I wonder if it ever dawns on all those well-paid, city-bred campaign consultants who come in to states like Montana, that nobody is listening anymore? Oh, sure. There are the political junkies, left and right, who thrive on the junk food of campaign advertising, doused with the vinegar of vitriol. But for most folks, the noise of the election season has reached a decibel level that so numbs the ears, that the messages are no longer getting through. We just want to be left alone to contemplate real ideas and real truths.
Clearly, it's time to turn off the politicians and listen to ourselves.
Sure. It’s fair play for a campaign to point out – honestly – the relevant record of the opponent. Incumbents, in particular, all have records that voters should closely examine. Their challengers have records, too. Candidates have a certain duty to bring out important facts, and draw valid contrasts between themselves and their opponents. But how much is true, and how much is hyperbole, exaggeration or outright falsehood?
As voters, we have a responsibility to do our own research, check the websites of each candidate and draw our own fact-based conclusions about qualifications and fundamental beliefs. Then get in touch with yourself. Forget about the “popular political culture” around you, think for yourself and ask in the quiet of your own conscience, what do I truly believe?
Meanwhile, the campaigns will continue to grow more strident and intelligence-insulting. If we succumb to the sheer volume of political noise, we will just be handing elections over to the ones whose collection of interest groups are the largest and have the most money. For many decades, this is exactly what has resulted in the election of leftist radicals to what I now call the Montana Extreme Court – far and away the worst, most incompetent and most politicized state court in the country. Trial lawyer money flooded the airwaves and mailboxes, and voters didn’t do their own due diligence.
If Montanans aren’t careful, the same thing will happen this time around, where the message of the moderate-to-conservative justice candidates Corey Swanson and Dan Wilson threatens to be obliterated by the liberal legal establishment and their mega-dollars. Other states with supreme court elections take heed!
Several Montana ballot issues fall into the same category with out-of-state-funded noise overwhelming the so-called public discussion. Consider CI-128, a radical “abortion rights” constitutional amendment that would turn Montana into a truly Blood Red state. As of early October, proponents had already spent $11 million in advertising, with a projected $15-20 million more to come. This in a state with approximately 800,000 registered voters. More than 90 percent of these dollars have poured in from outside of Montana’s borders, dwarfing the opponent spending of under $50,000 – a ratio of 220 to 1.
Personally, I approach the voting booth relying very little on the canned messages of the political campaigns, and mentally turning off all the massive spending of the National Noisemakers for Social Change. Instead, I listen to myself. I ask these kinds of questions about each candidate:
* Do they reflect humility and a servanthood attitude? Or is it all about them?
* Do they understand that government has constitutional limits, and the human possibilities under freedom and free markets are unlimited? That government itself creates nothing? Free people do all the creating, and do it best the more the government stays out of their way.
* Do they understand that government is not a Department of Happiness? It is a minister of justice. We create our own happiness when left free -- not when we become dependent on the “generosity” of politicians, who can give us nothing that isn’t first taken away from someone else. French economist Frederic Bastiat called it “legal plunder.” We call it “democracy” – hiring the government to do our stealing.
* Do they recognize that spending the taxpayers’ dollars is a sacred trust, not a vote-getting bribe for their re-election? Can they explain, in simple economic terms, how inflation is caused by deficit spending? How over-spending dilutes the money supply and reduces the value of each dollar we hold? That inflation is simply another form of tax?
* Do they understand that rights are natural and God-given, not government bestowed? That they are sacred, inviolate and non-negotiable? That in a constitutional republic, the government does not, in the name of “the democratic process,” have the power to compromise or usurp our God-given rights and liberties?
* Does freedom come up in their conversations? Do they truly understand it? Does freedom really matter to them? Or is it just a throw-away line on a political brochure, like “God bless” at the end of a speech? No substance. Just rhetoric.
Maybe you don’t believe these things. Perhaps you like being directed, planned and controlled by your government. Maybe you prefer being pampered and fed by government, at your neighbor’s expense, rather than asserting personal responsibility over your own life. Maybe, but I don’t think so. Not really. And I suspect you really don’t accept the meaning of “reproductive freedom” as the right to kill the innocent, as if the “new morality” requires putting “body” on higher ground than life itself. I think you’ve had enough of all that selfishness. You’re not buying it.
So, when you fill out your ballot, stop and listen to what your heart is telling you. I’m guessing it still beats in rhythm with America’s founders, and is proclaiming life (all life, including the smallest among us), liberty (freedom from injustice and government control), and pursuit of happiness (personal effort and individual responsibility.)
If you can find a candidate who advances those fundamental principles, give them your vote – and your guarded trust. They exist rarely if at all in one party, and grow increasingly more scarce in the other, where the right things are often said on the campaign trail, but the wrong things are commonly done once in office. Put personalities aside and take nothing for granted. Let them know you will be watching them and holding them accountable.
Turn off the political noise. Stop looking to government to give you something you didn’t earn, by taking it from someone who did. Trust yourself. Trust your neighbor. Trust your freedom. And vote accordingly.
A former Bozeman small businessman, Roger Koopman is president of Montana Conservative Alliance. He served four years in the Montana House of Representatives and eight years as a Montana Public Service commissioner.
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