Going Home

I’m not in any way related to Glenn Beck, but lately there’s been an odd amount of overlap. He announced a week or two ago that he is being put on a very strict diet, for his health, required and no choice about it. I looked at his list and said, “That’s my diet!” Except he gets coconut, and I get tomatoes. (I prefer tomatoes to coconut, so that’s OK.) This has to do with food allergies; the body sees foods that are safe and healthful for most people as if they were poisons. It’s not a shock for me anymore; my list of forbidden foods built up over a couple of decades. And every time I lose another food, I go through a bit of a mourning period. (Giving up Greek yogurt and hummus last year made me pretty sad. I tried denial for a while, but that didn’t work out well.)

So, anyway, I wish him well as he figures out how to focus on the good things we can still eat. It’s hitting him all at once, which seems to me crueler. But it’s fresh and healthful food, and I’ve found ways to really enjoy the flavors I get. Social eating and traveling are toughest, but at home all is well. And in reality we probably get more variety and better food than most of the people who have lived on this earth over the millennia.

Saturday afternoon Glenn Beck announced the passing of his dear father—about an hour after we learned of the passing of Mr. Spherical Model’s mother (my mother-in-law). So we are sharing yet another experience.

Mother, Grandmother, exemplary woman
1932-2014

So we’re traveling for a couple of days, getting the very large extended family together, as we do at these times. We knew this was coming and thought we were prepared, and yet it is still painful to miss someone you love. Still, when family and friends get together, there will be many happy memories about a life generously lived.

I am working on a piece about the 5th Circuit Court’s ruling on Texas’s HB2, last summer’s abortion legislation—at last some good news. I’m hoping to get that written later in the week.

In the meantime, for now, I thought I’d quote the words from the song “Going Home,” which a brother-in-law suggested for the funeral, and they seem so appropriate today:

Going HomeFisher)

Going home, going home
I'm jus' going home
Quiet like, some still day
I'm jus' going home

It's not far, yes close by
Through an open door
Work all done, care laid by
Going to fear no more

Mother's there 'specting me
Father's waiting, too
Lots of folk gathered there
All the friends I knew

All the friends I knew

I'm going home

Nothing lost, all's gain
No more fret nor pain
No more stumbling on the way
No more longing for the day
Going to roam no more

Morning star lights the way
Restless dream all done
Shadows gone, break of day
Real life yes begun

There's no break, aint no end
Jus' a livin' on
Wide awake with a smile
Going on and on

Going home, going home
I'm jus' going home
It's not far, yes close by
Through an open door
I'm jus' going home

Going home, going home

(Dvořák / Fisher)

Going home, going home
I'm jus' going home
Quiet like, some still day
I'm jus' going home

It's not far, yes close by
Through an open door
Work all done, care laid by
Going to fear no more

Mother's there 'specting me
Father's waiting, too
Lots of folk gathered there
All the friends I knew

All the friends I knew

I'm going home

Nothing lost, all's gain
No more fret nor pain
No more stumbling on the way
No more longing for the day
Going to roam no more

Morning star lights the way
Restless dream all done
Shadows gone, break of day
Real life yes begun

There's no break, aint no end
Jus' a livin' on
Wide awake with a smile
Going on and on

Going home, going home
I'm jus' going home
It's not far, yes close by
Through an open door
I'm jus' going home

Going home, going home*

________________________________________ 

*Lyrics found here.

Civilization Requires Religion

This is where I go to worship on Sundays,
but I practice my religion everywhere, always.

I got to thinking, while writing Monday’s post on arguments related to the Hobby Lobby case. Particularly, I was thinking about the argument that government could allow a for-profit corporation to have free speech rights because, the more information people have in an election, the better; but that government shouldn’t have to allow a for-profit corporation to have religious rights, since there is no obvious benefit to society. The necessity of religion is one of the main points of the Civilization Sphere section of the Spherical Model.


I’d like to review just a few of the benefits we get—in law, in civil society, in all our relationships—from a basic list of religious requirements. So, quoting myself from the website:

Laws of Civilization

When Jesus Christ was asked what was the greatest commandment, he answered, and gave a second as well: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40, KJV) In other words, every law comes under the categories of honoring God or honoring your neighbor as equal in value to yourself. Some people might reword this second part as the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you—which is universally accepted as basic civilized behavior.

The Ten Commandments, from the Judeo-Christian tradition, must therefore also come under these two categories. The first four command that we honor God, who is the source of our human rights, which we are free to exercise in a civilized society. The remaining six identify ways we must honor one another in a civilized society:

• honor parents
• do not murder (take innocent life)
• do not have sex outside of marriage
• do not steal
• do not lie
• do not covet (want what belongs to your neighbor)

Other religions that lead to civilization must require these behaviors of adherents. There aren’t any civilizations (using my definition) that do not share these beliefs. Is it possible for non-religious people to adhere to these basic civilized behaviors as well? Yes, but their reasons will be pragmatic, that people are happier when they treat each other this way, therefore logic suggests following these rules. And since they consider themselves, rather than God, the final arbiter of good (including what is logical and what feels happier), they can be depended on only so long as they consider the behavior beneficial, not out of duty to a higher being. So the society is helped by their adherence, but it is more true that they benefit from the duty-bound religious people bringing about civilization around them than that the civilization comes from these (often rare) civilized-living secularists.

 

It’s fair to say that there must be a critical mass of religious people honoring God’s commandments in order for Civilization to result. Civilization doesn’t require perfect people, which would be impossible. But it does require a strong majority daily going about their lives in purposeful effort to be civilized toward one another. Less civilized people will always exist among them, but the stronger that majority, the less savage effect the non-civilized will have.

Ways the Ten Commandments Civilize

We can look at the last six of the Ten Commandments in more detail and find that they all civilize, either by valuing family, valuing human life, valuing property, or valuing truth.

 

The opposition to civilization—the anti-religious crowd, mainly—goes through this list and devalues each piece.

It doesn’t value family. It even attempts to discount the value of family by saying “anything” is a family. It’s sort of like that saying (pointed out by Dash in The Incredibles), “If everyone is special, then no one is special”: if everything is family, then family has no meaning, no purpose. But since family is the basic unit of civilization, you can’t have civilization without an abundance of strong families.

It doesn’t value human life. Or, rather, it doesn’t value innocent human life. But it will fight tooth and nail to keep a serial killer from being executed.

It doesn’t value property rights; it believes it is moral to take, by force, wealth from those who have worked for it and earned it and then redistribute it to those who have not worked for it and earned it. This is called social justice. (A lot of the words they use mean the opposite of what normal people would expect.)

It doesn’t value truth. Repeat a lie until it gets believed. That’s a standard practice. There’s a sort of pattern: deny, deny, deny, and then when enough time has passed, admit and say, “What does it matter now?” That will be the epitaph for Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, just to name a few of the ringleaders.

What does the opposition offer?

In place of valuing family: valuing sex without consequences, and devaluing children.

In place of valuing innocent human life: valuing guilty human life, or valuing animal life.

In place of valuing equality before the law: valuing special interests and trying to enforce equal outcome regardless of effort, and/or unequal outcome favoring special classes.

Add to these the practices of valuing the earth and sacrificing to it, and you have a pretty good description of pagan worshippers in a savage society. Coincidence or consequence?

If you want civilization, you have to follow the laws of civilization. If you’re willing to settle for savagery, there are many in the world today willing to drag you down there.

Fractious Fractional Argument

Tomorrow the US Supreme Court hears arguments on the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods cases, concerning whether corporations are exempt from having religious rights.

Image from HobbyLobbyCase.com

I’ve written about this before. But in the past week I heard an argument I hadn’t heard before, which I’m calling the fractional argument. There are several places to go for more, some of which I’ll summarize here:

·        “Underlying Hobby Lobby,” Philip Hamburger, National Review, 3-11-2014

·        Hugh Hewitt “The Smart Guys” interview, 3-19-2014 (available only in membership-required archive) between Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Irvine Law School, and John Eastman, Dean Emeritus of Fowler Law School of Chapman University

·        www.HobbyLobbyCase.com for general and detailed information about the case, including briefs

My son Political Sphere brought the Philip Hamburger piece to my attention, which was the first I’d heard the fractional argument. Hamburger talks specialization affecting an organization as only fractionally allowed rights:  

Can government treat specialized organizations as having diminished constitutional rights outside their fields of specialization? Can it conclude, for example, that because Hobby Lobby is a business corporation, it has diminished interests in religion, and therefore in religious liberty? From this perspective, organizations devoted to some specialized paths have reduced interests in constitutional rights that the government associates with other paths. Churches, for example, have full religious rights, but not full speech rights, and businesses have complete speech rights, but not complete religious rights.

The effect of this kind of distinction is to curtail the constitutional rights (and associated statutory rights) of Americans when they associate with one another in organizations.

Corporations are made up of people, so that the organization combines the shared interests of multiple persons (at least three persons, in the states where I’ve looked at it personally). Do people lose rights, or get only a fraction of whole-person rights, when functioning within an organization?

In the Citizens United vs. FEC case, the Supreme Court ruled that a corporation does qualify for free speech rights as asserted in the First Amendment. In other words, a corporation qualifies for the same speech rights as an individual.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the same First Amendment is at issue. Does a corporation have religious freedom rights? Can a corporation be said to have religious beliefs?

Since the administration doesn’t like the Citizens United ruling, that corporations do have speech rights, but must abide by the ruling, it is attempting to limit other rights. The government is trying to say that a corporation exists only for a single purpose: maybe that is a religious purpose, like a church, so then it can have free religious rights but not free speech rights. Or maybe a corporation is for profit and ipso facto has no other mission than making money, so it can have speech rights (because SCOTUS said so), but not religious rights. In other words, corporations are fractional, depending on purpose as seen by the government, and therefore will be granted rights as government chooses to grant them.

We might not straighten out the government with this case alone, but government does not grant rights; God does. That’s in our founding document, the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution spells out some of them, just in case some tyrant tries to ignore our rights. But, back to the issue at hand.

Can a corporation have only one part of the First Amendment apply to it and not another, unless the Court’s simply making up rules as they go along?

In the Smart Guys interview, the second place I heard this fractional argument, the liberal side is represented by Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Irvine Law School. He asserts that a corporation can’t have religious beliefs:

A corporation is a fictional entity; it can’t have religious beliefs. There is an enormous difference between a corporation like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Woods Specialty; those are corporations that exist to further the corporate mission of making profit. They’re not religious entities. And I don’t believe a fictional entity like a corporation can have religious beliefs.

Is a corporation a fictional entity? No, it is quite real. There’s a lot of paperwork and physical property showing its existence. It gets taxed and fined real money. It is not a fictional entity; it is a fictional “person.” It is a combination of individuals organized together as if one person.

In addition, corporations are frequently pressed to have good citizenship, and follow whatever moral values are being pressed upon them. As John Eastman said in the Smart Guys interview,

We have entire movements in this country calling on corporations to be good citizens, to have corporate civic values, and to support movements in South Africa and elsewhere around the world. The corporate responsibility, we demand that of them, even though it’s got nothing to do with their corporate profits and their bottom line. So why can’t included in that be the exercise of the fundamental religious beliefs of the closely held owners of those corporations?

One of Chemerinsky’s arguments is that people form corporations to avoid liability, in case the corporation gets into financial difficulty. Yes and no. The corporation is seen as financially a singular “person,” or entity, so financial default doesn’t take away all the personal belongings of one or several individuals in the organization. But if the corporation breaks the law, commits fraud, for example, the “fictional person” doesn’t do jail time; the actual human being(s) inside the company found responsible gets the indictment. So it’s not formed to protect oneself from the law; it’s simply one way of combining resources for a purpose.

Chemerinsky likes to refer to “secular corporations,” as opposed to “religious corporations,” such as churches and non-profits with a mainly religious purpose. This is a new phrase, however, not a legal distinction. A corporation forms as a non-profit, with a religious, educational, or even a political purpose. And forms as a for-profit corporation if it’s a business—but that doesn’t mean that is the only purpose; it just means that at least some of the corporation’s activities are expected to make a profit. You wouldn’t disqualify it as a for-profit corporation if it also donates time and resources to charities. Just as the rest of us humans, we might work a day job for profit, but that isn’t all we do, and that doesn’t determine whether or not we are religious.

There’s a point over which I most disagree with Chemerinsky, Looking at religious freedom issues, he refers to a case called First National Bank of Boston vs. Belotti, as well as the Citizens United case, concerning speech rights:

…corporations are given free speech rights because the more expression that’s out there, the better informed people will be. In other words, corporations are given free speech rights, because it instrumentally serves the goal of the First Amendment of a better informed electorate. That has no analog when we’re dealing with religion.

He thinks speech is valuable but religion is not, and that should be the deciding factor. He fails to notice that honesty, property rights, fairness, valuing life, and community commitment all come from religious beliefs. Can you picture a society full of corporations without any of those moral beliefs?

He is trying to come up with a rationale for the government to willingly grant speech rights, as required by the Court, without granting anything else. First, let me say there ought to be no distinction; if a person (or corporation made up of persons) has the inalienable right of free speech, the person (or corporation made up of persons) also has religious freedom. Not because the Constitution says so—but the Constitution says so to make it extra clear that government has no business doing anything to take those rights away. If there are other inalienable rights God has granted to people, the people do not have those rights alienated (taken away) whenever they associate with other people in an organization.

Hamburger says,

Why is this so troubling? Standing alone, individuals in an egalitarian society are weak in relation to government. But when they associate with one another, as Tocqueville observed, they acquire a shared strength, including the resources, capacity, and courage to develop public opinion independent of government and thereby to defend their freedom.

It would be very dangerous for the Supreme Court to accede to the government’s assumption that specialized organizations are often only specialized persons with only specialized constitutional rights — that is, only partial persons with only partial rights. If government can act on this vision of specialization, it can divide and undermine civil society.

The two cases at issue tomorrow are “closely held” corporations; they are fully owned by the founding families, and these families consist of people with religious beliefs—beliefs that carry over into the way they do business. Hobby Lobby, for example, closes on Sundays. They’ve been clear about their religious beliefs all along. Conestoga Woods is owned by a Mennonite family. So both have always been clear about the religious beliefs of the people heading the corporation and the influence that has on their companies. I’m concerned that there will be an additional parsing, eventually granting Obamacare religious exemption waivers to these particular companies because of their particular family structure, but refusing to grant such exemptions to larger, publicly held corporations, regardless of the beliefs of their boards of directors or other leadership.

I hope the Court hears truth with clarity tomorrow. I pray for them to be both wise and good.

Advance Directive

I haven’t yet written my personal advance directive. I thought that doing it here, not only would it be in print, I would have the chance to define some terms my own way. So here goes.

image from here

If a time ever comes that I am in a hospital on life support, I DO NOT give permission for life support to be removed to hasten my demise.

Here are the basic reasons:

·        I believe the decision about when I die belongs to God, not to me or any other person or entity (exception: if I were to commit a heinous murder and had thereby subjected myself to capital punishment—but I think that scenario is easily avoided).

·        I reject the premise that a person deserves the “dignity” of choosing the time, place, and circumstances of their own death. How does usurping that authority from God make you more dignified, rather than simply unwilling to trust God?

·        I reject the premise that people who are a “burden” on their loved ones, or on society, have committed a capital offence.

·        In addition to the above, I reject the premise that, since good people don’t want to “burden” their loved ones or society, euthanasia is the preferred option to alleviate that guilt.

·        I have experienced a long history of failures by medical experts; I don’t automatically trust their opinions about whether healing can come. I believe in miracles, and I don’t want to rule out that possibility. I also believe that the brain can respond to stimulation and exercise, and is worth trying to rehabilitate.

·        When it is time for the Lord to take me, I want to go in harmony with Him, knowing that even in the difficult last hours, I did not rebel against Him and insist on my own way.

·        I absolutely DO NOT want my family members burdened with the decision to overrule God.

·        I refuse to let anyone imply that I have given permission to medical personnel to decide I am not worth treating. If medical personnel or government bureaucrats (death panel) try to take that decision upon themselves, I want them to know that I expect them to stand judgment before God for undervaluing my life (or anyone else’s).

Now, I think we have to define some terms. We think we know what life support is: machines maintaining life that would otherwise not continue, so it’s artificial life and not real life. But in reality, life support has some specific aspects.

One is air. We need to breathe. In older times simply the absence of breath was the indicator of death; there wasn’t a remedy. Now we can provide oxygen and help a person breathe. Usually this is expected to be temporary, but there are a number of people, often elderly, who are able to go about their lives as long as they bring along their oxygen tank. They’re conscious, definitely alive. Without the oxygen, they would likely soon die, but with the oxygen they can enjoy their life for possibly a number of bonus years. So a life on oxygen isn't by definition an artificial life.

Another is heartbeat. Lack of heartbeat is another indicator of death. But sometimes a stopped heart can be restarted. Worth trying? To the millions who have responded to defibrillators, probably so. One of the machines people are hooked up to might be a heartbeat monitor (that beeping thing with the jagged line, that sends an alarm when it goes to a flat line, so stimulation to restart the heart can be tried again). Unplugging it would do nothing but remove the indicator that help is needed urgently.

Another one is blood. In older times, large loss of blood typically led to death. Now we can provide blood transfusions, to resupply.

Another one is nutrition: food and water. If a person is unconscious, they may need an IV to supply nutrients, because they can’t eat. Or there might be a feeding tube or maybe some other method I’m not thinking of. The food supply is probably put in at a point when there is a supposition of possible recovery. You don’t starve an unconscious patient; you give them nutrients, so the body can heal.

Food, rather than some “artificial life,” is the likeliest issue concerned in an advance directive. If you assume someone is not going to recover, and you want to hasten the inevitable death, you remove the food. You starve the patient to death. In the already weakened condition it could take from a few days to a couple of weeks for the unfed organs to begin to shut down, one after another.

Dying of starvation and thirst is a painful way to go. And it’s unnecessary. There are ways to continue giving the patient nutrients.

Are there exceptions? Possibly. Suppose you have an Alzheimer’s patient, nearing the end. Almost no mental function—which is soon going to affect control of various organs that require input from the brain. Suppose the patient is essentially unconscious most of the time, and never lucid when conscious. Are you required to feed artificially in order to lengthen the time of death? You could. But you could also offer food and water whenever the patient can be persuaded to swallow. At that point you are nurturing the patient, not artificially lengthening life. In this case it isn’t a matter of removing life support; it’s a matter of choosing whether to impose that form of feeding, or continuing the more natural way.

I don’t want to be a burden on my children. I intend to continue earnestly striving to maintain good health; they are all aware of this. Plus, the odds are in my favor. Brain function has been good in my family; my maternal great-grandmother had dementia in her last years. No one else. No grandparents. No aunts and uncles. My dad was 91 and fully lucid the last time I got to talk with him, the day before he passed away. My mom is 85 and still sharp and taking care of herself in her own home. So it looks like genetics are with me.

But, while I hope I can be active and involved with my family up until the very end, I recognize that some things may be beyond my control. I don’t wish that burden on my children. But I want them to know that God will bless them for any loving care they give. One way God blesses us is with increased love for those we willingly serve. So I admonish my children to willingly serve me and their dad, because I want that blessing of increased love in their lives.

I want them to know that I believe in them; they can be loving, even in difficult circumstances. I don’t discount them by thinking such a challenge is beyond them, and, like some misguided helicopter parent, signing some paper that will whisk the problem away.

I don’t mean to indict others who have “no resuscitation” orders or similar advance directives. They may have a different understanding of “pulling the plug” than I do. They may have a different relationship with God than I do. I’m not trying to persuade them; I’m just trying to declare what I want.

I want life. It’s a matter of gratitude. I want abundant life, appreciating every day I get here with those I love, even if some of those days are difficult. I want Heavenly Father to know that I hope to always trust Him to be with me during whatever hard times come. And I want my children to know that valuing life, trusting God, and offering loving service make for a better life than avoiding burdens or misplaced guilt.

I choose life.

Logical Leaping Leprechauns

image from here

There’s no purpose in having Leprechauns in the title, except that it is St. Patrick’s Day, and they are dangerous tricksters, with the promise of unearned prosperity that you never get.

I was reading the Outlook (opinion) section of Sunday’s Houston Chronicle, and started reading a piece, by a local physician, that at first struck me as way more conservative than I usually find in that section. Here’s the beginning:

   In high school, I had to memorize the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution. I did not understand why then, but I do now. This is essentially the mission statement for the United States. When I served on the U.S. Senate staff during the initial months of the health care reform debate in 2009, I thought that the Preamble should serve as a touchstone for proposed legislation. Given that health care reform legislation would affect every American and about one-sixth of the economy, it seemed prudent to return to first principles to justify such action.

   The Preamble begins by saying who wrote it and why. The government derives its power from the people. That power should be used continuously to improve the country that the Founders fought to free from foreign control. Establishing and preserving justice, peace, safety, well-being and liberty were all part of the role of the federal government. Implicit in the singling out of “our posterity” is the idea that this was to be a timeless arrangement that would protect us collectively and individually.

This is almost exactly right on track. We want people to do this—read the Constitution, recognize that mission statement in the Preamble, and limit government to its proper role.

But there’s a change he makes, which I didn’t catch until I read further (because I had failed to read the article title). Notice when he’s listing the roles of the federal government, he uses the term “well-being” instead of “general welfare.” He could mean the same thing I do, which I think is what the founders meant. But he doesn’t. I believe it means the federal government is limited to making laws that affect the population as a whole, rather than specific special states or groups. And those laws, according to the enumerated powers of the federal government, are designed to protect life, liberty, and property (and the freedom to pursue property/happiness as one chooses, rather than having government choose one’s profession).

 

So I was surprised at this very next passage in the op-ed: “How does the Preamble support health care for every American?” Um, it doesn’t. Health care is a service that can be purchased. Government’s job is to get out of the way of informed legal transactions. This is an odd question to follow the correct claim that the Preamble is the US government mission statement.

The leap of logic is revealed in the next paragraph:

That there is such inequity in the provision, access, cost and quality of health care in America is inconsistent with a just country.

So, to him, a “just country” is one in which no one can purchase more care than anyone else; they can all purchase exactly the same services regardless of resources. Social justice. Code for socialism.

That bit about “I understand the Constitution” was just a cover for “I think government’s role is really supplying everything we as a majority decide everyone ought to have.” This is FDR’s “positive rights” argument/fallacy. Commodities and services might be nice to have, but they aren’t rights. God gives us rights.

We’re born here naked, impoverished, and inexperienced. We spend our lives working our way out of that condition. But the only “entitlement” involved is the requirement that parents provide their children’s needs, teach them, and prepare them for self-sufficiency.

The government can’t “give” you a commodity or service without requiring a taxpayer to pay for it. Government isn’t allowed by the Constitution to provide any commodity, only services—and only those services that fit in the category of protecting your life (not allowing others to harm you), liberty (not allowing others to enslave you), and property (not allowing others to steal your property).

There’s nothing in there about providing “health care.” If health care were a right, then why would we pay doctors for it? They would have to provide it because it’s our right. But that would be enslaving the doctors, who should be justly compensated for their skilled services. So, in order not to enslave doctors, the government would have to pay them—and the government only gets money by taking it from taxpayers. So the taxpayers would be enslaved (forced to work without being able to keep their income) in order to pay for the health care of someone they don’t even know. Including those who don’t take care of themselves the way that taxpayer has done. Is that fair?

In his piece this doctor does say some things I agree with:

The debate I witnessed in Washington in 2009 was never based on discussing how to fulfill the mission of the United States through a different form of health care delivery. Rather, a deal was concocted that preserved the basic aspects of the system we already had with third-party support of health care payments, despite the third parties (insurers) adding nothing to the health of anyone, but reaping huge profits for bookkeeping and risk management as a means to maximize shareholder value.

 

He’s right; Obamacare proponents have conflated health care with health insurance, even though insurance is simply one way to pay for health services (a way that has been enlarged mainly because of government interference). There are other ways. There are health savings accounts, and concierge medicine, and self-insuring, and paying cash.

He doesn’t look at the “less government interference options,” however; he thinks Obamacare simply doesn’t go far enough. My guess is what he wants is to have the federal government do a total takeover of health care, doling out care “equally.” He hates “inequity” (different outcomes) more than he loves freedom.

If the problem is separation of payer from service receiver, then why would adding government as an additional separator help? It just adds another layer of bureaucracy (the world’s biggest bureaucracy) between service receiver and payer—with all kinds of additional decisions being made by distant bureaucrats rather than patient and doctor.

People who see only the southern hemisphere—the portion on the Spherical Model where you go back and forth between the varied tyrannies of anarchy and government control—look the wrong direction. They have an unsupportable faith in government and its intellectual elites to “do it right the next time.” They never do it right. They can’t know what I and every individual buyer of health care services knows about our particular situations, preferences, and personal finances. But they’re unwilling to trust individuals to make decisions for themselves about what services to buy and how to pay for them.

Government’s lack of trust in individual citizens is an excuse for interference that always leads to further tyranny. We limit government because we know it can’t be trusted, and we trust ourselves with the rest. 

There’s another leap of logic story I came across over the weekend. It was handled well (as usual) by Matt Walsh (“I am afraid of this indisputable pro-choice argument” from March 4, 2014). The “frightening” “irrefutable” pro-choice (pro-abortion) argument is referred to as “bodily autonomy.” A reader calling herself “Rachel” says essentially that, if a person has bodily autonomy, then a woman has a right to stop that parasitic baby’s life at any point in pregnancy. She claims that a woman gestating her own child is equivalent to being forced to be tied up in a hospital bed next to a sick person, for nine months, sharing blood with the sick person, against one’s will.

It’s not a good analogy, and Matt Walsh covers the reasons. But I’m just going to point out the leap of logic from “we have control over our own bodies,” and “after consenting to the presence of a growing child by performing the procreative act, the mother should still be allowed to kill the growing baby at any point she chooses.” That’s quite a leap.

No one forced her (in cases that aren’t rape or incest) to invite the growing baby to grow in her womb. No one forced her to share her body with a stranger; the baby inside is her own offspring. No one forced her to stay confined in a hospital bed for nine months; pregnancy will cause varying levels of limitation, but most of the time the gestating mother just goes about her life as autonomously as ever.

The choice happens before conception. After that, another life is involved, growing where he/she was invited, and where he/she belongs. A closer analogy would be: after you invite someone into your home, at any time you can kill the visitor for breaking into your home. That would not go over well in a court of law.

We’re all pro-choice. But most of us think that choice was made when engaging in the behavior that has been known, for literally thousands of years, to lead to pregnancy—so ignorance can’t be the excuse. Maybe Rachel, like Obama, thinks God was wrong to have pregnancy follow that behavior, when she wants it without consequences. Whatever. She ought to take that up with God, rather than insisting that the rest of us are wrong for wanting to protect innocent human life.

Today's lesson: don't pretend it's logic when it's just a blind leap.

The Big 500th Celebration

 

Today is the 500^th post at the Spherical Model blog. Yay!!! (Balloons being dropped and confetti strewn as you read this. I can always vacuum later.)

It is also, coincidentally, approximately the 3^rd anniversary of the blog; that was officially March 4^th, but this 500^th milestone seemed close enough, I thought I’d wait and do both at the same time. The website, SphericalModel.com, is a few months older and has changed little; I’ve used the blog to add to the basic ideas.

Milestones are a good time to explain what the Spherical Model is. So here goes—again.

The Spherical Model is a different way of looking at the political world—different from the usual right-wing/left-wing model. In addition, the political world interrelates with the economic and social worlds, so the Spherical Model handles more ideas than the simple right/left arrow.

It works like this: think of a sphere, with freedom in the northern hemisphere, and tyranny in the southern hemisphere, so north is good and south is bad. (This relates in no way to actual places on our earth.) What about east and west, you ask? Good question. There isn’t a good-half/bad-half thing going on with east and west. It’s about level of interest, from the smallest unit of society, the family (furthest west longitude line), moving eastward to town/city, state/province, region, nation, multi-national allies, and reaching global interests at the far eastern longitude line. The caveat is, you need to be as local as possible for whatever issue is being addressed, or else there is loss of freedom (and therefore movement southward).

So it’s possible for there to be global issues, but they’re rare. And we tend to see a lot of national or state levels trying to usurp decision-making authority from the appropriate lower levels. Theoretically we could see a lower level insisting it is the appropriate level when a higher level actually is for fitting, but that’s more rare. And when there is such a disagreement, that’s when debate on issues should show up.

Just as you have freedom north and tyranny south for the political sphere, you have corresponding good north and bad south for the economic sphere: free enterprise economy north, and controlled economy south—which translates to prosperity north and poverty south.

You also have corresponding good north and bad south for the social sphere: civilization north, and savagery south.

All of these spheres interrelate. In other words, if you don’t do what it takes to sustain civilization, you suffer a loss of prosperity and a loss of freedom. If you strengthen civilization, that leads to greater freedom and prosperity as well. If you centralize decisions about who controls the spending of earned wealth, you affect freedom and civilization. For example, if either government or marauding gangs confiscate wealth from those who have earned it and redistribute it to those who haven’t earned it, workers are discouraged, feel enslaved, and feel hopeless.

What is the value of using this slightly more complicated model? For one thing you totally get rid of the accusation of being extremist just for wanting freedom, prosperity, and a thriving civilization. And you get rid of the notion that compromising in the middle, maybe just slightly toward the right, is sensible and logical. Because it is never a good thing to move south, and it is always a good thing to move north.

It doesn’t matter if an ideology is called socialism, communism, tyranny, dictatorship, anarchy, oligarchy, monarchy, or theocracy. All of these can be floating around below the equator. Location depends on the level of control (gang, state, nation, region—as is Axis of Evil—or global), and how much control. The more control, the further toward tyranny.

We don’t need to argue about whether “progressivism” is socialism by another name; we just need to look at how appropriate the level of interest (west/east), and how controlling the power center is.

If you’re conservative, you probably already believe much of what you’ll read here. The purpose is to give you new ways to evaluate ideas, candidates, issues, and policies—based on principles that are consistent and knowable. We can encourage policymakers to ask, “Does it lead toward more freedom, ensuring our inalienable rights?” “Does it lead to prosperity by encouraging free enterprise?” and “Does it lead to more thriving civilization by encouraging adherence to long-known good behaviors of religious people, and valuing the family as the basic unit of civilization?”

If you’d like to get a clearer understanding of the Spherical Model, I hope you’ll check out these sources:

Long Version: The Spherical Model website—a collection of long pieces describing the model and the three spheres, about 50 pages worth of writings.

Short Version: Blog post March 5, 2012: Year Two Begins, written for the one-year anniversary of the blog.

Best of the Blog: Collected links of blog posts most likely to give you additional understanding, offered as a celebration of the 400^th post, June 2013.

·         Part I covers the interrelationships of the three spheres, plus the Political Sphere.

·         Part II covers the Economic Sphere.

·         Part III covers the Social Sphere, or how to get to Civilization.

Special Topic Collections: These are additions to Best of the Blog, posts on specific issues that relate to the principles of going north on the sphere, but aren’t obviously related to a single sphere.

·         The Defense of Marriage Collection

·         The Education Collection

We’re a hundred posts beyond the Best of Blog collection. I hope there are now additional posts that should be favorites. They’re all available in the archives. I’m always honored whenever someone spends their time reading here. I hope you find the Spherical Model valuable in our joint efforts to have a world with more freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Those Pesky Enumerated Powers

I saw snippets of CPAC speeches from this past weekend. One was Texas Governor Rick Perry, talking about states experimenting to see what works—and the very clear evidence of what does work and what doesn’t, marked by how much more it costs to rent a truck to escape from California and come to Texas than the other way around. Where he really got my attention was toward the end (about 8 ½ minutes in) when he talks about enumerated powers.

It’s not too late for America to lead in the world, but it starts by leading at home. And it starts by returning to the founding principles of democracy, found in our Constitution. Among the enumerated powers of Congress are: the power to lay and collect taxes, to pay debts, and provide for the common defense, to regulate commerce with foreign nations, to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy.

But nowhere does the Constitution say we should federalize classrooms. Nowhere! Nowhere does it give federal officials—nowhere does it give federal officials primary responsibility over the air we breathe, the land we farm, the water we drink. And nowhere does it say Congress has the right to federalize health care….

It is time for Washington to focus on the few things the Constitution establishes as the federal government’s role: defend our country, provide a cogent foreign policy. And, what the heck! Deliver the mail, preferably on time and on Saturdays. Get out of the health care business. Get out of the education business. Stop hammering industry. Let the sleeping giant of American enterprise create prosperity again.

You can watch the entire 11-minute speech here:

 

Governor Perry gives a good summary. But, for the sake of thorough exercise, let’s list the enumerated powers.

The Preamble to the Constitution is a good source for the purposes of delegating anything to the federal government. We’ll put this in bullet list form, to make it easier to see:

We the People of the United States, in

·         Order to form a more perfect Union,

·         establish Justice,

·         insure domestic Tranquility,

·         provide for the common defence,

·         promote the general Welfare,

·         and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Then the Constitution lays out the structure of the government to do those things. Most of these are spelled out in Article I, which says what the legislative body can and should do, and how the legislative powers are divided between two houses: the House directly responsive to the people by population, and the Senate designed to be responsive to the several states (although since 1913 also directly elected, but still numbered two per state, rather than by size of population).

In Section 8 of Article I there’s this great list of what the legislative branch can make laws to do (followed in Sections 9 and 10 with listed limitation). So, here are the enumerated powers of Congress:

1:  The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

2:  To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

3:  To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

4:  To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

5:  To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

6:  To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

7:  To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

8:  To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

9:  To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

10:  To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;

11:  To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

12:  To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

13:  To provide and maintain a Navy;

14:  To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

15:  To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

16:  To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

17:  To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;—And

18:  To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

Article II directs the select process for the executive branch, which is responsible for carrying out (executing) the laws legislated by Congress. The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces. He has the power to negotiate treaties with foreign nations (but can only make treaties with the approval of the legislative branch). Also with legislative approval, he can appoint ambassadors, consuls, and Supreme Court justices.

The president takes this oath:  “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” So here the Constitution restates the preservation of the basic law—the Constitution. Anything the president does that fails to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, pesky enumerated powers and all, and any purposeful failure to uphold the duly legislated laws is breaking that oath.

Article III covers the judicial branch, mainly the Supreme Court. Their cases concern mainly those to which the US itself is a party, and also disagreements between two or more states.

Article IV covers the concept of citizens receiving the same US citizen rights in the various states. That also means committing a felony in one state and fleeing to another state means you’re still subject to prosecution. There’s also something about how new states can be added, with equal standing among the older states. And here’s an interesting requirement: The federal government “shall protect each of them [the states] against Invasion.” Border security is required.

Article V covers amending the Constitution, which has been done only 27 times (which some might say is a few too many). The first 10 Amendments were included in the original ratification of the Constitution, often referred to as the Bill of Rights, which we’ll get to in a minute.

Articles VI and VII cover the treatment of existing debts, contracts, and treaties at the founding, and details concerning ratification.

So, then we get to the Bill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments. Inalienable, God-given rights are not limited to these, but these are the ones the founders decided better be spelled out, in case a future time came when they were no longer self-evident. So these are specifically to let the federal government know—You Cannot Do This!

So what can the federal government not do?

·         Establish a state-favored religion

·         Limit the free exercise of religion

·         Limit freedom of speech

·         Limit freedom of the press

·         Limit the right to freely assemble

·         Limit the right to petition for redress of grievances (file lawsuits over government wrongdoing)

·         Infringe on individual right to bear arms

·         Force citizens to quarter soldiers

·         Search or seize property without probably cause shown by warrant

·         Put person on trial for felony without indictment by Grand Jury

·         Put person on trial for same offence again after being found not guilty (double jeopardy)

·         Force person to testify against themselves

·         Fail to provide an accused with swift justice (speedy and public trial by jury)

·         Right to jury trial for property disputes over a certain threshold

·         Inflict excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishments

·         Construe anything in the Constitution to take any additional rights from the people

·         Assume any power not spelled out in the Constitution, but assume those are left to the states and the people.

So those are the limits. We could easily add, under those last two, that the federal government cannot usurp the rights of parents, except in the extreme cases where there is immediate endangerment to the child (and that would be local and state governments, not federal in any case). Otherwise, parents have the right to make all decisions about the care, upbringing, and educating of their children.

So Governor Perry is right about the federal government needing to get its sticky hands out of education, out of health care, out of commerce—and anything else not specifically granted.

And the founders foresaw that there would be attempts at misconstruing. They were right. The commerce clause has been stretched beyond elasticity to mean the government can get involved anywhere there is or could be commerce, to the point of preventing home gardens if they think you could affect the market by not buying because you’ve grown your own. If the founders had meant the law to be that gaping, why write a limiting Constitution at all?

There’s misconstruing about the second amendment, because of that phrase about expecting people to be prepared to serve in a militia. So someone comes along and decides that means, if you’re not in a militia (and we don’t need those while we have standing armies), then you don’t need a gun—although maybe we’ll decide you can use one for hunting. No, the founders knew that granting the right to protect us did not give up our right to individually protect ourselves.

Then there’s misconstruing the freedom of religion—so that it limits expression of religion, as if the first amendment said, “Government shall not allow any public expression of religion, because not all people believe the same, and some could be offended.” It’s just the opposite. The amendment guarantees our rights to worship our own way, without government deciding what to allow (within the limits of accepted law—no child sacrifice, for example). So when the government says a person must go against their own conscience, that is simply tyranny.

Governor Perry was right about one additional thing as well: once a person gets power, it’s human nature to try to keep it. So now that so many powers have been usurped—taken unconstitutionally—how do we get them back as a people? The written law is on our side, but not the law enforcers.

Gov. Perry suggests electing a better president (it would be hard to elect a worse one), and elect leaders who understand limited government and want that. I think he’s right that electing the right leaders is important. But I don’t know if that will be enough. He started his speech quoting Thomas Jefferson as saying, “A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” Which sounds extra nice with a Texas accent.

Nevertheless, the kind of rebellion we need is one of hearts and minds, not might. We need every elected leader from president to county clerk to know and understand the Constitution, and the principles of limited government. We get that by sharing what we know with more and more thinking, caring citizens. And then we pray it will be enough. We have a long road back up to freedom, prosperity, and civilization.