Speaking Up for the Family

A week ago the administration put out the news, quietly, on a Friday, that they were doing something earth shaking and historic. Which they didn’t want to call undue attention to? It was “the first ever national gender strategy to advance the full participation of all people, including women and girls, in the United States and the world.”

You can read the fact sheet here, which includes a link to the full Gender Strategy Report.

This was brought to my attention a few days ago in commentary by Glenn Beck. He read from the report, and then made some comments. And I’ll get to his. But first I want to cover a couple of things I notice—which may not be anything beyond an editor’s eye.

Glenn Beck talks about the new National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality,
screenshot from here

There is a high saturation of abstract words: fundamental, essential, ensuring, opportunity, potential, imperative, inflection, exacerbated, underscored, systematic, interconnected, priority. It’s not wrong to use such words—unless you’re using them to hide plain meaning. I’ll leave that issue for another time.

Another thing that caught my attention is a list of priorities:

The strategy identifies ten interconnected priorities: 1) economic security; 2) gender-based violence; 3) health; 4) education; 5) justice and immigration; 6) human rights and equality under the law; 7) security and humanitarian relief; 8) climate change; 9) science and technology; and 10) democracy, participation, and leadership. These priorities are inherently linked and must be tackled in concert.

The first one that jumped out at me was 2) gender-based violence. Certainly that’s something we don’t want. But number 1 was something I’m assuming we’re supposed to want—as are the remaining 8. Why is there a priority to avoid among a list of priorities to aim for? Without clarification? It appears, then, that it is a priority to achieve greater gender-based violence. No, I don’t think that’s what they literally intend; but I think that unclear writing shows unclear thinking. So there’s that.

Then there are the priorities containing “and.” Why is “justice and immigration” a single item; why is there not a separate priority for justice and for whatever it is you want related to immigration? Or, if it’s something about immigration that ought to have justice and doesn’t, why not “immigration justice,” whatever that might be? How do "justice and immigration" fit together as one thing?

I don’t really have a problem with “human rights and equality under the law,” other than that, for clear-thinking people, equality under the law is a human right already, so it’s redundant.

Then there’s “security and humanitarian relief.” Security, in government terms, is like border security, and protection from our foreign enemies (military defense), and protection from domestic enemies to the people of the nation (FBI, or lawbreaking involving multiple states). Humanitarian relief is not a bona fide enumerated power, but as it happens we give aid to foreign nations, ostensibly to improve our relationships with them. But the connection of those two things as a single item is odd—unless they’re doing some conflation of security and economic stability and assuming that’s a government responsibility instead of the natural outgrowth of appropriate limited government.

“Science and technology” probably do go together, no problem there. But then there’s a three-part item: “democracy, participation, and leadership.” Why those three words together? All three abstractions sort of relate to self-government of the people, but what are the separate aspects of them requiring all three to be mentioned, and the common elements that make them together one item? I don’t know. And I suspect whoever wrote this doesn’t know either; they just thought it sounded weightier.

The real issue with this statement hidden on a Friday afternoon release is what Glenn Beck identifies: it attacks the family.

Here at the Spherical Model, we identify the essentials of civilization: 1. Civilization requires a religious people—including honoring God, life, family, truth, and property ownership; 2. Family is the basic unit of civilization. You see family come up twice—because it’s such a big deal. Family is what enables the perpetuation of both the species and the civilization. The Spherical Model has three overlapping spheres: political, economic, and social. And we have a long article identifying the principles in each, leading respectively to freedom, prosperity, and civilization—and away from tyranny, poverty, and savagery. In the section on civilization, we have a large sub-article on family, and why it’s essential to civilization.

So I’m on the same page with Glenn Beck. Beyond that, I recognize the words he’s using—because he’s referencing, and doing a lot of quoting from, “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” signed and sent out to the world September 23, 1995. I wrote about it for the 20^th anniversary. In that I tell the story of the late Richard Wilkins, who helped institute the World Congress on Families, when he attended his first international conference on families:

He told me that he spoke about the Proclamation on the Family, issued shortly before that by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which he was a devout member (as I am). At the time it came out, the issues in the Proclamation were such standard doctrine to us that he said he wondered at the reasoning. Since that time, he says he sees it as prophetic; every line in it is challenged in the world today. But in 1996 he happened to take a brochure of the Proclamation with him and had it in his pocket. When he shared those ideas, the opponents to the family (the previous speakers) hissed their disapproval, but the room at large gave him a standing ovation. They came up to him afterward to thank him for speaking what so many of them believed, and they formed long-standing alliances to work toward protecting the natural family from the international onslaught.

I remember that feeling at the time it was given, of “Why are we being told this? Isn’t this all obvious?” It was obvious then. But I look at it now, and it seems even more prophetic than it did six years ago. The family, sex and its purpose, procreation, gender, marriage—all of it. It’s all still true, but you might get yourself booted from social media, or fired from your job, for saying what was so obvious in 1995 that we didn’t even know it needed to be said. And it will put you at direct opposition to our current government.

So, as Glenn Beck speaks the words, they sound very bold. They need to be said—again. I’ve transcribed the last 6 minutes of his clip and include that in full: 

I want to share with you the fact that the family is under attack. That the sacredness of being a man, and the sacredness of being a woman, is under attack. And it’s under attack to do one thing: destroy the family. That’s it. This is the most evil plan I have ever encountered—to destroy the family.

Some organizations, like BLM, have that in their manifesto—to destroy the family. This is now going to be implemented by the federal government, through our banking systems and ESG [Environmental, social, and governance]. And through everything else. It will touch every aspect of your life.

screenshot of the BLM beliefs page, August 24, 2020
since removed from their website.

 

So I’m gonna go through a few things that are true. And, if you disagree with them, well, then we can still be friends, but I don’t think we’re on the same side. You may be fighting for the wrong side. And I want to share what I hold to be self-evident truth.

I’ll give you 90%, 95% Agree 95%? Great. Let’s fight together. If not, we should part ways.

Now, if one of your objections to what I’m about to tell you is that there is no God, see if you can work around that objection. I truly believe there is one, and we need to implore Him for His help. But if that is your objection, see if you can’t get around that to go with all of the other truths that I’m’ about to speak.

All human beings, male and female, were created in the image of God. They were created for a purpose male and female. Each—each has a divine nature and a destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of that eternal identity and its purpose. You were born a male or a female for a reason. And there are only two genders. God commanded, at the beginning, to multiply and replenish the earth. And that still should be our goal. It still is in effect. And procreation, and the powers that it takes to procreate should only happen between a man and a woman who are lawfully wedded as husband and wife. 

The beginning of The Proclamation on the Family

[sigh] Have I gone too far now?

Which means that, because that is a sacred power, to procreate, and it should be happening between a man and woman lawfully wedded as husband and wife, it means that that life that you create is divinely appointed. And thus all life is sacred, and abortion is murder. 

Husband and wife together have a responsibility to love and care for each other and their children. Parents together have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for the physical and spiritual needs, and to teach them to love and serve one another; to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. That is the responsibility of mothers and fathers, and they will be held accountable if they fail to discharge those obligations.

The family is sacred. It is the basic, fundamental building block. Thus, a marriage between a man and a woman is essential to, not only God’s plan, but to the universe.

Children are entitled to be born within the bounds of matrimony, to be reared by a father and a mother who honor their marital vows with complete fidelity. And happiness in family life is found most likely in the followings of the Judeo-Christian values and principles.

Successful marriages are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreation. 

from The Proclamation on the Family

As a dad, I am responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection of my family. My wife is primarily responsible for the nurture of our children. But we help each other on both of those things as equal partners. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t special cases. Of course there is. And extended families should lend support when needed.

But the disintegration of the family—the destruction of the family—will bring upon us as individuals, our communities, and our entire world calamities beyond your imagination. That’s why I believe: family first. You must stand up for these principles first.

 

The warning near the end of 
The Proclamation on the Family

 

A lot has changed in our world in the relatively brief 26 years since that proclamation was written. But every word of it is still true. And we do face calamities in our world, in our communities, when these words are abrogated. 

Sometimes I use big, less familiar, possibly abstract words too.
But I try to do that when it's the right word for meaning.

Conversely, many of the ills in the world would be relieved if we valued family so much that a critical mass of intact functional families civilized our savage world.

I stand for the family. When necessary, I declare opposition to the government in order to stand for the family. I hope at least some of us can avoid the calamities.

Redistricting Report

At our Tea Party meeting this past Saturday, we heard from local House Rep. Mike Schofield, who was on the Redistricting Committee, and also Tom Nobis, our SREC (State Republican Executive Committee) Chair, to talk about the outcome of the legislature’s redistricting process.

Rep. Mike Schofield at the Cypress Texas
Tea Party on October 23, 2021.
We meet at a BBQ place, and we work
around the stuff they store in that room.

Rep. Schofield is a good storyteller. He gets up to talk—he talks fast—and an hour and a half later he takes a breath. Before we get to redistricting, I’ll just share one of his stories, for anyone out there who thinks there’s no voter fraud. For background, during early voting, we can vote at any voting location. There were, I’m trying to recall, 40-60 voting locations. There were many more in 2020. He says, 

You may remember back in 2018 they actually beat me by 113 votes. Now, I’m sure I had more actual voters than my opponent did, but after they stuffed the ballot box in some places, we came up 113 short.

Now, by the way, they tried that again this time [2020]. There were 60 votes a day being cast in a precinct over here [SE Harris County] during my race. You may recall there was a pandemic. People were afraid to get out from under their bed. But somehow 60 people a day would drive from here [west end of Harris County] through the fourth largest city in America, out the other side, and vote in the same precinct in my race.

What was happening was, they were stuffing the ballot box. And they knew they had won by 113 votes last time, so they figured the 600-and-some votes they stole this time would be enough to win. What they didn’t know was that I was trying to beat my opponent so badly that, even with the 600 votes, we still beat her by 3500.

So, that kind of stuff goes on. And it goes on more now that the elections are being controlled by the Democratic Party. So, I figured, I’d better get on Redistricting and defend my district.

We didn't have literal ballot boxes to stuff. What he means, I think, is that someone got a list of names from his district and then voted for them. It would have to be someone with access to the machines. That's why it's important to have workers from both parties, as well as poll watchers.

House Districts and General Redistricting Info

I’m assuming similar discussions are going on across the country.

Rep. Schofield says he refers to redistricting as pushing the reset button. Populations move around. There’s growth in some places, not in others. He says,

Now, the very first principle of redistricting, no matter what part of the country you’re in, no matter what year it is, is population. That’s why we do it. People—they get so caught up in the partisan, and the racial and Voting Rights Act and all this, they forget what this is actually for.

The Constitution requires that we redistrict every 10 years to more or less make everything equal again. And the reason is, if you’re in a district like mine, we were the fourth largest district in Texas. And when they started, ten years ago, they were all roughly—we don’t require exact equality in Texas, but they were roughly equal. And then growth happens. Right? And some places shrink in population. Other places grow.

Of the 150 districts in Texas, in the House, the first largest growth and the fourth largest growth were both in Katy [west of Houston, west end of Harris County, and some in Ft. Bend County; Schofield’s was fourth] We’re supposed to have grown from about 167,000 people at the beginning of the decade to about 194,303. Exactly…. That’s supposed to be what we’re all supposed to get to: 194,303. My district had 282,000 people. So, if you lived in my district, your vote counted less, because you’re a lower percentage, than in someplace where they had 187,000 people in their district. Your vote counts on a proportional basis for less than theirs does.

Redistricting has to happen before primary elections, which happen early in the year of even-numbered years. Getting the numbers into the hands of legislators was delayed, so it couldn’t be done during the regular legislative session last January-through-May (in Texas, during odd-numbered years). It couldn’t even be handled during our first two 30-day special sessions.

We were concerned it wouldn’t get done in this third session either. The Dems had walked out of the first special session, saying they were preserving voting rights from the horrendous new legislation designed to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat. They ran out the clock while they were getting Covid and otherwise hanging out in DC. And they have fled the state before during redistricting legislation. This year, I guess they gauged, accurately, that people were already annoyed with them enough over their shenanigans, so they stayed in Austin during the third special session, which was dedicated to redistricting.

Even though the redistricting legislation has now passed, there’s always the possibility that someone will challenge it in court and delay our primary. But for now, we think our primary will happen on the first Tuesday of March, as scheduled.

Redistricting didn’t start from scratch at the beginning of this special session a month ago. Rep. Schofield, along with the committee, was working on map redrawing all through the legislative session, based on estimated numbers.

The numbers come from a snapshot in time: April 1, 2020. However many people, and wherever they were living on that date, that’s what counts. Schofield’s district, HD 132, grew by 30,000 in just one year, and may have grown another 20,000 in the time since the census date. That meant he needed to lose about 88,000 out of his district based on growth since the last census. Controlling how that went was why he wanted to be on the committee that got to decide. He’s puzzled by representatives who called him the last couple of weeks, worried about what was happening to their district. They could have called him any time since February, rather than waiting until it was being voted on.

There are rules determining how redistricting must be done. The purpose is to make all districts approximately equal in size. When they work on US Congressional districts, that has to be literally equal, down to the individual voter, but things aren’t quite that exact in the state House and Senate. There is a rule for the House that they can’t cross county lines. On at least two sides of Schofield’s district, that’s a constraint. Then there are efforts to use natural boundaries, such as highways, waterways, reservoirs, etc.

When you see contorted, oddly shaped districts, the ones that people use to describe gerrymandering, those are shaped that way in order to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act, to allow for minority representation. In Harris County, he pointed out one of these that is Hispanic, and another that is Black. The assumption, for those who set up those lines, is that they will vote Democrat, so it’s actually in the law that districts must be set up in a way to favor Democrats.

Oddly, the reason for the Voting Rights Act is to counter previous gerrymandering intent on preventing minority representation. That was done by Democrats. Every time. So, the Democrats gerrymandered to make districts the way they wanted them—based on race. And that caused a law to be put into place for the Democrats to make districts the way they want them—based on race. The solution? Somehow overcome the lie that the Republicans were the racists. It’s a slow process.

Anyway, while my House district , HD 138, shifted somewhat to the west, I’m still in the same district. I was moved in 2010, so I’m glad I don’t have to deal with another new House district.

Current and new House district maps
images available at District Viewer, here

Senate Districts

The Senate has 31 districts in the state. By comparison, there are about to be 38 congressional districts. So the state senators have more constituents than US Congressmen have.

Like the House, they start with the districts they had and make adjustments from there. They need to each have 940,178 more or less.  They don’t get to deviate as much as House districts do, because they don’t have a county line rule. But they can be off by a small handful.

Rep. Schofield gave us some behind-the-scenes play in the legislature. The Senate originates its own map and then sends it to the House, and vice versa. In most legislation, when a bill passes the originating chamber, it gets passed on to the other one, where it can undergo a fair amount of amending before getting back to the originators, who then can either concur with the amendments or get a reconciliation committee, made up of members of both chambers, to come to an agreement on what ought to be in the bill.

Redistricting bills, however, are expected to be left alone by the other chamber. As some Democrat House member once put it, “The Republicans are the opposition; the real enemy is the Senate.” If they don’t want they other chamber messing with their map, it behooves them both not to mess with the other chamber’s maps.

In order to avoid getting each other’s bills messed with, they have an arrangement where they will gavel down at exactly the same moment. If one chamber gaveled down (approved the other chamber’s map with a vote) first, the remaining chamber could then mess with its map at will, and there would be no leverage to stop it. So the two chambers, located at opposite ends of the building, open up all doors between the two, and coordinate so that both can gavel down at the exact same moment. Because, you know, trust is everything—but you can’t trust anybody.

Current and new Senate district maps
images available at District Viewer, here

Tom Nobis summarized for us the SD changes in Harris County and affecting Montgomery County, just to the north, with this graphic:

 

Congressional Districts

Congress is totally different in many ways. Mainly, they don’t draw their own districts. The state legislature does it. In Texas, that originates in the Senate, but it seemed to me they worked together on this map quite a lot.

Some people suggest putting together a non-partisan commission, to take politics out of redistricting. In theory that may sound good, but it’s not possible in reality. Rep. Schofield says,

No such thing as a non-partisan angel gonna drift down from heaven and make sure everything is fair.

He says, when the legislature goes through their process, everybody fights for their area. They tug and they pull, and they go, “I want these guys on the other side of the reservoir,” and so forth. There are a lot of complicated issues. You deal with the minority areas first—and that’s why they come out looking so oddly shaped. Then you deal with all the other things that the constituents and the representatives might care about.

But when you have these nonpartisan groups, say 7 of each of the two major parties, plus an impartial judge, what you get is, one side wins 8-7 and takes everything. That judge belongs to one of the parties, and may have been appointed by the governor. So that’s the tie breaker. There’s nothing non-partisan about it, except the label to fool the people.

Anyway, so you’ve got growth. In Texas, we’ve had growth—and added congressional seats—every census since statehood, I think he said. Wherever those new districts go, it’s like dropping two giant boulders in the middle of existing districts. And they have to have exactly the same number of people in them as every other district, when everything is said and done. Around 875,000. If you can’t get it right, you have to split up precincts, or blocks, or maybe just cut a house or two, until you get it exactly right. That is, according to how it was on April 1, 2020; you could be off by thousands by the time redistricting goes into effect, but it’s the count on that date that matters.

There were various places around the state that were suggested for the new districts. The decision finally came down to Harris County, where Houston is, and the Austin area.

The splat of the Harris County boulder came down on my district. I was in District 2, with Rep. Dan Crenshaw. He got pushed further north (not sure he’s actually still living in that district). And I’m now in the new CD 38. Wesley Hunt has declared as a candidate; he ran against Lizzie Fletcher in CD 7 two years ago. I imagine others will run as well. But he’s former special forces, a friend of Crenshaw. He’s conservative.  And happens to be black, which makes him bulletproof against certain criticisms. I’m looking forward to learning more about him.

What I’ve heard is that both Crenshaw’s district and the new district are likely to go safely Republican, and CD 7 will be sacrificed to the Democrats for the foreseeable future.

Rep. Schofield talked about the philosophy behind safe versus competitive districts. He said people complain when they’re in a district where their representative doesn’t agree with them on various issues—likely because they’re in a different party. If you’re in a competitive district, 49% or so of the district is going to feel like that—dissatisfied, unrepresented. But in a “safe” district, a higher percentage of constituents will be satisfied with their representative. So he’s changed his opinion over the years and now favors safe districts when possible.

That’s great if you’re in agreement with your representative, but what if you’re not? We’ve had sympathy for conservatives in Sheila Jackson Lee’s area for ages (she wins with over 80% of the vote; it’s  too much to be attributable to voter fraud). Rep. Schofield says, it’s not that you’re without representation. It’s like, when you’re in a group and order out for pizza, who gets to decide what kind of pizza? The guy who wants only cheese so everyone is OK with it? The one who wants meat lovers? The vegetarian? Whoever wins, the others still get their slice of pizza (the representation); they just may have to pick things off or go without what they would have preferred.

Current and new US Congressional district maps
images available at District Viewer, here

 

Other Districts

We talked only briefly about SBOE (State Board of Education) districts. The legislature sets those up as well. There were 15 before redistricting; there are 15 after. These are the largest in the state. It’s an unpaid position, without a bunch of constituents financially supporting a candidate. So getting to visit every part of the district is practically impossible.

We also talked about the Harris County Commissioner Precinct redistricting. This isn’t a legislative issue; it’s being done at the county level. But it’s on our minds. Harris County is, I think, the second largest non-state government jurisdiction in the US. It’s run by someone on her first job out of college, since 2018. It’s run badly. And it’s run according to whatever “progressive” (i.e., Marxist) strategies of the pushiest commissioner (one Rodney Ellis) wants. There are five commissioners: 3 Dems, 2 Republicans. These two intrepid Republicans go up against this wall of hypocrisy and graft daily. (The list of their faults and failings is too long for this late in a post.)  The Dems don’t like the opposition, the calling to account, the occasional public calling them out so the public knows what they’re up to. What they want to do is get rid of one of the Republican commissioners. They’ve chosen Tom Ramsey (mine is Jack Cagle). The plan is to pile as many Republicans into Cagle’s district as they can manage—taking them out of Ramsey’s. The hope is that they can then oust Ramsey and wreak havoc with a 4-1 Commissioner’s Court, plus Hidalgo the County Judge (executive). That would be the setup for a decade.

They may handle the redistricting at their regular Commissioners’ Court Meeting tomorrow (October 26) at 10:00 AM, hoping to slide it in before anyone notices. If you live here and would like to take a stand against local tyranny, you need to sign up by 8:00 AM to speak virtually (sign up and info here). 

If not, they will have a public hearing on Thursday (October 28) of this week, 12:30 PM. The County GOP was sending out announcements today, calling for a large voice from the people.

 

So, in summary, statewide we’re doing OK as conservatives. Locally, in Harris County, some of us are OK and some not. By law, redistricting has to be done. I’m glad this decade it was done with conservatives in the driver’s seat.

Some Are More Equal Than Others

Newly released footage of the surveillance cameras in the Capitol building on January 6^th were recently released. Law vlogger Robert Gruler’s video from October 18 talks about  it.

Gruler shows several clips of the 40 minutes released, of the same doorway; he shows on top the view looking out and on the bottom the view looking in, simultaneously. He shows several consecutive segments. These start around 2:30 PM on January 6, 2021. In the first, the hallway between an exterior door and an interior door is mostly empty, although some people, who look like they could have concluded or walked away from a tour, go from the interior door, through the hallway, and exit the building. And other people calmly enter the building. People are coming and going at will, with police present but not in any way hindering them.

Robert Gruler shows clips of surveillance footage
from the Upper West Terrace of the Capitol, exterior and interior doors.
At this point, people are allowed to come and go through this hallway.
screenshot from here

In the next segment, about ten minutes later on the time stamp than on the empty hallway video, you see police move toward the exterior door and stop people from continuing to come inside. So more people wait at the exterior door. A few police officers stand in the entrance and talk with some of the people at the front of the crowd. The people are standing and waiting, and the crowd builds but remains calm. You see one man, not an officer, walk from the interior and pass through the police and exit the building. The police do not seem at all alarmed by him. He simply exits. Another couple of times a person will begin to enter the hallway from the interior, see the police, and turn around and go back through the interior door. Police do not seem bothered about the people already inside the Capitol.

The same doorway, ten minutes later, police stop allowing
entry, and the crowd obeys, waiting outside.
screenshot from here

In a segment about four minutes later, one of the police officers speaks in the ear of another (we do not have audio), then taps another officer on the shoulder. Then the officers—it looks like a total of six, when we see them in lower frame—back up and enter through the interior door, allowing the crowd to follow them and enter the building, which they do, calmly, without any restraint from or conflict with the officers. It looks as if the police got orders to allow the people in now.

Gruler has drawn red arrows indicating the three visible officers;
the one in the center speaks to the one at his left, then taps the
one on the right, and then they allow the crowd to enter.
screenshot from here

So, what are we seeing? An orderly crowd allowed into the Capitol building by police officers. In this particular doorway—and we've seen both people in the interior and exterior of the building—we do not see rioting. We do not see shouting or agitation in the crowd. We see calm and restraint, and obedience to the officers. And then these restrained members of the crowd enter the building with permission.

Does that mean that no violence happened elsewhere? No. But we were told this was—Biden’s words in April—the worst assault on our democracy since the Civil War. Something supposedly started around 1:30, before President Trump finished his speech, before the crowd listening to him could have moved to the Capitol. But by 2:30 people are peacefully entering and existing the building with the permission of the Capitol police.

If it was worse than Pearl Harbor or 9/11, there must have been massive death, right? No. One woman, an unarmed veteran, was shot at close range by a Capitol police officer when clearly there was no need of deadly force. (By the way, she was denied a veteran’s military funeral.) That was the only gunshot at the Capitol that day. Not a single gun was found or confiscated from any protestor at the January 6 event. The only other deaths were deemed to be natural causes, including the death off Officer Brian Sicknick, who it was falsely reported had been bludgeoned by a fire extinguisher. Not only did that not happen to him, but there doesn’t appear to be evidence of anyone using a fire extinguisher as a weapon.

No insurrection charges have been made against those arrested and detained—many of them still await being charged. Most charges have been for trespassing, a minor offense. Some have been charged with “disrupting an official proceeding,” which is a law intended for acts such as shredding documents needed in a Congressional inquiry, not for a ceremonial proceeding such as was happening on January 6^th, and which continued unheeded after a few hours’ delay.

Despite the 6^th Amendment right to a speedy trial, some are still being held, unable to talk with family or counsel, kept in solitary confinement until eventually being brought to trial. The video surveillance released this week is part of the evidence. It is only now, in part, being provided, even though defense counsel is entitled to all of it from the moment it is to be used in the case—and it was available on or immediately after January 6^th. That’s ten months ago. Prosecutors claimed they had to go through the 14,000 hours of footage to get it in the right format for the defense. But that convenience service is not what is required of the prosecution; providing the raw footage is. That is what they should have done immediately. So it appears they have held off to avoid showing the benign nature of the vast majority of attendees at the Capitol. It appears they were afraid we would see footage such as Robert Gruler shared.

Roger Kimball
image from Imprimis

This month’s Imprimis newsletter is a piece by Roger Kimball, adapted from a speech he gave at Hillsdale College September 20^th. He lays out the case that the “hoax,” the hype surrounding the mostly banal event at the Capitol, is part of a larger picture, beginning with the Russian collusion hoax, in order to paint their opponent as the dangerous enemy. He says,

Of course, it is absolutely critical to the Democratic Party narrative that the January 6 incident be made to seem as violent and crazed as possible. Hence the comparisons to 9/11, pearl Harbor, and the Civil War. Only thus can pro-Trump Americans be excluded from “our democracy” by being branded as “domestic extremists” if not, indeed, “domestic terrorists.”

Kimball says that when Biden and others have referred to Trump and the 74 million people who voted for him as a threat to “our democracy,” what they mean is a threat to “their oligarchy.” He takes us back a bit further, to 2015,  

when the resources of the federal government were first mobilized to spy on the Trump campaign, to frame various people close to Trump, and eventually to launch a full-throated criminal investigation of the Trump administration.

What we know is that the Steele dossier, which was the sole pretext for the FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page and other American citizens, was false, known to be false, and was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC—its source kept unknown from the judges signing off on the warrants. We know, then, that the DNC knew, the Clinton campaign knew, and James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Rep. Adam Schiff knew, along with other Democrat House Intelligence Committee members and the upper levels of the FBI. Whatever they claimed in public, under oath, behind closed doors, they admitted they knew there was no evidence to merit spying on a presidential candidate.

They attempted to impeach President Trump beginning mere minutes after his inauguration; riots followed, with damage to property and injury to multiple police officers. As Kimball points out, “You will search in vain for media or other ruling class denunciations of the violent riots in Washington, DC, following President Trump’s inauguration.” Those rioters got off. The rioters who began in May 2020, following the death of George Floyd were praised and supported—our current VP actually funded some of their legal fees. As one commentator quipped, in a reference to Animal Farm, “some riots are more equal than others.”

When they did finally impeach Trump (but of course failed to remove him from office), it was on false charges that were not even an impeachable offense, and which they simply couldn’t support with any evidence beyond their over-puffed indignation. Then they impeached him a second time—after he left office—without any charges, because of January 6^th, even though he had clearly called for people to “peacefully and patriotically” walk to the Capitol and let their voices be heard—something that sounds an awful lot more like a 1^st Amendment right than an incitement to insurrection.

Kimball expresses something true about this whole thing:

Another lesson was perfectly expressed by Donald Trump when he reflected on the unremitting tsunami of hostility that he faced as President. “They’re after you,” he more than once told his supporters. “I’m just in the way.”

There’s a part of Kimball’s piece where he contests a quote from philosopher David Hume: “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” Kimball points out just how very quickly we have been losing our liberty. Maybe it's like the saying about bankruptcy: it happens slowly, slowly, and then suddenly. Of the sudden loss of freedom, Kimball uses as an example, one Joseph Hackett:

[Hackett] is a 51-year-old Trump supporter and member of an organization called the Oath Keepers, a group whose members have pledged to “defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.” The FBI does not like the Oath Keepers—agents arrested its leader in January and have picked up many other members in the months since. Hackett traveled to Washington from his home in Florida to join the January 6 rally. According to court documents, he entered the Capitol at 2:45 that afternoon and left some nine minutes later, at 2:54. [According to the video mentioned above, police were allowing entrance at this time.] The next day, he went home. On May 28, he was apprehended by the FBI and indicted on a long list of charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, and illegally entering a restricted building.

As far as I have been able to determine, no evidence of Hackett destroying property has come to light. According to his wife, it is not even clear that he entered the Capitol. But he certainly was in the environs. He was a member of the Oath Keepers. He was a supporter of Donald Trump. Therefore, he must be neutralized.

Joseph Hackett is only one of hundreds of citizens who have been branded as “domestic terrorists” trying to “overthrow the government” and who are now languishing, in appalling conditions, jailed as political prisoners of an angry state apparat.

The clearly biased congressional committee looking into the January 6 event—set up because it didn’t like the findings of the official investigation, which found there was no collusion—is on a fishing expedition, requesting every communication Trump or his advisors may have had. That means, ten months after the event, they don’t have a single statement or copy of a communication—like a tweet—that shows Trump or anyone surrounding him was involved in planning any sort of insurrection, violence, or illegal action of any kind. And note, they ought to have had that evidence before they impeached him (after his term). The former President is rightly taking them to court over their overbroad subpoenas into his private communications protected by executive privilege. Meanwhile, the current occupant of the White House, Biden, says he is waiving the former President’s right to executive privilege. It doesn’t work that way. (Robert Gruler discusses this in another video, here, at about 45 minutes in.) 

The Biden crowd seems rather disappointed that there wasn’t more violence on January 6^th. (Maybe they had paid for there to be more, and feel swindled.) They acted then, and continue to act, as if it were something much worse than it was. As Kimball says,

Turning Washington into an armed camp was mostly theater. There was no threat that the Washington police could not have handled. But it was also a show of force and an act of intimidation. The message was: “We’re in charge now, rubes, and don’t you forget it.” In truth, there is little threat of domestic terror in this country. But there is plenty of domestic conservatism. And that conservatism is the real focus of the establishment’s ire.

This current administration, more than past administrations, has proved that they cannot be trusted. They are lying about what happened on January 6^th entirely. They are holding political prisoners—in the way Cuba would, or the old Soviet Union, or North Korea—but totally anathema to the laws of the United States of America. They are separating and dividing us, weakening us on the international scene, causing a border crisis, and an economic crisis that’s beginning to show in supply chain problems—what we might one day view as a modern famine, where there’s plenty of food grown, but it can’t get into the hands of the hungry. They continue to foment fear of a treatable illness, censoring and mandating at every turn. It’s hard to believe this administration has our health in mind, when it’s obvious that control over us, and our compliance in thought and deed, is what they demand.

Kimball says a sad lesson learned from the January 6^th hoax is:

that America is fast mutating from a republic, in which individual liberty is paramount, into an oligarchy, in which conformity is increasingly demanded and enforced.

Miracle Max and wife Valerie, from The Princess Bride
image found here

In a reference to Benjamin Franklin, after the drafting of the Constitution and announcing it as a republic, can we keep it? We haven’t been fully keeping it for a very long time. But previously it always seemed to be just a matter of getting a little more power in Washington, and then we could straighten things out. What we need now, though, is a wholesale upending of the tyranny and a return to our constitutional republic. That’s a tall order.

I’m not without hope. But, to quote Miracle Max (The Princess Bride) after telling the heroes to “Have fun storming the castle!” he whispers to his wife, “It’ll take a miracle.” I hope a miracle rescue of our Constitution—and freedom for other good people in the world—has been in God’s plans all along, and we’re about to witness it.

Pronoun Lesson

I’m sure you come to a blog like this for grammar lessons. Who wouldn’t? Anyway, since pronouns—and your choice of pronouns—is such a big topic in media, I thought we ought to go over what pronouns are and what they mean.

A pronoun is a word used to take the place of a noun.

from Webster's New World Dictionary, College Edition, (c) 1982

There are a great many more varieties of pronoun than I’m covering here, but just personal pronouns will do for our discussion.

Personal Pronouns	Subject Case		Object Case		Possessive Case
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
First Person	I	We	Me	Us	My/Mine	Our/Ours
Second Person	You	You	You	You	Your/Yours	Your/Yours
Third Person	He/She/It	They	Him/Her/It	Them	His/Her(s)/Its	Their/Yheirs

 

If you’re familiar with the Bible, King James version, or maybe some Shakespeare, you might be aware of an additional Second Person group: Thou, Thee, and Thy/Thine. In other languages, Spanish for example, they are not considered archaic, but are commonly used. Interestingly, they are used for more familiarity, sometimes with inferiors such as servants, but also for more intimate relationships, such as among children and their parents or grandparents. If you thought that using these terms in prayer put more formal distance between you and God, the meaning is actually to bring you closer, as to a dear parent or grandparent in your familiar world.

If you’re from Texas, you might be familiar with some additional second person plurals:

·         Y’all = You plural, but maybe singular with implied others

o   Ex: Y’all are literally going to hell for believing that. (You and anyone who believes like you…)

·         All Y’all = You plural, including the whole group

o   Ex: Are all y’all going to the picnic on Saturday?

·         All Y’all’s = You plural possessive

o   Ex: Are all y’all’s kids signed up for the football league this season?

These personal pronoun forms are things you’ve actually known since you learned to speak English, so you hardly think about them. But when a part of speech is weaponized against you, maybe it’s time to think it through.

The thing about words is, the people who control the words control the thoughts. If you don’t want somebody else controlling your thoughts, then don’t let them control your words.

The pronouns people are having a kerfuffle about these days are the third person singular. These are the ones related to sex. We have male (he/him/his) and female (she, her/hers) and neutral (it/it/its). It generally refers to things, but can refer to people, particularly to babies, when the sex is not apparent, although this is done more commonly in Britain than in America where we just guess (often incorrectly).

Here’s an imaginary conversation about preferred pronouns.

Trans-activist: My name used to be Justin, but now it’s Justine. And my preferred pronouns are ze/zim/zir-zirs.

Me: Let me be clear. Your name now is Justine, but when I use a pronoun in place of Justine, I shouldn’t use you?

TA: Um. I don’t mean…

Me: Because it gets pretty awkward. Second person pronouns are pretty straight forward, and also happen to be gender neutral in English. But in speaking to Justine [points to the person] I shouldn’t use you?

TA: No. I guess I’m not talking about second person pronouns. You can use you when you talk to me.

Me: Well, thank you. That’s decent of you. So what pronouns are you preferring and for what reason?

TA: Well, when you refer to me by a pronoun.

Me: A pronoun other than you. I notice you use I and me when you refer to yourself. So those must be fine, right?

TA: Um, yes.

Me: So, is it third person pronouns you want to declare?

TA: Yes, I guess it is.

Me: Third person means—obviously, you’re the third person. You’re not in the dialogue between me and whoever else. You want to control what I say when I refer to you with another person in another conversation?

TA: I, um— Uh, yes?

Me: It seems to me that what I say to another person ought to be done in a way to convey my meaning to that person. So, if I were to refer to you, Justine, in a conversation with someone else, I would do it in a way that would convey who I meant. So I would use words that would do that. If you look like a male, I would probably use he/him/his, so I wouldn’t confuse the person I’m speaking to. And if you look like a woman, or are at least dressed to appear as one, as you are today, I would probably use she/her/hers, to match what the person I’m talking to is perceiving. Although it would depend on what we, in our conversation, seem to understand together.

I would never use words that have no meaning to me and probably not to the person I’m talking with either—like those ones you say you prefer.

TA: But you should learn those words. You should get used to them.

Me: Why?

TA: To show respect to people like me.

Me: But if they don’t convey meaning between me and the person I’m talking to, then that would be gibberish instead of vocabulary.

TA: But I demand that you show respect for people like me.

Me: People like you who use gibberish, you mean?

TA: No. Trans people like me.

Me: Respectfully, I don’t understand what business it is of yours what vocabulary I’m using in a conversation in which you are not a participant.

TA: I, uh…

Me: Here’s a deal I hope we can agree on. When I’m talking to you, I will use the pronoun you. When I’m talking to other people and refer to you, if you choose to listen in, then you can choose to pick apart my words, take offense, and malign me for my attempts to communicate clearly. But that is not civil on your part and is certainly not respectful of me.

Or you can realize it’s none of your business. And then we can co-exist quite nicely. Maybe even have good, understanding discourse.

So that’s your choice. But you do not get to choose what words I use in conversation with other people.

 

There are several reasons that conversation is imaginary only. One is that trans-activists such as Justin/Justine are not ubiquitous in my real life. In the general population, trangenders are maybe three in a thousand (although recruiting is going on to raise the rate); activists could be more plentiful, however. Another reason is that such people don’t allow you to get a word in. They shout you down. That’s what someone as reasonable as Jordan Peterson has experienced. 

Incidentally, Jordan Peterson recommends a book on pronouns, The Secret Life of Pronouns, by linguist James W. Pennebaker, which Peterson says mentions that pronouns are “part of what is called a closed linguistic category, and they don’t change.” So the made up ones really can’t be part of the conversation; they really are just gibberish.

chart used in this article originally from the University of Oklahoma's 
LGBT Ally Program Resource Guide

So, anyway, in such a conversation, the likelihood of being able to go through the language usage argument is pretty small. But maybe it will help one of you reading this to see the meaning of what they’re asking.

There’s a story, underway since May and June, but updated this week. I heard the discussion on the Robert Gruler law vlog yesterday.  And he referenced a Daily Wire story and a Fox News interview with that story’s author this week, and another with the father in the story, Scott Smith. This is the story of a father in Loudon County, Virginia, who had trouble with his school board, to put it mildly. I think we can piece together what has happened.

On May 28, 2021, a 9^th-grade female student was raped in Stone Bridge High School, in the girls’ bathroom by a male student wearing a skirt. The father was brought to the school with a call telling him his child had been involved in a physical altercation. But when he got there, he learned that what had actually happened was sexual assault—rape—but the school told him they would be handling it internally.

Schools are required to report to police such crimes. So admittedly he was upset with them. They called the police—on him, for making a scene (I believe he swore at the principal). Fortunately, in the ensuing conversations with the officers, they used a rape kit to gather evidence and opened the investigation.

Photo from the arrest of Scott Smith,
at the June 22 school board meeting
screenshot from the Robert Gruler video

It took two months before the perpetrator was arrested. But one month after the rape, at the school board meeting held June 22, on the agenda was the transgender bathroom policy for the school district. Smith, whose daughter was raped (we probably can't mention that too many times), came to ask why nothing had been done to secure his daughter’s safety, and the safety of others, at school. Why were they talking about this bathroom policy without even considering the rape of his daughter? Before he could speak, he was arrested and dragged out for unlawful assembly and disturbing the peace—because he was bigoted, racist, or anything else they might want to label someone who disagreed with their policies. If I’m understanding correctly, video of the father being dragged out went viral and was used to claim that parents were out of control and violent at the school board meetings—which, you might note, have not gone well in that county since then either. 

An additional detail, there is no evidence that Smith had signed up to officially speak for the one minute they would allow, so that is their excuse for claiming he was out of line and should be removed.

When the father got word out about the rape of his daughter, the head of the school board, a Mr. Ziegler, claimed they had no record of any such incident. It is possible that the school board wasn’t brought in on the case, and juvenile laws keep names from being reported. However, according to the Daily Wire, the father’s attorney verified that “a boy was charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio, related to an incident that day at that school.” The sheriff’s office does confirm that there is such a case involving sexual assault. The father is not making this up, as the school board implied while impugning his reputation with the video.

On August 11, the school board voted to implement their transgender bathroom policy.

On October 6, a 15-year-old boy was charged with sexual battery and abduction of a female student, this time at Broad Run High School in the same district. The sheriff’s office confirms that the two cases are related but does not confirm it is the same male perpetrator. Smith, however, claims that it is. I’m not understanding how a boy charged with rape by late July is in school to commit another crime on October 6. It would be easy to confirm it wasn’t the same student, if the perpetrator of the May 28 crime was not roaming free in school on October 6. It was this second crime that prompted Smith to go to the media this week. He had been told the best way to seek justice for his daughter was to remain quiet, but authorities had let another girl be victimized. So he decided he shouldn't keep quiet any longer.

Scott Smith (right) was interviewed by Laura Ingraham on Fox News
the screenshot is from Robert Gruler's video

What the father alleges is at issue is that the school board hid information about the crime against his daughter in order to protect its woke policy. I think he’s not wrong. And it’s not out of line to assume he and the parents of the other female victim have cause to sue this school district for gross negligence.

It seems obvious to me that, since evidence shows gender identity does not necessarily affect sexual preference, a boy who is attracted to girls, who claims to be a girl, is placed in a voyeuristic setting when allowed into female bathrooms or locker rooms. And his being stronger physically, as a biological male, puts girls in jeopardy. Refusing to consider this while writing up a bathroom and locker room policy is gross negligence on its face.

And the concern is not new. We went through this in Houston, back in 2014, when our mayor attempted to implement such a policy. It’s not so much transgenders we’re worried about; it’s sexual predators. Making it so we can’t question their presence in our private places puts us at risk. I wrote about it here. Just as in Houston, those “compassionate” policymakers call parents like Scott Smith bigoted conspiracy theorists, claiming such assaults don’t happen, even while stats pile up.

Gruler’s video goes on to detail what’s in the school district’s policy. Additional privacy within bathrooms is probably not a bad thing. Think Buccee’s, if you’re in Texas, where you have a solid locked door, instead of a flimsy stall with gaps around the door. But that’s probably not enough to keep students safe from determined perpetrators who are given a safe place—and cover from a school board and its “compassionate” policies.

Also, the policy sees itself as the ultimate authority on what is best for the transgender student, particularly if the student’s assertion of a different gender is at odds with what the parents believe about their child. If the parents don’t affirm the child’s delusions, the school will support the student while keeping the parent uninformed.

In the policy, of course, is a pronoun section: “School staff shall, at the request of a student or parent/legal guardian, use a student’s chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their consistently asserted gender identity.” Since we’re doing grammar here today, note that “a student” is singular, but “their” is plural—because using “his or her or whatever pronoun such student chooses” would have been awkward.

from the FAQ related to the Loudon County School Board policy,
pronoun policy highlighted
screenshot from the Robert Gruler video

And how does a teacher know a student’s alternate name or pronoun details? There’s an online database system, which I suppose the teacher is expected to memorize for each and every student. Or maybe the teacher can get online and search it in the middle of class discussions to avoid "mis-gendering." And/or there’s a personal request, if nicknames and pronouns aren’t in the database, and then the teacher must just remember.

Again, I assert that the requirement is for use of pronouns in conversations the transgender person is not a part of. Maybe in the same room, but really none of their business. That ought to give us a clue about the bigger picture. This is not about mutual kindness or respect. You would not have a school board covering up the rape of a child in order to promote their policies, if this were about kindness and respect. It is about thought control. And it is about control by institutions over families and parents.

What they did to shut up that father at the school board meeting—put yourself in that place. They want to shut you up. If they had listened for even thirty seconds, everyone would have been better off. But it also would have derailed their policy plans.

Let’s hope you and/or your child or loved one never has to suffer as this father and his daughter have suffered—and the next victim as well.

But one thing is certain: giving in on language is a big deal. And it is something you still have control over.

Use the pronouns you know are appropriate, the ones you’ve been using all your life. And, if you’re put in that position, tell anyone who says you should use their preferred pronouns that it is none of their business what words you use in a conversation they are not a part of.