By Jasmine Michaelson and Skeeter Ellison

According to Dr. Randy Simmons' Grandpa Jake, "People are just no damn good." But Simmons begs to differ.

The reality, he says, is even more frightening: People are too damn good.

Simmons, the head of the political science department, gave the traditional "Last Lecture" Thursday in the TSC ballroom to an audience ranging in age from 17 to 73, according to ASUSU President Celestial Starr Bybee in her introduction. For 28 years, the USU Honors Program has sponsored the final lecturer of the year, always a nominated professor. Simmons' topic was "The Tyranny of Good Intentions."

The opinions Simmons expressed in his lecture were difficult to miss.

He said that people today have a lot of good intentions but a lot of the ideas
have gone astray. Government and society treat people like pieces of a chess
board, Simmons said, always dictating how they should live their lives and
directing them to do things with the sole purpose of good intentions.

LDS prophet Joseph Smith "once said that we should ‘Teach correct doctrine and let them govern themselves.' I think we should try to be a little less good," Simmons said.

"We've become Canadians!" he said. As opposed to "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness," Americans are now, especially after 9/11, lusting after Canada's ideal of "peace, order and good government."

Americans feels that as long as the government's intentions are good, they can do whatever they want, he said. But we must remember, he added, that Canada's ideals can be just as tyrannical as a stereotypical tyranny.

"You have to remember two things," he said. "One: good intentions won't always produce good outcomes. And two: good intentions will produce unexpected outcomes."

The "good intentions" of 1972's Title IX of the Civil Rights Act were interpreted during the Clinton administration to do away with gender discrimination in schools, he said. The unexpected outcome came after the government "went crazy investigating schools trying to find violations" despite the fact that no complaints had been made.

Not taking into account that more men than women are interested in sports,
school officials cut men's athletic programs in an effort to equalize the opportunities for both genders.

Now, aside from limiting opportunities for men, women athletes are viewed
almost as "welfare cases," Simmons said.

He also (bravely) discussed professors' salaries, stating that they have "nothing to do with how well the students learn."

"We are monopolous," he said. "The pay is the same for a good professor and a bad professor."

Most professors, he said are opposed to having their student evaluations
posted because "they are flawed."

"They are flawed because we can't control them," he said sarcastically, then
posed the thought-provoking question, "What if professors had to advertise?"

He then made the argument that common law is more effective than government regulation, using the Clean Water Act as an example, saying that more progress was made before the act was passed than after.

He admitted that there may be alternate reasons for this, but said the fact
remains that officials "don't worry about harm now, as long as you meet everything on the checklist."

He continued to discuss how Utah's well-intentioned drug laws put fathers and breadwinners in prison, resulting in divorces, families on welfare and a decreased potential income for the father after his sentence is completed.

"That seems real anti-family for pro-family Utah," he said

He also expressed his disgust for college students from wealthy families who
live on welfare while they are attending school and don't have insurance. They get married and have a baby, he said, without insurance so that the federal government has to pay for it.

"But they have the latest in digital equipment to film the blessed event," he
said. "Shame on them."

Finally he brought up the irrelevance of Salt Lake City's mass transit system,
saying that it costs taxpayers $6.60 for each Trax rider.

"What happened to liberty?" he said, "We wanted to make our lives better--and liberty gets run over by people with good intentions."

In his conclusion, Simmons quoted one of his colleagues who said, "If you?re
doing something that you think will help somebody else--cut it out!" and LDS prophet Joseph Smith who said, "Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves."

He spoke of America's founding fathers and their dreams of liberty and asked, "Are we working for that tradition?"

Director of the Honors Program Tom Peterson thanked Simmons for his remarks and assured the audience, "I'm sure he was well-intended."

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