By Evelyn Pyburn

So, how dare a political candidate even mention the concept of privatization!

When people started asking me about Republican candidate Tim Sheehy’s comments about privatizing health care, etc. as though it was an outrageous thing to say, my answer has been, “I only wish I thought he intended to do it.”

More than anything, though, I was most amazed at people’s response to it. Even that Senator Jon Tester should be so over the cliff as to think it would be a persuasive argument against his opponent! Not that it isn’t obvious that Tester is all for government controls, and fully in league with the socialists or Marxists, but I didn’t realize that the public in general would be so horrified about privatization that it could be used convincingly in a political debate in the United States of America. How truly sad and disappointing about the state of things in our country.

 We were never meant to be a county in which government ran or controlled the economy. The government was supposed to be as separate from the economy as it is from religion. The reason should be readily apparent in the current state of affairs. Most of the issues that trouble us today, including the very existence of “the swamp,” are manifestations of government controlling economic activity.

The real reason politicians and government leaders hate and fear Donald Trump is because he poses a threat to a system that has made a great many of them very rich in the selling of favors, pilfering, bribing, embezzling and other means of appropriating the unearned. President Biden and his son are not alone. They were simply more brazen than most.

But it is still hard to believe and disheartening that so many average Americans do not have greater appreciation for the amazing success and grand achievements that they have all been part of, as participants of the private sector. They are the private sector! They are the ones that Sen. Tester is disparaging.

The US is the strong, successful and desirable place to live that it is because of the private sector – not because of government. In fact, given the staggering mountain of regulations and tyrannical threats from government, that the private sector – the producers in our country – must deal with, it is most accurate to say that it’s in spite of the government that the private sector continues to produce.

One must understand that the government has nothing – absolutely nothing —  that it didn’t first confiscate from its citizens. Government creates absolutely nothing and advances our standard of living not at all. Everything that politicians are always eager to take credit for is not their doing one iota. They must always first take from the private sector which often means the disruption and destruction of the efforts of the private sector.

That is why all the other “isms” fail so quickly. To be in charge, the authoritarian regimes must destroy the very means – the creativity, ingenuity, and productivity – – of its citizens that it otherwise depends upon. If citizens are allowed to retain the personal, individual power they must have in order to produce, then there is nothing for the power mongers to appropriate and upon which to build any kind of pretense of supremacy.

I am sure that much of the reason that appreciation of the private sector has diminished so significantly is that we have been generations removed from a real free market, and those generations have no knowledge of it. They have certainly been taught nothing about it in government schools, and so intertwined is government in our daily lives, many people can’t imagine how we would manage without it.

And, sadly, it is undoubtedly true, as so many others aspects of American life is demonstrating, there is an ever greater lack of the moral integrity which spawns the free market AND which the free market spawns.

Much of the support of government programs came from and continues to be advanced by people seeking the unearned. The woman pleading for government health care in the Tester ads says as much. She wants free health care – knowing full well that it is not free — knowing that the unearned wealth for which she grabs must first be extracted from other citizens – from her neighbors.

People have responded saying “but without the government no one can afford health care.” But that is exactly what government intervention spawns. The only reason most people can’t afford health care is because the government has made it unaffordable. If you want to make any commodity unaffordable, just get the government involved. In my life time, there was a time, in which people could afford their own health care – and insurance was something of a novelty.

The recent experience with the COVID epidemic revealed, most excruciating, exactly how much government runs our medical system and what has come of it when hospitals and medical professionals bow more deeply to government than to their patients. Because of that there has been an increasing exodus, by medical professionals from government dominated institutions, who are going back to the private sector; and one of the first things they are reporting is how greatly they can reduce their prices.

Can you imagine how incredibly affordable health care might be if the people in the business ran their business without government intrusions, regulations, mandates, edicts, price controls, etc. Health care would be eminently affordable for most people. And, remember, before government programs, hospitals were often built, managed and supported, specifically to serve the poor, by philanthropic institutions – they too are part of the private sector.

A return to private markets in medical care would mean more options, better care and, yes, lower costs.

So if Tim Sheehy is a believer in the private sector more power to him. So am I. And, tsk, tsk, tsk that Sen. Jon Tester is not.

By Evelyn Pyburn

The price of something conveys a message.

Looking at the price of a can of soup is a message. Deciphering that message might be complicated but attempting to arbitrarily change it will not change the facts it attempts to convey.

If the price has increased it may be saying the cost of the labor has increased. Or perhaps that the cost of the gas in the truck that brought it to the grocery store has gone up. If it has dropped in price perhaps it is saying there is a glut of canned soup on the market.  Or, maybe it is saying that no one else is making cans of soup and therefore customers have no choice but to buy this brand.

If one is buying an orange, a sky high price could be conveying that a late freeze destroyed much of the orange crop. Or that an infestation of bugs did so. Or perhaps that there are few people willing to pick oranges and labor costs are higher, or perhaps that the quality of the orange isn’t that great and the price has to be lowered to sell it.

All those things, individually or in concert with one another, dictates the utilitarian cost of everything we buy – or sell. How it works at a very basic level is not complicated. In fact, it is so simple that it feels almost condescending to write an explanation, but apparently some people need explanations.

In a free society, the price of something is what the buyer and seller agree upon. If the buyer refuses to purchase at what the seller is asking, then there is a message in that. And, the seller better pay attention. He may have just been informed that someone else can produce it for less, or that there is more of that product available than there are buyers to buy it. It’s a message that can change from one locale to another, and from day to day, or even minute to minute. It’s so multi-faceted and world encompassing that probably even God has trouble keeping tract – but not so our prospective presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

Everyone involved, even in a slight way in business, knows they have to pay attention to all those many messages, if they are to survive in the business world. To ignore or mistake any one of those messages could spell doom for your business or your household budget. It’s a huge challenge just for the owner of one small business – but apparently it’s nothing for Kamala to manage the entire world of economics.

Kamala seems not to realize that if someone capriciously and arbitrarily sets prices without relationship to any facts of the reality that it takes to create a product or service, they will destroy markets. That means they are destroying the means of human survival in the modern day world.

Mandatory price and wage controls – being told what to sell a product for or what the value of your labor is  — is also a message – a message that comes with a club, which has absolutely nothing to do with the market.

If you arbitrarily limit the price on a loaf of bread, you do not lower the cost of bread. You assure that there will be no more bread. Who makes bread when they can’t recover the cost for labor and materials to make it?

And while the fundamental basics of a single transaction is the same the world around, trying to manage all of the world’s transactions is not. Just think of the billions of such transactions that happen every single day in the world, for billions of products and services, by billions of people, and then imagine how every little transaction has its own ripple effect of information and impacts in the economy, world around. What human being can track all that, much less know how to manipulate it all, for any specific outcome? Well, apparently presidential hopeful, Kamala Harris can, which makes her most amazing.

She hasn’t been the only one, however. President Richard Nixon, in the early 70s tried the same thing. Fortunately, he understood his folly within just a couple years, and while having undoubtedly harmed thousands of individual citizens he abandoned the policy before destroying the whole economy. But one would really hope that people with such a profound lack of economic understanding would never rise to such high levels in government.

One has to wonder if Kamal Harris would ever figure it out or even see the disaster that would surely befall us all. One has to suspect she would see the consequences as being unrelated, Perhaps they would appear as inexplicable and mysterious as many of our other current leaders and “experts” seem to view inflation.

Economic literature is full of explanations — not only about why price and wage controls don’t work, but what has happened in the past when someone else tried it. Most of those same books also explain that high prices is what happens when you inflate the money supply. Apparently, that’s another read that Kamala missed.

Of course, governments and bureaucrats are already deep into manipulating markets. That they screw things up quite frequently usually passes unremarked upon. It’s another strange and mystical manifestation that just happens. No one traces it back to some stupid regulation or arbitrary restraint on the market. Apparently mystical and strange things happen all the time in the market place, just like they seem to do in how people rise to power.

By Evelyn Pyburn

One really can’t look at the events of the world today without realizing that there are forces coming from every direction trying to destroy our country. As bit by bit government chips away at our lives, we must realize that the effort has actually been going on for a long time, but it has largely failed. The US is still the largest economy in the world and it is still growing daily.

A lot of people do not make the connection between our economy and our freedom but the power mongers do. That’s why so many of their attempted restraints focus on the activities of business and how people use their time and property. How we use those things determines our level of production, and that is the strength of the US far more so than armies. That’s what makes armies possible.

To cripple our ability to produce is what the savvy power mongers are trying to do with most every new law,  with every shut down, with every law suit, with every distortion of history, and twisting of common sense.

And it shouldn’t be surprising that  many of those efforts are focused as attacks on the availability of  cheap and abundant energy. There’s only one thing more important to the success of our economy than energy and that’s property rights – the right of every individual to own property, to own what they produce, to own their own life.

Americans go to work every day to acquire property just so they can be independent.

But, as vital as property rights are to our personal and national well being, there is astounding little public discourse about them.

Regulations that erode them are incorporated into local laws with hardly a comment – they are called regulations.

Judges who rule to destroy private property in favor of empowering government or the collective, are publically applauded, and few people are aware that they are cheering their own demise.

Individual property rights, as our forefathers provided for in the US Constitution, give each citizen great strength in how they function in society and in dealing with politics.

Our individual property rights are unique in human history and their creation unleashed a force in civilization never before seen, and never duplicated by any other country since, despite their proven effectiveness in achieving what every foreign despot – as well as many domestic ones – claim is their goal — a higher standard of living for the citizens.

That’s no accidental oversight on their part, they know full well what they need to do to retain power. The despots of the world who collaborate in the great effort to bring the US down, know full well that they could achieve the same level of economic success as the US, if they too granted the same level of private property rights for their citizens. That that has never happened says most clearly that their true interest is in gaining power over others.

It’s been claimed that ‘private property is standing room for the individual’ for very good reason.

So as individual citizens, if it is our freedom and our standard of living we want to preserve, we should be focused on preserving this most coveted of rights. We must fully understand the depth of its importance and defend it at every turn.

Property includes all that we value and that which has value. It includes ideas, the cash in our pocket or savings in the bank. Our means of protection, our homes and our businesses. When a thief takes any of those things, because of the degree that our individual wellbeing can depend upon them, it makes theft a most heinous crime. There was a good reason that they used to hang horse thieves.

We should understand that when we purchase a parcel of land we do not purchase a pile of dirt to put in our pocket but we purchase the RIGHT to determine how to use it. A property owner has the legal right to determine whether to grow wheat upon that land or build a building. It is the ability to make those choices that they purchased, not a pile of dirt. The owner of property has the legal stance to resell that right, lease all or part of it to others or improve its value in some manner they think fit, even if their neighbors or the government disagrees.

Any effort to minimize the property owner’s ability to make those decisions is a taking of the right he has acquired. Without that legal power a property is nothing. It has no value.

So when neighbors (and all too often government) gather together to try to stop a property owner from doing what he wants to do on a parcel of property — when they are imposing their choices upon how that property is used they are taking a value from the owner. In legal terminology that is exactly what it is called – “a takings”.

In most circumstances when someone takes the property of another it is called theft, but I guess for the sake of civil decorum judges and lawyers prefer calling it a takings – but a theft is exactly what is happening. And it is rampant. Every day we hear about one group or gang taking away all or some of this value from others. And the really amazing thing is they can stand up in righteous indignation to declare they should be allowed to conduct such a theft.

In the name of scenic views, preserving history, the environment, or to protect their own property values, they have no compunction about conducting such acts of theft. And quite often the legal system supports these acts of thefts even though there is a much easier way to resolve the issue. Buy the property. Purchase the right to determine how to use it, just as the existing owner had to do.

Oh that’s not so easy if you don’t have the money. When you don’t have the value needed to legally determine how to use the property. What makes you think it was any easier for the existing owner to acquire the right to determine how to use the property? That is the value you attempt to take at no cost to yourself!

If you want to have control about what happens on a piece of property next to your house, your farm, or your business there’s a very simple straightforward way to do it. Buy that control. Buy that right. There are very savvy business people who do that every day. They purchase a property just so they can assure some future use won’t have a detrimental effect on their business or their home.

If you want to preserve the view of the neighboring landscape owned by a farmer, property rights can allow that to happen probably cheaper than a court case. One can pay the property owner some lesser sum to guarantee he won’t build a granary there or some company can’t pay him to build a cell tower. There are numerous legal mechanisms that can be used to control such things – agreements, contracts, covenants etc. and the glorious thing is they recognize everyone’s property rights – but they don’t allow “takings.”

More importantly, the very nature of exercising legal property rights and the people involved are acting to preserve the integrity of private property rights which is by far the greatest value to be preserved for everyone’s sake.

By Evelyn Pyburn

The current news about growth in entrepreneurship and the dynamics of start-up companies should be seen as a very positive turn of events. It’s not that entrepreneurship is a new idea or phenomenon, it’s that a whole new group of people are seeing it and understanding it for the first time and coming to appreciate it in a way they never would let themselves when it is called “Capitalism”.

Some think it’s a new discovery and are sincerely excited. If that is what it takes to get people to understand and embrace free markets and economic freedom, more power to them.

An article about entrepreneurship in New Orleans quoted one entrepreneur as saying, ““The remarkable thing about a startup in New Orleans is that there are two passions at play. It’s really normal for a startup company or a new company to get excited about the mission of the business… But ….this other passion, this other thing . . . is the importance of contributing to the community, that our work was really helping the community, and job by job, hour by hour, rebuilding something.”

“This Other Thing” has always been there, and there has always been a group of advocates trying to explain this beauty of free markets, of Capitalism.

Given that the country has been slipping more toward controlled markets and socialism, free market advocates apparently were not very good at making their argument. Or maybe it is just true that the betterment of mankind is not what some people want, they want power over others – true capitalism does not deliver that. Maybe that is why most political economic development efforts tend to pursue crony-capitalism, rejecting free market avenues.

Entrepreneurship, start-ups, capital investment in new and growing enterprises – no matter what it’s called, has ALWAYS created new products and services that serve the broader public good, created jobs, provided livings, generated new wealth and built the foundation of economies. This has ALWAYS, ALWAYS been true and it is true for every business and productive effort in the private sector no matter its size, purpose or level of success. Even a business failure often contributes to the broader community.

While we can lament that the basics of economics aren’t taught to American students, we should also understand, neither is history. There is no factual presentation of history that could miss the fact that the success, power and wealth of the US are not a matter of happenstance, geography or power of some politician. It is the product of freedom – free enterprise – capitalism – the existence of an environment in which citizens can freely and voluntarily exchange, value for value with each other, to their mutual benefit.

That this is being discovered anew by younger generations who have been taught that electricity is a right and not a luxury, or that milk comes from the grocery store, speaks to the failure of older generations to educate.

The sudden popularity of the dynamics of free enterprise may just be demonstrating the importance of marketing. It turns out that the reality of what happens with the growth of entrepreneurship may not be as persuasive as simple terminology – a fact that others seem to be recognizing.

Dr. Jay Richards explained how free markets achieve all the benefits that socialists commonly claim are their goals, but yet they eschew the most perfect system ever known to deliver those life-affirming benefits. He said that he didn’t like calling this miraculous process, “Capitalism”, because it so poorly relates to what it is. He suggested calling it anything other than Capitalism – free markets or free enterprise.

His point makes sense, because it is true, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet – and what happens in a free market economy — what entrepreneurs achieve — is absolutely sweet.

By Evelyn Pyburn

As we see, in our own fair cities, massive apartment buildings towering above the streets for blocks and blocks, looking more like prison walls than a place to live, we have to realize that life has changed for each and every citizen in the United States. And, it is a dilemma of our own making – the cause for which our “leaders” are stubbornly refusing to correct even though they have accurately identified the cause.

I recall watching movies filmed in other countries with scenes of shoebox style apartment buildings lining streets for huge quadrants of a city – stark and dreary and depressing places — and I thought “that’s because their standard of living is so far below that of ours in the US.” Seeing the same thing now in the US as the acceptable solution to a nationwide housing shortage, has to be for the same reason. We are being pushed into a lower standard of living.

All the other reasons that are often given, such as development costs, rising costs of construction, supply line shortages, etc. point to but one problem – artificial disruptions in the market – disruptions that are caused by centralized planning and political manipulations. That conclusion is inescapable, if one understands that the free market is inexorable. The free market responds to “supply and demand” faster than the blink of an eye, if not artificially prohibited by regulators and politicians. In fact, if one watches closely, one sees that keeping up with rapid market changes is the biggest challenge for those trying to control it.

So the question: “Why isn’t the market responding to the huge, huge demand for housing?” There is only one answer, market barriers, which means but one thing — government.

That was in fact the answer that the special committee established by Montana’s governor came up with, after studying the matter. Regulations!

The conclusion should not have been surprising if one listens to builders and contractors and industry professionals. At every opportunity, for many, many years, they have proclaimed as much. During the last effort to “re-code” building regulations in Billings, input from the building industry was essentially shut out in favor of those who use the codes to achieve goals other than affordable or “safe” housing. For them the codes are not there to serve housing or traffic safety, but to fulfill quests for power over others, esthetic wishes, ideologies, and partisan goals of bureaucrats. They are imposed from the top down, without regard to cost, property rights, or any other kind of loss to the consumer.

No one should be surprised at the committee’s conclusion about over regulation, but what is astounding is how little they recommended for change. While building codes — mandating the placement of every board and nail, building shapes and size, fencing and landscaping — easily fill volumes of legal language, the committee found very little that should be changed in that area. Basically, their biggest conclusion was that regulations need to be changed so that builders can more easily build the high-rise, shoebox, wall apartments, which seems to be the future envisioned of how peons should live. No more quaint little cottages on tree-lined streets with flowers and picket fences, with children and pets and neighbors playing and visiting in the yards.

Shoebox apartments are NOT what consumers are demanding, but it is what the regulators of supply are insisting we accept. This is not the market place at work. It is government controlling the people. Given a free market, and the freedom to innovate, create and experiment, and protection of property rights, there is no doubt that the building industry would solve the housing crisis in a nanosecond. The free market ALWAYS works. But first it needs to be free.

By Evelyn Pyburn

I hate to say it but the court decision regarding the case of Held vs. Montana – kids suing the State of Montana for failing to provide them with a clean environment – was totally in keeping with Montana’s 1972 Constitution.

And I suspect we have more similar decisions to come unless we change the Montana Constitution.

Back in the day when people were all excited to approve the new constitution, as though they were getting a new car – – a small group of people I knew discussed what they saw as the most atrocious part of the new document, which was written based upon a “model” constitution provided to the delegates by the League of Cities and Towns (a very statist organization).Their concern was about such a glaring error that, quite frankly, I am surprised it has taken so long for the legal industry to take advantage of it.

Montana’s current Constitution states: “All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment….” With that declaration the crafters of the constitution set the stage for guaranteed injustices.

It’s a matter of understanding what the term “right” means as it is used in a Constitution. A right is not some “thing,” it is action. It is not a gift card, it is the opportunity to pursue a course of action.

When the word is used as it was in the Montana Constitution it demands an answer to the unspoken question: If a citizen has a right to a clean environment, then who has the obligation to provide it? Who by virtue of nothing more than having been born is inherently obligated to fulfill that right for that citizen? Who is to be that citizen’s slave?

Apparently, considering the recent court decision, it is business owners and market investors, as well as consumers and taxpayers, who are obligated to fulfill the Constitution’s mandate.

In the US Constitution, a “right” is used to allow the freedom to pursue an action. You are given the right to acquire a gun, not “to” a gun.

If the judge in Held vs. Montana were to be consistent, he would also conclude that someone, somehow is required to give every citizen a gun. Or provide them with a podium or air time to fulfill their “right” to free speech.

This use of the word “right” in such an incorrect way in the Montana Constitution is not an aberration. The state constitution also claims that every citizen has a right to an education. Again we must ask, who is responsible to fulfill that “right.” A free country – a free state – does not enslave one person for the sake of another; it provides an environment in which everyone is free to act to acquire that which they need or want. Indeed, everyone should be free to gain an education. But, if it is something that is our due, then President Biden isn’t so far off in paying off college loan debts, and it is somehow fair that other hardworking citizens should pay for it.

The US Constitution makes no mention of education – it was assumed to be no different than acquiring any other commodity and it never occurred to them that it needed to be itemized. Our forefathers would have been horrified at government providing education. It takes little imagination to know where that would lead – exactly as it has.

And, they undoubtedly never imagined we would all be condemned to live as though in a prison to “save the planet.”

Of course there are those who will insist that the claim on the wealth of others is “just” because there are people who need to be helped, or causes that are good and should be supported. While those aspects of reality do exist, so do the very many opportunities (especially in a free society which is what this issue is really all about) to VOLUNTARILY provide for them. An important word in that effort is “persuasion” – rather than using the force of government to achieve those ends, people persuade others as to their importance – whether it’s cleaning up a river or feeding starving children. In fact, during our era of freedom, Americans did more to help worthwhile causes than any coerced support from any government ever, and the US has one of the cleanest nations in the world, because people CHOSE to direct their wealth to achieve those things. No one had to confiscate it from them.

To have used the word “right” in the manner it was used in the Montana constitution is a disgrace. It reflects very little acumen; it is, however, a marvelous “make work” provision for lawyers and graft for carpetbaggers for decades to come.

There are instances in which the state constitution uses the term correctly. In fact, in the same paragraph in which it declares citizens have a right to a clean environment, the word is used correctly: “…and the rights of pursuing life’s basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways.”

To believe that the Held vs. Montana case is an aberration would be a huge, huge mistake. As one attorney commented soon after that court decision, be assured attorneys are lining up with all kinds of cases to file in Montana because it will henceforth be quite profitable. What they don’t impose upon investors of Montana business and industry, the taxpayers will be required to pick up.

Just use your imagination, while looking at all the many ways they are attacking our means of survival and ability to produce in the name of preventing global warming. Each law and regulation and claim of calamity is a ripe opportunity for a lawsuit against the State of Montana and its now- obligated taxpayers.

And they will win every time because our state constitution says that some of us have a claim to the property of others, to have what we want because we want it, and the rest have been enslaved to provide it.

Rudyard Kipling

Owning Yourself

By Evelyn Pyburn

Few quotations strike closer to home during the current era than this, especially as it pertains to speaking truth as we see it.

I understand the reasons. In my youth I used to feel quite intimidated at having to speak in a public setting of any sort. I doubt that I was unusual in that. But as with so many things in life, I learned that the more you do it the better you get at it and the more confident you become.

Speaking up when it is the right thing to do makes you feel better about yourself, even if you find out you are wrong in what you say – you learn something new and the world does not end. It’s a challenge that encourages being well informed and requires a lot of thought, so you know why you come to the decisions that you do.

So why should one find it necessary to speak up at times? Because untruths must be challenged. Truth must be recognized even when we don’t like it. Wrong information, deceit, or mistakes often harm others. One cannot build a civilized society on untruths, maintain peace or have justice with falsehoods, and falsehoods cannot stand if they are challenged by the truth. Also, whether in your personal life or in society in general, one cannot change or improve what hasn’t been accurately identified, and that requires adherence to truth.

What most people are afraid of in speaking out is “what will others think of you?” That thinking must surely come from us being social creatures and wanting to be part of the group. It’s why Rudyard Kipling calls it “hard business.” It is not easy to stand alone, and you often will have to stand alone, because human beings are very, very susceptible to “group think” – as cowardly as it might be, it feels safe.

But while you may worry what others may think, as Kipling also points out, what you think of you is far more important. After all, you have to live with you far longer than with anyone else. The more comfortable you are with yourself the more happy that life will be. Internal peace comes in knowing that you stand for what you believe is right and you have the strength to deal with truths and reality.

One of the funniest ironies of life has to be that when a person is worried about what someone else is thinking of them, the likelihood is, if they are thinking about you at all, they are wondering what you are thinking of them. And, the real truth is (which might be disappointing to discover) most people don’t think about you as much as you think they do. In the broader world, you just aren’t that important! So, you might as well be important in your own little corner of the world.

And, you might as well know why it is you believe the things you think you believe to be true. Far too many people simply adopt the opinions of those around them and never give them any deep thought. If they have confidence in those opinions it comes from believing “everyone else thinks this, so it must be right.” Seldom is that the case.

One of the keys in speaking your mind is to LISTEN to the responses. You will find new knowledge, no matter the response. One of the things I have come to realize in such discourses is that I learn more from people who disagree with me than from those who agree.Kipling also points out, not only might you have to stand alone but it might also be frightening — a factor that also has a great deal of relevance in today’s world. But one should understand the significance of the various kinds of push back you might encounter. When people have no reasonable argument in a debate of ideas their first point of refuge is name calling. It’s not only a short cut to having to think, but it often succeeds in intimidating those with the stronger arguments into silence, which for those who tend to believe in “might over right” is some kind of hallow victory.

Coerced censorship is an even greater admission of having lost the debate. The kind of censorship we have been witnessing by those who control social media and a President who establishes a bureau of censorship is to admit that they recognize themselves to be intellectually bankrupt, and any kind of victory they hope to attain requires silencing all intellectual discourse. But, most of all they are declaring that they very vehemently believe in “might over right.” They are in fact the reason that we must be brave enough and strong enough to speak truth when seeing its need, because their acts of coercion against innocent citizens demonstrate most clearly what is at stake: our very freedom, and the right to “own ourselves.”

                                      

A federal judge in Kentucky struck down a Biden administration rule that required states to measure and report the greenhouse gas emissions from any vehicles traveling on the national highway system, according to a report in Epoch Times.

“With this victory in court, we’re slamming the brakes on the Biden Administration’s politics that make no sense,” said Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, who led a coalition of 21 state attorneys general in suing the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) over the rule that sought to force states to cut carbon dioxide emissions on their roads.

Multiple states that sued over the rule argued that it could dampen job creation and eliminate future economic development.

Judge Benjamin Beaton of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky blocked the FHWA rule on April 1, calling it “invalid” and “a statutorily unsupported and substantively capricious exercise of the [FHWA] Administrator’s rulemaking authority.”

By Evelyn Pyburn

A plea for more fellowship in politics is nothing new. I have heard people calling for less “partisanship” for years and have understood part of it – or at least what I hope they mean – but there is another aspect I don’t think is wanted by some people. It is that, which seems more threatening, today, than it has for some decades.

Understanding and tolerating the views of fellow citizens is absolutely essential in a country in which freedom is promised to every individual citizen. So that — I not only “get,” but I would agree with it. But, when they seek “unity,” that could be far more difficult.

Asking for a compromise on a tax rate is doable, or the speed limit, or the boundaries of a precinct, but how do you compromise when the opposition is calling for your annihilation? Exactly how do the Jews of Israel compromise with Hamas demanding their total destruction? Does that mean agreeing to the killing of only half their population? Is that the kind of compromise expected of Israel? Just to get along?

It’s like being asked to compromise with someone who plans to shoot you. What kind of a compromise would you strike? About what kind of gun he should use?

That impossible compromise of two diametrically opposed positions is why there were early predictions that the fundamental principle of the US Constitution — declaring that all men are to be equal in a country that practiced slavery — would eventually lead to a civil war. The prognosticators understood that ideas are powerful and even a few words on a piece of paper hold great significance. Also, they understood that there was no way to compromise about how much of a slave’s life should be free. They are either free or they are not.  Our founders knew all this, and yet they wrote the Constitution as they did. Freedom for the individual was a principle they believed important enough to the future of civilization that they were willing to fight for it.

Just think about the injustice of compromising fundamental issues. When someone is simply defending themselves or their property and are asked to compromise with the aggressor, such an agreement is most assuredly to the benefit of the aggressor at a cost to the defender. The defender against aggression will always lose unless he stands strong.

It is a contradiction to justice and a violation of a citizen’s rights. It’s a fundamental over which compromise is not possible, and it is the conflict that usually lies at the basis of most political conflicts today.

The specifics of all our disagreements vary greatly, from how we get our medical care to what kind of stove we can use in our kitchens. Whether we must ride a bus or drive an electric vehicle. The pending conflicts at issue could fill a book, and basic to all of them is the threat of the use of FORCE.

Why ever should the issue of whether the planet is getting warmer be a political one? It is only political because of the threat of the use of FORCE. For the most part, those who disagree are not resisting the conclusion of those who believe it, they are resisting the use of FORCE, which is really the primary goal of the whole debate. Those claiming to believe the planet is warming want to FORCE their ideas and solutions on others.

So how does a society bring about change? There’s a magic little word – it’s called persuasion. Rather than FORCE, you persuade. Rather than addressing the opposition with a club, you address their mind. One is the tool of the caveman the other of civilized society.

Rather than coerce manufacturers to build electric vehicles and then FORCE citizens to buy them, you build the car and build a market – a FREE market – in which the product is refined and its benefit can be demonstrated and consumers are persuaded that it is a better product. The process happens a thousand times a day and it works – if indeed the product is valid. If it is not valid, then what is the point?

Ahh, but there is a point, power over others — brute FORCE. Although the desirability of it is inexplicable.

As a political issue – as an issue that pertains most often to governments – we should not be surprised that this conflict exists. After all, government is FORCE. Government by definition is the legalized use of force. Advocates for a civilized society concluded long ago that the only legitimate use of force is in self-defense or in the defense of others. The men who wrote the US Constitution believed that that principle is one upon which government should also function and they wrote laws meant to deliver that end in our relationships, one with the other, and most especially with how government interacts with citizens.

We should also not be surprised that there are people who do not agree – people who covet power and are more than willing to use it against fellow human beings, even if it is only about what light bulb they should use.

So, if you are among those who just want us all to get along, you should first understand that it is the threat of the use of FORCE that is dividing us, not the many nuances of debates. I might have an opinion about what kind of stove you should use in your kitchen, but we really have no conflict until I attempt to FORCE you to use a specific stove.

If harmonizing while holding hands and singing kumbaya is the goal, then decide what you really think about using FORCE against your neighbor. If one is truly sincere in striving for greater harmony among people, drop any advocacy that relies upon the government pointing a gun at innocent citizens and demanding their obedience. Getting along will not only be achievable, it can be guaranteed. And, who knows what amazing things might truly be achieved.

By Evelyn Pyburn

So reports are that migrants who have come to the US illegally are disappointed and want to return home. They are saying “the American dream is dead.”

As one Venezuelan illegal was quoted, “The American Dream doesn’t exist anymore. There’s nothing here for us… We just want to be home. If we’re going to be sleeping in the street here, we’d rather be sleeping in the streets over there.”

If they thought the “American dream” was handouts, freebees and socialized care from cradle to the grave, then double good riddance to them.

The “American dream” was never about those things – the American dream is, and will always be, about the freedom of individuals to work hard, to create and to generate wealth – the wealth that makes socialistic whims possible, for those who want to be kept citizens. But the socialistic whims only last until – as it has been said – we run out of other people’s money. “Other people”, of course, being those who are producing the wealth needed to sustain those who prefer not to work.

And, we should be doubly glad that they are gone because they are ILLEGAL! If they do not respect our country to the degree that their first act is to commit a crime with the crossing of our borders, then exactly when can we expect them to be law-abiding, trust worthy citizens, who truly respect this country and its laws?

The answer is never.

Never will they stand up and defend those principles or the people who live by them, when the chips are down – which is a most likely scenario with so many dishonest and disrespectful criminals abiding among us, who will vote for corrupt politicians. They vote for unethical politicians to wield the force that is necessary to aid them in their ideal of confiscating the property of the honest and productive citizens.

That there are many people crashing our borders because they want freedom there is no doubt. It is mind boggling that there are many in the US who apparently do not want freedom – people who apparently believe that powerful politicians, who will subjugate others, are their friends. It is indeed too bad that they have never studied history.

There was a reason for having a legal structure to enter the US – so immigrants would not have to sleep in the streets. Part of that process included immigrants having a sponsor – someone to help them get established so they would have a place to live, food and a job. And, US citizens across the board readily stepped up to be sponsors. Often they were church organizations, not unlike the one recently reported on in Billings that is assisting legal immigrants.

Democratic leaders in places like Chicago and New York are crying that they lack the resources to feed and house the thousands upon thousands of illegal immigrants who have descended upon their communities, and they blame President Biden for not giving them enough funding to do so. They say their states have provided millions in aid but the federal government has not matched it.

These politicians are little different than the illegal immigrants who thought the “American dream” was about freebees and handouts. They too do not understand the “American dream.” They apparently do not know that it isn’t their state or the federal government that has the wealth needed to support the illegal aliens. They do not seem to know that the aid they talk about comes from taxpayers – the citizens who work and produce and abide by the laws. They express no appreciation or recognition for the people from whom the funds must come. But given the role they play as legal plunderers, their indifference is not surprising.

This situation of encouraging illegal immigrants to enter the US, seeking a distorted perception of the American dream, has every potential of unraveling the fabric of the “American dream.”

The truly sad thing is the “American dream” is not something that has to be uniquely American. Any country can have it. Nothing – absolutely nothing – stands in the way of any country having the wealth and standard of living that Americans have – but it can’t be achieved through socialism or any kind of collectivism.  The people of a country – including the US —must rid themselves of the confiscators – the corrupt politicians – and they must believe in the justness of individual freedom, and abide by the ideals and principles of individual responsibility and system of laws, rather than the favors of power mongers.

While many illegal immigrants have come with a very incorrect idea about what the American dream is –they are not alone. Many Americans hold the same mistaken ideas, which is significant because it is the IDEA that matters. It is not a matter of borders. The American dream is built upon an IDEA . . . and it is that IDEA that is the focus of the desperate efforts of collectivists to censor communications, silence free speech and criminalize the exchange of ideas, so that people never understand the IDEA. It is the IDEA of the “American dream” that they fear. The American dream is the IDEA that each citizen should be free to live life as they choose.