I’m back. I didn’t really stop writing this blog. For the past month I’ve been inundated with work on the state platform. Got subcommittee files sent out last night. So today I vacuumed, which I hadn’t done for some weeks, so that we were practically swimming in dog hair. And I did some grocery shopping and other things I’ve put off.
I’m a little bit compulsive about details, things like
formatting and consistency. But much of this long effort just has to do with the
overwhelming amount of work—done by me and other volunteer/unpaid editors. This
is the first year we’ve done the file preparation; in past years RPT staff did
it. But we hadn’t been satisfied (some senatorial districts—mine included—had
not been included, so that was a serious problem). We now have better ideas for
process, for next time. Ways that I thought were going to be done this time,
since we had done it at our district level, but I guess what was in my head did
not coincide with others. Anyway, it takes a lot of tedious work, regardless of
process. But we do have plans for a better process in the future.
There were more than 3500 resolutions that came in from the
31 senatorial districts across Texas. There were duplicates of many of them;
several SDs submitted the exact same wording. And there were additional near
duplicates, where just some of the wording was different. And there were many
more resolutions of the same ideas but that were expressed in different wording.
And here and there are unique ideas, also worth noticing.
We have a huge platform—over 330 planks, before adding more
this year. People are very concerned about ideas they’ve worked on in the past
being lost, so they insist that we start with the previous platform. If no
resolutions come in related to a particular plank, that doesn’t mean it goes
away; it means it probably didn’t generate strong concerns this year. It may
not even get talked about. So it stays. And the issues garnering attention this
year get added. Most of the time, the committees don’t disagree with what was
put in the platform the year before—unless it’s an idea that still stirs up
emotion—so they leave those ideas alone. So, alas, it will probably always be
long.
What has gotten my notice this year are the themes. And
these are repeated from what I saw at our district convention.
The people of Texas are against tyranny. They’ve seen too
much of it—from the federal government and state and local. The platform is a
way to express that. The ideas come up from precinct conventions to district
and county conventions, and now on up to the state convention.
Some of the resolutions are minutely specific and detailed.
Some just express a broad sentiment in a sentence.
Two years ago we were already expressing concern about
pandemic response being used as an excuse for tyranny. There’s even more on
that this year. But that concern has broadened—because the government
overreach, attempting to control our lives, is even greater, with more invasive
tentacles.
We do not want tyranny in our healthcare choices. We also do
not want tyranny in our media—social media, news media, entertainment. We think
more open discussion is better. And we’re really sick of truth being labeled
“disinformation” by people who are lying to us. And, by the way, we don’t want
the government surveilling us and keeping that data—just in case they can come
up with probable cause someday.
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| Parents have the inherent right to the care and upbringing of their children. That's Mr. Spherical Model doing that job with two of our now-grown kids. |
If this were not a real issue, if this were something that
is just a rumor with no real life examples, we would not be hearing the uproar
from across the state.
Think about numbers. Most people do not attend a precinct
convention, let along write a resolution to put forward at one. So that person
who writes the resolution probably represents several hundred people in his or
her precinct who feel the same way but aren’t involved. Maybe they don’t know
how to get involved or express that idea.
So this person writes a resolution on a topic of
concern—like Social Emotional Learning, and anything under that umbrella, being
taught in our schools. We get similar resolutions on the same topic from maybe dozens
of local precincts, meaning it’s widespread here. It means several thousand
people have the same concern.
And then you get together at a district convention and find
out tens of thousands of people have the same concern. You can extrapolate at
the state level, when the same idea comes up in maybe 20 out of the 31
districts, that there are hundreds of thousands of people with the same concern,
probably millions.
People want sex out of the schools. Let’s just remove sex ed
entirely, since the public schools have already proven they can’t be trusted—and
because that’s not the basic function of schools. We want NO
LGBT-plus-any-other-letters-or-symbols agenda being foisted on young people.
Parents resent schools doing sneaky things like leaving parents out of the
information loop, or telling kids not to tell their parents about something.
When schools fail to meet the needs of families, the parents
feel stuck. They want school choice. Here we are paying taxpayer money, and it
goes to this failing monopoly—actually preventing parents from getting the kind
of education their children need. We want our legislators to hear this: we want
the money to follow the child WITHOUT government strings attached.
Related to that is the horror people feel about permanently
mutilating minors for the sake of “affirming” a confusion that most of them
will grow out of.
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| First and Second Amendments |
During the 2018 convention season—it was May—there was a
school shooting in Texas, in Santa Fe. As a result, people were concerned about
the same type of conversation going on now, following the Uvalde school
shooting. The pro-tyranny crowd tries to use such tragedies to gain power. Pro-freedom
Texans want to make sure the over-emotional “we’ve got to do something” crowd
that gets all the media attention doesn’t take away our rights.
Do we or do we not have a God-given, inherent right to defend
ourselves? Texans know we do. And none of the hue and cry gives us a reason for
law-abiding citizens to stop defending themselves against the
criminals/crazies. It’s not the guns that are evil; it is those who wield those
weapons in the perpetration of crime that are evil. Taking away the means for
good people to defend themselves from such evil does not make anyone safer. In
fact, we argue that it makes us less safe. Schools are targeted because they
lack defenses.
And, no, we can’t wait for government officials to show up
after a crime is underway to protect us. In Uvalde, we still can’t understand
all that happened. But we know the shooter was inside the school for most of an
hour, continuing to kill, before an official came in and took him down while
other officers waited safely in the hallway. An armed teacher might have made a
huge difference. An armed security officer actually on campus and doing his job
might have helped.
We can’t trust elected officials to respect our right to
self-defense. So there’s a lot being voiced on that in the platform resolutions.
And, I should mention, the resolutions were turned in weeks before the Uvalde
shooting. But, because of the tyrannists going for our guns, these resolutions
should get attention in platform committees.
Can you think of other ways the government has been overreaching?
They’re probably mentioned here.
The detentions related to January 6th come up a
few times. Detention of citizens without charges is wrong on so many levels.
Election integrity is a huge issue. I’ll be writing more about 2000
Mules soon—you and everyone you know should definitely watch it. Catherine
Engelbrecht is from here. True the Vote started here in Harris County. We’ve
been paying attention to these issues longer than most—but still come up
against the same wall of frustration. “Here’s the evidence. Do the prosecution.”
And nothing happens. So the cry comes up, through the platform, to the
legislature to do something about it.
People have many ideas and specifics they’re offering that
they think will help. People are concerned about the machines that do the
counting and think paper ballots might help (there are arguments against that
as well, because there’s a long history of cheating with paper ballots). People
are calling for forensic audits—which are expensive but probably necessary if
we’re ever going to regain trust in our election system. People want voter
rolls cleaned up—and they don’t want some outside company, like the ERIC system
[Electronic Registration Information Center], meddling in the process.
Here’s a pretty good general list, from one resolution:
New Election Law Bills: The New Election Law Bills provide:
a. Voter
Registration database with restricted input/output access.
b. Limit
voting to precinct or adjacent precinct only voting.
c.
Paper Ballots that are sequentially numbered,
hand marked, & watermarked.
d. Paper
Poll Books for voters to sign.
e. Basic
Optical Scanner/Vote Counter only to tally vote results.
f.
Printed Vote Result Tapes – Early Voting and
Election Day.
g. Limited
Early Voting with no gap between Early Voting and Election Day.
h. Hand
Counts are allowed at the judges' discretion.
i.
No wireless, Lan, cellular, or computers in
voting sites.
j.
Third party verification and audit.
k.
Unique identifiable seals on ballot boxes.
l.
Vote results delivered to central count on paper.
m. Vote
results tabulated from paper record with calculator.
n. Chain
of custody from start to finish.
o. Unofficial
results called into SoS and media.
p. Poll
watcher protection: Standing to sue, and ability to use video surveillance.
q.
Lawsuits can be filed in adjacent counties.
What all this tells me is, the people mean business. They’re waking up. They’re taking action in ways they believe are both effective and civilized. I hope the next legislative session responds. But I don’t place my trust there. When a large group of people are declaring their love of God and family, and are doing all they know to do to make things right in a world gone very wrong—that is when we can expect to see God step in to protect us in ways that are miraculous.
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| Good people of Texas standing together might be able to do some good in the world. This is a University of Texas class photo, found online in 2015, link no longer active. |
There may be more appalling things before that end comes, as
the opposition ripens in iniquity. But that end will come. When it does, I will
be very glad to be on the side of freedom, family, and truth—on God’s side. He
can win His battles without us; but we cannot win these battles without Him.
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