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| May 6, 2018 2:00 AM

Empowering evangelicals

Evangelicals are an important group to the future of our country. A group in an identity crisis. Where their journey takes them in settling on a new identity in the age of Donald Trump and after Billy Graham will affect us all and the state of our union.

Democrats will continue to have a problem enlarging their tent until there is hospitality in that tent toward the large strongly pro-life segment of Americans.

Republicans have leverage over the pro-life voters, so many Americans feel justified in being one0issue pro-life voters. That and the money of the gun industry. This sums up most of why Republicans control everything right now (they dominate the FBI, Supreme Court and all the rest despite the cries of “witch hunt” they raise).

A party occupies the moral high ground inasmuch it is consistently pro-life.

Wave elections are caused when one party convinces a large majority that it is the pro-life party and in contrast the opposing party is the special interest party.

We need a party that at least has space for anti-abortion Americans. And also is pro-life in regard to action climate change. Pro-life in being pro-environment — for clean air, clean water, clean food, clean medicine that does no harm, clean material goods (regulating harmful chemicals for the good of the people, fairly, with no corruption by or interest in the money of the chemical industry). All that balanced with being pro-jobs because we have to have both health and industry — not one or the other.

Now to my fellow evangelicals, let me suggest the following as a political cause for Christ very much following the example set by the preaching of Martin Luther King Jr, pro-life and pro-woman. Evangelicals, these should be our consistently pro-life political goals:

— Aim to outlaw abortion (except as medically necessary). I recently read “Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice” by an abortion-providing doctor of considerable reputation in the circles he has inhabited. I read it to stretch myself and hear the other side but I found it unconvincing. I was left with the realization that the pro-choice argument puts convenience on one side of the scales and life on the other and yet somehow concludes that convenience is more weighty and of higher priority.

— Adoption.

—?Free childcare from birth.

—?Women’s aspirations.

— Paid family leave. —Matthew Lamberts, Bigfork

Montana state government hurts Lincoln Co.

As a former Lincoln County commissioner that spent years advocating for both the Rock Creek and Montanore proposals, I thought I had seen everything that could be thrown at these projects to delay their development. Seems I hadn’t.

We now have our own state government attempting to derail these mines by determining that Hecla Mining is somehow a bad actor. It really boggles the mind to understand how a company that has never operated a mine in Montana can be held accountable for another company’s failure.

The decision of our state’s executive to do this is an epic example of just how little the communities of Northwest Montana are thought of. Our rural natural-resource-based economies have been crushed by groups and individuals that have nothing but disgust for our very existence in this region, and it seems our own government is now collaborating with the obstructionism. —Rita Windom, Libby

If Trump were more like Obama

Maybe liberals would love President Trump like they love past President Obama if Trump were exactly like Obama. To be exactly alike, Trump must:

—Apologize to the world for how bad the US is.

—Circumvent the Constitution whenever possible.

—Bow when meeting kings and emperors.

—Lead from behind.

—Don’t have an average of 3 percent or greater for any year of presidency (meaning the lowest economic growth in U.S. history).

—Call lSlS a JV team.

—Pull our troops out of lraq so lSlS can take over.

—Never use the term “lslamic terrorism.”

—Be pro Islam and anti-Judeo-Christian.

—Don’t support Israel.

—Never use the term “illegal aliens.”

—Make the needs of illegal aliens more important than the needs of legal U.S. citizens.

—Never use the terms “America First” or “Make America Great Again.”

—Draw lines in the sand but never back them up.

—Vastly increase the size of the federal government.

—Create more national debt than all other presidents in history COMBINED.

—Vastly increase the number of people on food stamps and welfare.

—Try to have the federal government control all our medical decisions.

—Try to eliminate the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

—Keep adding crippling federal regulations.

—Corrupt the Justice Department, the FBI and the IRS.

—Have socialists and communists in your inner circle.

—Don’t reduce taxes or improve the tax codes.

—Make a disastrous nuclear deal with Iran.

—Appoint socialists to the Supreme Court.

—Let all our trading partners take advantage of us.

—Try to model the U.S. after European socialism.

—Give billions of dollars to countries that hate us.

—Collude with the mainstream media to overlook your corruption and lies.

—Have corrupt attorneys general and secretaries of state.

—Don’t close off our southern border because liberals need more illegal dependents to vote for them.

Please, please President Trump, do NOT follow your predecessor! Please continue to do what is in the best interest for the United States and the LEGAL citizens. —Davy A. French, Eureka

Library book or hard-core porn?

I have always been a fan of the library, even before it became Imagine If.

Now I am a old man and can’t pretend I was always a saint and thought I had seen and heard most everything but the other day I was totally shocked when I picked up a Spanish-English translation book in the new releases on the shelf at the library. I sat down and just flipped it open to whatever page. It was telling how to say in Spanish all the most vulgar terms imaginable for every kind of sex act one could think of and the same thing for male and female genitals. It also told how to ask where you could find people to perform these acts (maybe animals too, I only looked at one page so don’t know for sure).

Of course through the years I have heard some of those terms but why we need a book to translate them is beyond me, and to top it off in our library.

I called the next day and asked to speak to whoever had the highest rank. I was given to a lady who said someone would call and discuss my problem with the book, so far no call and I would just love to have someone try to explain what social value a book like that has.

Is this the kind of crap our tax dollars are going for at the library now? That book is hard-core porn without the pictures. It is just trash and in my mind anyone who would buy it is trash also. It does not belong in anybody’s library. —Glen Hook, Kalispell