Simple Utah Mormon Politics

Ronald Reagan haters ascribe malice to nearly all of his actions during his eight years as President. That ascription is especially made for his supposed involvement in what came to be known as the Ira-Contra Arms for Hostages scandal. In reality, though, Reagan's biggest mistake was, in his attempt to make things right, to trust people who didn't deserve to be trusted.

I have a dilemma regarding Glenn Beck.  He's bombastic, and--as he admits--he's a rodeo clown.  But he's also very intelligent.  His latest book, although poorly named, is full of interesting truths and insights.  Many people hate Glenn Beck.  They challenge his personality and some of the causes that he (jokingly) advocates, but they seldom challenge his facts. Beck can be very uncivil.  But he speaks the truth.  Is that enough reason to keep paying attention to him?

If you didn't know that the man-made global warming theory was an elaborate hoax, there exists no question about that fact now.  With the uncovering of thousands of e-mails that identify the gyrations that supposed scientists went through to hide real data and to deceive the public, the days of faux scientists promulgating lies about man-made global warming are numbered.  Al Gore, the two-bit, filthy rich snake-oil salesman should be required to return his unearned Nobel Peace Prize, and he should be made to walk as a pariah about the earth until the end of his days.

The predominant belief among the Founding Fathers was that the General Welfare clause of the Constitution did not allow the federal government to perform any act or collect any amount of money for whatever it deemed to be the general welfare. That belief, though, was not unanimous among the Founders. However weak the case might be, nonetheless a case can be made, based on the beliefs of such Founders as Alexander Hamilton, that very broad powers are granted to the federal government when it comes to providing for the general welfare. This reality requires us to defend the "limited" view of General Welfare powers not just as a matter of Constitutional principle, because those who make the opposing case do so using the same Constitution and the words of other Founding Fathers. Those who make the opposite case see our "principle" as mere dogmatism. Our case is made much stronger, then, if we can defend the limited view of the General Welfare Clause from a pragma...

Ronald Reagan did some wonderful things as president.  But he was far from perfect.  Reagan presided over some of the worst moments in American history.  The worst thing about Ronald Reagan, however, was not anything Reagan himself did, but rather his distorted "legacy," created by those who wished to profit from his popularity.  This so-called legacy, embodied in the two-term presidency of George W. Bush, has given both Reagan's supporters and his detractors a far different idea as to who Ronald Reagan really was. They were very dissimilar.  Ronald Reagan was an imperfect statesman.  George W. Bush was a political freak.

Ezra Taft Benson saw it firsthand.  Ronald Reagan knew it was there.  Decades of Soviet Communism could  not quench it.  For what they saw, Reagan and Benson have been reviled.  Reviling does not, however, change the truth.  Through decades of the dark slavery of Soviet communism, the Russian people, along with their fellow Warsaw Pact slaves, illustrated that a firm belief in God cannot be suffocated. In the Fall of 1959, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, along with family and staff members, toured the Soviet Union.  From the moment he arrived, Secretary Benson requested to be able to visit any  Christian church in Moscow, all the while fearing that his KGB handlers would never allow such a thing to happen.

Everything has a law built into its nature.  Our ability to recognize and obey such law is the basis of Natural Law.  Good government ensures that man-made law adheres to natural law.  Government which makes unnatural law in order to benefit one class of citizens (usually the elite) will invariably create more unnatural law in an attempt to pretend that it is righting (or hiding) its previous wrongs. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States both satisfy the predicates of Natural Law.  Natural law realizes its limits and stops there.  The current United States government doesn't.  Natural law finds its equivalent in our founding documents.  Our current national government is natural law's antithesis.