In Defense of Family

Sally Smith
U Idaho

In today’s world, the divorce rate for first marriages is 50 percent and for second marriages it’s 75 percent. Instead of getting married, people just live together. It’s easier when there’s no strings attached. And now, gay couples can adopt children. What happened to mom and pop having kids?
With an ever increasing number of single parents, juvenile crime rates have gone up. Single parents just don’t have time to spend with their kids when they’re worrying how they’re going to put the next meal on the table. Teenagers trying to ‘fit in’ get into trouble by partying at an early age or selling illegal substances.
The famous Andy Griffith once said, "If we don’t teach children to live in society today, what’s gonna happen when they grow up?" It is so true. Children need to be taught family values at an early age in order to distill in them an upright and moral character. They need to be taught to make healthy choices on their own that will benefit society.
Gordon B. Hinckley said, "The family is the fundamental unit of society". A nation cannot expect to survive if the very institution that ties it together fails.
"A healthy, happy family benefits our whole society. Among the children of strong families there is less crime, less divorce and less emotional problems. They tend to go on and have strong, healthy families of their own, having learned from their folk’s example," states Mim Ford. A family must be founded on principles of honesty, hard work, respect, and love for others.
The family will endure when these values are taught to children. When a man and woman are lawfully wedded as husband and wife and work together to raise their children, the world will see a ‘blessed change’.

Liberty for Security

Michael Freimuth
UW

It was 1787 and delegates from the 13 states had met in Philadelphia to determine what form the new government would take. The strict secrecy in which the meeting was conducted led anxious citizens to gather outside freedom hall in anticipation of the final agreement. Upon his emergence, Benjamin Franklin was approached by a local woman named Mrs. Powell who asked, "Well Doctor, what have we
got?"
To which Franklin replied: "A republic, if you can keep it."
Two years later, the First United States Congress added the Bill of Rights. The first ten amendments to the constitution were part of the Massachusetts compromise which occurred after a long debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists. The Anti-Federalists were concerned that the central government they were creating would be too powerful and the bill of rights was a way of explicitly limiting its power and preserving those "essential liberties", without which, we would be in danger of descending back into tyranny. To put it another way, it was to help us preserve our republic.
It is imperative that we rediscover the importance of our constitutional rights because they are under assault and we don’t even seem to notice. To see what I mean read the fourth amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Then go to the airport where you will see people being "randomly" (which means arbitrarily) selected and put through a rigorous and intrusive search with no warrant or probable cause merely because they wanted to get on a plane. But this is not an intrusion according to Attorney General Janet Napolitano.
Her response to people who don’t want to go through the searches: "Don’t fly."
According to Napolitano, "If people want to travel by some other means, they have that right."
But consider for a moment what this means. Unlike driving on public roads, which has long been held to be "a privilege not a right," getting on an airplane is a purely private exchange between two private parties. If the government can interject themselves between you and an airline and force you to submit to intrusive searches before you are allowed to conduct a private business transaction, then do you really have the right to travel by other means or do you just have the ability to do so at the moment because the government hasn’t decided to take it away yet? The answer is obvious, but in case you’re not convinced, here is what Napolitano had to say about it on "Charlie Rose":
"I think the tighter we get on aviation, we have to also be thinking now about going on to mass transit or to trains or maritime. So, what do we need to be doing to strengthen our protections there?"
If the government came out and said that from now on, the police have the right to "randomly" stop cars and search them or stop people walking down the street and search them wouldn’t we be outraged? So why aren’t we outraged when they stop us in line at the airport? Clearly it is because terrorists are scary and remember that we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. But are terrorists confined to attacks on airplanes? Couldn’t a terrorist put a bomb in his car and park it in Time’s Square? Couldn’t they strap one to their chest and walk down the street?
Maybe you think that the government will just stop at the airport, and you might be right but if they don’t stop there what will stop them? Where is the line that they cannot cross? That which was designed to stop them is the Constitution and it drew the line at unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause. But now they are blatantly violating this protection and we are just shrugging and saying, "whatever it takes to keep us safe." But we need to understand that this is not just about trading a little privacy for safety, it’s about trading liberty for safety. And remember:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-Ben Franklin

Can You Defend Your Rights?

Max Nelsen
Whitworth

Now that the 2010 congressional elections are over, commentators are buzzing about what the results will mean for the future. However, I think it is important to pause and take a look at some of the key issues that surfaced during the last campaign cycle. In particular, several candidates supported by the conservative Tea Party movement brought up issues that are rarely discussed in modern politics. Unfortunately, many were successfully branded by their opponents and the media as too extreme, though I would argue that some of their views were perfectly valid.
One of these individuals was Republican Sharron Angle of Nevada. Angle had the backing of the Tea Party movement but lost her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat. Angle made many highly controversial statements during the course of the campaign, but I would like to take a closer look at her views on the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which delineates "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."
Angle was quoted by Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent as stating that the Founding Fathers included the Second Amendment "for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government." Angle quoted Thomas Jefferson for support and went on to say that people were starting to consider "Second Amendment remedies" as a way to respond to an out-of-touch government.
Angle was immediately and passionately condemned for her statements. Without offering any rebuttal, Democrat David Philips, writing for Examiner.com, called Angle an "extremist" and relegated her views to the "fringe." Somewhat lacking in originality, The Huffington Post also called Angle "extreme" and her comments "outlandish." It is quite likely that Angle's statements and the media response contributed in some way to her loss to Harry Reid.
Without defending Angle as a candidate, I believe that her views on the Second Amendment are not as unreasonable as they may sound. While some today perceive the Second Amendment as protecting only minimal gun rights, such as recreational shooting and hunting, it is undeniable that the Founding Fathers had far broader intentions.
I will not dwell on the fact that the Founders meant for the Second Amendment to apply to individuals; I believe there is credible evidence enough to support that. Beyond that, however, I would argue that one of the fundamental purposes of the Second Amendment was to provide the citizens with a defense against tyrannical government. All of the following references come from the James Madison Research Library and Information Center.
For instance, Samuel Adams said, "If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
Does Adams envision patriots experienced with pitchforks defending their freedom? Not likely.
Thomas Jefferson takes it a step further: "What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms."
Thus, individual citizens should not only defend their freedom, but they should do so with firearms.
But it doesn't stop here. In Alexander Hamilton's opinion: "…if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights."
Along similar lines, Noah Webster said, "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
Both Hamilton and Webster are essentially stating that, in order to defend their freedom, the citizens not only need to be armed, but need to be "little if at all inferior" to the military. By no means am I arguing that every home in America needs to have a tank in the driveway. However, this is a clear indication that at least some of the Founders believed that citizens should be able to possess military-grade small arms. True, these are beyond what is needed for hunting and recreational use, but that was not the point. The point was to allow the citizens to provide a last-resort check on government power if needed, and the prospect of a citizenry armed with now-vilified "assault weapons" provided such a check.
In this light, candidate Sharron Angle's views shouldn't seem quite so extreme. At any rate, her views are not incompatible with those of the Founding Fathers. Unfortunately, instead of initiating a debate about the proper role of an armed citizenry and the nature of the Second Amendment, Angle's comments were dismissed out of hand. This should cause us great concern. Indeed, I think the question needs to be asked: do Americans any longer "stand ready to defend their rights?"

Contact Max Nelsen at max.nelsen@whitworthian.com.

How to distribute money fairly

Brett Stevens
Guest Writer

One thing any government or culture is going to do is determine how it distributes wealth, because any successful society will generate wealth that doesn’t originate in a single person.
There are two basic theories:
* Divide the spoils. If we have money, spend it on us. Make sure everyone gets a cut, and don’t let anyone get more than others. That’s fair.
* Spend like a business. Put the money where it will make more money: with those who will buy high-end goods, stimulating the economy, and those who will invest in research and development.
Like most things political, this is a hard one because that which “appears” fair, just, and best is in fact an unmitigated disaster.
When you give money equally to all people, it goes to the bottom of the economic pyramid: into groceries, luxury items, rent and car payments. In other words, it goes to expenditures where the value has already been added.
But when you drop money into the top of your economic hierarchy, giving it to corporations, the wealthy and R&D-heavy government agencies, you prime the pump. Value has not already been added in these areas, so there’s a chance to generate value:
* Corporations buy raw materials and make them into products;
* the wealthy buy high-end goods and raise up new brands;
* R&D-heavy government agencies invent new technologies.
An analogue in a small town would be giving money to the farmers instead of the town bums. The town bums will use it to buy food and booze; the farmers will buy new equipment, new land and new seed, so everyone eats even better the next year.
Earmarks are a way of distributing income not at the national level, but directly to states. These often have little to do with priming the economy at the national level, but in subsidizing local economies. The result? Happy people at the local level, but a loss of value at the national level, which is where the income spent on these earmarks is collected.
Since 1950, the fastest rising segment of government expenditure has been on social costs; instead of aiming to provide a stable place for people to live, government has been trying to subsidize those people. It’s kind of like paying off the barn door after the horse is gone.
Earmarks are part of this culture not of building stability from the top-down, but subsidizing where convenient.
Since the 1970s, economists have argued that we need national health care and national job insurance but that instead of making these federal programs, we should privatize them and use the vast purchasing power of the federal government to achieve competitive costs and benefits.
Job insurance, like all insurance, doesn’t magically make problems go away. It spreads out the impact over time by storing wealth during good years, and spending it when bad things happen.
Health insurance will be the same way; for people with chronic and expensive conditions, no system seems to work except a bankrupt one, because such people are a massive draw. There are death panels now and there always will be, otherwise we can’t staunch the bleeding — in the health system itself.
Why do people distrust government bureaucracies?
1. They are one level removed from oversight. In private business, you have a client and you satisfy them. In government, you have clients and if enough of them get dissatisfied enough to launch a petition, political campaign and catch slogan, they vote our your protector and then seven years later your funding ends. You aren’t responsible to anyone but the regulations on paper, which are vaguely worded to avoid being unfair, and so easy to circumnavigate. In addition, government specializes in hiring every disabled person, ethnic minority, homosexual and other discriminated group without checking to see if they are also competent.
2. They have no self-regulation. When a government bureaucracy is out of control, the only solution is to create another bureaucracy to oversee it. Eventually you have layers upon layers of people pushing paper around under the guise of watching each other, but at that point, they’re just trying to get the paperwork right.
When we say we want limited government, this is what we’re talking about.
The solution is to have fewer regulations and to focus more on the real capital here: the people. Get rid of all regulations except that our care-givers must be competent. Don’t let people hide behind paperwork or protected job classes. Encourage the free market motivation to reward good health care providers, and so channel smart, alert people into being doctors, nurses and other caregivers.
The more paperwork and bureaucracy you pile on your medical caregivers, the fewer competent people you attract. Why put up with that boredom and frustration? Go be a lawyer instead — there’s less paperwork than being a doctor. Or, even better, pick a really easy job like being a psychiatrist, chiropractor or homeopathic health expert. The money’s there without the regulation.
Our society is neurotic because we assume that more rules and restrictions will solve what is really a problem of people: we need to reward those who will spread the money downward through our economy, and we need to stop trying to regulate mediocre people into being excellent, and instead simply select for excellence.