Key Issues
Partisanship
Political parties are inevitable, but as citizens and neighbors we can minimize the false dichotomy they present when we engage in honest, issues-based and reasonable dialogue with each other in determining public policy.
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We serve our communities best when loyalty to party is minimized in favor of loyalty to community, and principle-based public policy. I am disinclined to use labels such as “liberal”, “conservative”, “right” or “left”. They are are too low-resolution to define the many and varied perspectives and opinions held by the many and varied individuals in our community.
My hope is that we avoid putting ourselves and each other firmly into these categorical boxes. That we genuinely reason together to address public policy, writing only what’s necessary into law, and leaving the rest to open and friendly discussion.
(With lifelong Democrat and dear friend, Jeff Hall, after a good dialogue exploring a few controversial issues of the day)
Education
Both Jana and I attended our neighborhood public schools and we are both graduates of our state’s flagship university. I understand the value in these institutions. We have sent each of our six children to our local public schools and we have genuine love and gratitude for their teachers and administrators who helped us to successfully raise them.
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While public education is critical to a healthy society, it should not maintain a monopoly of control. We ought to welcome diversity and choice in education, whether through charter, private or home schooling. As with all goods and services quality improves when consumers have a real choice. We have an obligation to sustain our public schools, and adequately compensate teachers, without marginalizing other educational options that may better serve the needs of many of our citizens.
(Our son, Ollie (left) at Olympus High graduation in the Huntsman Center, where Jana and I received our diplomas from the University of Utah 25 years earlier)
Public Health
Had the Framers foreseen just how industrialized healthcare would become - how much its enormous profits would influence our politics - I believe they’d have written into the Bill of Rights a prohibition of state-sponsored medicine, similar to the 1st Amendment’s establishment clause prohibiting state-sponsored religion. If the state has a positive role to play in promoting the health of its citizens I don’t think it’s what we experienced with the Covid-19 pandemic, during which we routinely heard politicians and journalists recite, “the science says…”, pretending that science is a dogma of established rationality on which they should base, or even mandate, public policy. “The science” is in fact a wonderful but messy process of testing and probing in order to understand how the material world works. It is not a principle-based orthodoxy, which is why public officials are under oath to abide by constitutional principles, not by medical journals.
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The authoritarian impulse of both national and local public officials was on display during the pandemic, and the presumed authority they exercised in the name of public health has left us with a tragic array of consequences, making the presumed cure exponentially worse than the disease. While Utah was spared the most draconian practices implemented in some states, we were nonetheless dealt harmful indignities, particularly in Salt Lake County where elected and unelected officials imposed mandates, school closures, and the shuttering of businesses they deemed “nonessential”, all the while spending public funds to promote one source of information while censoring all others.
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Never again can we afford such a reckless disregard of our fellow citizens’ basic right to choose their medical remedies and pursue their professions. Regardless of a public official’s belief in social distancing, masks and vaccinations, etc. these are matters of scientific review and recommendation, not of law or mandate. We can promote public health without taking a wrecking ball to foundational liberties, economic prosperity, public education and social and psychological wellbeing.
Taxation & Spending
Much of what happens at the legislature has to do with the appropriation of the revenue generated through taxation. The urge for legislators to appropriate more and more money to their favored cause is incessant. Many or most of these causes seem, at least in principle, justified and beneficial. Who doesn’t want to promote public health, improve the status of the marginalized, empower the disadvantaged or encourage research and technology, etc.?
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But why is the state the favored instrument through which these aspirations are pursued? Because legislators claim authority to raise the money by force - to take what is Peter’s and give it to Paul (assuming Paul is well-connected).
We ought to be cautious with such power. There is no proof that legislators are endowed with superior virtue and judgement to determine such priorities. If we wouldn’t assume to extort money from our next door neighbor in order to invest it in a community enterprise, or to give it to our less-fortunate neighbor across the street, we probably shouldn’t commit the same offense through our legislators. The power and creative energy to solve problems in the free market of ideas and voluntary human interaction is infinitely greater than the most well-intended government program.
Let’s minimize taxation and leave most spending priorities in the hands of individuals and families, encouraging government to focus on its express Constitutional duties, leaving our collective virtues and problem-solving to be honestly and voluntarily expressed without coercion.
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Free Markets
Protecting freedom in the marketplace is perhaps the most significant way a legislator can enhance the human condition. Government regulation of business may sometimes be a necessary evil, but more often it’s an unnecessary one - a nefarious tool to protect the politically well-connected from having to innovate and compete to meet market demands.
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Politicians are tempted to think they can improve our economy by “doing something”, but their interventions inevitably lead to unsustainable public debt and inflation which are anything but “socially and economically just” - especially to working class people.
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We’ve never achieved a truly free market, it’s more of an aspiration. In the meantime it takes constant vigilance to guard against legislative and bureaucratic creep due to the pressures of crony-capitalism. The more freedom we allow in the marketplace the more likely the market will create opportunity and prosperity for all of us.
Bill of Rights
The framers of the U.S. Constitution designed the supreme law of the land to restrain lawmakers and public officials in their natural inclination to impose on their fellow citizens’ unalienable rights. Knowing it may not be enough to restrain the legislative impulse they included a bill of specific rights in order to remove all doubt. When they used language like “Congress shall make no law…” and “the right of the people… shall not be infringed…” I believe they meant it.
Nevertheless legislators, backed by powerful monied interests and zealous ideologues, continue to “alienate” people from their “unalienable” rights. From speech and religious observation to self preservation and bodily autonomy, the urge for state actors to “infringe” upon and “abridge” foundational rights persists. Legislators swear an oath to uphold the Constitution - not a science journal, educational theory, religious orthodoxy, or advocacy group.
I encourage all who genuinely love and respect their neighbors to recognize the deep wisdom and humanity engendered in the U.S. Constitution and to join me in maintaining and strengthening our fidelity to the law as expressed in the Bill of Rights.
Freedom of Speech
Political Correctness often begins with good intentions - after all there is virtue in respecting the sensitivities of others. Unfortunately it is sometimes abused by those in power to intimidate and cancel people with minority viewpoints, threatening the foundational ideals of free speech and even freedom of thought.
It’s essential to nourish an atmosphere where all are safe to express what they believe and even to question policies or attitudes adopted by the majority, that in doing so people won’t be cancelled from their livelihood or shamed out of the public square, or worse, be made to profess things they don’t believe.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — George Orwell, ‘1984’
We all benefit when everyone feels at liberty to express their sincere thoughts, beliefs and questions in the daylight of civil dialogue where those thoughts and beliefs can be better disciplined, tested and refined. It was profound wisdom that inspired the Framers to enshrine freedom of speech and of conscience into the 1st Amendment. We should not simply hold the line on any attempts to overthrow them, but do all we can to expand them.
(My niece, Melissa, putting this in simpler terms)
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Right to Life
The Declaration of Independence soundly acknowledges that we are all created equal, and endowed by our Creator with certain “unalienable” rights, among which are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
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The first of these is Life since without Life no other rights matter. Nevertheless, in 1973, under the influence of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of an incoherent claim that our Constitution allows for depriving that first unalienable right to persons still in the womb if their parents didn’t want them.
That ruling has recently and rightfully been overturned. It was an erroneous legal claim and a chilling moral breach that has led to an unspeakable loss of human life.
“America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation.”
— Mother Teresa
While the abortion lobby strategizes to maintain this practice - and there are rare instances when it will be justified - we in Utah can ensure that, generally speaking, our state becomes a protector of these innocent lives and a place of support for the women who bear them.
“How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers.”
— Mother Teresa
(My three granddaughters, Emma, Lucy and ?)
Ecology & Public Lands
Utah is the most beautiful place in the world. I have known and loved other places around the country and around the globe, but in my humble opinion, this really is “the place”.
Part of what makes it so unique is the easy access we have from our metropolitan areas to our wild country - especially those of us who live in this blessed community at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. We of all people can be acutely aware of our obligation to thoughtfully protect these wild places and our access to them, from both the ambitions of developers and the zealotry of environmental extremists.
Most of us who love the outdoors understand it takes rational and collaborative negotiation to preserve and protect our cherished wild country while maintaining public access to it. After all, our community is healthier when more of us benefit from the healing power of nature, and the more we experience it, the more we will all cherish and want to conserve it, for ourselves and for our posterity.
My legislative priorities in this arena will be grounded in my love and respect for both nature and for humanity, and in honoring private property rights and the public’s right to access public lands.
(Looking down at the Valley from high in Millcreek Canyon)
(Somewhere in the High Uintahs)