Idaho's Ministry of Vice and Virtue
Commentary published in the Lewiston Tribune
In 1995, when I first started reporting on Idaho state government, the candidates for office were of a different breed entirely. Back then, if a Republican candidate for office wanted to advertise himself as “conservative” — whether he was or he wasn’t — he needed only to mention three issues: abortion, business and guns.
Government is more complex than that. Yet, under the cover of these issues, many Republicans managed to win and remain in office without a lot of deep scrutiny of their ideology or voting habits. The typical Idaho legislator would then cast the requisite vote in favor of a bill limiting abortions, for example, and also, without flinching, vote to raise taxes, grow the size of government and restrict freedom.
As a result, Idaho’s government is so much bigger now, more intrusive and more expensive, and it ain’t the Democrats who did it. It was Idaho’s Republican super majorities, dominated by leftists.
So over the span of the last 15 years, I worked to change the trajectory of state government. And my efforts succeeded — at least on paper. Idaho today has the most conservative state government in history. This is the good news. The bad news is that this government seems entirely disinterested in cutting programs and protecting liberty while more disposed to creating its own Ministry of Vice and Virtue, at least based on lawmakers’ cumulative actions so far.
In 2025’s legislative session, we got to see legislation:
Relitigating same-sex marriage.
Requiring mandatory Bible readings in public schools
Declaring the period from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day to be Traditional Family Values Month
Making grown adults have to jump through hoops to view porn online.
Making it a felony to pay for sex.
Taking away the constitutional rights of probationers and parolees, as well as anyone found in their company.
Adding mandatory minimum penalties for cannabis possession, including for people who use this medicine for post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or chronic pain management.
Making it harder to legalize other proven, natural alternatives to Big Pharma.
Penalizing people for sleeping in their cars.
Of the above, only the first two didn’t pass. The others made it through the Legislature with flying colors.
The number of programs eliminated? None.
The number of programs cut? Also none.
That’s not to say the 2025 legislative session was a complete disaster. Some regulations were cut, but tepidly so. For example, lawmakers ended the registration of makeup artists because the registration is hardly used and no complaints were filed against practitioners.
But lawmakers wouldn’t, say, eliminate the registration program for contractors or veterinarians, now would they? Because that would be scary. It’s far easier to get rid of things that no one uses.
They deregulated Ivermectin, allowing it to be sold over the counter because that’s a popular thing to do right now. But if I wanted to buy, without a prescription, any number of other drugs besides Ivermectin, I’m still better off going to Mexico than to a pharmacy in Idaho.
Instead of eliminating food stamps, lawmakers excluded from the program what food and drinks can be purchased with food stamps. Instead of eliminating medical welfare, lawmakers fixated on work requirements to participate in the program.
Neither food stamps nor medical welfare are the proper role of government. They’re a form of legalized theft, and these so-called “reforms” are designed to keep the programs in place while making politicians look like they’re doing something about runaway entitlement spending.
Idaho politicians have abandoned the deeper, more difficult discussions about how government-run welfare is hurting society, and they have abandoned asking whether it is morally proper to use the force of law to steal from some people in order to give to some others. Leaving this system in place has also closed out a return to community- and family-centric systems of caring for the poor and vulnerable of the state.
My concern is a big one. Idaho could do a lot to demonstrate to the nation what a self-sufficient, limited government state actually looks like. This was always the goal, to have people in office with a deep desire to cultivate a free society and who act accordingly, without hesitation, without games.
What we got is something different, nannyism from the right, while keeping in place the nanny government of the left. It’s truly the worst of both worlds and not at all what I had hoped for.