Last Word

“Liberty is a strong food, but a difficult one to digest; it needs a healthy stomach. I laugh at those degraded people who, letting conspirators incite them to rise in arms, dare to speak of liberty, without having even a notion of what it is; who, with hearts a prey to all the vices of slaves, imagine that to be free they need only be rebels.”
– Jean Jacques Rousseau

“If…If…We didn’t love freedom enough.”
– Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

“He would never…

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By Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

"The sun was shining as I was strolling
The wheat field waving the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me"
— Woody Guthrie

With socialism, even in a diluted and inchoate form, assuming a higher profile, I’m reminded of my early years in North Dakota during the 1950s. On the one hand, it wasn’t the Gestapo-like scenes from Standing Rock, today’s widespread sex trafficking in the booming oil fields…

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By Mark Rodenbiker
mrodenbiker@gmail.com   

The first brick building had just gone up on the corner of the block. The government built that to house the post office, so it didn't mean so much. Not like this one; for a person to have the ambition to build a brick building of that size was an acknowledgement that Rocklake was no longer a railroad siding. Now, in 1907, Rocklake was a town.

The post office may have made it government-official before that, but the show hall made it…

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“Hell… is the suffering of being unable to love.”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I and the public know, what all school children learn; those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.”
– W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

“To my knowledge, America has never known any enemy children.” 
– Senator William Langer (R-ND), March 29, 1946

“We ask ourselves what kind of world we live in, but it’s too painful to face the truth. Maybe our worst fears have already been realized -- maybe the…

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By Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

Recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.
- The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Good on everyone who rallied in such large numbers on behalf of keeping families together. I will generalize and break down the participants into three groups. The first was composed of folks who may have participated in their…

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“Davis Refinery permit approved.”

That was the headline in the paper last week, telling us that the North Dakota Department of Health has approved an air quality permit and issued a permit to construct an oil refinery three miles from Theodore Roosevelt National park.

Yikes! What kind of monsters would want to do this—put an oil refinery right next to Theodore Roosevelt National Park? And what kind of state regulators would permit that to happen?

And who, at the highest level of North…

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North Dakota has more than a million acres of public land, most of it in western North Dakota, our Little Missouri National Grasslands, managed by the United States Forest Service.

Most of it is grazing land, although it’s grazed by more than cattle. Pretty much every creature that lives in North Dakota has a presence there. For some—mule deer, sharp-tailed grouse, sage grouse, prairie dogs, coyotes, bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, and countless species of birds, including our state…

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By Paul Jensen

Fargo, as the most populous city in the state with 120,000 inhabitants, added nearly 6,000 20-to-34-year-olds in 2015, just over five percent of the total population. Fargo is attracting well-educated young professionals due to its clean air, strong economy, low unemployment, safe environment and affordable real estate.

Sustainable growth is only possible if we don’t cut corners on our infrastructure, energy use and other forms of sustainability. We have unfortunately…

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Negligent Homicide - the term that describes a killing without any intent to kill but occurs when a person is acting in negligence.
– Black’s Law Dictionary

"In the [19] twenties and [19] thirties denaturalization and denationalization were increasingly used by governments as ways of getting rid of citizens they deemed undesirable…As the stateless refugees entered the countries of the West…it was soon discovered that these were people who could neither be repatriated nor granted…

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Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

“Rev. William Barber is the closest thing to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that we have in our midst.”
- Prof. Cornell West on the Poor People’s Campaign Co-Founder, Rev. William Barber

Recently, I was privileged to be among the thirteen people arrested for civil disobedience at the first Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) rally at our state capitol building in Harrisburg, PA. The campaign, modeled on Dr. Martin Luther King’s original movement from 50 years…

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