Bravo for ballot issues

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Sept. 17) “Why, John Andrews! You don’t like government.” The scolding words came from Gov. Roy Romer. It was 1990, and I was the Republican nominee debating the Democratic incumbent. To emphasize my freedom agenda, I had begun urging a vote for "Andrews and the Amendments," namely TABOR and term limits. The liberal Romer pounced on this as proof of his conservative challenger’s unfitness, and sure enough, he won big on election day. But term limits won even bigger, and the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights just missed winning, coming back for a victory in 1992. Both are still with us and popular. So if liking those reforms equates to not liking government, this columnist is not alone in the sentiment.

Let’s be clear. I accept and respect government. I recognize the need for a political order to protect and restrain all of us as unruly human beings, deficient in self-discipline. But precisely because of my skepticism about fallen humanity, I have little liking for government as such, little trust in its fearsome monopoly of power.

Liberals do feel affection and affinity for government. They center their hopes on what it can do for people. We conservatives worry more about what it can do TO people. We cherish our American form of government, the best on earth, limited and directed by consent of the governed. Our hopes, though, are centered on what freely choosing individuals and private, voluntary institutions can do for themselves, under God.

Coloradans this year face another ballot crowded with amendments and referendums. Some believe we have too much of this voter participation in changing the constitution and laws, whether proposed by the legislature or by citizens’ petition. Not me. Distrusting political insiders and centralized power means welcoming a brake (or accelerator) on the process from we the people – and I do.

No matter which candidate you like for governor, or which party you want running the legislature, these ballot issues are your chance to alter the playing field on which November’s winning candidates will suit up next January. “All political power is vested in and derived from the people,” proclaims the Colorado constitution. Never let the insiders talk you out of exercising your share.

Our state is fortunate, for example, that government must always seek voter approval of taxes or debt, under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Those who claim TABOR is dead, just because state refunds were waived till 2011 by last year’s Referendum C, are talking moonshine. Your permission for key fiscal decisions will be requested on many local ballots this fall. Lots of other states envy us that.

As for the statewide ballot, 15 measures large and small await our action. Much like Senate bills in the past, my vote is an easy call on some of them, a tougher decision on others. Here’s my scorecard so far:

Strengthening consent of the governed: Yes on Amendment 38, safeguarding your petition rights and restraining legislative overreach. Yes on Amendment 40, putting term limits on high-ranking judges.

Making illegal aliens less welcome: The state Supreme Court robbed us of voting on the main issue here. But I’ll vote Yes on Referendum H, a tax hammer over employers who cheat, and Yes on Referendum K, a state lawsuit demanding tougher federal enforcement.

Affirming traditional marriage: Yes on Amendment 43, putting into the constitution a one man-one woman statute we passed in 2000.

Maximizing education dollars in the classroom: Yes on Amendment 39, so at least 65 cents on the dollar gets spent where teachers face kids. No on Referendum J, a bogus alternative from teacher unions.

Easing the property-tax burden on disabled veterans: Yes on Referendum E, absolutely.

Protecting jobs for minorities and youth: No on Amendment 42, a minimum wage hike that would lessen entry-level opportunities by boosting labor costs 30%.

Nixing nutty ideas: No on Amendment 41, unless you want to chill normal dialogue between public officials and the public. No on Amendment 44, unless you want to make Colorado a marijuana mecca.

The remaining loose ends I’ll happily tie up in a future column, for I do indeed love politics. It’s just government I’m not crazy about.

Tancredo for President?

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Aug. 20) It’s a long way from the Stockyards Amphitheater in Chicago, summer 1960, to the Cool River Café in Greenwood Village, summer 2006. But Congressman Tom Tancredo’s post-primary Republican breakfast speech the other day reminded me of watching Senator Barry Goldwater tell conservatives at the GOP convention back then to keep faith, his time would come, moments before the delegates nominated Richard Nixon to face John F. Kennedy. It’s clear to me that Tancredo today, like Goldwater back then, envisions a serious run for President of the United States, but wants to remain above the battle at present because it’s still a long shot. The Arizona senator’s moment did come, four years later. Will the Colorado congressman’s moment come two years from now? Stranger things have happened.

I know, Tancredo says his exploration of entering the 2008 presidential primaries is on hold. He’s now supposedly considering a Senate race. But several things make me doubtful: the fiery Republican’s themes in that August 9 speech, his new book developing those themes, and the uneasy flux in GOP leadership ranks just 500 days before the Iowa caucuses.

Addressing the Arapahoe County Republican Men’s Club, the four-term representative from Littleton said nothing about the previous day’s contest between would-be successors to his departing colleagues, Bob Beauprez and Joel Hefley. He hardly mentioned his party’s struggle to hold Congress amid weak polls, or his reelection bid against Democrat Bill Winter. What Tom Tancredo dwelt on was the kind of leadership Americans need right now from our chief executive.

With his trademark passion, candor, and humor, but also with a discipline that shows new depth in my friend of 25 years, he skipped the rhetoric and hammered intensely on three concerns – the immigration mess, the multiculturalist assault on American identity, and the clash of civilizations pitting Islamic fascism against Western civilization.

Tancredo’s bottom line on each issue was: How will the next president measure up? Passing laws to secure the borders and deal with millions of illegal aliens won’t help, he said, unless we have an executive determined to enforce them. Rescuing our national unity and pride from a dispiriting “cult of multiculturalism” will take unflinching presidential leadership as well. So will the existential challenge of knowing our global enemy and defeating him at all costs, the congressman warned. His whole focus was on 2008, not 2006.

Having given and written many a candidate speech, let me stress that technically this wasn’t one. Tancredo mentioned none of the presidential contenders. He never hinted of joining them, let alone winning the great prize and shouldering the great burden. But he didn’t have to; it was all there between the lines, an invitation to a draft, Goldwater 1960 all over again. People were shouting “Tancredo for President” in the ovation afterward.

In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security, the congressman’s latest book, tackles the same three issues in vivid detail and uncompromising bluntness. It’s much more than a campaign tract for a suburban Denver lawmaker, make no doubt. If Tancredo’s chapters from the Mexican border are expected, the ones from Beirut and Beslan are less so. The guy has range. And if you’re not aroused by his account of only four hands going up when he asked 44 of East High’s brightest kids, “Who believes we live in the greatest country in the world?”, you’re hopeless.

How far will the author-politician go? Barry Goldwater’s book, The Conscience of a Conservative, helped him to the GOP nomination, and though his candidacy lost in 1964, his ideas have won in the decades since. Goldwater supporters said he offered “a choice, not an echo,” in contrast to the bland, cautious alternatives in a party lost and adrift. And it worked.

Heading into 2007, if McCain, Giuliani, Romney, Allen, and Gingrich all seem like echoes of each other, the clear choice Tancredo offers could start to catch on. Michigan Republicans made him No. 1 in a recent straw poll. Might the enthusiasm be contagious?

Cultural comparisons reflect realism, not racism

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Aug. 6) Thought police on patrol: it’s not a pretty sight. To me it’s un-American. And when the insult to freedom is compounded by injury to opportunity, because leaders won’t face facts, it’s downright tragic. Sadly, that’s where things stand right now in the kangaroo court case of The Status Quo vs. Richard Lamm. The former Democratic governor is guilty of “hate” and “racial profiling” according to Sen. Ken Salazar and ex-Sen. Gary Hart. He’s condemned by black legislator Terrance Carroll for “demonizing” and by Hispanic clergy leader Butch Montoya for “extremism.”

Republican state chairman Bob Martinez charges Dick Lamm with making “bigoted remarks… inciting fear and suspicion and distrust.” Bruce DeBoskey of the Anti-Defamation League says Lamm’s comments will “lead to greater prejudice.” “Hard-core racist,” says Latino activist Veronica Barela. Offensive to Dr. King’s memory, adds black pastor Paul Burleson. Slaps America in the face, summarizes Sen. Salazar.

So there’s your jury verdict; sentencing is next. Banishment to Siberia awaits the outspoken politician-turned-professor unless he apologizes and pays restitution. Even then, the implacable establishment may order branding. TH for “too honest,” seared on the blasphemer’s cheek, will deter potential signers of his next petition.

What impermissible idea has Dick Lamm voiced to arouse such outrage? In a January book and a July speech, he dared suggest that Americans of African or Mexican descent should first look inward at their own habits and attitudes, rather than outward at “racism and discrimination [which] clearly still exist,” to account for the lagging educational and economic performance in those communities. Horrors.

A remedial dose of “Japanese or Jewish values, respect for learning and ambition” could do a lot to help discouraged residents of our ghettos and barrios help themselves, Lamm writes in Two Wands, One Nation. Citing statistics (difficult to dismiss as bigotry), he goes on:

“When two-thirds of black births are out-of-wedlock births, it is hard to write a happy or prosperous future for black America. When close to 50 percent of Hispanic students don’t graduate from high school, it is hard to see Hispanics following the typical American route to prosperity.” Most of us from whatever ethnicity would call this realism. It’s bizarre to hear Butch Montoya label it extremism.

But remember it was Mr. Montoya who helped orchestrate the protest last spring when Superintendent Michael Bennet closed the low-performing, chronically dysfunctional Manual High School. Bennet argued we owe inner-city children an education that lifts them. Montoya, despite his experience overseeing the police department, seemed less interested in rescuing kids than in demagoguing the ‘hood.

His claque used the same angry rhetoric of victimization and white guilt against DPS that they are using against Dick Lamm. Theirs is a shameful failure of leadership, of adulthood itself. How are young people, brown or black or any color, supposed to learn that character means hearing the message, even when bitter, and not simply shooting the messenger – if so-called adult leaders do the opposite?

The message that tells kids to work harder, study longer, save more, complain less, stop resenting and start achieving, is no hot-fudge sundae in any era. To the teenage sweet-tooth in our spoiled urban culture of multicultural excuse-making, it’s castor oil. Yet the only choices for any of America’s population groups are to swallow it and thrive – or spit it out, sicken and die. There is no third way.

We should thank Dick Lamm for being the unwelcome messenger, the curmudgeon with the tough love. He’s only repeating what nonwhite truth-tellers like entertainer Bill Cosby, economist Thomas Sowell, and former education secretary Lauro Cavazos have already said: Culture matters, and unlike race, culture can be chosen and changed.

Constructive criticism of comparative cultural outcomes is thus the very opposite of racism. Will the Burlesons and the Barelas of inner-city Denver bravely champion that choice, that change? Or will they stay trapped in the blame game? Our future together as Americans, not just for this or that race but for all of us, depends on the answer. ------------------------------- For further reading: Here is Dick Lamm's own 8/2 statement in the Post, after the controversy was already boiling. Here are a critical Jim Spencer column from the preceding day, and a Mike Rosen piece in Lamm's defense.

Which political anniversary shines brightest?

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, July 16) “We have no king but Caesar.” It was an odd thing for the elders of Jerusalem, royal David’s city, to tell the governor from Rome. But politically this was the safe answer, so Pilate proceeded to execute the freedom-talking seditionist in question, one Jesus of Nazareth. Independence Day set me on a historical odyssey from the ancient emperors to the modern idea of liberation. After a detour through the dictionary and the calendar, this column resulted. The theme is political birthdays. The destination is America in 2076. Come on along.

Why do the last four months of our year have Latin names signifying 7 to 10? Because the Romans inserted, ahead of September, two months named for Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar. Fittingly, July and August now abound with memorable dates from the endless struggle of freedom versus tyranny.

Next month begins with our statehood anniversary, Colorado Day. This month Americans have already marked the Fourth of July, the French on July 14 celebrated Bastille Day, and on July 26 the Cuban people (some at least) will hail Fidel Castro’s revolutionary beginnings. Britain paused on July 7 to commemorate last year’s Al Qaeda attack.

I won’t be around for the U.S. Tricentennial on July 4, 2076. But my three-year-old grandson Ian will be here, God willing. You know youngsters who likely will be too. Ask yourself, though, and don’t answer too quickly – will the United States itself be around for that great celebration?

Some would say it absolutely will be. I am more inclined to say it depends. The Constitution was written “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Liberty is real for you and me because previous generations kept faith. Our posterity, Ian and his descendants, won’t have it unless we keep faith. The responsibility is ours.

Nobody in 2006 wants to live under a Caesar who claims divinity and rules by decree. Britons, French, and other Europeans, Cubans and the Third World, even the Islamofascists, all profess their visions of liberation. Yet for mankind’s sake everywhere, it is the July 4 vision that must prevail.

The Declaration of Independence, America’s birth certificate, teaches that our rights come from nature and God, not from laws and majorities. Limited government, consent of the governed, and as a last resort the right of revolution, necessarily follow. This remains the best mode ever devised for organizing society, bar none.

The July 14 vision in Paris, “liberty, equality, fraternity,” may sound similar. But it licensed atheistic and utopian illusions that led to the Terror and then to Napoleon, Caesar reborn – by way of their own renamed months and statist cult. Unlimited government, albeit in tamer forms, has haunted the French ever since. It haunts their brainchild, the European Union, still today.

Castro’s July 26 communist vision goes further, annulling morality and truth entirely. It substitutes an ethic of raw power, where might makes right and no limits on government remain. Far from dying out, this evil has new life in Venezuela and Bolivia. Nor is it completely dead in China and Russia. The Marxist dream dies hard.

As for July 7 and the 2005 subway bombings, Melanie Phillips’s new book “Londonistan” raises dark questions. Is Britain already too far gone in EU multiculturalism and appeasement to resist the Islamic colonizers within? Will the Mother of Parliaments honor Magna Carta or Sharia, come 2076? It depends.

Which political anniversary will shine brightest 70 summers hence? Americans need to understand our own heritage better, for starters. Too many, according to surveys, don’t even know Marx’s “to each according to his need” from Jefferson’s “all created equal.” The relativist curriculum in government schools doesn’t help.

Blather like the Diane Carman and Ed Quillen columns in the Post on July 4, painting President Bush as morally equivalent to George III, doesn’t help either. We should debate our differences like grownups. And we should never take for granted this “republic, if you can keep it,” which Benjamin Franklin and the other Founders gave us. Its keeping is our most sacred trust.

Three days off the grid

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, July 7) Three days without cell phones or email, TV or the Web. Three days without talk radio, iPods, or even this newspaper. That was how nine of us spent the final weekend of June, floating the Skagit River in Washington State. Was it great? You know the answer. Being off the grid of hurry and worry helped us renew a more elemental, timeless connection with each other and with life. We unplugged from the hectic and plugged into the soul-grid instead. What a trip, in every sense of the word.

The men in my family first indulged our Huck Finn fantasy ten years ago on the Current River in Missouri’s Ozarks. Our next float was in 1999 on the Colorado River west of Grand Junction. In 2002 the clan needed four canoes for a rainy trip down the Pine River near my Michigan birthplace. This year we headed northwest to entice our Keasey kin from Seattle (they came) and the Grossman guys from Portland (they couldn’t).

Washington and Oregon’s Cascade Mountains have a volcanic mystique that’s different from the Rockies. Mount Rainier stands sentinel over the Puget Sound metropolis. Southward is Mount St. Helens, which blew not long ago. Guarding the north flank is Mount Baker, its flat cone still snowclad even this close to Independence Day.

The Skagit rises east of Mount Baker, in British Columbia above three hydropower dams. From the head of navigation at Newhalem to the estuary at La Conner it’s 80 miles by whitewater raft and voyager canoe. Shane Turnbull, the owner of Chinook Expeditions, said our group was the first he’s ever guided the full distance. It required no prowess from us, only persistent paddling. Our reward was that magical time on the quiet river and off the grid.

My son Daniel, a Denver policeman, and my brother Jim, a lawyer in St. Louis, were the only 1996 trip veterans who could make it this time. Cousin George in Kansas, a previous regular, had obligations with his daughters. Cousin Marc from Virginia was a repeat from 2002, however. So was Jim’s teenage son Garner. Bob, married to my sister in Seattle, was along for the first time, as were their grown sons Ben and Jon.

Other people’s family chat is cloying, I know. You don’t need a midsummer “Christmas letter” in a column that usually looks at issues and ideas. Yet there IS a big idea here, transcending such details as why Carl and his boys couldn’t float with us (plugging into another soul-grid at Yosemite) or why the Turnbull brothers of Newhalem remain so bonded (Catholic parents, one-room schoolhouse). It’s the idea of true and false priorities, fool’s gold or the real thing.

Other things being equal, Bob would have conscientiously monitored the market on Friday for his clients, I’d have joined my pal Caldara for his Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms event on Saturday, Daniel might have responded with fellow officers to Sunday’s horrific Safeway shootings. Monday morning would have found Ben at his pharmaceutical job and me at a Defend Colorado Now meeting, rather than sipping campfire coffee at sunrise.

Other things were not equal, though. As on any weekend in the year, urgent pressures could have chained us – if we let them – to the daily grind, the grid. But we said: No, this errand in the wilderness matters more. Worthy as those workaday commitments may be, we eight (plus Shane, our ebullient guide) chose a different priority for June’s end: each other, the good earth, and Him who made it all.

So off the grid and onto the Skagit we went. Although the Indian pronunciation is like “agitate,” the balm you find is just the opposite, out there in the whispering current between the looming peaks. The agitated issues of 2006 count for a lot, and the self-evident truths of July 4 for even more. But it’s relationships with loved ones and peace of soul that count most. Take time for them this summer. Your reunion river is waiting; plug into it.