New column on perspective from conservatives

For years, the very wise, knowledgeable and thoughtful Mike Lang wrote the “Thoughts from a Conservative” feature. His insight and great grasp of history always made sure people understood the greatness of America and our founding. Unfortunately, Mike has decided upon a much-deserved retirement, and I have been asked to continue his rich tradition of presenting ideas and thoughts from the political right. Hopefully, you will find my thoughts useful as well.

A little about me. I grew up in Harlan and have been in Creston since 1998. I am divorced and have four adult children (three still living). Coming from a politically agnostic upbringing, I was politically moderate until I became a Christian shortly after moving to Creston. Christianity profoundly affected my politics. When reading the Bible and observing modern policies and platforms, I determined quickly that the political “right,” typically represented by Republicans, was more consistent with the Bible. Walking by faith, I became active in Republican politics.

However, I am a conservative first and Republican second, meaning I am not beholden to a party but to a set of ideals. As long as the Republican Party continues to espouse those ideals and push for legislation that is consistent with my faith and the Bible (and common sense), I’ll continue to support the party and its candidates.

For the remainder of this article, I want to briefly discuss our fair neighbor to the north, Minnesota. I’ve spent considerable time in that state, and I have lots of friends there. Fishing and outdoor recreation is great…politics, not so much. The left has controlled that state for decades, leaving it ripe for a curious type of identity politics.

For decades, Minnesota has been home to an increasing population of Somalis, many of them refugees fleeing from corruption and violence in the African nation of Somalia. The problem is that they brought some of that corruption to America. The difference is that America has tremendous wealth, confiscated from hard-working Americans in the form in taxes, which go into a so-called safely net. We are now finding out that for many years, some Somali people have learned how to rob the system very creatively.

The Democrats that run Minnesota claim ignorance, but if it is ignorance, it must be grave incompetence. Most rightly believe that the Democratic governor and other leaders in the state ignored the problem at the very least and did so because this is a non-white population. No one wants to be branded a racist, so they got away with robbing our programs for the poor, children and disabled for years. When this happened, good people, including hard-working Americans did not receive the assistance they deserved.

So far, investigators discovered at least $9 billion in misspent public (taxpayer) funds in the Twin Cities alone. With a population of 5.8 million, each Minnesotan was robbed about $1,550. Some of that money was sent back to Somalia, some indirectly funding terrorist organizations. Other funds were used to create fake childcare facilities, including the now infamous “Learing” Center, that educate or care for no children.

While the easy thing is to blame the Democrats, and they deserve blame here, but we all know Republicans can and have been corrupt as well. I think there are two places we should focus our attention.

First, we need to realize many people in America have become greedy and unappreciative of what made and still makes America great. Now, many millions of people, including many Americans, look to what they can get out of the government. Our founding fathers understood that America would only prosper when its people followed a higher moral standard. Today, in a post-Christian nation, the masses look closely to how they can gain the system.

This leads to the second problem, one that will only get worse as long as the first problem remains. That is our obese government. When government is so big, the true master of our country is the bureaucracy. The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, so we try to solve that problem by growing the government more, creating new programs and adding more regulations. The additional complexity just makes it possible for those driven and focused on taking advantage of the government to find more ways to succeed and hide it.

There are solutions to these problems, and we’ll talk about some of those in the coming months.