MY TURN: Service does NOT = freedom

You know fall is in the air in North Idaho when you step outside early in the morning and feel the “chill” from the night before. You know your neighbor is onto a new multi-level marketing scheme when he calls and says, “I have something really big to share with you.” And you can tell the general election season is right around the corner when the North Idaho Republicans start running propaganda pieces in the local paper and dusting off their website.

Christa Hazel, former Democrat and founding member of the NIR, in her recent op-ed entitled “The NIR Way …” starts by mentioning freedom. But she is not talking about freedom as we understand it. She is talking about community service. Billing themselves as "traditional" Republicans, they claim to be the REAL Republicans, and the REAL conservatives. Why? Because their members volunteer at a long list of local nonprofits and foundations. Somehow this makes them the torchbearers of "freedom" in North Idaho.

Many newcomers are at a disadvantage because they don’t know the history that has defined the battle lines between what many call the “faux” North Idaho Republicans and the bona-fide, officially recognized party known as the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, or KCRCC. 

The KCRCC is the committee that selects candidates and helps them win elections for the Republican Party in North Idaho. That’s what they do, that’s their purpose. Do their members also engage in community service? Of course! Through their churches, civic organizations and individually in their neighborhoods. Hazel stated in her op-ed, “You rarely see KCRCC-types (volunteering) at these events …They don’t show up …” This, of course, is untrue.

Conservatism in our region, like conservatism all over our beautiful country, has shifted to the right out of necessity. As the evils of left-wing progressivism have threatened our freedom on a hundred different fronts, people have begun to demand a society free from these ideas. This freedom has little to do with volunteerism. It has more to do with who we trust to govern us. And that is what the KCRCC is focused on.

If life, liberty and the freedom to prosper are values you hold dear, join the KCRCC. Help us select and elect people who are committed to these values. Let’s keep Idaho moving in the "right" direction … we still have a battle ahead, and the other side never sleeps!

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Anne Patterson is a Coeur d’Alene resident.