An Open Letter To AZ Rep. Cecil P. Ash

The Honorable Cecil P. Ash,

You responded recently to my online post of an open letter to members of the Latter-day Saint church who are either Mitt Romney supporters or on the fence about his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. I am appreciative of your review of my letter and for investing your time crafting a well written and thoughtful response. Rather than “reply to your reply”, I will utilize my site to publish an open letter to you directly. I believe the arguments expressed by each of us in our writings strike to the very core of the ever widening chasm of philosophical difference between the GOP establishment and myself and others who are deeply concerned about our nation’s overall direction over the past 80 but more especially the past 20 years under both political parties’ leadership and deserve a thoughtful discussion.

You assert that my “assumption” of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) agenda is incorrect. This really is not up for debate any longer, Mr. Ash. The CFR agenda has, within the past several years, become well known among those surrounding the “mainstream”. Indeed, this organization has an agenda which is truly “hidden in plain sight”, published for all to see who are willing to spend even a few minutes doing the research. Mitt Romney’s name has most definitely appeared on the Council’s roster and I find it disturbing and deeply suspicious that it is no longer there. Active member or not (by way of the published roster), this subject of Mr. Romney’s involvement with this organization could not be more timely. Only Thursday of this past week, Mr. Romney announced his foreign policy and national security advisory team. The Washington Post article by Philip Rucker listed 36 team member names which Mr. Romney will look to in crafting his positions on important policies concerning our foreign affairs and national security. The fact that Mr. Romney needs 36 people, largely returning from the Bush administration, to tell him what he thinks about America’s role in the nation building activities currently underway around the world and on how to secure America’s borders is disturbing enough. However what it is immensely more disturbing to me is the fact that, of the 36 people named, squarely twenty-two of them are members of the CFR. Fully 61% of Mr. Romney’s think-tank team are members of an organization whose leadership has made no secret of their socialistic-communistic agenda. Quite frankly, Mr. Ash, with more than half of Mr. Romney’s advisors coming from the CFR and nearly 100% of them former Bush administration advisors, it is not even necessary for his name to appear on the CFR roster. His association with and reliance upon that organization is crystal clear and should frighten any Latter-day Saint who has read even a small portion of Ezra Taft Benson’s treatise’s on the subject of socialism.

You asked if I had heard of EMTALA, and of course I have, and we agree that it should have been contested. Your contention, however, that because EMTALA is in place we have adequate justification to mandate that all American’s have health insurance is to further our nation’s sprint toward socialism and to guarantee that the cost of medicine in America will continue its dramatic escalation. As a leader in health issues in your state of Arizona, you no doubt are aware that the concept of health insurance was intended only as protection against catastrophic health events, much like the automotive or homeowners insurance model today. Health insurance, through what, our own LDS leaders like Benson and [Marion G.] Romney referred to as “creeping socialism” has grown into an out of control juggernaut that is used to cover every health ailment under the sun from a runny nose to brain cancer and every prescription pharmaceutical in between. Currently, the costs to obtain even the most basic health care strain the average family budget. Were automotive insurance to follow the same pattern as health insurance (which, in fact, glass coverage has), then imagine going in for an oil change and being presented with a bill for $850 submitted to your insurance company, while you pay a $10 co-pay. Here’s a real world example from my own personal life illustrating the outrageous cost of healthcare in the U.S. I recently mistook my finger for a cucumber with my chef knife and was required to have 3 stitches. I am self-insured by choice (oh, the HORROR), and chose to take my case to a local instant care facility where I received a bit of Novocain and three stitches at the hand of a qualified physician. The total cost? $380.00. This same incident taken to an Emergency room would have easily exceeded $1000. Rewind to about a year ago in our second home near Sololá, Guatemala where my youngest son hit his head on a sharp rock while rough-housing with his brother. The resulting laceration also required stitches. We hired a private boat to quickly whisk us across Lake Atitlan to the village of Santiago La Laguna to visit a modern hospital and receive 5 stitches at the hand of an American physician. The total cost including the private boat ride in US dollars? $30. Yes, that’s thirty US dollars. Let’s break that down, 4 minutes of the Doctor’s time at the cost of $20 (the boat ride and medications totaled $10). That’s $5 per minute or $300 per hour. That’s a pretty impressive rate in a third world country with 85% of those funds going straight to the Doctor. Compare that to my instant care experience here in the states of $380 for 4 minutes worth of work, that’s $95 per minute or $5700 per hour. Couple this with the fact that I paid cash for the services, thus putting the maximum dollars in the pocket of the physician, – no insurance filing, no paperwork, no collection efforts needed – even after covering the overhead costs of the clinic and malpractice insurance premiums, say, 75%, that still equates to a rate of more than $1425 per hour to the physician. Clearly, from a free market point of view, our health care system is broken.

Your suggestion that Mr. Romney is something other than the GOP establishment’s chosen one comes with fascinating timing as well. Just over one week ago, Governor Christie finally clarified for the GOP his decision not to pursue the nomination. With Christie (and Palin, as of this writing) now officially off the table, the last remaining big money hold out’s are swarming to Romney’s campaign. I’ve come to learn over the years of my political involvement that wherever the big, corporate money goes, that’s where the greatest skepticism should be applied. The establishment is most assuredly behind Romney’s campaign and to suggest otherwise is either naïve or just plain dishonest. I make no secret of my disdain for the GOP establishment which has gone horribly off course. We, along with our supposed rivals across the hall have jumped on the Fabian superhighway to the land of socialism. With our foreign policy, we have taken a page from the British Empire’s nation building playbook. How long are we Latter-day Saints, who know of the promises made to our nation and know of the divine hand which guided the Framers to craft the greatest governmental document in the history of mankind, to sit by and watch our freedoms eroded, our liberties stolen and our Constitution trampled under the feet of socialistic, imperialistic corporatists and statists? I say we sit back not a moment longer.

You know, I am a fellow Arizonan, having been raised in Benson in the heart of Cochise County and graduating from Benson Union High School. My late father, a life-long Republican, lived in Arizona for more than forty of his fifty-five years. I have a great love for the state even though I no longer live there and now that I live in Mr. Romney’s back yard here in the Live Free or Die State of New Hampshire, I challenge you to hop a plane over here and see how well your Romney sales pitch fares. Mr. Romney certainly has name recognition among many of the GOP establishment lemmings; however he also has left quite a negative taste in the mouths of voters here in New England. Those who watched his one term as governor saw him as a corporate elitist who used his Governorship solely as a springboard from which to launch his campaign for president in 2007/2008. Aside from the “Big Dig”, most are largely unimpressed with anything else that Romney supposedly accomplished here. Small to medium sized business owners would not buy any of your financial numbers, as they saw their tax burdens increase substantially under Mr. Romney’s leadership. The citizens of Massachusetts (60% as you cite) may have favored the health insurance mandate, but is that really a selling point? What, you mean the people of Massachusetts, the state which gave the late Senator Ted Kennedy a 47 year senatorial career ended only by his death, had a majority of people support a socialistic policy? Shocking?

You asserted that Mr. Romney is uniquely qualified as a successful businessman to see to the “business of our nation” and I categorically reject your assertion that Mr. Romney’s business success qualifies him to lead our nation and negotiate with foreign nations. America is not a business to be managed, Mr. Ash, this is a Constitutional Republic to be led by a president who understands where our Constitutional role in world affairs begins and ends, how our example to the world leads more powerfully than our military might, who understands the fundamental principles of economics and monetary policy, who does not need to hire a legion of former Bush advisors and CFR henchmen to tell him what his positions should be and who will not “negotiate” with China and the Russians. Are you serious, Mr. Ash? Did you honestly use the words “negotiate”, “China” and “Russia” all in the same sentence? Since you appear to have read a little Benson, maybe you recall these statements.

Taken from the book, “God, Family Country” written by Ezra Taft Benson in 1974.

“Today the devil as a wolf in a supposedly new suit of sheep’s clothing is enticing some men, both in and out of the Church, to parrot his line by advocating planned government-guaranteed security programs at the expense of our liberties. Latter-day Saints should be reminded how and why they voted as they did in heaven. If some have decided to change their votes they should repent—throw their support on the side of freedom—and cease promoting this subversion.”

And quoting David O. McKay, Benson further warned,

“During the first half of the twentieth century we have traveled far into the soul-destroying land of socialism and made strange alliances through which we have become involved in almost continuous hot and cold wars over the whole of the earth. In this retreat from freedom the voices of protesting citizens have been drowned by raucous shouts of intolerance and abuse from those who led the retreat and their millions of gullible youth, who are marching merrily to their doom, carrying banners on which are emblazoned such intriguing and misapplied labels as social justice, equality, reform, patriotism, social welfare. . . .” (Gospel Ideals, p. 273.)

And finally,

“No true Latter-day Saint and no true American can be a socialist or a communist or support programs leading in that direction. These evil philosophies are incompatible with Mormonism, the true gospel of Jesus Christ.” (Bold added)

You seem impressed by Mr. Romney’s first and only book, “No Apology” and point to this as evidence of the great thought he has given to issues facing America. Mr. Paul by comparison has written 9 books since 1981 covering every major political topic faced by the Chief Executive. You assert that “no other candidate has thought so deeply about these things, partly because no other candidate has the depth of experience that Romney has.” I find this statement arrogant and this over exaggeration only seeks to diminish your credibility on all of your other arguments in support of Mr. Romney’s candidacy. Are you truly of the opinion that Mitt Romney has thought more about our nation’s policies or has more experience than say, two-time Ambassador and former Governor of Utah, John Huntsman? More than 20 year congressional veteran and former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich? Or more than 33 year congressional veteran, 3 time presidential candidate and House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy Chairman Ron Paul?

As to your statement that there is “more gray to most issues than black and white”, where the Federal government is concerned, I vigorously disagree. The Constitution, that divinely inspired document written by the hands of divinely inspired men, most assuredly deals with “black” and “white”. By implication, you are saying that the same God who inspired the Constitution left us with a document ill equipped to deal with the supposed “gray” issues to which you refer? Where are our principles as a nation? Where are leaders who do not deal in the supposed grey areas but instead turn to the Constitution as their very clear guide? I can think of one currently running for the GOP nomination and I’ll give you a hint, it’s not Mitt Romney. If Mr. Romney is seeing gray at the Federal level, then it sounds like he needs a pair of glasses to help him read the Constitution more closely.

Mr. Ash, as a legislator yourself, it is hard to imagine that you cannot see a fellow legislator (at the Federal level), a 12-term representative spanning more than 30 years of experience defending and upholding the Constitution, so much so that his peers nicknamed him “Dr. No” as uniquely qualified to lead our nation. The president’s fundamental role is to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of [their] ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” I don’t see anything in the oath of office about running our country like a business enterprise, supporting socialistic policies, negotiating with communists, building fences and installing armed soldiers along our border, expanding the role of government, burdening businesses and citizens with devastating taxation, dropping bombs on innocent women and children in countries who present no realistic military threat to our nation, entering a military action without a declaration of war, installing military bases in more than 130 countries around the world and undermining the voice of the people by legislating with the pen through unconstitutional and unconscionable executive orders.

Finally, is it so ridiculous to posit that a border fence could one day be used to keep U.S. citizens in? If our current economic policies continue unrestrained, we will see the complete collapse of our currency along with the resulting chaos. Couple this with concepts such as the “RealID” and National ID cards and you begin to get a sense of where Paul was going with his comment. Would most find it hard to imagine right now such a scenario as the one Paul described? Sure. Just as I am sure it was hard for Germans in the early 1900’s to envision a time when a wall would exist through the middle of their country keeping East Germans in. Just a few short years ago right here in America, I could freely walk across the Mexican or Canadian border to buy an inexpensive malachite chess set, ski the Canadian Rockies or buy a pint of pure maple syrup, all without the risk of being accosted by a hyped-up, assume-everyone-is-a-terrorist border patrol official. Unless I submit to government screening and fork over the funds to obtain an electronically chipped passport, I am, in effect “imprisoned” within my own country. The State Department website is riddled with fearsome warnings about the pick-pocketing dangers in various countries further discouraging American’s from traveling overseas. If the State Department is so concerned with our safety and keeping us apprised of potential security threats, then what about warnings on their site against walking alone in downtown New Orleans at night, or to avoid entering an inner city housing project wearing red or blue or a “Raiders” ball-cap to prevent being shot?

Mr. Ash, our nation is in the midst of a Constitutional crisis. We very well may be living in the day when the Constitution indeed would “hang by a thread”. Paul will not solve the problems created over an 80 or 100 year span of time in 4 to 8 years, but he could certainly begin turning this ship around. Mr. Romney, if we could believe his campaign trail rhetoric, might go about making a minor course correction, but this will do nothing to keep our ship from smashing into the approaching cliffs. Given Mr. Romney’s past politics, I’m afraid he’d actually stay the current heading and even lean on the throttle, thus accelerating our collision course. I am not interested in minor course corrections. I am not interested in tinkering with America or the fundamental problems we face. I want a restoration of America. A restoration of freedom, of liberty, of the America the Founders created and envisioned for us. A restoration of the blessed and promised land held in reserve for this, the fullness of times. I want to stand with others to hold up the proverbial “Title of Liberty” and to shine forth our example to the world of freedom, greatness, righteousness and glory.

There may come a day when there are several worthy candidates from which to choose the Chief Executive to lead our nation. There may come a day when we do not have candidates who, like Mr. Romney, attempt to pander to so many different sides that no one can determine what he believes or who he is, when we have choices between candidates who do uphold the Constitution with exactness rather than rhetoric and who do act and make important decisions based on principle, honor, consistency and integrity. But today, Mr. Ash, and in terms of our political debate, I see none other to stand beside me and beside others like me to work to restore America to uphold the Constitution and provide the foundation for each and every one of us to truly fulfill the full measure of our creation, God’s creation; none other today in my humble opinion than Congressman Ron Paul.