Beware election fear-mongering

Every day is Halloween around Election Day. There is a monster under every bed, and only Republicans or Democrats can save you. Politicians are at their fear-mongering best around elections, and this election is being painted as even more scary than most.

KKFT talk radio host Rick Roberts in the last few weeks has advocated, among other things, putting every Muslim in America on a watch list, banning all air travel from West Africa, linking a Midwest upsurge in back-to-school flu to the refugee children from Central America, calling for further militarization of the police, and sealing off the Mexican border because we are being infiltrated by ISIS terrorists infected with Ebola carrying Korans and prayer rugs. But, not to worry, he does not believe in black helicopters. That would be so 1990! If you are going to call yourself a constitutional conservative, at least mention you mean the North Korean constitution.

The incumbent Democratic candidate for governor of Colorado is alienating voters by calling the legalization of marijuana that over 55 percent of them voted for “reckless.”

In California and elsewhere liberal anti-male animus has led to politically correct Salem witch trials where students accused of rape have to prove their innocence to a hostile academic tribunal. The only way to do this with a notarized consent form (YES MEANS YES) signed by the accuser acknowledging that she affirmatively said YES in advance to every sexual escalation from first base to home. The new Scarlet Letter is expulsion from the overpriced institution they went into crippling debt to attend.

Global warming alarmists in 2014 continue to predict worldwide calamity from economic activity despite there being no measurable warming for 18 years. Liberal scientists and politicians declared the debate over and call skeptical fellow scientists “deniers.” Once smeared as Nazi traitors to the planet, the next rhetorical step is to send these skeptics to prison after a “Nuremberg trial.”

Harry Reid led Senate Democrats on a vote to repeal the First Amendment out of hatred for the Koch Brothers and the Supreme Court who upheld the right to political speech without advance permission from the state. The only exemption was for “the press,” defined as organized and mainstream. Bloggers, YouTubers and mavericks like myself who speak out would do so at their own risk. Fortunately, their proposed Constitutional Amendment did not pass.

The Center for Disease Continuance and Proliferation (CDC) is under fire for its lack of training for the nurses in Dallas who contracted Ebola from Thomas Duncan, who arrived there on a flight from Brussels, not Liberia. When one of the nurses told the CDC she had a fever but wanted to fly to Cleveland, they said, “Sure, go ahead.” The CDC has more procedures preventing secondhand smoke in hospitals than it does on what it is supposed to prevent: the spread of actual infectious diseases. The politician’s solution: create a CDC “swat team,” and appoint a political hack with no medical background the new “Ebola Czar.”

American faith in government is at an all-time low. Government promises to protect us from every inflated threat largely of its own making but continues to fail miserably. After every failure, from 9-11 to ISIS, from campus rape to teenage sexting, from economic collapse to the slowest recovery since the 1930s, they demand (and usually get) more power and money that comes at citizens’ expense. Go ahead and vote red or blue, but remember if elections could actually change anything, they wouldn’t be legal.

I wish to thank the Montana judges for Nevada Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest for naming “Let Freedom Ring” the best local non-staff column. I am thrilled and honored.