By Oregon State Senator, Dennis Linthicum
May 4, 2024
In the midst of this Primary season, attempting to enumerate the failures and bankrupt ideas spilling from the Democrat Party is tough. The rising costs associated with our state’s regulatory burdens, needless legislation and up-scale bureaucratic army is terrible and it is hurting people, their lives and livelihoods. It harms producers, manufacturers, businesses, farms and families in both metro and rural areas.
We need to elect courageous people to both Congress and our own state legislature. We need them to push back against incompetent extravagances and fight against unnecessary taxes, endless spending, and needless regulations.
As we are learning daily, these issues are complex and finely woven traps that are difficult to recognize at first. They are baited traps none-the-less – laced with enticing incentives, coated in feel-good rhetoric, and carefully hammered through the majority party’s brutally efficient 
committee hearings. Many of these financial injustices have now become part of the fabric of our lives, but isn’t that the point? We have become so accustomed to, or so enamored with some program or another, that most of us don’t remember why it was done in the first place.
These issues can no longer be shrugged off.
Recently I have been reading about France’s famed Maginot line and its speedy collapse under a military and propaganda onslaught. William Shirer was a CBS radio correspondent in Berlin for six years. He provides us with well-reasoned details in his first-person account. His analysis weaves the tragic events happening on the front with what was happening among the city-dwellers.
Although Shirer wasn’t among the soldiers, or riding on top of a tank, his books are filled with tremendous technical details that coincide with his observations from the propaganda ministries. His book includes information that was released after the allied forces gained access to a treasure trove of resources in the Third Reich’s secret archives. Shirer understands the importance of these unique details and relates them to his own first-hand experiences.
Shirer routinely dealt with censors who banned, canceled or demanded word-changes whenever he tried to share his forthright and honest thoughts. This is not unlike our modern era.
During his years as a war correspondent, Shirer was uniformly censored and denied access to relevant information. His ability to share intricate details was reviewed on a daily basis and then routinely denied. He was stuck in Germany with the ability to see the truth but forbidden from sharing it.
Still, Shirer wrote his experiences down. He exercised his freedom by keeping a diary. He documented his thoughts and recorded his first-hand experiences. He knew the bureaucratic enterprise couldn’t control the inner workings of his heart.
After-all, he was certain of one fact – his understanding of right and wrong. He knew appropriate from inappropriate, male from female, fact 
from fiction and propaganda. He was not willing to allow himself (or us as readers) to be led away by a, “weird mixture of the irresponsible, megalomaniacal ideas which erupted from German thinkers during the nineteenth century.”
Observations
Shirer makes several observations that I’ll quote below. I’ll let you draw your own meaningful conclusions. The following quotes are from Shirer’s own hand and found within the first two pages of his forward in The Collapse of the Third Republic – France 1940, William L. Shirer:
How did it come about, “that a cultured, Christian people lapsed into barbarism in the midst of the twentieth century, gladly abandoning their freedoms and the ordinary decencies of human life and remaining strangely indifferent to the savagery with which they treated other nations, other races”?
Nor did the public realize how it was being poisoned and misled, not only by Fascist-minded leaders and newspapers, small in number but growing in influence, who on ideological grounds … were being manipulated by German agents and German money. True, the government and the press failed to impress this upon them.
“… the genial ‘Francophile’ German agent in Paris, was effective, easily penetrating political, business, social and cultural circles; he worked tirelessly at winning their sympathies.”
“… engineered trips with all expenses paid, for numerous politicians, intellectuals, industrialists, and leaders of the war veterans’ groups to Germany, where they were wined, dined, and otherwise feted, and fed with Nazi propaganda.”
“… obtained lucrative contracts for French writers to have their books translated and published in Germany.”
“… arranged interviews for French journalists with Hitler so that the Fuehrer could reiterate that he wished only peace and friendly relations with France.”
“The German agents at this time didn’t buy newspapers. They bought journalists. It was cheaper. And it was more effective.”
“In the last resort and particularly in a representative democracy, the people are responsible”
Are we seeing the same level and type of relentless, big-moneyed corruption? Am I the only one that can sense the ominous signs? Don’t we all recognize that something is wrong?
It seems we go to work, come home, play with the kids, rinse and repeat. I’m not complaining, I think life is beautiful, but the corruption flowing from government authority is near universal. Can’t our learned-academics or our political elites see themselves? Can’t they hear the ridiculously old and worn-out phrases blubbering from their lips? How do men and women of common-sense and traditional values continue?
They fight back!
They will not be the ones found quietly hiding under their bedsheets. They are the brave and courageous, both young and old, who are willing to stand for the things that are right, good, true and beautiful.
Every day, I meet them. The working men and women in our communities, the people who have had enough. They don’t need anything but to be left alone. They are the ones still standing. They are the ones standing against our cultural bosses who are still shoveling their same old mix of weird, irresponsible, megalomaniacal ideas (otherwise known has BS).
Join us! Will you pledge to stand for truth to prevent our culture from drowning under the corruption spilling from Oregon’s own?
Each of us can contribute to our Freedom Agenda.
What are your skills? Where do you fit into the puzzle? Can you join with other like-minded individuals? Are you willing to speak up and share your ideas with your family, neighbors and friends?
Now is our time – Help your community see the dangers of wandering blindly towards a cliff which we know is right beyond the corner.
The Primary election is May 21st.
Conservatives must elect strong, consistent Republicans who will courageously stand firm and true. We don’t need any more go-along, get-along politicians, statists, or bureaucrats who will ignore the Constitution, their constituents and their responsibility to our kids and grandkids.
Your support is vital and necessary!
© 2024 Dennis Linthicum – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Dennis Linthicum: sen.DennisLinthicum@gmail.com
