COLORADO 2006 AND PIKE 1806

"Make your election sure." So urged a mass letter I saw recently. It
was not a voter-turnout pitch for this campaign. It was the Apostle
Peter writing to believers about heaven.

The ancients put our instant-gratification culture to shame when it
came to foresight. But for a middle view between biblical eternity and
the political present, consider the sweep of two centuries. That's how
long it has been since the Zebulon Pike expedition, America's first
look at the mountains and plains we now call Colorado. And as we
conservatives brace for unheavenly results on Tuesday, I believe the
longer perspective can offer us encouragement.

Autumn 1806 in these parts was not kind to Pike and his men. Weather
kept them from the summit of the peak that would later bear his name.
Their exploration up the Arkansas River and then briefly down the Rio
Grande (where Spanish authorities arrested them) never gained the same
glory as Lewis and Clark's voyage up the Missouri. Zebulon Pike died a
hero in the War of 1812. A descendant and namesake, age 84, still
lives in Salida.

It's worth asking what President Thomas Jefferson, who bought this
vast territory from France, would make of the civilization that has
arisen here 200 years later. "We are acting for all mankind,"
Jefferson wrote. Upon Washington, Adams, Madison, himself and the
other founders rested "the duty of proving what is the degree of
freedom and self-government in which a society may venture to leave
its individual members." Has their proving stood the test? How does
Colorado measure up?

The debate over such questions as Bill Ritter for governor, Matt Dunn
for state House, the defeat of Judge Jose D.L. Marquez, immigration
penalties under Referendum H and a cannabis carnival under Amendment
44 will be settled soon. The transcendent question of whether our
state still honors America's founding principles should concern us
long after the election suspense is over.

All of us created equal, our rights to life and liberty endowed by
God, not Caesar, the securing of those rights by limited government,
its derivation of just powers from the consent of the governed - these
timeless truths as voiced by Jefferson in the Declaration of
Independence are the yardstick to measure by.

No matter whether Democrats or Republicans win this election,
Jefferson would be generally approving of our 21st century Colorado
republic. We respect individual rights better than in earlier eras or
in other countries. We enforce limits upon government better than most
other states. He would applaud our commitment to universal education
and to religious liberty.

Yet there are things he'd see here that would trouble the Sage of
Monticello. Our notions of group rights and multiculturalism would
alarm him, as would the cradle-to-grave welfare state. Our schools, so
gratifying to Jefferson in concept, would sadden him with the civic
illiteracy of their graduates and the union mentality of their teachers.

He and all the founders would be shocked at our militant secularism,
unmooring politics from "the laws of nature and nature's God" so that
marriage is mocked and babies are unsafe in the womb. They would
marvel in horror at the indifference of our elites to mass invasion by
foreign migrants across open borders. Their legacy to Coloradans,
though well-kept overall, is jeopardized by such post-modern trends, I
believe.

The hubris of progressivism with its "living" constitution was
anathema to the men of 1776. They sought fixed principles for
government because they saw human nature as fixed - and they were
right. That's why their appraisal of us in 2006 is important. That's
why we should cherish what Katherine Bates, in "America the
Beautiful," penned atop Pikes Peak, called their "patriot dream that
sees beyond the years."

Remember, Colorado is the state once known as Jefferson Territory. May
his principles always be our unmoving political landmark, just as the
rugged mountain was for Pike, according to his journal: "Never out of
sight in our wanderings."