What's your family story?

(Denver Post, Feb. 24) When a prominent man says he is stepping down to spend more time with his family, it’s usually a fib. He invokes the family as a fig leaf for failure, embarrassed to admit the horse bucked him off. But nothing like that is the case, I believe, with Ken Salazar’s return to Colorado after serving as a senator and secretary of the interior. The veteran Democrat’s words rang sweet and true to this Republican's ear when he spoke of living up to “my highest moral responsibility… helping my family.” If there were a medal of honor for unsung homefront heroism, give one to Ken. Our society, however, does not heap honors on fathers and mothers and kids and kin who quietly do right by each other and, in so doing, build the future. It’s a pity, because the institution of the American family is disintegrating before our eyes. The household has literally become a homefront, a battlefield – and the me-first forces are winning everywhere you look.

According to the 2010 census, fewer than six in ten babies are now born to a married mom and dad. For Hispanic children, it’s fewer than five in ten. For blacks, fewer than three in ten. Getting married before getting pregnant is the best single anti-poverty strategy for a woman and her kids. Yet public policy, social signals, and the cultural climate are massively aligned against it. A soft suicide is in progress.

You probably didn’t notice the recent celebration of National Marriage Week. Meager funding and elite indifference doomed it. Most of our tax dollars, philanthropic dollars, advertising dollars, and entertainment dollars pour into America’s selfishness machine. Kids and adults alike are encouraged to believe that people are my instrument, love is my wish list, and sex is my plaything. Me, me, me.

Contrarian groups that work to build a marriage culture through classes and seminars, relying on the best science with a non-religious, non-judgmental tone – such as the Center for Relationship Education under Joneen McKenzie and Friends First under Elycia Cook, to name two of my local favorites – have to scrap for budgetary leftovers as they stand against the flood of money propagandizing for value-free lifestyles.

The collapsing family in our time represents a generational betrayal with few precedents in history. With shameless hedonism, we are abdicating the trust our children and grandchildren ought to be able to place in us. Families are qualitatively ever more dysfunctional and quantitatively ever smaller. A new book by Jonathan V. Last, “What to Expect when No One’s Expecting,” runs the numbers, and they are scary.

What’s to be done? Top-down policy solutions are the smallest part. Attitudes have to change from the bottom up. My family has vowed to do three things. One, respect the long run. Two, stop the selfishness machine. Three, help build the ark.

“In the long run, we’re all dead,” Lord Keynes’ cynical crack, has done worse moral harm in the world than all the harm of his economic theories. We must secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity as well as ourselves, the Founders taught. That means recognizing the far-flung ill effects of modernity’s selfishness machine, calling them out, and resisting them.

And because things may get worse before they get better, we’ll need a vessel of rescue. Every simple word and act that affirms family and fidelity, relationships and self-giving, is another plank in the ark that will float us above the coming flood. Our house has joined the builders. Will yours?

The Salazars of San Luis have a great story. But so do countless other Colorado families. Just putting them on record and praising them is a start. What’s your family story, or a family hero you admire? Email me with nominations. Let’s be the change.

Can we keep America exceptional?

President Obama insists that America is not exceptional. Yet for his flawed economic policies to work, he must rely on an amazing degree of exceptionalness. Like any nation, we are not exempt from the consequences of ill-considered choices. We have the advantage of observing the outcome that decades of overspending and social profligacy have caused in Europe -- welfare dependency, oppressive taxation and insurmountable debt. And riots.

America is indeed exceptional in many important ways: freedom, innovation, opportunity, honor. But bloated government outlays and intrusive, business-thwarting regulations bring economic collapse, even here.

In which Obama gets a 2nd chance but blows it

Might the recent inauguration herald some real hope and change at last, wonders a tongue-in-cheek John Andrews in the February round of Head On TV debates. He even momentarily dons an Obama button before Susan Barnes-Gelt reaffirms the hardball playbook and reminds us it's all the Republicans' fault. John on the right (button quickly discarded) and Susan on the left also go at it this month Hillary Clinton's past, the GOP's future, immigration reform, and gun control. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for February: 1. PREVIEWING OBAMA’S SECOND TERM

Susan: Obama has four years of on-the-job-training – and he doesn’t have to pander to special interests for re-election. Washington is a swamp and he can apply his will and intelligence to cut entitlements, reform the tax code and protect the vulnerable. Elections have consequences. He must play hardball.

John: Mr. President, sir: Like my [Obama campaign] button? I voted for Mitt, but since I follow a God of second chances, I appeal for you to devote yourself to hope and change. Change your confrontational ways. Stop trying to transform us into France. Give Americans reason to hope for constructive cooperation between Democrats and Republicans.

Susan: Washington’s dysfunction is driven by the politics of partisan primaries. Incumbents who are moderate problem solvers are threatened by right wing ideologues – not Democratic challengers. Majority Speaker Boehner is trying to manage a freak show that has noting to do with Obama’s leadership style.

John: Barack, my friend, this saddens me, but it’s over between us. [Removes button, tosses it away.] You had your chance. Your spokeswoman here, Susan, won’t get off the Alinsky talking points. Second-term hardball, Obama unfettered. Veer to the left, no comprise, consensus be damned. In 2010 that approach cost you dearly. It will again in 2014.

2. ARE REPUBLICANS EVEN RELEVANT ANY MORE?

Susan: After decades of posturing and hyperbole, immigration reform will happen. And human issues – human rights, women’s health, LGBT issues and religion – are no longer the third rail of partisan politics. The reason: young people see the world in chiaroscuro– shades of grey. If Republicans don’t embrace change, they’re doomed.

John: The party of the left keeps helpfully advising the party of the right to come over there with them. Then we’d have both parties proclaiming government is the only answer and relativism is the only truth. Ain’t happening, Susan. The answer is freedom and responsibility. Republicans will stand on that, thank you.

Susan: How’s that workin’ for ya so far? Let see, R’s lost seats in the Senate, the House and – ummm – the White House? Senate Minority leader McConnell and House Majority leader Boehner serve at the will of a fractured herd of nattering nabobs of negativism. They make Spiro Agnew look respectable.

John: In America, freedom and responsibility have always worked better than bureaucracy and dependency. Always will. Democrats can go on being the party of government, Republicans the party of liberty, and we’ll see who has the best winning percentage over time. My money is on liberty.

3. HILLARY’S PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

John: As Obama builds a new cabinet, America is better off with Hillary Clinton stepping down as Secretary of State. She is dishonest, unscrupulous, and manipulative even by the low standards of Washington. Her evasive Senate testimony about the Benghazi massacre was shameful. America does not need a Clinton third term in 2016.

Susan: Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State was great for the President, our global partners and the nation’s safety and respect. An unparalleled advocate for the rights of women, children the underserved across the globe – she is a remarkable leader who happens to be female. Kerry has big shoes to fill!

John: John Kerry as incoming Secretary of State is no prize either. The Vietnam peacenik who threw away his war medals will have US enemies laughing at us around the world. Mrs. Clinton leaves him a legacy of weakness and appeasement. She failed as foreign minister and would fail worse as president.

Susan: This country and the world would benefit from Hillary Clinton’s leadership – whether as president of the United States or head of a multi-national organization. She is smart and articulate with impeccable values. She knows who she is and what she stands for and is respected throughout the world.

4. IMMIGRATION REFORM, AGAIN

John: I like Marco Rubio as a rising conservative star, and I like the savory seasoning that Latinos add to the American melting pot. But Rubio is wrong in teaming up with Obama for a so-called path to citizenship, which really means amnesty for lawbreakers. Ten million new Democratic voters? No thanks.

Susan: Republicans will continue to be irrelevant if the old white boys don’t recognize the inevitable. The realities of the 21st Century – from demographics of economic sustainability depend on sane immigration policy. A majority of Americans agree. Marco Rubio is the face of America’s future. Get used to it.

John: The social and economic dysfunction of Mexico has sent opportunity-seekers flooding into the USA for decades. Can we make room for them? Absolutely, on the right terms. But full political participation is not the way. Amnesty failed when Reagan tried it, and will fail again. Secure the border first!

Susan: John F. Kennedy said it best in his 1958 book, A Nation of Immigrants. The United States is and always has been a nation of people who value both tradition and the exploration of new frontiers, people who deserve the freedom to build better lives for themselves in their adopted homeland.

5. GUN CONTROL, AGAIN

John: The gun control proposals by Feinstein in Congress, and by Hickenlooper here in Colorado, take away too much self-protection and self-responsibility and offer too little assurance of greater public safety in return. A government big enough to give us everything we want is big enough to take away everything we have.

Susan: Thirteen. Sixty-four. One hundred and forty two. One hundred and thirteen. Two-hundred and fifty. Four Hundred and fifteen. Thirteen years. 64 mass shootings. One hundred and forty-two guns. One hundred thirteen illegal guns. Two hundred and fifty dead. Four hundred and fifteen injured. Do the math.

John: Firearms are dangerous, no question. But power-hungry big government is far more dangerous. Citizens and politicians alike, including Colorado’s own Democratic senators, need assurances that proposed gun laws will truly deter criminals and lunatics, not just disarm the law-abiding. Then we can deal.

Susan: Thirteen. Sixty-four. One hundred and forty two. One hundred and thirteen. Two-hundred and fifty. Four Hundred and fifteen. Thirteen years. 64 mass shootings. One hundred and forty-two guns. One hundred thirteen illegal guns. Two hundred and fifty dead. Four hundred and fifteen injured. Do the math.

'Keep & bear arms' isn't negotiable

(Denver Post, Feb. 3) Firearms are dangerous. When learning to use a rifle in boyhood, and later when training with a handgun, I was drilled hard on this. Instructors barked at my least show of carelessness. But the force of government and political power is more dangerous than any gun. Our public officials are trustees over the organized monopoly of legitimate violence in this country. Under due process of law, they hold the dispensation of life and death over us all. How chilling if this fearsome power were to be used carelessly. Unfortunately, instances of its careless use are all around us, often on a massive scale and with disastrous consequences. That’s why in these United States we live not only under laws – in which the government tells the people what they may and may not do – but also under constitutions, in which the people tell the government what it may and may not do.

This recently came to mind as I listened to state legislators taking their oath “to support the Constitution of the United States and of the state of Colorado,” and last week to President Obama swearing for his second term “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

In Barack Obama’s heart, however, it seems his constitutional agenda is more transformative than protective. He’s on the record in a 2001 radio interview, thinking aloud about the need to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution [which make it] a charter of negative liberties.”

Such goals as “redistribution of wealth and… political and economic justice in society” are harder to accomplish, the future president explained, because the Constitution says what the states and federal government “can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what [they] must do on your behalf.”

One of the “tragedies of the civil rights movement,” Mr. Obama concluded, was its failure to “put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Tragic? Only if we misunderstand rights as claims on other people. The modern bureaucratic state establishes such claims all the time, obligating one group as givers and privileging another as takers. Society can sustain a certain amount of this without going broke or coming to blows, and opinions differ on how close we are. But if words mean anything, such a process is not the creation of rights. God alone can do that.

Rights, in the American political tradition, mean those equal, natural, inherent endowments of an individual’s very being which no one else – especially government – may arbitrarily take from him. “Negative liberties,” Obama’s term, is correct is that rights are a stern “Thou shalt not” to a grasping, meddling, paternalistic, power-hungry Caesar.

That’s true even when Caesar is cloaked in good intentions and a democratic majority. So the federal Bill of Rights, ten amendments to our U.S. Constitution, and the Colorado Bill of Rights, 31 sections of our state constitution, ban piled upon ban specifying what government “can’t do to you,” are a free people’s best friend.

The latter in particular, established for us since statehood in 1876, deserves your attention as gun control is debated this year. The right to keep and bear arms – federally guaranteed by the Second Amendment, but with a problematic militia clause – shines unclouded in Colorado’s Section 13, where it is justified explicitly by an individual’s “defense of his home, person and property.”

Now come Gov. Hickenlooper and his legislative allies, with their well-meaning proposals to, in some degree, disarm law-abiding Coloradans – supposedly in exchange for new assurances of what government “must do on your behalf” (to quote the President one last time). Don’t they recognize how much Section 13 ties their hands? They need to.

Don't disarm the law-abiding

Since Connecticut's strict gun control didn't prevent the Newtown horror, policymakers shouldn't impose new restrictions that disarm the law-abiding, says John Andrews in the January round of Head On TV debates. Just do the math, replies Susan Barnes-Gelt, and we'll all conclude too many have died, laws must be tightened. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over Colorado proposals to help children of illegal immigrants and shut down death row, as well as the continuing fiscal cliff drama and the Obama-Boehner standoff. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for January: 1. GUN CONTROL

Susan: Thirteen. Sixty-four. One hundred and forty two. One hundred and thirteen. Two-hundred and fifty. Four Hundred and fifteen. Thirteen years. 64 mass shootings. One hundred and forty-two guns. One hundred thirteen illegal guns. Two hundred and fifty dead. Four hundred and fifteen injured. The Second Amendment? Do the math.

John: The mass violence is unacceptable, Susan, absolutely. We have to address it. America can do better. But my friend, listen to yourself. Most of the guns in those shootings were already illegal. Legislation in Congress or in Colorado must recognize that. When responsible citizens have firearms to protect themselves, crime goes down.

Susan: Thirteen. Sixty-four. One hundred and forty two. One hundred and thirteen. Two-hundred and fifty. Four Hundred and fifteen. Thirteen years. 64 mass shootings. One hundred and forty-two guns. One hundred thirteen illegal guns. Two hundred and fifty dead. Four hundred and fifteen injured. Do the math.

John: The math says more Americans are killed each year by hammers and clubs than by guns, according to the FBI. More Americans are killed by automobiles than guns. Connecticut’s very strict gun laws didn’t prevent the Newtown horror. The problem is the culture, not the weapons. Don’t disarm the law-abiding.

2. COLORADO ASSET BILL (DREAM ACT)

Susan: Colorado voters retained a Democratic Senate and turned over control of the House to the Dems. The economy is uppermost for D’s and R’s, but reduced tuition for undocumented students – the ASSET bill – is high on the agenda. Investment in education for ALL Colorado students is key to the future of this great state.

John: Public policy should not reward lawbreaking. It’s unfair that CU should cost more for Tommy from Kansas, a citizen and the son of citizens, than for Tomas from Mexico, whose parents snuck him into the country as a child. Tomas is not to blame, but neither are taxpayers. Let private charity subsidize his tuition.

Susan: The demographics of Colorado and the entire country are changing – Exhibit 1: November’s election. Kansas Tommy’s future is inextricably bound to Tomas’s skills. Education is not a zero sum game. America’s future depends on an informed, diverse and well-trained workforce.

John: America’s future depends above all on the rule of law, a shared common culture, and patriotic citizens who understand that rights involve responsibilities and cheating has consequences. The Asset Bill or Dream Act disregards all those values with misguided sympathy and a hidden leftist agenda. Don’t pass it. 3. DEATH PENALTY

John: An ancient principle of justice says that if you take a life, you pay with your life. This is not barbaric, it’s reasonable and right. A child-murderer like Austin Sigg or a mass killer like James Holmes deserves the death penalty. Colorado should not abolish it.

Susan: Which testament is it? The ‘eye for an eye’ bible or the theology valuing the sanctity of life? Honestly, I am ambivalent on the issue of the death penalty. I am a pragmatist. Which costs less? Lifetime incarceration or the death penalty? It’s a calculation, not a principle.

John: When lawmakers debate abolishing the death penalty, they will be told it has become impractical with the way the appeals process works today. There’s your pragmatism. Then we should fix that process, not redefine crime and punishment to the vanishing point. Tell it to the Ridgeways and the Aurora theater families.

Susan: I need to be convinced that loss, grief and anger can be assuaged by retribution – the death penalty. Reforming the justice system isn’t the answer, particularly during these hyper-partisan times. Life imprisonment may be more unbearable than death.

4. FISCAL CLIFF & DEBT CEILING

John: With last-minute legislation on January 1st, Obama got his tax increase on the most productive Americans. The minimal added revenue will not nearly solve our trillion-dollar deficits. It merely penalizes success and hurts everyone’s prosperity. Congress must address the spending crisis. Do your thing, Republicans.

Susan: If the D’s and the R’s don’t stop their playground antics – the country suffers. Dems must get serious about entitlement reform. Republicans - about the bloated defense budget. The rest – to quote the Bard, “ Sound and fury, signifying nothing!”

John: Washington is all bloated, but for the record, defense spends less than half the money as entitlements. But it starts with attitude. As the Lincoln movie reminds us, when America faced a cancer called slavery, the president and both parties came together. Why can’t they now, with the cancer of overspending?

Susan: Overspending is merely a symptom of the cancer. The disease is myopic self-absorption where nearly everyone exposed to the DC swamp becomes infected with the perq’s of power, the illusion of control and the obsequious groveling of special interests. It’s a toxic, potentially fatal disease.

5. WHITHER SPEAKER BOEHNER?

Susan: House Republican Speaker John Boehner has a problem: followership. Leaders cannot lead without the consensus of disciplined, informed colleagues who share a common sense of purpose, while disagreeing on tactics. His power as Speaker is hostage to a minority of luddite anarchists.

John: Americans knew what they were doing when they reelected a Democratic President to step on the gas and a Republican House to hit the brakes. It’ll be bumpy, but divided government may create the opening our economy needs to recover. John Boehner is tough as a boot. He’s the right speaker to confront Obama.

Susan: The problem isn’t divided government – a balance of D’s and R’s. The problem is the intransigent myopia of the far right and, perhaps, the far left. Progress in a democracy demands compromise, negotiation and mutual respect. These three characteristics define the Beltway’s endangered list.

John: You didn’t mention the most uncompromising ideologue of them all, our left-liberal President. Dogged John Boehner leading the House majority and crafty Mitch McConnell leading the Senate minority can’t match him on charisma, but they have the people’s best interest at heart to avoid US bankruptcy. Unlike Barack Obama.