Thanks as always to Pirate’s Cove and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links!
Complete Colorado’s has a good idea; let’s educate newcomers to Colorado about what makes Colorado Colorado. Yeah, good luck with that. Excerpt:
Fortunately, some of us are beginning to recognize the need to educate newcomers about what it means to be a Coloradan. That was one reason I wrote an Independence Institute issue paper on our beautiful state song, “Where the Columbines Grow.” The paper not only discusses the anthem itself but focuses on its deep roots in Colorado history and values.
Similarly, the Care for Colorado campaign is targeted at familiarizing people with Colorado outdoor and environmental values.
Broader in scope is True Colorado. Only recently funded, True Colorado plans a wide public campaign consisting largely, although not solely, of videos explaining Colorado values and what it means to live here.
Wil Lemon, who with Seamas Mulvihill founded True Colorado, is a native Coloradan who has spent time in other states as well. He says he was motivated to work on newcomer education when he saw how out-of-state interests were promoting Denver’s Initiative 300. That measure would have made Denver a sanctuary for street people.
Lemon believes the initiative was a frontal attack on the Colorado values. It obviously would have undermined the value of self-reliance. But because of how it was written, he says, it also would weaken our tradition of neighborly assistance. Although voters trounced 300 by a margin of over 4-1, Lemon saw it as a warning of Colorado’s future: Unless newcomers were educated about Colorado values, we could lose many of the benefits that make this state so attractive.
While I love the idea, I’ve got news for Mr. Natelson – we’re already losing the values that make Colorado so attractive.
The latest crop of pols in the Capitol, along with well-funded – from outside Colorado – ballot initiatives are trying to chip away at TABOR. One such initiative was only just fended off this very month.
Denver’s Initiative 300 would have turned the Mile High City into a smaller, landlocked replica of San Francisco, complete with feces and discarded needles.
Every year, more people flood into Colorado from failing blue states – and proceed to vote for the kinds of politicians and policies that made their states places they wanted to leave.
There’s no way to reverse it. Not without a couple of Constitutional amendments that I’d hate to see have happen, as they would be a jackboot on the neck of what’s left of our liberty. But, even so, Colorado, due to all these things, is rapidly becoming a not-so-free state.
Some folks would tell me to stay, to fight for my state. My own inclinations, not long ago, would have agreed. But I’m getting old. I’ve fought my political fights. I want to live out the rest of my life in something like peace and quiet.
Alaska, then.
