Monthly Archives: August 2016

If Donald Trump was not having enough trouble in Utah, a former Colorado congressman and Trump supporter just added to his woes by taking on the LDS Church. Like many Americans, Tom Tancredo opposes illegal immigration – a big reason why he loves Donald Trump. It’s anybody’s guess why Tancredo thinks he is the guy to take on, or even lecture, the LDS Church about immigration policy. But, for whatever reason, he picked up the gauntlet.

In a recent piece he wrote for Trump’s ad agency Brietbart News, Tancredo writes, “It is an open secret in Washington, D.C. that the Mormon Church supports open borders and lax enforcement of immigration laws. Many Mormon politicians have been supporting amnesty and open borders for decades.” Well, that is news to me. I’ve been a Latter-day Saint for 38 years now, pre-dating Ronald Reagan’s immigration policies. I’ve spent most of those years working in and around Washington, D.C. and I’m not aware of this “open secret.” read more

I was 19 years old when I first imagined anything political. Back then, young and foolish, I was a libertarian, meaning I hated authority and I smoked pot. For two years, in the late 1970s, I also was a dues-paying member of the John Birch Society. I attended monthly meetings and read their material that was readable (some of it wasn’t) because somewhere in the deepest recesses of my young mind I just knew politics was corrupt and selfish wealthy businessmen were pulling the strings of governments around the world. read more

On the northeast corner of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. is the inscription “What’s past is prologue,” a quote from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, meaning that history often sets the content for the present. One piece of history that very well could explain conservative opposition to Donald Trump occurred mid-January, 1962.

National Review founder, Bill Buckley, received an urgent phone call from William Baroody, then president of the American Enterprise Institute. Baroody urged Buckley to come to the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, to meet with Barry Goldwater, Russell Kirk and a public relations man named Jay Hall, who worked for General Motors. They were meeting ostensibly to discuss the policies of President John F. Kennedy and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. But the topic soon turned to The John Birch Society and, as it turned out, the real reason for the meeting. Goldwater needed counsel. read more