“If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if even one life can be saved, we have an obligation to try.”
—President Obama

“Within three months of the precrime program, the homicidal rates in the District of Columbia had reduced 90 percent.”
—Minority Report, 2002

In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, gun control advocates pressed with renewed vigor to revisit and restore federal gun control measures in an attempt to crack down on violence. Conservative opposition was loud and clear: minimizing tragedy and preventing violence is an insufficient basis to impose such regulations. These measures, touted by their proponents as “common sense,” infringe upon one’s right to acquire and use a firearm. While some studies have suggested that gun control measures can save lives, that fact alone does not persuade many who instead insist that the government lacks the legitimate authority to punish peaceful people because other gun owners have been irresponsible or outright criminal in their actions.

Simply put, supporters of so-called “gun rights” believe that preventing gun violence is not a reason to impose such regulations. They argue that despite such regulations, those who want to obtain and use guns will do so regardless of what the law says. These regulations will only violate individual rights, and turn innocent people into criminals.

We agree with these concerns, and share the belief that rights must trump statistics; preventing unnecessary violence and death is an important objective, but regulations in pursuit of such an end must have a legitimate basis—and one which imposes justice upon criminals, and not innocent individuals. Accordingly, we suggest that to be consistent one must apply the same argument to other policy areas, such as alcohol.

Currently in every state in the nation, the maximum percentage of blood-alcohol content (BAC) permitted while driving is 0.08%. This means that the average person is prohibited from driving after consuming two to three alcoholic beverages, for fear that the impairment caused by the alcohol might lead to the person’s own injury, or worse, the injury or death of an innocent third party. The Utah legislature reduced the level from 0.10% in 1983.

Last week, the National Transportation Safety Board announced its new recommendation that all states should reduce their BAC maximum levels to 0.05%, pointing to studies which suggest that many lives could be saved with such a move. “There are at least 10,000 reasons to tackle this issue,” said Deborah A. P. Hersman, chairwoman of the NTSB’s board, alluding to the estimated number of people who die annually in alcohol-related traffic accidents. The organization, which has no enforcement authority and can only recommend its policy proposals, points to other countries that have been operating with a 0.05% limit to suggest that their lower rates of alcohol-related traffic accidents merit implementation in America as well.

Her same argument is easily (and often) used in the gun control debate as well. In the United States, 8,775 people died in 2010 at the hands of another person who used a gun. In 2008, there were 78,622 nonfatal firearm injuries in this country. Suffice it to say that there are similar reasons “to tackle this issue,” and yet it is not so simple as to suggest that increased regulations on peaceful people is the proper approach.

It is problematic to claim that simply lowering the legal limit is the key to preventing disaster and death. According to a 2008 survey by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, some 20% of drivers drink and drive each year. A 2010 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately 112 million alcohol-impaired driving episodes took place in 2010 (a number that has declined 30% from 2006).

Out of those 112 million episodes, some two million of them (using 2000 data) involved a crash of some sort. 96.7% of the crashes involved a BAC of over 0.08%, comprising the vast majority of instances in which a drunk driver was involved in a car accident of some sort. While some anti-alcohol activists in Utah will soon be pushing for a reduction in the state’s BAC limit, we should all keep in mind who would be targeted under such a policy change. As one report notes, most instances are already in violation of the law, and a reduction would therefore be irrelevant to them:

The Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice’s 2012 DUI report to the Utah Legislature states the average reported BAC level of a DUI arrest in the state last year was .14, nearly twice the current legal limit. Only 10.2 percent of reported BAC levels of 2012 arrests were within the .08 to .10 range, and only 5.9 percent of those arrested for DUI blew under the legal limit.

The report further notes that, “DUI arrests last year decreased 5.7 percent from 2011 and 14.7 percent from 2010,” in part due to the public becoming increasingly educated about the dangers associated with drinking and driving.

Herein lies the problem with those who support increased enforcement and regulation—especially against those who are innocent and would not have gotten in a car accident, let alone harmed themselves or anybody else. Persuasion and education have a more profound affect upon behavior than do punishment and law enforcement. While some view the law as a “teacher” and believe that time in jail may serve to deter further bad behavior, this position sidesteps the argument regarding whether such a law (and its enforcement) is legitimate. While lives may be saved by increasingly punishing drunk drivers, at what cost does such a “Minority Report”-esque policy come? To what degree will Utahns support incarcerating and fining those who have not harmed another person, but instead have run afoul of the state’s BAC decree?

Lowering the BAC limit will only exacerbate the problem, and make such hanging questions more relevant. Instead of treating drinking and driving as a crime, alternatives should be increasingly explored to help educate and persuade people regarding the potentially violent results of such a decision.

Further, we believe that the structure of DUI law in the state needs to be reworked, such that the mere acts of drinking and then driving are not punished. Instead, actual violations of others’ rights (including their right to life by injuring or killing them) should be increasingly penalized in cases where the driver was knowingly negligent, such as in the case of consuming alcohol prior to operating the motor vehicle. Under this type of penalty system, only actual crimes would be penalized, and those who might drink and drive in the future would be put on notice that the consequences of hurting somebody else would be extra severe should they do so while impaired by intoxication.

Instead, the current system penalizes those who might hurt somebody in the future (but who in the vast majority of cases do not). Police agencies effectively become involved in pursuing precrime, punishing people before they have done actually done anything to harm another person. The problem with this system lies in the fact that influences are being criminalized by themselves, as opposed to their associated actions. Many other influences cause drivers to be distracted, such as talking to others in the car, or talking on the phone, or looking at billboards, applying makeup, eating, daydreaming, or any number of other things that can and do impact the cognitive ability of a driver. Instead of adding such things to the list of actions which should be prohibited by law under the threat of punishment, drivers should be educated to minimize or remove such distractions, with the knowledge that they may lead to harming another person, and if that were to occur, the penalties would be more harsh.

If we reject increased regulations for preventing injury and homicide with a firearm, then it makes sense to apply such a standard to other circumstances as well. (Some may argue that the second amendment justifies the opposition to gun control on grounds that owning and using a gun is a right, but they usually fail to recognize the ninth amendment which makes clear that individuals have plenty of other rights [including ingesting alcohol].) Opposing gun control regulations does not mean that one is okay with the many gun-related crimes that take place, just as opposing lowering the BAC limit does not imply that one wants drunk drivers out on the streets.

Drunk driving will happen. It has happened ever since cars were invented. Lowering the legal limit will not stop it from happening. Setting the legal limit at 0% will not stop it from happening. Thus, the proper approach to resolving this problem satisfactorily does not lie in tweaking an arbitrary standard. Policy makers and concerned citizens should instead focus their efforts on how to prevent the problem before it occurs—not by threatening innocent people and enforcing an arbitrary standard, but by educating drivers about the consequences to drinking while driving, and ensuring that all are informed that their actions will be strongly punished if and when they harm another person.

Editor’s note: The following is a lightly-edited transcription of an interview with Oak Norton, an education activist in Utah and founder of Utahns Against Common Core and Agency Based Education.

Libertas Institute: Please describe your background.

Oak Norton: I’m originally from Pennsylvania and came to Utah to attend college back in 1991. I graduated in accounting and went to work for a public accounting firm for a while. I have a beautiful wife and five wonderful children, and never intended to go down the path of educational advocacy that I have.

When my oldest daughter was in third grade, I discovered at the end of her school year that she hadn’t yet learned the times tables. At a parent-teacher conference, I asked the teacher about it, noting that 30 years ago I had learned them in third grade. She said “we don’t do that anymore. It’s not part of the curriculum.” I asked her how she expected the kids to learn their times tables, and she said: “well, the smart kids will just pick it up as they go.”

I just about died. I immediately went to the principal’s office, and he reassured me that all the recent studies showed me that their new methods were the best way to teach math. It was called Investigations Math, and Alpine School District had implemented it in such a way to not teach children times tables, long division, and division by fractions. I was blown away. I couldn’t believe that anybody in their right mind didn’t need to know these things.

I went to the store and bought flash cards, knowing that I had to take education into my own hands for my children. My advocacy involvement got started a little later, when in 2000 I realized that I didn’t know the Constitution very well. I started to study, starting with Clean Skousen’s Five Thousand Year Leap. Shortly thereafter, the school district sent home a flier announcing that they were going to have a meeting called “The Role of Public Education in a Democracy.”

My first concern was that we are not a democracy, and the second concern was that free education in government schools was something promoted by Karl Marx. At the time, I was working with the Varsity Scouts (14 and 15 year olds), and they knew nothing about the Constitution. So during the public comment in that meeting I stood up and suggested that a course on the Constitution was needed, and that Skousen’s book The Making of America should be the textbook. I pointed out that our country is not a democracy, and that children need to learn what form of government we really have–what our founding fathers gave us.

After that meeting I created an online survey about Investigations Math, and began to do research and collect information that showed how California, for example, had abandoned it because it had gotten so bad. This was the beginning of my advocacy work. I later got involved with the legislature in Utah, because the school district wasn’t listening to parents. In 2007 we were able to get Utah to raise its math standards. Around 2009 I began to look at the state history standards and saw problems there as well. For example, the word “Republic” was nowhere in the social studies curriculum. In 2010 we ran a bill that now makes it state law to teach students in public school that America is a Compound Constitutional Republic.

LI: Your latest advocacy deals with “Common Core”. Help our readers understand what that’s about.

ON: Common Core is an agenda — it’s not just a set of educational standards. People will say that critics are just upset with the standards, but that isn’t the case at all. In fact, when Common Core first came out I was not opposed to it. I thought that math should be taught pretty much the same way, anywhere you go, because how different can it be?

About a year later, I became aware of some of the connections to Common Core that made me alarmed. The process began decades ago with central planners who wanted to shape society such that children would be trained for business as part of a managed economy, a planned workforce. Various things have been done over the years trying to accomplish this. One of the notable things was a letter written by Marc Tucker, who ran the National Center on Education and the Economy, to Hillary Clinton when her husband was first elected. It basically laid out a roadmap to centrally plan the educational path of children, along with database tracking. That didn’t really go very far at the time, as there was resistance (as there always has been).

Common Core really picked up in 2004, when Bill Gates, representing Microsoft, signed a contract with UNESCO (the UN’s education arm). In the contract, they committed to help establish a global education system. What’s of great importance is what they proceeded to do after that. Gates started to influence education systems and government leaders around the world, admitting in a New York Times interview that he has put five billion dollars into education reform, and hasn’t seen a lot of improvement in education.

It was recently reported that Gates has spent $150 million on grants for Common Core implementation in the United States. He started off by putting money into the National Governor’s Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. He put about $25 million into those groups to get started on this, and basically invited them to create common standards. He wanted everybody to come under one umbrella and have a common curriculum.

LI: You said earlier that you weren’t necessarily opposed to common standards, at least initially. Why, then, is this problematic?

ON: The problem comes in when you start to look at the agenda behind all of this. For one thing, after various states agreed to create the standards, Utah had to sign onto them in order to get federal dollars under the Race to the Top grant. $4.35 billion was offered to the states, and all they had to do was agree to adopt standards that were common to a majority of other states. So the federal government started to get involved and support this movement.

The standards were written behind closed doors without any opportunity to give public comment on them. Our state office of education goes around telling people that these were state-led standards, when they themselves didn’t know who was on the drafting committee until the standards were completed. It was the Gates Foundation who basically hand-picked the people to write the standards.

One of those people was David Coleman who is now president of The College Board which sets the direction for the SAT and ACT exams. He has announced that he’s aligning those tests with Common Core.

States were given another chance for more federal money by signing on to one of the two federally funded consortia of states for assessments. Utah signed on to Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium as a governing member, obligating the state to use their exams. In February of last year, the state board of education in Utah voted to stay in the SBAC in spite of our concerns, but then a few months later after we elevated the issue of getting out, they finally voted to exit our SBAC membership. What followed was a controversy when someone inside the state office of education informed me that they were going to write the assessment RFP in such a way as to only use an SBAC partner organization, and in fact in January 2013, the USOE announced they were going to pay AIR $39 million to write assessments for Utah. The state superintendent announced they were the “only organization” that could meet Utah’s needs, in spite of the fact that Utah was already in a successful pilot program with another assessment vendor.

The specific concern with SBAC was Linda Darling-Hammond who was their senior researcher and gave the group its direction. She’s a Marxist who wrote a book for teachers on how to teach social justice in the classroom, and was Bill Ayers’ recommendation to President Obama for secretary of education. So that kind of tells you what her philosophy is on education.

LI: Do you think it’s fair to refer to Common Core as a centralization of education policy? If so, why is it troublesome?

ON: Absolutely, it’s a centralization of policy. It’s also a problem because of what the centralization is allowing the government to do. As a requirement to get out of No Child Left Behind, Utah had to set up a database (which was done in January 2012) called the P-20W database. This stands for preschool through grade 20 (post-doctorate) through into the workforce. So this data collection, that the federal government wants on all of our children, is set up as part of Common Core. It contains over 500 data points, including things like blood type, religious affiliation, dental records, what time you get on the bus, and so on. There are a whole lot of things that the federal government doesn’t need to know.

During President Obama’s last State of the Union address, he announced that he wanted to have a German-style education system here in America. In Germany, early in elementary school they start channeling children into the tracks that they think would be most appropriate for them to go into. So by the time you’re in junior high or high school, you may have lost the ability to change what your future career path is, based on decisions that were made “for your benefit” by the government.

Even though this isn’t happening at the moment, they move slowly and surely towards these goals. We’re trying to prevent that from happening.

LI: No Child Left Behind was done under Bush, so your concerns aren’t related to President Obama and his administration specifically, correct?

ON: This is definitely not a partisan issue. There have been problems from both Republicans and Democrats who occupy power seats. Even Ronald Reagan failed to shut down the Department of Education. Charlotte Iserbyt was his senior policy advisor in that department, and became very frustrated with Reagan and others who were not shutting it down. She actually released documents essentially proving that the department was a socialist/Marxist stronghold intent on deliberately dumbing down America. She documented this in a book that you can freely download.

LI: Is there anything inherently wrong with educational standards themselves?

ON: My efforts in 2007 to enact stronger standards for math in Utah shows that I’m not opposed to standards. I believe that there should be minimal standards that a state can set for its schools, but I think that local schools should have a lot of leeway in pursuing even higher standards for the students in their school, and tailoring the education of children within the school according to their needs. Common Core dramatically reduces this flexibility.

.

LI: Common Core proponents point out that the standards may be “centralized” but the control over curriculum development remains at a local level, so educators and administrators can determine how best to achieve the standards. Do you accept this argument?

ON: No. The reason is that the assessments being prepared with federal money are tied to the Common Core standards, and those assessments are going to be used to determine each teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom. Teachers are going to “teach to the test” because that’s how their job is going to be evaluated. If they fail to have their students perform well on those tests, then they can be penalized themselves.

In addition, because the Gates Foundation has so much money and connections, they’ve partnered with Pearson Publishing and McGraw-Hill in order to create curriculum for Common Core. So the large publishers are driving what is being taught in the classroom, because they are creating the class material that will match the standards.

LI: Common Core’s focus is “college and career readiness.” Should education be geared towards these things in your view? If not, then what?

ON: I strongly believe that a proper education does provide a person with college or career readiness. The problem with Common Core is that it does neither.

Dr. Jim Milgram was the only professional mathematician on the validation committee for the math standards, and he refused to sign off on them because he said they would put us two years behind the Asian countries by 7th grade (among other reasons). On the English Side, Dr. Sandra Stotsky, who provided Massachusetts with the best English Language Arts standards in the country, said that Common Core’s ELA standards would only allow students to really be high school ready, not college ready.

LI: You said that a “proper” education helps prepare students. What do you mean by that?

ON: Classical education, where we’re not trying to train students for a particular endeavor, but giving them a broad liberal education. Expose them to great literature (which Common Core cuts out by 70% by 12th grade). Expose them to quality curriculum.

LI: Ellwood P. Cubberley, an influential educational administrator at the turn of the 20th century, viewed education as a tool for social engineering. He said, “Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life.” This was a view widely shared by his peers who helped establish and shape what has become the public education system in America. How does Common Core contribute to schools being used for social engineering?

ON: Common Core turns all schools around the country into the same factory. On the top of our website, Utahns Against Common Core, I feature this quote by Justice Louis Brandeis:

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system, that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

Our children are individuals, different from any other kids around the country. What Common Core attempts to do is to standardize all of those children onto the same schedule of learning, using the same subject matter. Our children are not wax to be molded — they are unique individuals with different learning rates, learning styles, interests, and talents. They need to have an opportunity to use their minds, coupled with choice and agency, to pursue their dreams. States should be independent to try what they feel is best. When one state finds something that works, others can mimic it if they want.

LI: In a public school system with set standards (even if they’re not Common Core), how would a child have that choice and individual adaptation?

ON: In my ideal world, every child that goes to public school should have set standards that they should try and adhere to. That doesn’t mean that every child is going to achieve the same level of learning at the same rate, of course. So education needs to be more individualized, where teachers and parents can collaborate for the best educational experience for the child. In charter schools, they will ability group students for math, where there might be 8-12 kids who are at the same level, and they will be moved through the math book at a pace that’s geared for where they’re at, where other kids might be a little slower or faster, they’ll all be grouped together based on their current ability. That’s one example of what I mean by that. Another would be greater flexibility in allowing kids to pursue things that interest them.

LI: Obviously, the greatest degree of educational flexibility occurs in homeschooling, where parents can control and adapt the curriculum on a completely customized level for their child. Some parents opt for homeschooling because of religious or ideological reasons, but most probably do it for the pedagogical flexibility. Many parents who homeschool may feel that Common Core won’t affect them, because they are “opting out” of the public school system. Is this a valid position, or do you think that homeschooling parents should be also oppose Common Core?

ON: Homeschoolers should definitely be worried about Common Core. Just two weeks ago, it was announced that New York was now storing homeschoolers’ information in their state-wide database that they’ll be using for Common Core tracking. The Homeschool Legal Defense Association has come out and taken some fairly strong positions against Common Core because of some of these issues, including the alignment of ACT/SAT exams, so that if a homeschooler wants to get into college, they’re essentially going to have to pass a Common Core test.

LI: How would Utah’s extrication from the Common Core be any different? If the ACT/SAT are still Common Core-aligned, and public school students in Utah are not using that system, doesn’t the same concern raise itself?

ON: Yes and no. This same anti-Common Core movement and strengthening of local control is happening all over the country right now. Utah is not alone in this fight. Just this past week, the governor of Indiana put Common Core on hold because of all of the raised concerns. Similar things are happening in a number of other states. There are still five states that never adopted Common Core, including Virginia and Texas. If this backlash continues to grow, I hope it will ultimately overthrow this agenda and return the SAT and AP tests to the traditional role that they’ve had in testing students’ broader knowledge.

LI: Dr. Carla Horwitz of the Yale Child Study Center notes that many experienced and gifted teachers are giving up in despair. “They are leaving the profession,” says Horwitz, “because they can no longer do what they know will ensure learning and growth in the broadest, deepest way. The Core Standards will cause suffering, not learning, for many, many young children.” Do you agree? Have you seen this with Utah teachers?

ON: Yes. I’ve heard from well over 100-150 Utah teachers so far who are alarmed about Common Core, the way it’s been implemented, what it’s doing in the classroom, both to them as teachers and their ability to teach their students. They’re being forced to teach at a certain pace in order to hit the new benchmarks of Common Core, and it’s leaving some students behind because the teachers don’t have the flexibility that they used to have to customize education for some of those children.

Regarding the suffering, Dr. Gary Thompson is a psychologist in South Jordan and his clinic is already bringing in students who are (as he describes it) being psychologically damaged by the Common Core push. These are children that don’t test well, being a part of the population that doesn’t have the ability to perform well when sitting down to take a test. He’s raised quite a few concerns for those children.

LI: There seem to be many teachers who object to Common Core yet remain silent for fear of being targeted by administrators or ostracized by their peers. Are teachers justified in worrying about speaking out? What contributes to this concern?

ON: Their jobs are on the line. There are quite a few teachers who have contacted me yet refuse to allow their names to be used. They’ve indicated that they are afraid to speak out, or maybe they have spoken out and were punished for it. Even during the Investigation Math fight in Alpine, I had a teacher tell me that she had been punished, and another told me that her contract had been threatened, along with others who had tried to go against what the administrators had told them to do (which was to not teach the times tables).

My very first political lesson was learned when I presented some information to the school board.

A lady who that night had been awarded the teacher of the year approached me in the hall afterward and said to me: “Oak, I used to shut my door to teach the times tables to my children.” I made the rookie mistake of publishing that account to my email list. One week later, I received a letter from this teacher on school district letterhead that said I misunderstood and that she had been explaining something different. That’s when I realized I needed to be careful with what I publish and how I treat information that I get from teachers.

LI: Finally, if you had the attention of Utah legislators for two minutes to discuss education policy, what would you say?

ON: The most important thing that we can do for education in Utah is to restore local control, where parents and teachers have the full ability to do whatever they think is necessary for the education of students at their school. I believe that education should follow five principles:

1. Must be based in choice and not compulsion
2. Helps develop an internal moral compass as one fosters a recognition and love of truth
3. Truth best inspires when sought from original source materials
4. Should be individualized to allow children to identify their gifts and talents and discover their life’s missions
5. Must recognize that parents have the sovereign stewardship to guide their children’s educational journey

In Utah, we have a law on the books that says that parents have a fundamental liberty interest in the education of their child. I believe that compulsory education laws violate that fundamental right that we have as parents and should be repealed.

Touted as a limited government state, Utah came in 14th in the list—45.3% of its total state revenues coming from the federal government, far more than such big government states as New York and California. When totaling indirect and direct federal dollars coming from the feds to Utah, the total amounts to 25.2% of the state’s gross domestic product (GDP).

A 2011 financial report produced by the federal government states that “there is little question that current fiscal policies cannot be sustained indefinitely.” The Comptroller General similarly said in the report that “the current structure of the federal budget is unsustainable over the longer term.”

Once known for its self-reliant, industrious, and independent people, Utah has become somewhat indistinguishable from other states who similarly feed at the federal trough. Unwilling to make hard decisions that would cut funding for popular programs, elected officials in the state have historically tolerated if not openly cheered the diversion of tax dollars to state coffers.

Of course, it is problematic for a people to expect more from their government than they are willing to expect from themselves. According to one study, “Nearly 44% of American households are one emergency away from financial ruin.” The same may hold true for state departments and agencies whose funding is heavily subsidized, directly or indirectly, by the federal government. (Though unlike individuals, the state claims the authority to be able to force others to bail it out by imposing more taxes.)

Elected officials in Utah have expressed a desire to see things improve. The Senate President, House Speaker, and State Auditor jointly authored an op-ed calling for “fiscal responsibility in an era of federal irresponsibility.” Several bills in the most recent legislative session were drafted to better work toward that end, all of which passed.

In the 2011 session, Rep. Ken Ivory sponsored a bill, later signed by the Governor, which required certain state agencies to disclose how much money they were receiving from the federal government, and how their budget would be impacted by both a 5% and 25% reduction in those federal funds. The resulting report in December 2011 to the Executive Appropriations Committee details the degree to which these agencies have profited from taxpayer dollars funneled through the federal government. $5 million for agriculture, $111 million for human services, $17 million for the environment, $50 million for community and culture, $38 million for natural resources, $466 million for education, $259 million for transportation, $613 million for workforce services, and a staggering $1.5 billion for health—these and a lengthy list of other agencies and government programs are heavily reliant upon Washington, D.C. When combined, these specific agencies would lose out on $800 million in federal dollars under a 25% reduction in funds. It takes little imagination to ponder the wailing and gnashing of teeth (and calls for increased taxation to compensate) that would accompany such a cut.

While we applaud efforts to help the various agencies and departments of Utah’s government prepare for a potential reduction in federal funds as part of their budgets, we nevertheless feel that this conversation is superficial at best. It is important to contemplate how state operations will be impacted by a significant reduction in such funds, but it is better to address whether the programs and policies supported by this redistribution of wealth should be occurring at all. Unfortunately, that is a conversation few politicians in Utah seem willing to have.

Budget concerns provide an opportunity to have a broader discussion about what the money is being spent on, and if it is necessary at all. The primary factor in any discussions regarding management of the budget should consider this fundamental point, rather than simply determining how the status quo will be maintained, or funding increased. Of course, government officials are incentivized to protect their own interests and those of their associates, therefore one can rarely count on deferential lawmakers to make steep cuts. Only a groundswell of taxpayer opposition can effectively accomplish such sweeping change in government. Despite the mythical perception of Utah representing limited government and self reliance, this state does not appear to be home to such a movement—yet.

Proponents of this Sunday business ban were quite vocal in affirming that a municipality somehow has the right to determine how best to shape the community through law, and to preserve the “day of rest” and “community feel,” the ordinance was important and necessary. Local control allowed for this option, they argued. What, then, would such persons say regarding a similar law at the state level?

In 2000, Larry H. Miller heavily lobbied for a change in Utah law to protect his car dealerships from national competition. The national chains usually operate on each day of the week, and Miller did not operate his dealerships on Sunday. (The same does not hold true for his Megaplex movie theaters.)

A bill sponsored by Senator Paula Julander changed the law such that a dealership or car salesman “may not, on consecutive days of Saturday and Sunday, sell, offer for sale, lease, or offer for lease a motor vehicle.” (Instead of having a Mormon Republican sponsor this bill, Miller and other proponents chose to have a non-Mormon Democrat do it—presumably to minimize the perception of theocracy.) Rather than simply banning car dealerships from opening on the Sabbath, the legislature was so gracious as to offer a choice: be open either on Saturday or Sunday, but not both. It is not obvious which one each dealership chose, nor why this language was created to be as crafty as it is.

Violating this prohibition is a class B misdemeanor and would result in over $50,000 in annual fines were a dealership to remain open on both days year-round. Of course, few dealerships (if any) are interested in violating this protectionist policy; Libertas Institute contacted over a dozen dealerships and those who responded liked the law, without exception. “Retail industry is hard work!” one dealer told us. “So one day should be taken off. Naturally, it should be Sunday.” Another said that “working six days per week is plenty,” noting that Sunday is the best day to take off “so people can go to church that day.”

Another dealer involved in the 2000 law change noted that “that’s the reason we put it that way, so we can close on Sunday. With me, the religious factor is number one, but number two, it’s hard to manage a family when it’s a seven-day-a-week deal.” When asked about a possible modification to the law, the Executive Communications Director of Larry H. Miller’s dealerships, Linda Luchetti, said “it’s been a law so long, I don’t think we have a comment on that.”

Of course, it is important to take breaks from work and spend time with family, attend church, participate in other associations, etc. This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether the government has any legitimate role in enforcing these things under penalty of fines and jail time. Despite the arguments used by those who prefer the status quo, this law is not simply about allowing car dealers and salesmen to take a day off. It is about economic protectionism—discouraging competition by using the law to favor one’s own industry at the expense of others who might wish to operate their business differently.

Additionally problematic is the portion of code which prohibits the mere “offer” of sale (presumably) on Sunday. An offer is a verbal agreement, part of speech, and thus certain forms of conversation are being criminalized by the state in its pursuit to impose by statute the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy. While we suspect that it would be difficult for this entire prohibition to withstand legal scrutiny if challenged in court, it is likely that the provision banning an “offer” would be particularly troublesome for the state to defend.

Despite their competition being open on Sundays, such businesses as Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A close on Sunday, and yet their businesses thrive. Rather than seeking to employ the arm of the state to enforce such desires as part of a protectionist economic scheme, businessmen in Utah should learn from these examples and voluntarily adhere to a day of rest.

If Utah legislators are in fact supporters of a “free market” as many of them claim on the campaign trail, we hope to see this policy addressed and corrected in the near future.

Imagine that your child breaks his arm while playing with friends. He is in need of medical services, and so you take him to the nearby hospital. Doctors perform the work they think is necessary, you’re sent home with your child in a cast, and you later find out what the cost is. In what other industry do consumers tolerate having zero information about the price of services prior to agreeing to the work?

When you buy over the counter medicine, for example, you contrast and compare between available options. Perhaps you wish to pay a premium for a name brand, or you’re willing to choose a less ideal option to save money. You analyze the products based upon their price, their reputation, their ingredients, their claims of what they can help you with, and other factors. But the important thing is that you are provided all of the relevant data to make an informed choice.

When doctors and medical administrators uphold a system that hides prices from consumers, because of precedent or preference, individuals are unable to sufficiently compare and contrast and make an informed choice.

An example illustrating the interference involved in the right of contract is the state’s regulation of raw (unpasteurized) milk. As part of a 2007 change in Utah’s laws regarding how this milk may be sold, cow shares were prohibited. Cow shares operate much like Community Supported Agriculture, where people pay a farmer in advance for a dedicated portion of the crop. By paying up front, they own a certain share of the crop and are essentially hiring the farmer to provide them with produce. Similarly, a cow share system allows a person to hire a farmer to care for and feed a cow while receiving a dedicated portion of that cow’s milk.

Outlawing such shares is a violation of the right to contract. It is fully legal for a person to own their own cow and drink its milk without pasteurization. It is also legal for a person to hire somebody to come onto their property and take care of their cow for them, allowing them to more easily obtain raw milk without having to personally invest the time and effort into caring for that cow.

For some illogical reason, however, it is now illegal to pay somebody to care for a cow when that cow resides on the farmer’s property rather than your own. The individual right to contract renders such a law illegitimate, for a person has the inherent authority to own a cow, or part of a cow, and pay somebody else to care for it (whether alone or in agreement with others).

Opponents of further legalizing raw milk express concerns over people consuming the unpasteurized product and thereby becoming sick. Of course, it is not within the government’s proper role to impose laws that help to ensure that people do not get sick. If an adult wishes to consume something such as unpasteurized milk, then they should be able to do so. Personal responsibility entails that the individual will suffer the consequences of that action, whether good or bad. (Many people who have a lactose intolerance or other medical issues, or who simply prefer the taste, report that raw milk’s “consequences” are, for them, quite good.)

The government destroys informed consumerism when they prevent those consumers from making their own choices and reaping whatever consequences may come. A state that treats its citizens like adults must step out of the way and allow them to ingest what they please, provided nobody else’s rights are violated in the process.

Whether it is the state or societal status quo, any system that impedes information necessary to have informed consent and the ability to contract should be opposed and corrected.

Editor’s note: The following is a lightly-edited transcription of an interview with Klaus Bernpaintner, a recent immigrant to Utah from Sweden. He is a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Sweden, and organizer of the annual FreedomFest in Stockholm.

Libertas Institute: In your perspective as a Swede, what’s it like to live like under that country’s government?

Klaus Bernpaintner: A lot of things have changed recently, even in the last ten years. We got a so-called conservative government, and people thought that a lot of the socialist nonsense would be done away with. Lowering taxes, increasing personal liberties… but that’s not happened. Instead, we have a “conservative” government that’s imposing the same social democratic politics.

They have made some things a little better. Some taxes have lowered slightly. But the personal liberties in Sweden have decreased, I would say. The most obvious case is in 2010 when they outlawed homeschooling. There are two countries in the “civilized western world” where that’s illegal: Germany, since 1938, and now Sweden since 2010.

LI: Similarly, here in America, the (supposedly conservative) Republicans had control of the entire federal government during Bush’s early years. Rather than lowering taxes and restoring personal liberty, they passed things like the PATRIOT Act and Medicare Part D. To what do you attribute the conservative unwillingness to actually reduce government’s power? 

KB: I would attribute it to a lack of ideology. Just pure pragmatism. Also, it’s the consequences of other bad decisions that have been made.

For example, Sweden has taken in something like a million foreigners in the past decade, on top of the population of eight million. I have nothing against immigration at all (as a matter of fact, I’m for open borders), but I’m not for subsidizing immigration using others’ money.

So people come to Sweden from a lot of places around the world, and when people arrive they are told what benefits they can receive, how much money they can get, what kind of apartment, furniture, bus pass, school, free medication, etc. Now there are even special laws for “undocumented” immigrants to give them free medical care, school, and things like that.

This causes a lot of problems in Sweden, for example in the schools. As more of these children are added, many of whom can’t read and write, the overall results of the schools declines. As a consequence of that, the government feels the need to tighten the control of the schools, and to use the schools to create a homogenous people. That’s the reason why the government outlawed homeschooling.

There’s a chain of events and consequences. But also there’s a desire to control people, making sure that people have the right opinions. In Sweden, there’s basically one opinion that is allowed and considered correct, and the government considers it important to ensure that children are getting that opinion.

On questions of religion, immigration, gender, homosexuality, there is one correct opinion, and it’s the school’s job to make sure that children grow up with the correct opinion.

LI: Those who wish to homeschool in Sweden, would you say it is generally for religious, ideological, or philosophical reasons, or something else?

KB: Interestingly, when homeschooling was outlawed, the initial reaction of the Swedes was generally “well, of course! That’s crazy. Why would you homeschool your kids? They won’t be socialized.” But what’s happened over time is that more and more people have become interested in this issue. Whereas it used to be a non-issue, now some people are questioning it in light of the school system being so bad.

There are different reasons for people in Sweden wanting to homeschool. I would say the religious aspect is not a dominant one. I wouldn’t even say that the ideological aspect is very important, either. There aren’t that many liberty-minded people in Sweden anyway. Mostly it’s because of pedagogical reasons, because the schools are getting so bad, and a lot of kids have a bad experience in the government’s schools. They’re being bullied, or constantly behind, and the environment makes them feel bad. Their parents then want to take them out, but now they can’t.

LI: In America, libertarianism seems to be on the rise. There’s a lot of popularity of libertarian ideas compared to recent decades. Being in the minority in Sweden, and with that culture of one approved way of thinking, what’s it like to be a libertarian in that country?

KB: A lot of people just think that you’re a nuisance. “It’s not so bad. We’re free. We get to vote every four years. Taxes are high, sure, but we get a lot back. Stop complaining!” This is what people say and think. But there is a growing movement in Sweden, albeit much smaller than in America. People are starting to wonder where all their pension money went. Why are the schools so bad? Where’s all the violence coming from?

Unfortunately, they tend to make the wrong conclusions as to why the problems exist and what needs to be done. They’re so trained, from a young age, that when there is a problem, there is a government solution. You need to court your politicians, or you need to vote, they are told. Swedes tend to think that more government is needed to solve society’s problems.

LI: With your experience in Sweden, a socialist nanny state, do you see America heading in a similar direction? What warning would you offer us because of what you’ve seen in your own country?

KB: I see that very clearly. One area where the USA is far more progressed in than Sweden is, of course, the police state. We don’t have that quite yet, but we’re getting there… police officers turning from helping citizens to “law enforcement” officers becoming heavily militarized. But where I see America following Sweden is in schools, for example. Common Core is a prime example of that, where the thinking is that there should be one system, one set of standards, one curriculum. I see it in the widespread support for centralized, government solutions, health care being the obvious one.

The problem with socialism is that it seems to offer a solution to a problem. But without the understanding of how it works, you don’t realize that 30 years down the road, there are some serious consequences that will be made obvious, though they may not be as obvious today.

We’ve had Obamacare for 50 years in Sweden, and I can see the consequences. To meet a doctor, unless it’s a serious emergency where you’re profusely bleeding or something, it’s very hard and takes a while. You call your local health care clinic, and they schedule you when they can see you, often two weeks away. Of course, if you’re sick today, that won’t help.

If you get an appointment, and want to see a specialist, you have to move through several slow steps to get referred, then schedule an appointment, then wait. It takes a long time to get anywhere. A lot of doctors have lost interest in their job because it’s so formalized and bureaucratic, filling out forms, finding the right code for your condition, etc. The good people leave. Few open up private practices, because Swedes already pay for their health care through taxes, so very few have any money left to pay for private care on top of the government’s system. There’s no market for it. Some doctors will go into other medical fields like pharmaceuticals.

That’s one of the consequences of this system. It’s hard to get care, hard to get a good doctor. But another thing that people don’t see is that 30 years later, you’re going to have a 70% tax rate. What people think is free today is so badly run by government, both quality and cost-wise, that the freebies today will come back and bite you 30-40 years down the road.

LI: We see that already with Obamacare in America, where one of its chief creators has been worried that it’s a “train wreck” because the government isn’t spending enough money to support it. Senator Reid echoed that sentiment, saying that the government should be spending even more than it already is. Those who have eyes to see can already see what you’re saying, and that in the long run we end up like Sweden.

KB: People aren’t trained to think in long-term consequences. They’re trained, in schools and by the media, to think of the here and now. Few people attempt to figure out what will happen 10 years down the road, let alone 20 or 30. The schools definitely don’t teach that method of thinking. In Sweden, they teach kids that they are part of the best system in the world, that it’s wonderful that everybody gets free health care, and so on.

Americans should look at others who have done this before, with open eyes. Talk to people who are suffering under these systems to see how bad they are.

For example, my wife broke her leg this past winter, here in Utah where we have recently moved from Sweden. She slipped on a patch of ice. We didn’t have health insurance through my job yet, because it takes a few months to kick in. We looked around and found a 5 minute clinic, went there, found no lines, had a 15 minute wait, got an X ray, got a cast, and we were very quickly back home having only paid $200 cash. That was it.

To even be treated that fast in Sweden is impossible. Even for an emergency, unless you have blood squirting out of you or you’re suffocating. It’s not unusual to sit and wait for seven hours in the emergency room. You see people screaming and bleeding and walking past you with their problems. After you wait for several hours, a doctor’s shift may be over so they go home.

There are some areas of health care in Sweden that do work. But what good is “free” if it’s not accessible? That’s the problem we have in Sweden, and that’s what things may soon be like in America.

If people would only look at other failures where this system has been tried, and understand why it didn’t work… are we so much smarter in America that we can make it work? Or is the problem systemic?

There are aspects that are better in America than in Sweden, and vice versa. For me, right now, there are still more personal liberties in America than in Sweden, and that is why we decided to move.

LI: Jonas Hemmelstrand, president of the Swedish Home Educators Association, fled with his family to Finland (as have many other families). He said that Sweden believes that “the state takes better care of children than their own parents.” Why has it become necessary for these folks, for you, to take such a drastic step?

KB: Our family didn’t think of homeschooling when we lived there. Our kids happened to have a very good school. But just the fact that it’s outlawed made me feel very uncomfortable, and made me want to do it.

Once it was outlawed, it piqued my curiosity and I began to investigate it. Right now we’re doing a mixture of homeschool and online schooling. My kids had an interesting experience when we got here, at Provo High. To them it was a culture shock, having never been used to this time fixation. If you’re a minute late, you get a tardy, if you get a certain number of tardies you get a detention, your parents get notified, police patrolling the schools… it was a big shock for them. So we started online school mostly as a transition but we’re sort of “stuck” on it because it works really well, it’s efficient, you’re done by lunch time and can do other things, spend time on your hobbies and interests.

For people who have tried it, I think they don’t want to go back to the way things were. It’s so much more effective, you’re at home with your family. Most of the Swedish families who have fled have gone to an island in between Sweden and Finland which is part of Finland but is more culturally Swedish. They speak Swedish there. So it’s not a big culture shock for them to leave their country, and with a quick ferry trip they’ll be back to the mainland in thirty minutes.

LI: Minutes before moving to India, Christer and Annie Johansson had their 7-year-old son taken from them by Swedish authorities because they had been homeschooling him. Do you see this as substantively different from kidnapping?

KB: To me, it’s kidnapping. They were leaving Sweden, done with the country. This was a year before homeschooling was banned. At that time, you needed the approval of your local school district to homeschool. They had gotten that approval but at some point that approval was withdrawn for no particular reason, without an investigation.

Because they were leaving for India a couple months later, they said they would homeschool their son until they left. They got into an argument with the local government, social services, and as they were leaving the country, the plane was stormed by police officers who took the child from his parents, and nearly four years later they haven’t seen their child very many times since then.

Just the other day, they appealed to the Supreme Court in Sweden and were denied, so they’ve basically lost their child completely now. This is kidnapping, of course.

It’s interesting to see the reaction to this is Sweden. First of all, almost nobody has heard about this story. To me, this is a huge story! The local paper in the area has written a few things, but the national media hasn’t touched it.

LI: Why is that? Perhaps because it’s outside the predominant cultural narrative in Sweden?

KB: I think so, yeah. I hope it’s because the papers just don’t know about the story, and not that they know it happened and don’t want to report on it.

The next interesting thing is that when you tell people that it happened, then you get a really interesting reaction in most cases. “Well it’s gotta be something,” they say. “Social services wouldn’t do that without for no reason.” When you then tell them that they were homeschooling their son, and that they were Christian, then Swedes typically have a reaction like “well, that explains it…”

Social services say that there was child neglect because the boy had a cavity, which they were going to fix when they arrived in India. They also justified their action on the grounds that he hadn’t received a non-mandatory vaccine. That’s their case.

A doctor involved in this case argued that “It is possible to change parents, we know it from the many adopted children we have in this country. Most can do it without lasting trauma.” So the child has been kidnapped and given to another family. There is no more recourse to appeal, except maybe the European court or something like that, I’m not sure.

LI: Describe the “educare” system in Sweden that provides both education and day care for kids. Are children in the care of the state all day long so both parents can go to work?

KB: That’s the idea. In the 70s, they made a big change to the tax laws, whereby you are individually taxed, rather than as a family. Since then, mothers have been strongly incentivized to work. Both parents end up working in a system where they are being individually taxed with a progressive tax.

More than that, there’s a culture, a propaganda, that to fulfill your potential and self worth, you should have a career. It’s considered the most important thing. If a parent wants to be home, in most cases the mother, there’s a very strong social stigma attached to that. Her friends will wonder what’s wrong with her, why she’s not working. The first question you’re asked when you see somebody is “What do you do?” If you say that you stay at home with the kids, that’s frowned upon.

There aren’t a lot of other mothers and kids at home in any given neighborhood, so it’s a very lonely decision to make. You have to fight both the system and the culture if you choose to do it. The culture is the worst of it, whereby the entire population has become brainwashed.

The mandatory age for begin in school has been lowered from seven to six, and now they want to go down to three years of age. Most parents turn in their kids when they are one. It’s a full day program, and the parents go back to work. The kids cry, the mothers cringe, but they generally reason that their child needs to be socialized and that the teachers are trained.

The number of students per teacher is huge. The plans were to have small groups for better instruction, but of course as with all socialist systems they run out of money and have to do bigger groups with fewer teachers. Even with the best teachers and small groups, to me it’s still wrong to give away your child when they are one year old to be cared for by the state.

LI: Would you agree that placing a child in the care of the state so early better allows the state to indoctrinate that child in a pro-state philosophy that becomes even more difficult to break free from?

KB: Absolutely. If you read the state curriculum with libertarian eyes, you see clearly that it’s an indoctrination program. If you read it with any other perspective you’re led to believe that its a good program. If somebody like myself feels that there is a better way to structure society, then the state’s educational curriculum is perceived as very ideological.

Swedes are told that they shouldn’t feel uncomfortable sending their children to school so young because it’s a value-free curriculum. But there is no value-free system. That must be recognized first, so parents can then choose what values they want their children exposed to.

The earlier the state can begin “educating” children, the more easily it can shape their way of thinking. When they come out of that system, they will support the state. They will believe that Sweden has the best health care in the world, the best schools in the world, that we are the most moral and progressive in the world.

LI: You said earlier how mothers were incentivized to leave the home and work. Despite the taxes, the cultural stigma, and the laws making school mandatory to take the children out of the home, how economically feasible is it for a mother who may wish to remain at home? Can a single income family live comfortably in Sweden?

KB: It can be done, and people do it. But there are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made, compared to having two incomes. For the average income family in Sweden, it’s a significant drop in standard of living. Keep in mind that these folks already pay for day care through taxes.

LI: Sweden has school vouchers. Do you feel that they have helped to make things better and more free, as voucher proponents often claim?

KB: It has opened up more choice in schools, but the schools have become so tightly controlled by the school bureaucrats to the point that they must all use the state curriculum. The money comes with strings, and you cannot teach what you want in these schools.

Another effect, which you seen in pseudo-privatized systems (such as with health care, too) is that the voucher amount is determined based on what it costs the state to educate a child. The state is so incredibly wasteful and inefficient that the monetary cost is quite high. A private school can achieve the school’s low educational standard at a much lower cost than the government schools can. So there is an enormous amount of money to be made by opening this type of business, because you are receiving far more money than is required in a private setting to educate the child to the state’s standard.

Government officials have become aware of this and are decreasing voucher amounts in response. But what happens it that the media discovers this and blames capitalism. They see a guy making millions off of educating children in a private setting, with tax money, and then he moves his tax money abroad to protect it… people wrongly think that this is capitalism, so the outcry is for more and more socialism, more state control.

Instead of realizing that in a true free enterprise society people would manage and spend their own money wisely and efficiently on schools that would have to compete on quality and price, they allow the state to exercise more control.

LI: Finally, if you had the attention of all Americans for two minutes, what would you say?

KB: Socialism shows itself in many different areas of society, and in many degrees. It can be in health care, education, wars, the police state, and a number of other settings. While it appears to solve short term problems, there are significant long term consequences that cannot be avoided, even with the smartest, well-intentioned people.

I would suggest that people try to think about the long-term consequences of any decisions or preferences that they have. Do you really want more control over your lives, less freedom, less prosperity? Realize that most political solutions are socialist in disguise.

Remember what made America so uniquely prosperous and free, and try to preserve that by not buying into collectivist, socialist solutions.

California outlaws using cell phones while driving. The various restrictions and regulations which prohibit and seek to punish the act of talking on the phone while driving are voluminous, but they aren’t hidden in obscure pages of the state’s legislative code. Instead, drivers are incessantly reminded of them.

In a 20 mile stretch of freeway, I counted easily over a dozen large, bright, electronic signs reminding drivers of the law, the associated fine if you were to be caught, and a statement saying that “it’s not worth it.” Apparently it’s not enough to criminalize the action—lawmakers feel they must provide propaganda to encourage increased compliance.

California is not alone in this, of course. Sticking to the subject of vehicle safety, there is a nationwide “click it or ticket” campaign run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and funded with millions of dollars by Congress. Each state, including Utah, participates in the program, and individuals are frequently reminded through billboards, radio ads, and other advertising methods that the state demands that they wear a seat belt while operating a vehicle.

Not only does a paternalistic or nanny state have to show others who’s the boss—it has to educate and remind them of that fact along the way. Still worse, it uses taxpayer dollars to do so, coercing citizens into funding the very programs that push propaganda back onto them.

The uses and methods of such propaganda are varied, and routinely exploited by the ruling class. Given the media coverage and widespread understanding of the no-cell-phone law in California, it’s unlikely that many drivers are unaware of it; throwing it in their faces every mile or two along the freeway is overboard and indicative of the unbalanced relationship between the state and the citizen.

Of course, much of this situation can be attributed to the myriad malum prohibitum laws on the books—prohibitions against things that are not inherently evil nor which violate another’s liberty. Propaganda is not needed to remind people not to kill one another, not to steal, not to vandalize one another’s property, or any number of other clearly wrong actions. Individuals generally accept, understand, and abide by such standards.

But when the state exceeds those self-evident bounds and begins to demand compliance with a lengthy list of mandates, it then deems it necessary to persuade, threaten, and coerce people into compliance who may choose to behave differently. Encouraging people to act responsibly is a good thing. Forcing taxpayers to fund propaganda campaigns to facilitate that encouragement is not.

Within a few years after their arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, a devout pioneer populace eager to begin building their church’s temple were hungry for a little of the sweet life too. So, 31 years before completing a temple carved out of a mountainside, many hundreds of volunteers set to work on the red pine beams of the Salt Lake Theatre. At the time it was the grandest building in the territory and was considered by one outside observer to be “one of the Seven Wonders of the theatrical world.”

It attracted the likes of P.T. Barnum, Wild Bill, Al Jolson and scores of acting royalty. At a cost of $100,000 (a little over $2 million in today’s dollars) it required thousands of volunteer man hours to construct and primarily used reclaimed building supplies from the disbanded Camp Floyd and wagon wreckage from the trails around the territory. The Pioneer Theater was built in 1962 (at a smaller scale) to resemble the Salt Lake Theater (which was demolished in 1928) and cost about $1.5 million to construct (over $11 million in today’s dollars). It’s sobering to think what a comparable 1,500 seat venue would cost today.

This brings us to the present-day incarnation of Salt Lake’s longing for amusement. By all accounts, the newly revealed renderings of the Utah Performing Arts Center (UPAC) are stunning. Open, airy, light-filled spaces that draw upon a pedigree of historic Utah buildings will doubtless draw visitors from near and far to enjoy marquee Broadway productions such as “Wicked” and “The Book of Mormon”. Total cost for the edifice will be an estimated $116 million ($46,400 per seat)—just a scooch more than the old Salt Lake Theatre or Pioneer Theatre cost to build.

While not many would argue with the beauty of the design and the potential to draw big-ticket shows to Utah, many have expressed reservations about the so-called “pent up demand” for another venue. Almost all the theatre management in Salt Lake, including representatives from Kingsbury Hall, Pioneer Theatre, Capitol Theatre, and Abravanell Hall have come out against publicly funding UPAC. This is not surprising, as UPAC will compete for rental space and bookings directly with many of these other venues, perhaps making their future untenable.

Back in 1892, a competitive threat to the future of the Salt Lake Theatre was neutralized when the Walker Opera House burned to the ground. It’s quite likely that one or a few of these competing theaters in Salt Lake would be headed for a similar fate, though the nature of their demise is more likely to be a financial one. As travelling productions opt for a date with the pretty new girl on the block, one nevertheless has to wonder what the ticket sales break-even point is for a building that will cost more than the combined annual property and sales tax revenues in Salt Lake City.

Most Utahns have become accustomed to the state picking up the tab for admittedly important artistic ventures, despite any legitimacy in doing so (as such things are outside the government’s proper role and delegated authority). Even the widely regarded Utah Shakespearean Festival has regularly sought money from the government to subsidize its projects, despite the fact that hundreds of area businesses are enlarged by the $35 million in economic benefit it brings in. As much as we appreciate a vibrant arts scene in Utah, we can’t see the sense in beggaring the state legislature for money when the ancillary benefits to area businesses should be enough to persuade them to voluntarily donate. If local retailers aren’t willing to fund such projects, then it amounts to redistribution of wealth to expect area residents, many of whom may not use the facility, to pay for construction through tax increases.

Rather than forcing taxpayers to fund others’ entertainment, those engaged in this industry should make a stronger case to local businesses, individual philanthropists, art lovers, and residents. Those that take a personal stake in the success of a venture tend to appreciate it more. The pioneers that built the Salt Lake Theatre with their financial contributions and bare hands should serve as an example of successful private industry benefitting all and enlarging our communities culturally and economically.

Editor’s note: The following is a lightly-edited transcription of an interview with Eric Hill, whose home was wrongfully invaded in December at 2:30am as police were looking for a soldier who went AWOL. 

Libertas Institute: Please tell us about your experience.

Eric Hill: On December 20, 2012, my oldest daughter came into my room at 2:30am saying that she heard some banging near her closet. I was half awake, of course, and told her to go back to bed. As I was telling her that, I heard some really loud banging. I told her to get in our bed (our youngest daughter was already in bed with us).

At that point I grabbed a baseball bat and went upstairs. On my way up I was peeking out of various windows and couldn’t see anything. I was confused. I walked to my daughter’s room, looked out her window and didn’t see anything. But then I heard the banging again. By this time I could tell that it was at the front door.

I yelled “who is it?” and didn’t get any response at all. Each time I asked that, they just pounded some more. I walked closer to the door, and finally at the top of my lugs I shouted again “who is it?” and finally heard “Ogden City Police!”

At this point I was skeptical as to whether it was really the police, because I had looked out the windows and didn’t see any police vehicles, and because they took so long to respond to my repeated questions.

I unlocked the door with my free hand, held the bat raised with the other, and opened the door as fast as I could to face what was at the door before it came in. What was at the door was three officers with semi-auto rifles pointed at my face, screaming at me to drop the bat. I did, and as soon as I did they instructed me to come out of the house with my hands in the air. They immediately placed me in handcuffs and told me to face the street.

By that time I saw three other officers come around from the side of my house, making a total of six officers. They asked me if there were weapons in the house, and I told them I had rifles. I kept asking them what was going on, and they wouldn’t give me any answers. They asked me who else was in the home, and I told them that my wife and two kids were downstairs scared out of their minds. Again I asked what was going on, and again they refused to answer me.

When I told them that my family was in the home, the officer holding me in handcuffs nodded his head at the other officers, and three of them went inside. Two of them had rifles, the other had a tactical shotgun. They never presented any warrant.

I was outside for 3-5 minutes. I was then told to turn around, and was led back into my home. They had taken all the couch cushions off to search it, and then sat me down and kept holding me by the handcuffs. I kept looking towards the stairs, waiting for somebody to come up. I could hear my kids screaming, and my wife kept asking what the problem was, what was going on. They were terrified, trembling, screaming, as they came up the stairs. The officer was behind them with his rifle.

As my wife would later tell me, when I went outside she could hear the commotion but couldn’t make out what was going on. She had 911 dialed on her phone and ready to press send. She didn’t know what was going on either. She was at the bottom of the stairs when she was met by an officer holding up his rifle, with a light that lit up the staircase. He never identified himself. My wife put her hands up in the air, later saying that she thought we were being robbed.

The officers said they had reason to believe that I was an AWOL deserter and they had a felony warrant for me. I told them I had never been in the military and didn’t know what they were talking about. The officer kept telling me that I matched the description and that I was lying to them, and that I was making things worse for myself. I kept telling them I had no clue what they were talking about, all while they kept swearing at me, telling me to ‘fess up.

I told them I had two vehicles in the driveway registered in my name, Eric Hill, and that I owned the house we were in. One of the officers went outside and I could hear him put in the request to look up the plate number for my truck. They verified that it was in my name, and the officer kept staring at my ID for a long time. Finally they realized that they had the wrong person, so they started making their way outside.

As they were leaving, the same officer that had me in the handcuffs picked up my baseball bat, spun it around, and said “a Louisville slugger, huh?” I said yeah. He said “well you’re lucky you didn’t come upstairs with a gun, because I would have wasted ya.” He slammed the door shut, and they were gone.

LI: When they left, they didn’t apologize or act remorseful for what had happened?

EH: There were never any apologies, nothing. At one point I was trying to reassure my oldest daughter (while I was in handcuffs) that things would be alright, that we would get it all sorted out. The officers never said or did anything to try and help my kids feel better at all, or anything. They never apologized. They made us feel like it was my fault that they came to the wrong house.

LI: What was it like for your little girls to watch you be handcuffed?

EH: For the first two weeks afterward, they slept in my bed. Then they moved to the floor by the bed, and now they’re in their rooms again. Our neighbor sometimes brings us eggs from his chickens, and once he knocked on the door and both my daughters got scared and went to hide. My youngest recently drew a picture of cops with guns and knives.

They don’t think that cops are good people now. I’ll try to tell them that not every cop is bad, but it still lingers on. Even with me, too, I have a hard time when I hear a car door in the middle of the night, I can’t sleep… I leave early in the morning to go to work, and my wife and kids are left at home, and it bothers me.

LI: One of the comments made after the event is by the Deputy County Attorney Gary Heward, who said that serving warrants on innocent people, and the trauma because of it, is unavoidable. “It’s very unfortunate, but it’s the world we live in today,” he said. Does that seem like a dismissal to you?

EH: That’s exactly how I feel about it. When I went forward to the media, only then did people start trying to call and apologize to me. I got a call from the police chief in Ogden one morning, and he said he wanted to hear my side of the story. I told him what happened, and he started making excuses for his officers, saying that they’re way more professional than that, and that he didn’t have any indication they behaved as they did.

The only reason he called to apologize, I felt like, is because his guys were portrayed in the media as bad people. It didn’t feel sincere at all. He told me that they could get my side of the story to start an internal investigation, but I told him there wouldn’t be any point since they would just cover up their own butts. He told me that’s not how it works at all, and I told him that’s exactly how it works. I see it all the time.

LI: So you haven’t filed a complaint?

EH: I haven’t. The conclusion wouldn’t be credible. Eventually we spoke at a city council meeting, and the Mayor said he wanted an internal investigation anyways, and that he wanted to get to the bottom of it. He wanted a full report by three days later. Three weeks later he got the report, and it was basically calling me everything short of being a liar.

The report said that after the event happened we were all laughing about it, and that they apologized and we shook hands. It said that one of the officers was hugging my child and making her feel better. It said that my kids were asking the officers what the neat things on their belts were. It said that my wife made a comment about how the event would be a funny story to tell around the water cooler at work. None of that ever happened at all.

I know mistakes happen. If it were to happen, and they would have apologized and tried to make it right, I never would have went so far with it.

LI: Heward is the lead prosecutor in the Matthew David Stewart case, where officers invaded the home of a man suspected of growing some marijuana, and in the volley of bullets from both sides one officer died. Even before that, the same narcotics strike force invaded a home where the suspect no longer lived, and ended up shooting and killing a man, Todd Blair, who grabbed a golf club in self defense, likely not knowing who was barging into his home. Do you worry that police officers have become a bit too trigger-happy, or that they’re doing these things in the middle of the night and in ways that produce bad results rather than properly investigating and doing due diligence?

EH: I am worried about that, and it’s really opened up my eyes lately, the more I follow it. It happens so often! It’s almost as if police officers think their bullets have expiration dates, and they need to use ‘em or lose ‘em. That’s how it seems, at least.

I feel lucky, because initially I thought to pick up my shotgun. But seeing my two kids in my bed, scared of the pounding noises, I didn’t want to scare them any further so I grabbed the bat. If I would have grabbed the shotgun, I’m sure I wouldn’t be doing this interview…

Troy Burnett is the officer who shot and killed Todd Blair a couple years ago, and he was assigned to my case. He kept calling me, wanting to talk it out, wanting me to go into his office so we could get to the bottom of things. I never answered, thinking that he would have a biased opinion, and I didn’t want to talk to him. He’s a killer.

LI: In a Tribune article about your story, Lieutenant Will Cragun said that your wanting to defend yourself with a baseball bat was understandable. “He has the right to protect his family,” he reportedly said. But you also have the right to defend your family with a firearm, and yet you were told by one of the officers that they very likely would have shot and killed you had you done so. Do you sense some sort of disconnect with that?

EH: Exactly. I should be able to defend myself. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t, but that’s the first thing that crossed my mind — to grab a firearm. It’s a crappy deal.

LI: Ogden officials told a reporter that the issue of officer safety has to be raised, even when it’s the officers creating the danger. How does that make you feel?

EH: Yeah, the title of that article said that “officer safety comes first.” I thought they were involved in “public safety,” you know?

LI: Your wife told the city council, “I want to raise my kids in a safe environment, and to be victimized by the same people that you felt should have your back is horrific.” Do you think there’s a systemic problem in law enforcement where the citizens they’re supposed to serve are instead fearful of them and in many cases not actually being “served”?

EH: Yeah, for sure. It shouldn’t be that way. Something needs to change and it doesn’t look like the officers are going to change it themselves as a result of internal investigations.

LI: If you could wave a magic wand and change something related to law enforcement, what would it be?

EH: I think there needs to be a complete reprogramming. Police need to unlearn all the things they’ve grown used to lately, and learn how to actually serve people, how to treat them, etc. The entire system and culture needs to be reworked because what’s happening now isn’t working.

And government should have nothing to do with it.

Culture is largely organic, undefined by any central apparatus. It is modified through the collective actions and attitudes of the masses. It is the societal counterpart to the state’s top-down, arbitrary set of laws which are enforced by the few upon the many.

The government exists to protect life, liberty, and property. It can only legitimately operate with authority it has been delegated by the individuals who comprise it. Because no one person has the moral authority to impose and enforce his cultural standards upon his neighbor, he cannot petition a third party to do so on his behalf.

Culture is properly promoted and even “enforced” only through non-coercive means such as persuasion and even peer pressure. To empower the state to help define and enforce such standards is to promote an ideal at the point of a gun, for all government is force.

The state’s stranglehold over alcohol distribution and consumption in Utah is an excellent example of this exact problem. Proponents of restrictive alcohol laws argue that they are necessary to ensure that the “culture” in Utah remains one in which the consumption of alcohol is minimized, and children are spared the sight of an alcoholic beverage being prepared. They therefore endorse locking people in a cage or beating them over the head (should they affirm their rights and refuse to comply) who disagree with their cultural ideals and wish to pursue their own definition of happiness, however misguided it may be.

Violence in such cases is not justified. Coercion is acceptable only in situations where somebody’s rights are being violated, or about to be violated, and a defensive action is necessary to repel the threat. The state can only be empowered to use violence in cases where individuals themselves would be justified in doing so.

Would a restaurant patron be justified in punching his server in the face, or handcuffing him to the table, for mixing an alcoholic drink in sight of the child he brought with him? Clearly not. We therefore cannot approve of the state doing similar things on his behalf, even if they start more benignly as fines and permit revocations. Ultimately, the government backs its softer actions with the barrel of a gun.

Laws exist not to educate people about how they should behave, but to punish injustice and protect individual rights. Relying on the government to educate citizens about their own culture is like asking the mob to make sure people go to church each week. Contrary to some conservative opinions, the state’s agents are not justified in acting as sentinels to force people to become their “better selves” in an effort to “help shape the order of a free society.”

The problem with empowering the state to promote and enforce culture is that the centralization of this authority creates an ongoing contest wherein warring factions whose cultures clash with one another each attempt to wrest control of the state in order to enforce their definition of culture upon everybody else. Keeping the state out of the culture war will decentralize this conflict and allow competing ideals to achieve popular support in the marketplace of ideas on the strength of their merits rather than the strength of the state’s muscle.