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Where Our Demons Hide

Posted by Connor on May 7th, 2013

In 2007, I had the opportunity to visit Africa as part of a three week humanitarian trip with a group called Mothers Without Borders (MWB). Perhaps at no time in my life have I been so strongly reminded that the lives we each lead are complex and difficult to discern through limited information and interactions.

Our group in Zambia consisted of over 20 Americans, most of them members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Liz Lemon Swindle, a Christian artist, had also come to Zambia with MWB along with her small entourage. They were working on Liz’s next project: a painting depicting Jesus and an African child.

MWB operates an orphanage with a couple dozen kids at any given time, and during the course of our stay we were briefly told some of their background—their family life, their medical challenges, and why they ended up under the care of MWB. Their stories were obviously heart-breaking, and seemed like situations from a world with which I was barely familiar. I struggled to imagine what their lives would be like.

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Raising Taxes is the Wrong Approach

Posted by Connor on April 12th, 2013

The following is an op-ed I wrote, published in today’s Standard-Examiner.

As government budgets tighten and the demand for its services either remains constant or increases, politicians and their constituents are exploring how to resolve this apparent conundrum. With a steady population increase in Utah straining the government’s ability to provide for its citizens, what is the proper response?

The state’s Republican Party platform, which calls for a “broad-based rate reduction” and only “limited taxation,” has not restrained some members of its party from advocating for tax increases to try and solve the funding gap. For example, Republican Sen. Aaron Osmond recently proposed raising taxes to better fund education and transportation. Highlighting a “recognition that we need to do something,” Osmond suggested that that “thing” should be to impose higher taxes—or, in other words, to take more money from Utahns that is rightfully their own.

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Children of the Collective: The State’s Attack on Individuality

Posted by Connor on April 10th, 2013

An independent thinker is an incredible threat to the state.

For this reason, statists throughout history have attempted, through propaganda and brute force, to shape and subdue society by controlling the education of the rising generation. As Hitler himself said, “He alone who owns the youth, gains the future.”

Of course, the oppressive state is not threatened by an ignorant, innocent, and vulnerable child. The child is no match for the state’s subtle tactics, wherein it wraps its power grabs in emotionally persuasive language. A child does not have the wisdom and experience to understand history and recognize its repeatedly occurring patterns today. He is not aware of how despots and central planners have worked throughout the ages, and therefore is unable to resist their efforts in his own life.

As I explain in Latter-day Responsibility, the nuclear family has long been the interposing institution to protect children from the state. Strong families defend their young from the state’s attempts to snatch them away—physically, intellectually, or morally. They provide an environment in which the innocent child can better learn truth, and prepare to combat falsehood.

The prolific cultural commentator Michael Novak observed it this way:

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I Believe the Resurrection is Real

Posted by Connor on March 30th, 2013

I believe in Jesus Christ.

I believe that we knew him in pre-mortal life, where we associated with him, and like us, he progressed through obedience to God’s law, but to the point of perfection to become like the father of our spirits.

I believe that Jesus lived here on earth two millennia ago, that he was the temporal son of God, and that he had spiritual power to command the elements and perform what seem to us like miracles.

I believe that he spoke truth to power, conveying the rich realities of the gospel in a simple manner that even after continual study allow us to find further application to our lives on ever deeper levels.

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What Internet Taxes and Gay Marriage Have in Common—And Why Both Are a Bad Idea

Posted by Connor on March 27th, 2013

One of the many troubling bills proposed in the Utah legislature this past session was one which would impose sales taxes on a variety of online and out of state businesses which do not currently collect them. Senate Bill 226, titled “Sales and Use Tax Amendments,” would have brought an estimated half million dollars into state coffers each year.

Though the bill ultimately failed, it passed out of the Senate committee meeting unanimously and then passed the entire Senate. Lobbyists were out in force, using some rather compelling arguments to convince legislators to support the bill. Those arguments have likewise been used to encourage the alteration of marriage law in America to apply to homosexuals. Both issues are a bad idea.

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The Price of Liberty: Eternal Vigilance

Posted by Connor on March 11th, 2013

I am often asked by others if I believe that my political involvement will actually make a difference. Implicit in such a question is a false binary view on what political involvement really means—a view which needs to be addressed and corrected.

I have been politically awake and active for about seven years. I have held positions in a political party, have served on campaigns, have participated in and led organizations, and have engaged in a variety of activities, initiatives, and other political efforts. The realist and/or fatalist folks in the liberty community have, throughout this entire participatory process, looked in on curiosity to determine if I thought I was going to achieve any degree (however infinitesimal) of success.

The false binary view I mentioned earlier believes that success in political involvement means bringing about the ends desired. If I fight for liberty, and the statists press on with their tyranny regardless, then the binary view would consider me a failure.

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Individuals Have the Right to Own Guns

Posted by Connor on February 1st, 2013

The following op-ed submission was rejected for publication in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Rarely have I seen an English professor (and a linguist to boot!) ignore the meaning and context of words like I witnessed in University of Utah Professor Thomas Huckin’s recent op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, “There is no individual gun right in the US Constitution.”

Huckin aimed his sights on the Second Amendment, a clause in the U.S. Constitution he pejoratively called “archaic,” to argue that “The framers of the Constitution never intended an individual right to own guns.” Instead, Huckin claims, the semantic structure of the clause itself specifies that owning guns is a collective right, and not an individual one. In other words, in his view, nobody has the inherent right to possess a weapon of self defense such as a firearm.

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How to promote freedom in Utah

Posted by Connor on January 25th, 2013

The following is an op-ed I had published in today’s Deseret News.

Article 1, Section 27 of the Utah Constitution states: “Frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is essential to the security of individual rights and the perpetuity of free government.” As the 2013 general session of the Utah legislature begins next Monday, this “essential” process deserves more attention and much more action.

Along the campaign trail, most candidates claim they will uphold individual rights and promote freedom. Our Constitution suggests that success in achieving these laudable goals will come not from a single vote at the ballot box or in a bill sponsored by a legislator, but by our collective recurrence to fundamental principles.

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State Sanctioned Marriage: Rendering Unto Caesar That Which Is God’s

Posted by Connor on January 15th, 2013

Just a century ago, a majority of the states which comprise this country had laws in place which prohibited white persons from marrying blacks, “mulattos,” Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Mongolians, or Filipinos without a state-granted license—a government permission slip.

Laws in many of the states had long been in place to outright prohibit such mixing of the races. Maryland was the first, enacting prohibitions in 1664. In Virginia, interracial marriage was banned in 1691. As time progressed, such marriages were allowed so long as a license was given, but licenses were not always easy to get. For example, Dr. Walter Plecker of the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics strongly enforced that state’s laws, which by the early 1900s had been modified to allow white people to marry a person of another race (provided that the non-caucasian genetic makeup comprised less than 1/16 of the individual’s genome) by demanding that his subordinates refuse to offer licenses to any mixed marriage.

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A Forgotten Focal Point in the Book of Mormon

Posted by Connor on December 16th, 2012

As a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Honduras a decade ago, I shared the Book of Mormon with all sorts of people. My personal copy became well-worn, and a line of dirt and sweat became visible over time along the pages closest to a passage from the book I would share many times daily.

This passage is the pinnacle event recorded in the Book of Mormon—the visit of Jesus Christ to his followers on the American continent after his resurrection. 3 Nephi 11, in which the story of Christ’s visit is recorded, is a culmination of centuries of prophecy by Christ’s disciples in this land who testified of his coming, abided by his teachings, and encouraged their fellow men to repent and prepare for that glorious day. It makes sense why this chapter of scripture receives so much attention among members of the Church.

But for all its importance and well-deserved attention, there is another focal point in the Book of Mormon we should similarly share with others and ponder for ourselves. And unfortunately, it seems that many within the Church pay little attention to it and fail to understand its profound importance.

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Gun-Free Zones: A Vacuum of Logic and Lawful Defense

Posted by Connor on December 14th, 2012

Today’s senseless and tragic murder of over two dozen innocent people in a Connecticut school once again brings into focus the ease with which irrational or mentally unstable individuals can cause others harm. And, unsurprisingly, this horrific event serves as fodder for the gun control lobby to call for tighter regulations of the weapons used in this crime.

Their advocacy is misguided. It’s important to note that criminals, by definition, are not concerned with laws. Prohibiting the use of guns in a certain place, or making it a crime to use a magazine that contains a certain number rounds, or any number of other regulations only serve as impediments for peaceful, law-abiding individuals looking to defend themselves. And while many of these regulations are little more than an annoyance, such as delaying the waiting time for a person to receive their gun after a background check, some of the prohibitions prove fatal.

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Confessions of a RINO

Posted by Connor on November 29th, 2012

As the loosely organized Tea Party emerged onto the national scene in advance of the 2010 midterm elections, hard-core conservatives mounted pressure on the less ideologically pure Republicans. As in decades past, the pejorative term ‘RINO’ was widely used to convey that certain party members were Republicans in name only.

I myself used the label when opposing the re-election efforts of former (woo!) Senator Bob Bennett during that same election cycle. Bennett, an establishment Republican whose constitutional infidelity was quite pervasive, was considered an early scalp taken by the Tea Party as they attempted to flex their newly discovered political muscles. Conservative purists countrywide began a coordinated campaign to purge the Republican Party’s ship of its moderate, big-government barnacles.

The RINO term was quite applicable in these circumstances, describing those who were members of the party though were ideological apostates from its platform. In 2010 and before, I called others a RINO. Since that election, however, I have come to realize that I myself am a RINO.

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