Articles written by Jim Elliott
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 148
Montana Viewpoint: Critical Rage Theory
Earlier today I thought I would study up on Critical Race Theory—which I have to admit I know little about—but I made a typo in my search query and I entered “critical rage theory” by...
Montana Viewpoint: A bad recipe
Well, the local elections are over in Montana, and I’m sure there will be some controversial results, even if there are not any. I mean, it just seems that somebody’s got to find fault with...
Montana Viewpoint: My uncle John
When I was 45, I went to my family’s second reunion. The first reunion was for my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary and I was five years old for that one, so at an average of forty years betw...
Montana Viewpoint: Francis
On a table in the front hallway to my house is a photograph of two men who look like they are enjoying each other's company. It's not obvious in the picture, but they are reclined on a short two-step...
Montana Viewpoint
Last Sunday, September 17, was the anniversary of the signing of the United States Constitution in Philadelphia in 1787. I want to think of those giants of history, the founders of America, brave, wis...
Montana Viewpoint
In the 1970s you didn’t see many new pickups in Trout Creek, and when you did you knew who it belonged to. Now you don’t see many old pickups and when you do you also know whose they are. So...
Montana Viewpoint: A moral dilemma
I don’t know where to turn. Yesterday I saw a public display of what I am sure is gender related wrongness and think I need to report it, I just don’t know what government agency to call....
Montana Viewpoint: Freedom has a cost
President Biden is asking Congress for $24 billion to support Ukraine. There will be a fight over this request, I am sure, and the reasons will be we are spending too much money, period, and if we...
Montana Viewpoint: The goose hisses
(A French finance minister of long ago compared collecting taxes to plucking a live goose. The object was to get the greatest amount of feathers with the least amount of hiss. Dogs growl, geese...
Valuing the American worker
About once a year I deal with an outfit out of Boise called General Gear or tractorparts.com. I use them when I need parts to repair my crawler tractor which is almost as old as I am and a damn sight...
Montana Viewpoint: Celebrating America
We celebrate America on this Fourth of July because we are a great nation with great dreams, great ability and great heart. None should feel this more than Montanans, who cherish the notions that...
Montana Viewpoint
So far there are about a dozen Republican candidates wanting to be President of the United States of America and most of them are as incensed over the legal threats facing Donald Trump as only a...
Montana Viewpoint
America could almost balance the budget if we collected the taxes that billionaires and big business cheat us out of. Currently the deficit for the 2023 fiscal year (October 2022 to today) is...
Montana Viewpoint: The mayor of Alberton
I hadn’t seen Joe Hanson for a few years. Mutual friends were saying that I should get over to Alberton to see him because — you know — he’s getting up there in years. Aren’t we all, I...
Montana Viewpoint: Political purity
A couple of months ago former Republican Governor Marc Racicot was labelled a RINO and formally drummed out of the Montana Republican Party, this in the face of the fact that he was responsible for...
Montana Viewpoint
Every little once in a while I am reminded that laws are created to protect us from ourselves, or more particularly from our faulty memories, or from forgetting history. For instance, years ago we...
Montana Viewpoint: Political party power needs limits
I give an unapologetic sigh of relief that the Legislature’s attempts to send harmful—in my view—amendments to the Montana Constitution to the voters are in trouble. Before that became...
Montana Viewpoint: Institutions and constitutions
You will hear people say that we need to protect our “institutions” in America. What on earth does that mean? In a nutshell, an institution is words, an idea, not anything you can touch or feel, e...
Montana Viewpoint
The state of Connecticut is thinking of exonerating people it convicted of witchcraft in the mid-1600s. They would be following the lead of noble Massachusetts which a year ago exonerated the last of...
Montana Viewpoint: Malice, lies and market share
In a Montana Viewpoint© article a month ago called “Marketing Anger”, I wrote about the prevalence of anger as an economic force as well as a political force, saying: ”There is also the economi...
Montana Viewpoint - Limiting government
A friend of mine once told me how he had become a drunk. After taking his first drink he said, “I began to feel so good, so happy, so powerful that I wanted to feel—even better!” Substitute...
Montana Viewpoint: Marketing Anger
I watch people driving down the highways in $80,000 pickups towing $200,000 campers (which are bigger than a lot of people’s homes, but then, so are some of the pickups) and then a boat is being...
Investigation for the sake of investigation
The United States House of Representatives will be doing exhaustive (and exhausting) investigating into many things like Hunter Biden, Jill Biden, President Biden, and Major Biden (the Biden’s dog,...
Democracy wears a sweatshirt
When Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed a joint session of the United States Congress, commentator Tucker Carlson was outraged, purely outraged. “As far as we know, no one’s ever...
Montana Viewpoint: Thanks
I started out to write about this being a good time of year to be helpful to others and that began to sound so preachy and goody-two-shoes that I thought that maybe I should just thank some people...