinated? You know she’s next.” “Palin is a murdering bi*** who deserves a crosshair on HER house so Al-Qaeda can come shoot HER family. See how that feels, republican trash.”

Chris Matthews of MSNBC has said of Rush Limbaugh, “Somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp.” While President George W. Bush was still in office, a movie depicting his assassination was released to the aplomb of media and entertainment critics. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz wished for the death of Vice President Cheney, declaring, “Vice President Cheney is, he is an enemy of the country....Lord, take him to the Promised Land, will you?” He later screamed on his program, “Vice President Cheney’s heart’s a political football. We ought to rip it out and kick it around and stuff it back in him!”

Air America Radio host Montel Williams in a vicious attack against Minnesota Congressman Michele Bachmann, literally yelled into his microphone, “Slit your wrist! Go ahead! I mean, you know, why not? I mean, if you want to — or, you know, do us all a better thing. Move that knife up about two feet. I mean, start right at the collarbone.”

All such vitriolic and virulent libel or ad hominem attacks should be condemned equally regardless of the source, and our standards of civility applied equally with equanimity. There is genuine disagreement over issues and the direction of the country and there is ample room for discussion over those issues. We collectively degenerate to an uncivilized and uninspired society when such ugliness becomes the face of our public discourse. If we are to elevate our level of colloquy to a substantive level, it must be done equally across the entire political spectrum.

Published - Idaho State Journal, 01/09/11

For some, the first-ever reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives this week was merely symbolic, having no meaningful significance to the country or to the legislative process. To others, not only was the symbolism powerful, but it represented perhaps the beginning of a return to fundamental principles in the governance of our nation.

Based on reactions and even the debate prior to the reading, the symbolism was both positive and negative. The positive, as mentioned, comes from the perspective that there is some effort to return the country to its constitutional roots, since it’s obvious from the legislation that has emanated from Washington for many years that few of our federal legislators have ever read, much less understood, the Constitution.

The negative symbolism was evidenced by a reluctance of some to read the original version of the Constitution as ratified in 1787. To some, the reference to slaves being “three-fifths of all other persons" was politically incorrect, even though the phrase was later voided by the abolition of slavery. This reluctance to peruse primary documents and commentary contextually with the reality in which they were penned is a symptomatic ailment of contemporary historical analysis that has led to massive historical revisionism.

Most textbooks these days say little of the historical verities that “formed us a nation,” but devote entire sections to politically correct topics written from an “enlightened” 21^st century perspective. As such, historical revisionism is an illegitimate process of “whitewashing” history, and a willful distortion of historical fact in such a manner as to make certain events more or less favorably perceived. Such a practice is antithetical to legitimate scholarship. As an example, we see the process employed with regularity by contributors to the Journal who willfully ignore the vast primary source material evidencing the Christian influence in the founding of the nation, in favor of scant evidence to the contrary, in order to secularize, or make politically correct, our history and portray any Christian influence as nefarious.

The reading of the Constitution is significant also because it is that document to which federal elected officials are required to declare obeisance and fealty. They don’t take an oath to do the will of the people, to enact good programs replete with good ideas, or to create new programs that may be popularly viable. They take an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution.” Consequently, it’s imperative that those officials know the language thereof, and understand the limited enumerated powers stated therein, and abide by those limitations, whether it comports with their personal ideologies or not. The language is specific, and limiting, which was even admitted to by then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama who, on a 2001 PBS radio program, admitted the Constitution gets in the way of implementing his ideology.

James Madison recognized this problem over two hundred years ago, when he said, “If congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.”

This has to be a bit disconcerting to those who think the document is archaic and anachronistic rendering it insignificant. If our elected officials take an oath that demands by their “sacred honor” that they “support and defend the Constitution,” the document is not only relevant today, but its content is to govern every decision they make in our behalf. Ezra Klein, a Washington Post columnist, earlier this week in an MSNBC interview asserted that the Constitution is “too hard to understand” because it was “written over a hundred years ago.” You can’t get much more specious than that as a reason to disregard our founding document!

To those like Klein, the Constitution is a “living” document which, as Thomas Jefferson warned, has become “a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” They willfully ignore the fact that, as Jefferson declared, “To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. ... [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers. ... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

While the reading of the Constitution this week on the floor of the House may have been largely symbolic, those of us who love America and what she stands for hope that it is much more than that. We pray that it represents a return to constitutional principles of governance.

Published - Idaho State Journal, 01/02/11

There are fundamental principles upon which our republic was founded that are so critical that they are inviolate. Principles so primary, that the elimination or subordination of them diminishes and minimizes the nation, and even our community. Individual property rights are among those.

Our Declaration of Independence, which codified the Lockean Creed, declares, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Lockean Creed substitutes “pursuit of Happiness” with “property.” Ownership and control of private property are at the very core of these principles, without which people are not citizens, but are merely subjects of whatever government is in power over them.

The Idaho State Constitution in Article 1, Section 1 embodies this when it declares in Article I section I, “All men are by nature free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are … acquiring, possessing and protecting property…”

In the context of the current debate over open spaces and completion of the Portneuf Greenway, that one line, “acquiring, possessing and protecting property” should discourage the city fathers from following the recommendations of special interest groups in the city from forcing greenway completion through the exercise of eminent domain. Especially when coupled with Idaho Code Title 7 chapter 7 section 701a which specifically prohibits the transfer of private property through eminent domain when it is used as a pretext to transfer that property to any private organization.

The ultimate determination in the issue should be the Idaho Constitution itself, which states in Article 1 Section 14, “RIGHT OF EMINENT DOMAIN. The necessary use of lands for the construction of reservoirs or storage basins, for the purpose of irrigation, or for rights of way for the construction of canals, ditches, flumes or pipes, to convey water to the place of use for any useful, beneficial or necessary purpose, or for drainage; or for the drainage of mines, or the working thereof, by means of roads, railroads, tramways, cuts, tunnels, shafts, hoisting works, dumps, or other necessary means to their complete development, or any other use necessary to the complete development of the material resources of the state, or the preservation of the health of its inhabitants, is hereby declared to be a public use, and subject to the regulation and control of the state. Private property may be taken for public use, but not until a just compensation, to be ascertained in the manner prescribed by law, shall be paid therefor.”

There is no allowance within that article that can be construed to include completion of a bicycle and pedestrian path! The property owners along the Portneuf are fully supported by the Constitution to preserve and protect their private property rights. As a blogger on the Journal website recently stated, “A nature walk doesn’t trump private property rights.”

Ours is a country of laws, and the primary codex upon which those laws are founded are embodied in the Constitution. That document, along with the State Constitution, clearly explicates and delineates the minimal authority of a government, and whatever powers of government were not identified in the Constitution were reserved unto the states or the citizens collectively.

George Swenson’s letter to the editor earlier this week provided great insight into how these unconstitutional concepts can grow and trump fundamental principles of property ownership rights. Based on his experience in California, before “escaping” to Idaho, he “had direct experience with this concept. Yes, it starts out innocently enough, an advisory board to recommend purchases of small amounts of land for nice things, like bicycle trails, parks, and other wonderful and popularly supported uses of land.”

“But, by design and not by accident, the concept grows. Large tracts of land are bought to preserve, you guessed it, open space. The “advisory” board is given taxing authority, special assessment districts are contrived in a way to force homeowners to pay for more purchases, and soon the Open Space Authority (so much for advisory) has more land than can be maintained — so fences are put up and the public is kept out.”

He concluded his letter, “I would strongly urge the mayor and City Council of Pocatello to reject this cute little reptile before it grows into the monster it was bred to become.”

This is just one more example of government, at any level, overstepping their constitutional and legal bounds for the sake of a “good idea.” Is the greenway a good idea? Yes, of course, but good ideas don’t trump legality and fundamental constitutional principles. It’s imperative that all levels of government revert to doing what is lawful and principled and not acting simply on “good ideas.”