Peace Through Strength and the Defense of Property Rights

On Liberty Toastmasters Day for April 23, 2026, Marshall Dawson joins Kim Monson in studio to moderate a peace-through-strength discussion with five Liberty Toastmasters members. Radiant Painting and Lighting owner Karen Gordey describes Xcel Energy’s smart meter ultimatum, Colorado Union of Taxpayers board secretary Wendy Warner breaks down the Public Utilities Commission sunset extension, and RE/MAX realtor Karen Levine contrasts homeownership with government-subsidized rental dependency.

Xcel’s Smart Meter Ultimatum and the Lakewood Lot-Splitting Bill

Start listening at 9:22 – Hour 1

Karen Gordey, owner of Radiant Painting and Lighting, opens the show with a letter from Xcel Energy that arrived the previous day. After fighting the utility for two years to opt out of a smart meter, Gordey was told she must upgrade by May 4 or her service will be disconnected. She plans to accept a non-communicative meter as a compromise but warns that those meters contain the empty cavity needed to add a transmitter later, with no notice to the homeowner.

Gordey also announces her first legislative testimony that afternoon against HB26-1114, the lot-splitting bill. The measure is sponsored in part by Rebecca Stewart, who argued in a recent Colorado Sun column that when voters want single-family neighborhoods the state should override them. Gordey connects the effort to a state legislature that simultaneously floated a no-primary act, describes the phase-two Lakewood ballot work now underway, and notes she is also advising two state legislative candidates and serving on the leadership team for James Riley’s secretary-of-state campaign.

“You must upgrade to a smart meter or we’re disconnecting your service on May 4th. You want to talk about tyranny?”

Karen Gordey, Owner, Radiant Painting and Lighting

The PUC Sunset Extension and the Single-Use Spoon Bill

Start listening at 20:22 – Hour 1

Wendy Warner, board secretary of the Colorado Union of Taxpayers, walks through four bills on this week’s CUT Engaged list at coloradotaxpayer.org. The Public Utilities Commission sunset review runs 44 pages and extends the unelected three-member commission another 11 years while expanding its jurisdiction to ride-shares, a sharp departure from the five-year reviews the sunset framework was built on. Warner warns that the pattern of lengthening sunset windows is an effort to quietly dismantle the mechanism altogether.

Warner takes particular aim at SB26-146, which would fine restaurants $500 on a second infraction and $1,000 for every subsequent infraction if a staffer fails to ask customers whether they want a spoon or other single-use serviceware. She also flags a School Finance Act raising per-pupil funding by $208.60 as enrollment declines without accountability and notes that a simple TABOR-affirmation resolution from Representatives Gonzalez and Barron was killed in its first committee rather than forced to a floor vote. CUT is all volunteer and costs $25 a year to join.

“The government doesn’t have to be in the middle to tell you what’s good and bad to do.”

Wendy Warner, Board Secretary, Colorado Union of Taxpayers

Moderating Liberty Toastmasters Day on Peace Through Strength

Start listening at 1:43 – Hour 1

Marshall Dawson, president of Liberty Toastmasters Denver and an area director within the local Toastmasters district, sits in studio across both hours to run the club’s call-in table topics. He opens the format by explaining that table topics train members to speak extemporaneously on a single prompt and notes that the prompt this morning, peace through strength, has been circulated in advance. He closes the round by redirecting the phrase away from the hawkish reading common in national-security debates.

Dawson frames peace through strength not as the threat or application of force but as the willingness and capacity to deter force, drawing a line between peace measured in bombs used and peace measured in bombs not exploding. He sets the table for the five callers that follow and returns in Hour 2 to explain how listeners can find any Toastmasters club through toastmasters.org.

“Peace through strength is actually measured by the number of bombs which are not exploding.”

Marshall Dawson, President, Liberty Toastmasters Denver

The Source of Peace in Wisdom and Grace

Start listening at 33:02 – Hour 1

Rick Rome opens the caller round by naming himself the former version of a man for whom peace through strength simply meant overwhelming force. Rome reframes the doctrine, arguing that raw might produces compliance but not durable peace, and locates the real source of peace in wisdom, clarity of purpose, and the discernment to choose grace where grace is due.

He applies the reframing to current events, citing justice for the women in Iran killed for showing their hair under a tyrannical regime and arguing that an expanded Abraham Accords is the concrete regional application of peace through strength rather than ongoing missile exchanges. Rome treats liberty, not force, as the lasting vehicle of peace.

“I’ve come to the realization that the source of peace is the same as our source of strength. And it comes from wisdom, clarity of purpose.”

Rick Rome, Member, Liberty Toastmasters Denver

Reagan’s Peace-Through-Strength Legacy and the Search for Colorado Leadership

Start listening at 36:13 – Hour 1

Greg Morrissey, a member of Liberty Toastmasters North in Longmont and vice chair of the Boulder County Republicans, points callers to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library where peace through strength appears in the opening headlines. Morrissey pairs Reagan’s observation that war comes when the forces of freedom are weak with the example of Reagan speaking the Berlin Wall down, arguing that Reagan’s communication was the instrument, not the missiles behind it.

Morrissey closes with a direct charge to listeners to recruit a Reagan-style leader for Colorado politics, naming his own attendance at Longmont City Council meetings and his party work as the ordinary civic entry points that make that recruitment possible.

“Let’s go out there and try and find a Ronald Reagan type for Colorado politics. We turn this state around, we can turn the whole country around.”

Greg Morrissey, Vice Chair, Boulder County Republicans

Three Scales of Self-Defense and the Eastern Reading of Turn the Other Cheek

Start listening at 39:14 – Hour 1

Fred Clifford of Liberty Toastmasters Denver layers self-defense across three scales: personal, civil, and national. At the personal scale, every person has the right to defend themselves. At the civil scale, the response is law enforcement and the judicial system. At the national scale, it is national defense. Clifford treats the three as distinct applications of one underlying principle.

He draws on a sixties-era bishop of the Indian Orthodox Church who taught that understanding the Bible requires reading it through Eastern custom. Under that reading, “turn the other cheek” answers an insult, not an attempt on one’s life. Clifford’s point is that the underlying principle stays constant across the three scales; the appropriate action does not.

“Self-defense in all three levels is very effective, but it doesn’t always require the same action.”

Fred Clifford, Member, Liberty Toastmasters Denver

Sound Currency as a Pillar of National Defense

Start listening at 46:44 – Hour 2

Ross Klopf reframes national defense around monetary stability, citing Grover Cleveland’s line that patriotism is no substitute for sound currency. Klopf notes that a U.S. Border Patrol pickup truck runs close to $100,000 while Russia and China field the same vehicle for about $50,000 and India closer to $20,000, and he lays out three cost-multiplying traits of tyranny: printing and spending, increased regulation, and restrictive trade policies.

He connects monetary drift to population drift, pointing to friends leaving Colorado for Florida, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and South Dakota as rising costs, rising taxes, and rising regulation drive Americans to vote with their feet. A defense budget built on that kind of currency, he argues, cannot stay disciplined.

“If you have an unsound currency, it increases costs throughout everything, including a defense budget.”

Ross Klopf, Member, Liberty Toastmasters Denver

Peace Through Strength as a Bipartisan, Ecumenical, Multigenerational Doctrine

Start listening at 50:32 – Hour 2

Tim Cranston, a newer Liberty Toastmasters member, closes the caller round with a historical survey organized around three axes: bipartisan, ecumenical, and multigenerational. He strings together George Washington on preparedness, John F. Kennedy on bearing any price for liberty, Harry Truman on the atomic bomb as a weapon of righteousness, Abraham Lincoln on peace worth fighting for, and Ronald Reagan on weakness inviting aggression.

Cranston then traces the just-war tradition through Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin on the ecumenical side and back through Hadrian, Herodotus, and Thucydides on the classical side, closing with Reagan’s warning that freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

“My goal is to show that peace through strength has been longstanding. It’s very historical across the ages. It’s bipartisan. It’s ecumenical.”

Tim Cranston, Member, Liberty Toastmasters

Homeownership Under Regulatory Siege

Start listening at 60:50 – Hour 2

Karen Levine, RE/MAX Alliance realtor, challenges Kim’s framing of an apartment-building glut and urges the conversation to pivot from rental affordability to ownership affordability. Levine describes how the Denver Metro Realtor Association initially supported Lakewood City Council’s upzoning on staff representations of extensive citizen outreach, and how she pushed the association to rescind that support once petitioners on the ground made clear the citizens had not, in fact, been heard. The April 62-38 referendum vindicated that read.

Levine connects regulatory cost directly to affordability, citing a plumber who now pays $500 more for a 40-gallon Bradford White water heater and whose replacement installs run $5,000 to $6,500 under Colorado’s new mandates, with 50-gallon units approaching $10,000. She warns that eviction reforms letting non-paying tenants remain in place for six to nine months are wiping out mom-and-pop landlords while large corporate owners with government-backed financing consolidate the rental market.

“Homeownership gives you freedom and independence, and it allows you to create wealth. But if you are dependent on a rental unit, you’re dependent on your landlord to provide you housing, which in many cases has now become government subsidized, which means you’re dependent on the government.”

Karen Levine, Realtor, RE/MAX Alliance

Listener Call-Ins and the Closing Quote

Kim takes a closing listener call from Gammy, who points listeners to Mark Cook’s handcountroadshow.org tour and argues that nearly every bill this session is either a distraction or an expansion of control. Her framing, in her own words, is that Colorado is less a blue state than “a stolen state between the Gang of Four, the 527s, the manipulation of the blueprint, which is national, not just statewide.” She urges listeners to organize at the precinct level ahead of 2026 primaries and the 2027 Colorado Springs mayoral race.

Kim affirms the principle that free, fair, honest, and transparent elections require representatives who read the bills they vote on and answer to constituents rather than special interests, and closes the broadcast with Marcus Aurelius on staying truthful and just while keeping peace in a world of lies and injustice.