Pete Ashdown

On Tuesdays, I try to attend my local Rotary Club. I was inducted almost a year ago and I’ve grown to hold the organization dear to my heart. Initially, I thought it was simply a business networking club, but membership has taught me the amazing good that Rotary does not only in communities, but nationally and internationally. Rotary’s motto sums it up best, “Service Before Self.”

Each week, Rotary has a luncheon with an invited speaker. These speakers are usually informative and inspirational. I’ve seen everyone from the head of the Utah National Guard speak to representatives from Doctors Without Borders. Yesterday, Tom Holmoe, the director of BYU Athletics was the speaker. He introduced his talk with scripture from Proverbs.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

This is a portion of the actual proverb, the full text is, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” (Proverbs 29:18). The message remains the same.

I have a hard time seeing any vision in our federal government. The recent energy bill is a good example of this. Rather than pushing for a national effort towards clean and plentiful energy, our government wanders the room like a drunk looking for leftovers in bottles. The best example of this is a $5 Billion Loan to China to fund new nuclear reactors. The reason our representatives give for this? Well, if China has more nuclear reactors, they’ll use less oil. In other words, if you send your neighbors on an all-expenses-paid vacation, there will be more crack in the neighborhood for you.

I challenge anyone of any political persuasion to stand back and admire the utter awesomeness of this legislation. What is even more special about this is that the fact that the Chinese have been buying significant amounts of U.S. Treasury Bonds, which is another way of saying they’re financing our debt. So we’re borrowing money and loaning it back to them, so they can take steps towards oil independence.

That is what I call a lack of vision.