Minutes February 11, 2009
Diane Prince welcomed the Forum at the Bountiful City Library at 10:15 am. Invocation was offered by Janet Seamons and Allie Bell led the Pledge of Allegiance.
This month’s Principle of Freedom was taught by Joan Heslop. The subject was “A Constitution Should be Structured to Protect the People from the Human Frailties of their Leaders.” Joan stated that “People in positions of trust must remain beyond reproach.” We were taught by our founders that leaders must have integrity and honesty rather than self interest and self advancement. The Constitution was designed to the control human frailties of our leaders.
President Debra Poulsen gave brief comments regarding the roles leaders. “Leaders” she stated, “need to be changed for good and fresh representation.” Deb announced our new President Elect – Kris Kimball who will take over UWF responsibilities at our April Forum meeting. The April meeting will be held at the Bella Vida Clubhouse in Eaglewood, North Salt Lake. Our host and speaker at the April birthday celebration will be Steve Smoot and we will view a short movie called Demographic Winner. Deb also invited all to attend a press conference at the Utah State Capitol today at 1:00 pm regarding the “Common Values Initiative” which is an initiative to maintain family values and traditional marriage in our state.
Kris Kimball invited us to each send pictures to Glen Beck if we agree with 7 of his 9 principles that she was passing around on a clipboard. The pictures will be shown on the Glen Beck show on Fox at the end of the month and it is designed to be like a petition of support for conservative values.
Southerland Institute just announced and kicked off their “Sacred Ground Initiative” which was designed to strengthen the traditional family.
Linda Hess told us about two new House Bills (160 and 267) involving inheritance taxes, housing and employment and invited us to attend any committee meetings or sessions that we could while the legislature is in session.
Linda Bunker introduced our guest speaker Jeff Novak, President CEAG Utah (Coalition for Ethics and Accountability in Government).
Jeff began his remarks telling us that “we are sovereign individuals with rights granted by God. We have certain things in common to protect and support each other from our enemies. We started out as a confederacy but when there were too many of us, the Confederate form of government was not sufficient and we then moved to a Constitution instead where individuals would participate (invest) in laws that would be difficult to change. For protection of the laws and the people, we formed the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branch of government.”
Our founding fathers were concerned that we have virtuous leaders and they established 4 Pillars of Conduct which were the essence of character.
The 4 Pillars are:
1) Private Virtue (personal moral code); applying morality to daily governance.
2) Public Virtue (desire for the good of others); personal values are transferred to sacrifice for the good of all; foster success of others; philanthropy.
3) Classical Education (broad thought regarding concepts, principles and philosophies); requirement to learn languages.
4) Auxiliary Forms of Government (separation of powers, written constitution); elections; Electoral College). The Founders wanted the constitution to be structured to be a protection against the human frailties of greed, power and temptations of leaders.
“We have protections to help us guard against corruption in government” noted Jeff. “They are: Impeachment, right to vote and getting involved in the political process.” Jeff said that “we are the power behind government and the failure in our leaders lies in our own frailties to engage. We have to shift our paradigm from the notion that people exist because of government to: government exists because of people.”
Jeff’s organization CEAG is set up to encourage ethics in government. “We all have the right to be heard and to be treated properly.” There are several bills before the legislature now promoting ethics in government. To manage this properly, Jeff encouraged appointments to an ethics commission from each branch of government.
A light lunch was served and the meeting was adjourned till March11, 2009.
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