Paul Mero

Are Utahns dedicated to limited government?  I’m Paul Mero.  I’ll be right back.

According to information from the governor’s office, between 1990 and 2009 the state’s total budget grew 120 percent, and that is after adjusting for inflation. Without the inflation adjustment, state spending growth was a whopping 261 percent. By comparison, Utah’s population over that same period grew by only 62 percent, and our median household income – a key consideration for government spending since every dollar the state spends starts out in taxpayers’ pockets – grew only 17 percent after adjusting for inflation.  Even California’s state budget, adjusted for inflation, grew by a relatively modest 78 percent over the same period. read more

This week I have more thoughts on nanny state nonsense.  State Senator Ben McAdams from Salt Lake City has announced that he’ll sponsor a bill making it a crime to leave a child alone in a car.  His bill would make a parent criminally negligent for endangerment of a child.

While you’re soaking that in, let’s go over his motive.  Last year, in 2010, 49 children died as a result of being left unattended in a car.  We can presume that those deaths occurred on hot summer days.  That number of children – 49 – was a nationwide number.  Forty-nine kids, out of over 100 million of them, died.  Of course, just one death is sad.  But I’m wondering if 49 deaths out of a possible 100 million, none of those deaths in Utah last year, is the sort of compelling reason to move a new law? read more

Over the weekend, Richard Davis, chairman of the Utah County Democratic Party, wrote an op-ed bemoaning why Democrats get so little support in the state. He begins by drawing an analogy to shopping in Russia where consumers only get one choice of product, and then says that Utah politics is like that – that we only get one choice.

He blames the convention system, in part, for this dilemma. He wonders why the few get to select the few while hundreds of thousands of Utahns are left in the lurch. He then grumbles that voters shouldn’t vote straight party tickets and that voters should take a good look at Democratic candidates.

He goes on to defend Utah Democrats as equally pro-family and equally committed to moral standards. He says Utah Democrats are fiscal conservatives.

And then he writes something that, I think, is very curious. He writes, “Voters need to understand that a two-party system is very fragile. The very existence of a choice is not automatic…If good Democratic candidates continue to lose because voters don’t give them a chance to prove themselves, it will be harder to encourage good people to run again in the future and voters will be back to the no-choice situation…That’s why even Republican voters should vote for some Democrats in Utah County in order to make sure Republican legislators aren’t neglectful of average voters.”

Okay…this might be the shortest Mero Moment in history. Here’s what I have to say to Mr. Davis and any other Utah Democrat who is tired of losing to Republicans: that’s your answer to renewing a vibrant two-party system in Utah? Just vote for a Democrat whether or not you believe in their platform and positions? Really?

This is exactly why the two-party system is in jeopardy, if it is, in Utah: a wholesale lack of leadership among Democrats.

I have said this before. If Utah Democrats want to regain political power they must relate to the average Utahn. In this case, at minimum, they must separate themselves from national Democrats and from radical social and socialist agendas. It’s that simple. A party is more than one candidate. Placing a candidate’s name on a party label means the candidate supports his or her party. If that party is the party of Obama and Pelosi, then a Utah Democrat shouldn’t be surprised that his or her candidacy is immediately marginalized in this state.

It’s not good enough for a candidate to be a self-described “conservative” Democrat. That doesn’t mean anything. You must be a real conservative, period. Understand that fact and Utah Democrats will, once again, become relevant.

I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.

This week I want to talk about religious liberty. The proposed mosque at Ground Zero in New York City is capturing a lot of attention these days. The discussion is testing the meaning of religious liberty. A related, but even tougher, debate regards the wearing of hijab, the religious coverings worn by orthodox Muslim women.

All throughout Europe, parliaments are banning the wearing of hijab, whether simple head scarves or more traditional burqas that leave only a woman’s eyes exposed to the public. Even in the United States, these religious coverings are being addressed in our courts of law. Just what are the bounds of religious liberty compared to workplace safety or culture?

On a recent trip, while at the airport, I picked up a copy of the conservative magazine, National Review. I read an article by a free lance journalist working out of Turkey. This woman, I can only presume to be a conservative, writes rather convincingly that it’s time that hijab be banned in the United States, or at least severely criticized and ostracized.

She recognizes the inherent conflict of her position: religious liberty is sacred in America and yet she correctly recognizes that no right is absolute in America – you have a right to worship Satan if you’d like but that right stops when a satanic ritual leads to sacrificing humans or animals.

The journalist argues that hijab, especially the burqa, has become an evil practice that allows Muslim men to commit all sorts of atrocities against Muslim women – in other words, the hijab is THE symbol of modern slavery in an era of Taliban Muslims. She writes that Muslim men immediately objectify any Muslim woman not wearing head coverings as whores which, in that world, permissions Muslim men to rape and even murder women.

She quotes one Muslim cleric, standing before his congregation in Australia, and referring to a recent woman who was raped, as saying, “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside…without cover, and the cats come to eat it…whose fault is it, the cats’ or the uncovered meat’s? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”

The female journalist writes, “While it is true that some women adopt the veil voluntarily, it is also true that most veiling is forced. It is nearly impossible for the state to ascertain who is veiled by choice and who has been coerced…Our responsibility to protect these women from coercion is greater than our responsibility to protect the freedom of those who choose to veil…Why? Because this is our culture, and in our culture, we do not veil. We do not veil because we do not believe that God demands this of women or even desires it; nor do we believe that veiled women are whores, nor do we believe they deserve social censure, harassment, or rape.”

She concludes her article with these words, “Banning the burqa is without doubt a terrible assault on the ideal of religious liberty. It is a sign of a desperate society. No one wishes for things to have come so far that it is necessary. But they have, and it is.”

She makes a good argument, in my estimation. So why is it that I’m reluctant to draw the same conclusion and endorse an idea that so flagrantly restricts religious liberty?

Maybe it’s because I’m a Mormon and appreciate its value. Maybe it’s because I’m a conservative and am very reluctant to give up any liberty that so defines the very nature of a free and ordered society. I’m not sure.

I do realize that no right is absolute. I can see the logical restrictions that can justifiably be imposed in workplace settings. So perhaps my reluctance is because the whole burqa thing is so foreign to my world. For instance, I get how repugnant the wearing of a white sheet can be during a Klan rally or even Nazi paraphernalia. But Muslim customs are still very foreign to me.

Perhaps the lesson for me and others is that we better get educated, and fast. We are Americans, and that means something. At the very least, it means we protect all human beings who live among us as human beings, not as chattel, not as objects.

I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.

Why would anybody want to read the Utah State Constitution? We all know that only the United States Constitution is important! In fact, doesn’t the recent Prop 8 decision in California prove that state constitutions are meaningless these days? Well, no. Our state constitution is every bit as meaningful as our national one.

So…who’s read our state constitution? Have any of you school teachers read it? If not, my guess is that our kids haven’t read it either.

Well, our Sutherland Institute has a good deal for you: send us your contact info and we’ll send you a nice, clean copy of the Utah State Constitution. But before I give you our contact info, let me share some tidbits with you.

Its Preamble begins: “Grateful to Almighty God for life and liberty, we, the people of Utah, in order to secure and perpetuate the principles of free government, do ordain and establish this Constitution.”

Right there alone, we could talk for days about its meaning. You mean God gives us life and liberty? If so, what do those look like to God? For surely we don’t want to get that wrong, now do we?

We also have “inherent and inalienable rights” under our Utah State Constitution. Here is Article 1, section 1: “All men have the inherent and inalienable rights to enjoy and defend their lives and liberties; to acquire, possess and protect property; to worship according to the dictates of their consciences; to assemble peaceably, protest against wrongs, and petition for redress of grievances; to communicate freely their thoughts and opinions, being responsible for the abuse of that right.”

Are you telling me that I have to be responsible for my thoughts and opinions? Good to know.

Our state constitution is a remarkable historical document on top of listing our rights and the limitations of state and local government. We need to remember that this state constitution was more or less thrust upon Utahns by the federal government at a time when Utahns weren’t all that popular. So in it’s language are several odd references to the power of the Church, meaning Mormon Church, and conversely, some clearly-stated protections for the dominant religion.

Another section worth mentioning given recent headlines is Article 12, section 19. Under the subtitle of “Blacklisting forbidden,” it reads, “Each person in Utah [note that it doesn’t say “citizen”] is free to obtain and enjoy employment whenever possible, and a person or corporation, or their agent, servant, or employee may not maliciously interfere with any person from obtaining employment or enjoying employment already obtained from any person or corporation.”

We ought to remind the employees over at Workforce Services of this provision.

If you would like a copy of this fascinating document…free…just drop Sutherland Institute a line – either online at sutherlandinstitute.org or by calling our office at 801-355-1272…that’s 801-355-1272.

Here’s one last quote from the same Article, section 20: “It is the policy of the state of Utah that a free market system shall govern trade and commerce in this state to promote the dispersion of economic and political power and the general welfare of all the people.”

Pretty cool, huh?

I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.

American culture has been structured around the ideal of an educated citizenry. This ideal holds that a free society requires educated people and that educated people create free societies. No less than Thomas Jefferson has written that, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

There are lots of ways we could go with this thought. We could challenge it – we could ask if Jefferson’s opinion is true: do well-educated people create free societies? In our day and age, well-educated people seem to be the ones more inclined to create Big Government and it’s the more humble people, the God-fearing people, the less educated people who seem to appreciate less government and real freedom.

Or we could approach Jefferson’s opinion from a point of pedagogy: does public education create the sort of educated people who are able to create free societies? We could even challenge Jefferson’s ideal of self-government in light of all of our modern personal dysfunctions and addictions.

There are many ways to consider his words.

The Boston Globe reports that two professors from the University of Michigan have come up with even another way to test Jefferson’s words. They wonder if facts even matter at all any more. They think that the desire to be right outweighs the desire to be factual for most people. They say that when most people have one opinion that is countered by facts, these people not only ignore the facts to hang on to their personal opinion they actually deny the facts.

These researchers call this phenomenon “backfire” – the idea that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong. They say that it’s a natural defense mechanism to avoid cognitive dissonance.

If these guys are right, it might explain an awful lot about politics today. For instance, it might explain why anti-immigration zealots continue to see undocumented immigrants as “criminals” even after it’s been explained that entering the country illegally the first time is a civil violation, like speeding, not a criminal violation of the law. That’s a fact and yet many anti-immigration zealots simply refuse to acknowledge it. The result is a less-free society, in my opinion.

But we need to be careful about how far we take the conclusions of these Michigan researchers – because facts are just facts. If facts are not accompanied by context, they could lead us equally down the primrose path away from freedom. My liberal and libertarian friends are notorious for doing this. On the right we see it with the “rule of law” crowd: doesn’t the law say this? Well, that’s a fact isn’t it? And on the left we see it with anti-poverty people: just give the guy some money…he’s poor…all he needs is money to make him whole. Of course, neither of those opinions is true but each is based on a fact – yes, the law does say this and yes, the guy doesn’t have money.

We also have to avoid confusing a personal belief with cognitive dissonance. Liberals most often can’t stand that many Americans hold certain political beliefs based on their very private religious beliefs – as if liberals don’t do the same thing with their worship of science and anti-religious beliefs – they don’t like that religious people have difficulty being persuaded by the facts.

I wish that the first thing every American school kid would be taught and learn is context for one’s intellectual exercises. The basis for our ideas is much more important than our ideas. Another way to say this is that universal truth is more important than momentary facts. For instance, it matters so much more that we view undocumented immigrants as we view ourselves than it does that they commit a civil infraction. Context matters. Context also keeps us free. Responsible citizens should seek facts, but they should love truth even more. Only then will Thomas Jefferson’s words have meaning.

I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.