EXCHANGE: God is on our side

Like many in Cd’A nowadays, I hail originally from California. Now, any mention of Californian expats is locally attended with rolls of eyes, rueful clucks of the tongue, and exasperated sighs. But I’m fine with this. In fact, I’ve absorbed this provincial instinct, myself, and fully sympathize with the local reservations about Californians. Really.

But I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed along these lines: as much a byword as “Californian” is, those who invoke it with a knowing wag of the head are themselves divided into two entirely different camps. The first group are they who see Californians as radical Leftists and busybody tyrants, who, as refugees of the failed Marxist experiment they created down South, resettled in North Idaho with the intent of bringing about the same political and social catastrophe here. This is the view of the native craftsman, entrepreneur, farmer, and most of the private sector.

Contrariwise, there are they whose prejudice is based upon the idea that Californians are all hard Right Constitutionalists who’ve suddenly imposed traditional Christian values upon a naturally Leftist, and multicultural native populace. This is the view largely extolled by government employees, or those dependent upon public sector moneys. And, if Dave Oliveria’s Spokesman.com blog is admitted as evidence, the press as well.

Transparently, this polarized view of Californians says at least as much about the native populace as it does about us recent transplants: the natives are every bit as polarized about all the same subjects as us Cali folk are.

But candidly, I confess that the polarized perception of Californians is nonetheless warranted. As much as I came to these parts to live in a place like this, there are indeed many who’ve come to remake this region into another California and — God forbid — this town into another L.A.

This brings me to my real point; the message I’d like to impart in the wake of the Feb. 23rd Healthcare Exchange town hall meeting is this: the designs against this community, and our families are quite real, but the problem isn’t all from without. Much is from within. If the barbarians are at the gates — and they are — the greatest threat is not the outland messenger who warns of their approach, but the man who opens the gate to the hostile forces. Our native representative, Luke Malek, is such a man. He and the gang of sixteen have, by Malek’s own confession, colluded in a scheme to deprive us all of our God-given rights.

I believe it was Ed Morse who pitched Malek’s Obamacare plan by way of analogy, saying, “When they send the truck around to take you to the camps you can either jump in the back to be taken to your end destination, or you can stand in front of the truck, and be run over ... or you can walk,” at which point some shrewd individual yelled from the crowd, “... to the same destination!”

Malek, Morse, and their turncoats maintain that since federal tyranny has arrived, we are somehow duty bound to acquiesce to it - to facilitate it, even. That, my friends, is political opportunism, at its blackest. Treachery distilled.

When the time comes we all need to know who our friends are. This Californian refugee will be standing, even if some natives will not, for the God given rights of Idahoans.

DANIEL BRANNAN

Coeur d’Alene