Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
Serving Southern Jefferson County in the Great State of Montana
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Some bad ideas, despite centuries of consistently negative consequences, come back to haunt the human race over and over again. The economic warfare of “protective” tariffs is one such bad idea that belongs in the dustbin of history, yet incoming president Donald Trump has given it a veneer of patriotic polish, while trotting out all the tired pro-tariff cliches that have been proven so wrong for so long. When a bad idea appears to have eternal life, you can bet its life support is coming from two major factors: (1) widely accepted myth and...
Shame on us. In our political discourse, we throw the “isms” around willy-nilly without really discussing – or understanding -- what they actually mean. Liberalism, socialism, Marxism, fascism, conservatism, libertarianism… At election time, we employ these labels to blast or boast about a given candidate. But words have meaning beyond being political hand grenades. Fundamental philosophies of government pace the course of human history and cast the die of our destiny, for good or evil. We fight over government policies and practices, and that...
“The Divine Knowledge has ebbed out of us, and we do not know enough to be free.” - Daniel Webster Have you noticed? When the election season rolls around, nobody talks about freedom anymore. Sure, that word is sometimes still dropped into campaign speeches, sprinkled like salt over a bland plate of political platitudes. But freedom is never the primary subject, let alone the goal of modern political messaging. It’s just a rhetorical enhancement that leaves the scene as quickly as it arrived. Why do you suppose that is? What does that tell...
Some problems are perplexing and complicated, with solutions evading the wisest among us. The need for affordable housing is not one of those issues. The causes and cures are not complicated. They evade us only because somewhere between kindergarten and college graduation, we never learned basic economics. Often, one avoidable and seemingly unrelated problem can inform the solution to another. Take your garbage, for example. It should interest you to know that if you live in Montana, garbage isn’t very affordable – its disposal, that is. Dep...
They called him Reinhart, but he would one day change his name to Ralph to sound more American than German. Huddled with his parents and three siblings in steerage class, he arrived at Ellis Island at the age of one. He grew up in Brooklyn, while his father scratched out a living as best he could. Henry had brought his family to America “to escape the Kaiser and his wars,” while seeking the freedom of a free land. Although he had very little, he thought himself rich. He had come to America, kissed the ground, and never looked back. The str...
So far, the obvious has eluded us. There’s a critical lesson to be learned from the tragic bloodbath that was once the peaceful cities, hillsides and farmlands of Ukraine. TV commentators are bent on characterizing Ukraine as a democratic and free country. Yet if that were true, Russia would have never invaded. To do so would have been military suicide. They would have faced a citizenry that is not only heroic and courageous, but a citizenry that bears arms and knows how to use them. A free nation does not fear its citizens. A free g...
We’ve all heard the quip, “how do you know when a politician is lying?” Answer: His lips are moving. But there’s another obvious question that begs an obvious answer. WHY do politicians lie? Answer: Because they can. The American media – or what could once be legitimately called the media – draws our attention every day to the lies they have caught their least-favored politicians saying. Often they are incredibly blatant. The furrowed brows on the left (CNN, MSNBC, and the major networks), were almost gleeful when they could trip up Trump in...
I used to dismiss as a peculiar form of psychosis, the desire of some troubled souls to silence and censor the right of others to speak and think freely. After all, the impulse to gag the mouth and shut the mind of another individual is hardly what we would call “normal.” Compelling others to conform to our views isn’t very normal either. Doing such things never enters the minds of healthy, rational people. It’s creepy. Rational people understand that living in a free society presupposes putting the rights of others ahead of our own, and tha...
Every election cycle, you can count on Republican candidates promising to reduce the size and cost of government, and in general, getting government out of our businesses and out of our daily lives. Yet as every session of the legislature demonstrates, that pledge – for the majority of Republican lawmakers – has a distinctly hollow ring. Not unlike their Democratic counterparts, the GOP’s commitment to controlling government and reducing welfare dependency is highly selective. For their friends, the free money game continues unabated. One o...
