President Hogue, Chairman Armstrong, Professor Schaller, CCU students and faculty, distinguished guests, Western Conservative Summit delegates from near and far, thanks for your kind welcome. It’s great to be with you today and to be back on this beautiful campus—and back in circulation.
I’ve been keeping a low profile for some time now, sort of semi-retired. This is my eighth year of a strange adventure with what they say is Parkinson’s disease. It’s either that--or something Dr. Fauci cooked up in a Chinese lab, hoping to take me off the playing field.
Nice try, doctor, but it didn’t work. Here we are eight years in, and the scoreboard still shows me pitching a shutout-- Andrews 8, Parkinson’s nothing. Zip, zilch, zero, nada. To God be the glory.
Note: The Western Conservative Summit, hosted in Denver by the Centennial Institute and Colorado Christian University (almost) annually since 2010, coincided this year with the state’s sesquicentennial, exactly 150 years since joining the Union. John Andrews, who directed the Institute and the Summit in their early years under the leadership of CCU’s late president, Bill Armstrong, gave these remarks to open the last day of the conference.
I only wish the political scoreboard looked as promising as my medical scoreboard does. Socialism is having its moment. America needs clear thinking and dauntless courage from freedom-loving conservatives as never before. Let’s try and draw some of that from the historical significance of this day, Colorado Day, August 1st.
38th Star
It was on this very day, the first of August in America’s 100th year, 1876, that Colorado was admitted to the Union, the 38th star in the flag.
Very early in our state’s history, the Denver Post newspaper—newspapers, remember them?—began to carry on its front page, and carries it there still, every day, the chipper little motto, “Tis a privilege to live in Colorado.” Does anybody out there agree? (Applause and cheers.)
Most all of us readily agree, it appears. And for those of you who don’t live here yet, those visiting from other states and enjoying some Colorado hospitality on this glorious summer weekend, what are you waiting for?
So, a privilege to live here? True indeed. But why, exactly? To start with, the spectacular natural beauty, the inviting and invigorating climate, the total package that John Denver, the bard of my boyhood, called “Rocky Mountain High.”
When I used to host Backbone Radio every Sunday afternoon, we liked to boast that the show originated from “the rooftop of America.” It’s no exaggeration. Colorado’s geography and geology are pretty much unique among the fifty states. Our elevation stirs the soul. From our watersheds it’s downhill in all directions. Four important rivers rise here and make their wandering way to the sea.
From Colorado’s Continental Divide you can go north on the Platte to Omaha and the wide Missouri—or east on the Arkansas to Little Rock and the mighty Mississippi—or west on the Colorado to the Gulf of California--or south on the Rio Grande to Texas and the Gulf of Mexico.
Sorry, I guess we have to say the Gulf of America now. Sorry, Mr. President, it won’t happen again.
There’s just no escaping politics any more, is there? It’s any way you turn. Ugh. I’ll get to the political part of this talk shortly.
Map Game
But first let’s amuse ourselves for just a minute more with the endless delights of our beloved Colorado as seen in some of her place names. If life has come to seem a little dull and drab, the solution is as close as your driveway. Just unplug your sporty little Tesla, fire up your GPS, and head out in search of the 38th star.
All of the following are real places right here in the Centennial State, listed on any glovebox highway map. (Folding paper roadmaps you got from a gas station, remember those?)
So, suppose you want to relive Colorado’s rich mining history. Head out for Golden, Silverton, Copper Mountain or Coal Creek, Gypsum or Granite, Leadville or Boulder or Basalt. But you will look in vain for towns called Molybdenum, Uranium, or Oil, “black gold.” Can’t win’em all.
Or suppose it’s beasts and birds and critters you fancy. Check out Eagle, Wild Horse, Bear Creek, Trout Creek, Deer Creek, Wolf Creek, Dove Creek, or Buffalo Creek.
We know, of course, that Colorado’s rich plains and mountains weren’t taken without a fight. Hence the places called Bent’s Fort, Fort Collins, Fort Morgan, Fort Lupton, Fort Garland--or Rifle! Hence Kit Carson for the famous scout, and Greeley for the editor who told young men to go west, and Ouray for one of the great Indian chieftains.
You want more? For woodlands we could do Aspen, Pine, Evergreen, Cedar Edge, Mapleton, Conifer, and Brush. For farmlands there are Orchard City, Sugar City, Wheat Ridge, Cherry Hills, Applewood, Punkin Center, and Fruita.
Not to mention watering holes, lots and lots of them--Idaho Springs, Colorado Springs, El Dorado Springs, Pagosa Springs, Glenwood Springs, Poncha Springs, Manitou Springs, Steamboat Springs, Hot Sulphur Springs.
And so on and so forth. It makes for a fun word game. There are echoes of Stephen Vincent Benet’s wonderful poem of a hundred years ago, “American Names” (it’s a gem, look it up). But none of this gets to the heart of our original question: Why is it indeed such a privilege to live here in Colorado?
Union vs. Disunion
Again we go back to that first Colorado Day, August the first,1876. After four failed attempts dating back to 1859, our state is at last admitted to the Union, the sisterhood of sovereign states spanning the American continent, Atlantic to Pacific.
And what’s the big deal about joining that Union? I think our forefathers and -mothers of the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s attached great importance, almost sacred importance, to the Union because they had experienced the consequences of disunion firsthand and very recently--as recently as you and I can recall the Obama years—and those consequences were awful. Never to be repeated if succeeding generations could help it.
Slavery leading to secession leading to bitter, barbaric, fraternal war with brother killing brother. Human beings held as property. Mad attempts to resolve with bullets, disagreements that rightly should be resolved with ballots. A political death spiral where the losing side in today’s vote walks away, only to have tomorrow’s losers do the same, until utter anarchy prevails. Never again. Never again.
Colorado statehood had been twice vetoed by President Andrew Johnson, the Tennessee Democrat who succeeded Lincoln. When finally signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant, the war hero and Republican, in 1876, the enabling act had a strong mandate for religious freedom—and a requirement that that Colorado’s new state constitution must be in no way “repugnant to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.”
This was new in Congress’s oversight of applicants for statehood. Translated from legalese it meant that the “all created equal” assertion in the Declaration must forever be considered binding upon the newly minted state of Colorado.
Brought into the present day, it means that socialism, communism, Marxism, Maoism, Castroism, and all the other “isms” that deny the rights with which God has endowed each of us, have no place—no place—in our American way of life.
Our Trust
You and I have a trust from the Colorado patriots of 1876. We must not fail them. We will not fail them.
Nil Sine Numine, nothing without God’s spirit, reads the motto on Colorado’s state seal. Our state will live on and thrive if we keep faith with that. And it will do so under a republican (small R) form of government, with no room for socialism.
Which is not to say it will live forever. No manmade institution can. How does the old hymn go? “Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane, but the church of Jesus constant will remain.”
And here’s the good news. The church of Jesus, his gospel, his cross, made possible this American republic of ours. Made it possible, made it happen, made it endure, and watches over it still.
The church of Jesus made possible this magnificent tower of learning, Colorado Christian University, and its policy center, the Centennial Institute--and Jesus watches over them too.
Be of good cheer then, my dear friends, my fellow patriots, for our God is mighty to save--and the best is yet to come.