A Time for Choosing

I got my photo with Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz (left) at the Paxton rally on September 21, 2026;
Trump endorsed Paxton on video at the rally (top right)

We’re less than a month out from the start of early voting in the November midterm elections (Early Voting begins October 19 in Texas). It seems we say this every time, but it becomes more intensely true each time: this may be the most important election ever for our future.

The reason that is more true now is that the Democrats have laid out their plan, if they gain the House and the Senate: impeach Trump, pack the Supreme Court, remove election integrity laws, give statehood to DC and Puerto Rico, and allow in illegal aliens—and let them vote, get rid of the Electoral College, and possible abolish the Senate. In short, it is to remove any possibility of opposition in the future, giving them a total and permanent socialist dictatorship.

The outcome of having socialists and Islamists in power would not offer a better future for America; it would be to offer what Cuba, Venezuela, and other socialist regimes have offered: poverty and tyranny.

They say they are offering better economic and social conditions. But no socialist regime has ever come through on that promise; that is simply the lie they use to get themselves installed in positions of power.

Here in Texas, we have a couple of races that exemplify the existential battleground. There’s Greg Abbott vs. Gina Hinajosa for Governor. And the other is the senate race: Ken Paxton vs James Talarico.

This is Texas, where a Democrat has not won a statewide race since 1994. Before that, Texas was pretty much a reliably Democrat state, but that was back when they were Democrats just because they were in the South (the South was mainly Democrat in the Civil War), and some of them even considered themselves “conservative.”

While, in the wild, you can still find some non-radical Democrats in Texas, they aren’t in leadership positions or running for office.

Texans are, as a people, no-nonsense, common sense, plain speaking, hard working, and God believing. The Democrat Party is none of those things. The Democratic Socialists, who run the party now, are dead set against all of those things—and anything else wholesome and good that could lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

On Monday I attended a rally for Ken Paxton. Senator Ted Cruz also came—and he is an excellent and entertaining speaker. This was in the middle of the day, at a church in northwest Houston. It was packed. I don’t know quite how to estimate numbers, but I’m guessing around 500 (maybe it was double that; I don’t know). It was hosted by Cypress Republicans and was a very positive and well-organized event. That’s a lot of people at a ticketed (but low-cost) event on a workday. And there was a lot of positive energy in the room. It’s hard, after an event like that, to believe that the polls are close, and we could really be facing the possibility of a tyrannical takeover of our beloved state. And, as Texas goes, so goes the nation. This is precarious.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers

President Dallin H. Oaks, screenshot from here

Earlier this week, on the eve of Constitution Day (which is September 17), there was a program at the Washington National Cathedral. The keynote address was given by Dallin H. Oaks, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a former constitutional law professor, Utah State Supreme Court Justice, law clerk to the US Supreme Court. And what I knew him for, as President of Brigham Young University, finishing his time there upon my graduation. In his 90s now, he is still energetic and wise.

I’ve got the whole transcript. (Video is here.) I’ll be sharing large parts, interspersed with a few comments as I think about what he said. I think it will be a fitting way to celebrate Constitution Day in this 250^th Year celebration of our nation.

I am grateful to be here in this sacred setting with many scholars, civic leaders, and others I respect.

I'm here to speak as part of the National Cathedral's ongoing effort to find a better way to embody the love of God in public life, offering hope for unity and a moral framework to move forward in a divided world.

In my professional work, I have always regarded the United States Constitution as a model for a diverse people to achieve self-government.

Along with Professor Yuval Levin and others, I read our history to teach that "creating purpose of the Constitution."

It was at this point I looked up the spelling and tried to find the quote. I couldn’t find that exact phrase, but I suspect it comes from Yuval Levin’s book American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. 

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Remember! Remember! 25, 14, 1

 

In some of my gospel learning, I’ve studied just a smattering of ancient Biblical Hebrew language and history. Among these things, I learned that there is a particular day of infamy to ancient Israel, called Tisha B'Av (תִּשְׁעָה בְּאָב).  On this day, the 9^th of the month of Av (which varies on our calendar, but was July 22-23 this year, counting sundown to sundown), they mark a number of disasters in their history, most notably temple destructions in Jerusalem: first, Solomon’s Temple in 587 BC, which was destroyed by the Babylonians; second, Herod’s Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. There are another dozen or so bad things that have happened on Tisha B’Av over the centuries. It’s considered a time of mourning, and of bad luck. You wouldn’t want to set you wedding date to coincide.

The month of September has become America’s Tisha B’Av, or time of mourning. 

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Compromises on the Way to a More Perfect Union: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part 9

 

We’re two months past the official Semiquincentennial July 4^th celebration day. But it’s still the year of celebration.

In this series, we’ve spent several months on various parts of our beloved Constitution.

Here’s the series up to this point, if you missed any or want to review:

·        January: The Declaration

·        February: Preamble to the Constitution

·        March: Article I: Lawmaking

·        April: Article II: Executive Branch

·        May: Article III: Judicial Branch

·        June: Bill of Rights

·        July: Happy Birthday, America!

·        August: Bill of Rights Continued

This month in particular ought to be about celebrating that amazing document, since it was signed in September (1787). There’s enough good in our Constitution that we could finish the year-long series doing more and more Constitution. I do, however, plan to celebrate some other American things in the few remaining months. But not today.

Today I thought it might be useful to go through the two major compromises in the Constitution.

The Great Compromise

The first one on our list, sometimes called the Great Compromise, had to do with the question of whether representation should be based on population or equally by state.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK

Principles of the Economic Sphere

There are principles we use in the Spherical Model to identify whether something qualifies as leading toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization, or in the other direction toward tyranny, poverty, and savagery.

Because of the prevalence of socialism in our time, I thought it might be a good exercise about now, two months ahead of the mid-term elections, to look at the principles. Since socialism claims to be just an alternative economic system to capitalism (the word they prefer to free-market), we’ll focus on the economic principles.

I’m taking from the list of principles here, where you can find the list for the political and social spheres as well.  And I’m taking from the list of question to ask candidates from here and here, where you can find those lists for all three spheres.  

We’ll go through the principles, and individually ask whether socialism agrees.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Conspiracy to Overthrow the Government Is Illegal

Communism is against the law in the United States.

In theory, that has been true since its inception, and well before its first introduction to people in this country—because our law is the Constitution, to which communism is antithetical. The implementation of communism requires replacement of any existing political system. To translate, that means the overthrow of the United States government and our Constitution.

But, as we know, making something illegal doesn’t mean it no longer exists.

What I’m going to go through here today is a thought exercise only. But these are thoughts I believe we should be going through prior to any next election. There is a threat to our constitutional republic. And it is a real threat, a “clear and present danger” to our God-given rights by authoritarian tyrants.

Back in the 1950s, there was what was referred to as the Red Scare, when the Cold War was underway, and the enemy was a communist regime looking to expand its power and control around the world.

The threat was real. This enemy, the Soviet Union mainly, had nuclear weapons. The Chinese Communist Party was also a threat, although they didn’t succeed in getting nuclear weapons until 1964. But also during this time communist North Korea invaded South Korea, involving the US in the Korean War.

The ideologies of communism had been spreading in America, and indeed had infiltrated higher echelons of government. McCarthy was right about that.

So it was in response to this real threat (whether exaggerated in numbers at the time or not) that the Communist Control Act of 1954 was written—and passed unanimously in the Senate, then amended in the House to clarify definitions.

We’ll look at the law itself, and then talk about why it was (almost) never invoked, and why we maybe ought to be thinking about it today.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

BIll of Rights Continued: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part 8

This is a monthly series throughout 2026, the Semiquincentennial year. You can see the other parts here:

·       January: The Declaration 

·       February: Preamble to the Constitution 

·       March: Article I: Lawmaking 

·       April: Article II: Executive Branch 

·       May: Article III: Judicial Branch 

·       June: Bill of Rights 

·       July: Happy Birthday, America! 

In our discussion of rights, back in June, we talked about what is a right, so we can recognize what we’re dealing with. Because a lot of Americans have been confused about that for a century or so.

And we covered a bit of history related to the Bill of Rights, and how we got those first 10 Amendments to the Constitution.

Then we talked about the first of the five rights in the First Amendment: the right to freedom of religion.

So that leaves the other four in that amendment, and a number of others in the remaining Bill of Rights. We’ll see what we get through today.

The other four rights in the First Amendment are:

·       Freedom of speech.

·       Freedom of the press.

·       Freedom to peaceably assemble.

·       Freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Last week we talked about the pandemic a bit—and a little bit of the 5^th Amendment (which was invoked 111 times by Fauci in that Senate hearing). And it’s interesting to note that all of these First Amendment rights were abridged during the pandemic.

The Constitution guarantees us that government will not abridge these rights—and yet government did anyway.

Our discussions here are intended to inform us, so that we don’t blissfully go along with whatever government officials say. Because government is fire, and it needs to be carefully contained, or it gets out of control and burns. In real terms, rather than metaphorical, government is full of humans, many of whom are motivated by power and greed, and they work for those motivators, rather than for the good of society. Some—maybe even the worst—work for the power and money with the full conviction that they are doing it for our own good, even when they’re doing it against our will.

So, about those guaranteed rights.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.