Just to Be Clear

I plan to make this short today. There’s something I want to spell out, as clearly as I can manage. I’ll say it slowly and carefully, so it doesn’t go over the heads of—someone like California Governor Newsom, who proposed a 28^th Amendment to the US Constitution yesterday, to nullify the 2^nd Amendment.

Governor Gavin Newsom, image found here

His announcement says they’re not really touching actual gun rights; they’re just—well, here’s what it says: 

While leaving the 2nd Amendment unchanged and respecting America’s gun-owning tradition, the Governor’s proposal guarantees common sense constitutional protections and gun safety measures that Democrats, Republicans, independent voters, and gun owners overwhelmingly support – including universal background checks, raising the firearm purchase age to 21, instituting a firearm purchase waiting period, and barring the civilian purchase of assault weapons.

The federal government is limited; they cannot do any federal gun laws. To refresh your memory on the 2^nd Amendment, it says, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Shall is a legal term. It is absolute. Infringing on the right to keep and bear arms is something the federal government cannot do.

There’s this other little clue, near the end of Newsom’s paragraph, telling us they’re not serious about protecting our rights: “barring the civilian purchase of assault weapons.” How are they defining that? Because we know from long experience that “assault weapon” is not an actual category; it is a catchall for “any gun we think is scary looking enough that we can convince people to think it’s an automatic military-grade weapon,” even when it’s just a simple rifle, such as an AR-15, which is a brand name, meaning Armalite Rifle. It is not an automatic rifle, which has been illegal for decades; it is a fairly basic semi-automatic rifle. It was not developed for the military, although some versions have been adopted by the military, because of its light weight and ease of use.

an AR-15 rifle
image from here

If a threatening bad guy has a gun, the threat can best be stopped by a good guy with a gun—and most efficiently by the person being threatened, because it’s immediate, instead of after damage is done. Government doesn’t get to set the terms, or decide on the tools, or determine the safe and lawful use of those tools.

There is plenty more we could say about weapons, and the anti-gun crowd’s harangues against all guns held by law-abiding citizens. But we’re keeping this simple, for their sakes, and in slightly larger print.

The right to self-defense isn’t granted by government; the right belonged to the people before any US government was formed. The right to defend oneself is inherent in all human beings.

We have the right to self-defense, as human beings, because we got that right from God. Even if you don’t believe in God, you don’t stop having the right to self-defense. It’s inalienable.

We don’t get the right to self-defense from the Constitution; the Constitution declares the right, to make sure no tyrannical government oversteps its lawful limits and attempts to infringe on that right. That’s true of all the rights in the Bill of Rights—the first 10 Amendments. And it’s true of other rights not stated (as summarized in the 9^th and 10th Amendments). These other rights include, for example, the right to the care and upbringing of our children, or the right to choose how we attempt to make a living, or the right to make medical decisions for our own bodies. Government doesn’t get to dictate our choices, unless our choices directly prevent another person from experiencing their God-given rights.

There. Just three paragraphs. If read slowly enough, that should be clear now.

We need a reminder, then, as John Adams put it:

“Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

There’s a paragraph on the Spherical Model website, where I say why we need a belief in God:

Why Every Civilized Society Must Be a Religious Society

If rights are God-given to every human being, then there must be a God from whom they come. Without God granting the rights, then “rights” would be totally dependent on whoever or whatever entity currently wields power over human beings. So, freedom from tyranny is only possible if we acknowledge God as the right-giver, and then we set up governmental systems for the specific purpose of protecting those rights—limiting governmental power to protecting rights rather than taking or granting them.

I was reminded of this in a recent interview with Robert P. George, in which he says, 

Robert P. George
image from here

But we are a country founded on the principle of ethical monotheism, the idea that there is a more-than-merely-human source of meaning and value—a Creator, a God who cares about us, who endows us with rights, and to whom we are ultimately answerable for how we conduct ourselves. So it’s not a merely human source of rights and obligations. It’s a divine source. And since our basic rights did not come from presidents or kings or parliaments or congresses, or any merely human power, those rights can’t be taken away legitimately by any merely human power.

So faith in God plays a very important role in the American constitutional order, a very important role, historically, in our self-understanding as Americans. And when faith in God, trust in God, and fidelity to God begin to wane, there are real social and political consequences. Our sense of our responsibilities begins to weaken, including our responsibility to honor and protect and never violate the rights of others.

Our “rights can’t be taken away legitimately by any merely human power.” That does not prevent tyrants and would-be dictators from attempting to take them away. Such despots lie, cheat, and steal—and sometimes harass and prosecute—to override any protections we have from what they see as that pesky piece of parchment people keep bringing out, that old Constitution we revere for some reason. They’ve been attempting this override with impunity. And they only get stopped when enough of us, referred to as We the People, take a stand and say, “No! You can’t do that.”

So, to be crystal clear—No, you can’t create a 28^th Amendment that allows you to take away a God-given right, one that is spelled out in bright letters in the Constitution by prescient writers who foresaw people like you who would try to do this very thing. No. You can’t tyrannize us without our consent. And, like our forefathers, we do not consent to tyranny.

What Are the Inalienable God-given Rights?

With the kids home from school, maybe this is a good time for a civics lesson—one they probably wouldn’t be getting (but should) if they were in class. Feel free to share this with them. They might understand more than you’d expect.

Why do we refer to God-given rights, as our founders did, as opposed to government-given rights?

If God is the source of a right, then that is final; no earthly power can take away that right. If it’s not innate, given to us by God simply for being born, then it is given by someone earthly who can take it away. If it’s from god, it’s permanent.

Human history tells us, however, that there are plenty of earthly powers that fail to respect those God-given rights, pretend they don’t even exist, and trample over them—trample over the people to whom those rights belong.

That doesn’t stop those rights from existing; it just means those earthly powers are tyrants—whether governments or criminals.

Governments are established to protect the people’s God-given rights. But government, like fire, tends to spread and burn things it wasn’t intended to burn.

That means we, the people, need to be constantly vigilant, to prevent the spread of government beyond its protective purpose.

America’s founders set up our government carefully. They had certain expectations based on centuries of English Common Law. And, because of the distance between the original colonies and Great Britain, they got used to a lot of self-government. That made it easy for them to recognize government overreach, and they pushed back against it.

If you read the list of abuses of power in the Declaration of Independence, you can see many of the things they recognized as tyranny, which were antithetical to a free people. I went through the list of abuses of power in the Declaration, as a thought exercise this week, to identify the right(s) each complaint dealt with. I didn’t always know how to categorize the complaint, but it was enlightening to find multiple complaints related to the same rights. It shows us what they didn’t like, what they saw as tyranny.

So, what are the rights that they showed were being trampled?

One was that they had a right to the rule of law, rather than ruler’s law. Ruler’s law is whatever the ruler says it is, making it capricious, unfair, and tyrannical. The right to the rule of law is what they’d come to expect for half a millennium, since the Magna Carta. They weren’t inventing something new and then complaining that their monarch wasn’t going along; their monarch was bound by the law—so he was clearly violating that law when he ruled by fiat.

The right to self-rule was another big one. The law the people were subject to ought to be something they agreed to; they have a right to representation, to have a voice in what becomes law. They wanted things to be local, to respond to their actual needs. And they wanted a say in what that law was. They rejected having law imposed on them from high up and far away.

They had the right to equal protection before the law—unlike past tyrannies that favored some classes over others, regardless of behavior. They also mention that justice should be swift, and local—instead of forcing them to travel far from home. And records should be available locally—they had a right to government information, the right to transparency of government.

They had the right to property, and to what is often called the “bundle of sticks” that comprise property rights:  

image from here

·         Right to determine how your property is used—right to control and use property.

·         Right to benefit from the use of your property (as you’d benefit from using the milk from a cow you own).

·         Right to transfer your property to another—by selling or giving.

·         Right to destroy/dispose of your property.

·         Right to exclude others from using, benefiting from, or destroying your property.

image from here

Let’s add to these the Bill of Rights—which are not rights given to us in our Constitution, but our Constitution protects us from having government abridge these rights. All of them come under the broader categories of the rights of life, liberty, and property.

These are five in the First Amendment.

·         Freedom of religion—government can neither establish a state-favored religion nor prohibit from freely exercising their religion.

·         Freedom of speech—government cannot get in the way of people freely speaking their opinions, beliefs, facts that they know.

·         Freedom of the press—government cannot prevent the printing of news and media, sometimes extended to freedom of expression.

·         Freedom of assembly—government cannot prevent people from peaceably assembling, or gathering together with whomever they choose.

·         Right of redress of grievances—government is subject to being petitioned, or sued, when citizens perceive that government has harmed them.

The Second Amendment is the right to self-protection. Here’s a basic difference between a free society and subjects to a ruler. Free people have the right to protect themselves from attack—even using weapons, even causing death in cases in which their life or the life of another is threatened. A subject to a ruler who has abridged this right is dependent on the benevolence of the ruler to provide protection of not. And the ruler might abridge this right particularly to prevent an uprising among the subjects. The founders wanted to make sure that right to self-protection would not be abridged.

The Third Amendment may seem foreign to us today. But in the founders’ time—and this is mentioned in the Declaration—is freedom from having a standing army living among us, including quartered in our homes. Think of it as being drafted into donating your housing space to a military, and in their case a military that was set up not to protect them, but to protect the faraway government’s interests from the people.

The Fourth through Eighth Amendments relate to judicial fairness issues.

The Fourth Amendment is the right to be secure—our persons, houses, papers, and effects—from unreasonable searches and seizures. You yourself, and what you own, are not the government’s possessions for the taking. There has to be a lawful reason for depriving a person of these natural rights.

The Fifth Amendment relates to judicial fairness. It prevents a person from being forced to testify against himself in capital or otherwise serious crime. Also, it prevents a person from being put in jeopardy more than once—a second trial after being found not guilty. It prevents a corrupt government from preventing a person from going about his life by continually putting him in court over the same issue.

 The Sixth Amendment is also about judicial fairness: the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury in a local jurisdiction. Also, the accused must be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be able to face witness against him, to have a process compelling witnesses in his favor, and to have defense counsel.

The Seventh Amendment is the right to a trial by jury in controversies over a certain minimal amount, and the jury’s decision shall not be overthrown. Also, the rules of common law must be followed.

The Eighth Amendment prevents excessive bail from being required, excessive fines from being imposed, and no cruel and unusual punishments afflicted.

The Ninth and Tenth Amendments are the miscellaneous everything else.

The Ninth Amendment makes it clear that mention of rights in the Constitution does not mean those are all the rights there are. Other rights cannot be denied. The people retain those.

The Tenth Amendment make it clear that any duty not delegated in the Constitution to the United States are duties and rights still held by the States and the people.

The rights that are included in the Bill of Rights reveal ways the founders had experienced tyrants trying to take their rights away, so they thought they needed to be spelled out most clearly—even though they were self-evident and inalienable.

But those last two show they understood that there are more rights, none of which can be taken from individuals except as the just punishment for a crime.

One of those not mentioned is parental rights: to see to the care and upbringing of their children. Another might be making your own healthcare choices.

But, in short, how do you know it’s a God-given inalienable right? It has to be something you’re born with. You deserve it because you’re human. Beyond parents obliged to caring for their child, it must be something others don’t have to be put into servitude to provide for you.

Pascal, Camus, and God-given Rights

There’s a quote I frequently come across by Camus:

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is.—Albert Camus 

I’m not sure he actually lived that way, but it’s an interesting theory. It’s related to a philosophical argument presented by French mathematician Blaise Pascal, referred to as Pascal’s Wager. He proposes that humans bet their lives on whether or not God exists. As Pascal argues, it’s rational to live as though God exists, and to seek to believe in God. If a person is wrong, his loss is finite (current pleasures, luxuries, etc.), but he stands to receive infinite gains (eternity in heaven) while avoiding infinite eternal losses (eternity in hell).

Blaise Pascal
image from Wikipedia

What if we try a similar wager on the related idea of God-given rights? Our nation was founded on an idea—rather than a geography or a tribal connection, like most other nations. The idea is that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” And, did we mention, God created us as equal—not the same, but with the same rights before the law. No one is born royal, or noble, while others are born as something less than human.

If God made us equal, with those unalienable rights, then we have a right to govern ourselves, rather than an inborn obligation to be subject to rulers.

Those who don’t believe in God are left with man-given rights. Who chooses what rights you’ll be granted? Who decides? Whoever is in the position to rule—which is likely to be whoever is the biggest, strongest, and meanest. That’s true whether there’s anarchy or a statist tyranny.

You don’t get freedom, prosperity, and civilization if you don’t have a government that is just powerful enough to protect your God-given rights but limited enough that it does not infringe on your rights. Such a government is simply the best way.

Even if people didn’t believe in God, it would still be better for them if they set up a system as if they were protecting God-given rights.

It’s better to live in a society where everyone practically takes it for granted that they can think and express their opinions, meet with others who share their beliefs, choose their own ways of making a living, or seeing to the care and upbringing of their own children. It’s better not to fear government spying and imprisoning you for your beliefs and opinions and pursuits.

Now that we’ve had America for a couple of centuries as an example—even non-believers want those freedoms, and even expect them and demand them.

But there’s no rationale for that expectation, because nonbelievers by definition have no more rights than what their ruler sees fit to allow them.

Using Spherical Model language, those who don’t believe in God-given rights are living below the equator, in the southern hemisphere of tyranny, just trying to get the best balance between chaos and control—all under the banner of some flavor of tyranny.

To them, it’s just a matter of forcing others to go along with the direction they want. They don’t look up and find freedom, prosperity, and civilization. They might think that the most we can hope for is some level of non-misery, if we’re lucky, and maybe we can find the right formula of statist tyranny to give us the impression of freedom, prosperity, and civilization—or at least some imaginary idea of fairness.

When they’re arguing with us, it’s against what they view as a stripe of tyranny they do not prefer. They do not even know they are arguing against freedom, prosperity, and civilization—and asserting a preference for tyranny, poverty, and savagery.

A Facebook friend, T. F. Stern, wrote a piece about a conversation he had with a socialist friend:

While exchanging ideas my friend boasted about how much better some socialist countries in Europe treated their citizens (subjects) and how Americans should consider moving in that direction.

My response, omitting his name out of respect for his privacy, “…there is no such thing as a socialist country that respects individual God-given inalienable rights.  While there are some that infringe on them less than others, the constitutional republic established by our founders with Divine intervention is by far much more desirable.  How about we, as individuals, how about we work at restoring that ‘more perfect union’ rather than seeking a replacement.”

He’s right. None of those countries has a guaranteed right to free speech, for example. Things go along fine—unless and until you disagree with what the government allows you to believe.

So, the question is, how do you enlighten someone in that much darkness? I’m not sure. They’re arguing against all the forms of tyranny except the one they prefer, and they assume we’re doing the same—except that they think our flavor of tyranny is certainly worse than theirs, so they dig in their heels.

Founding documents
image from here

If only we could get them to recognize the value of the experiment. As Pascal and Camus suggest: try living as if God does indeed exist. Let’s try living as if God-given rights do indeed exist. And therefore, let’s live as if our law—our Constitution—intentionally limits what government can do, so we can all live free. There’s been a world of history of their way, the no-God-given-rights way, the ruler-tyranny way.

It’s just possible that the Constitution works every time it’s tried. The possible benefits are immense and unlimited. On the other hand, the misery of tyranny—with the poverty and savagery that go hand-in-hand with it—is just as immensely negative. And the key difference is whether it should be a tyrant bestowing rights, or God. I choose God.

The Basic Principles

It’s the start of a new year, so it seems like an appropriate time to review what the Spherical Model is. I’ve done the description of the model a number of times:

Condensed version here: The Political Sphere Is Round 

Video here: https://youtu.be/IGoh5X-CPGA

The whole website here: www.sphericalmodel.com

In all of these we’re changing the language from a right/left dichotomy to a three-dimensional model. The hope is that, with old language out of the way, we can discuss the principles that lead to the best outcomes: freedom (instead of tyranny), prosperity (instead of poverty), and civilization (instead of savagery).

Rather than review what the model looks like, today we’ll cover the basic principles that lead to the best outcomes—upper northern hemisphere—in the three overlying spheres: political, economic, and social.

Go North on the Political Sphere

The Political Sphere

Government must be limited to its proper role: protecting life, liberty, and property. We can ask (and insist that our government officials ask and honor) a series of questions to test whether or not a policy fits within the freedom zone:

·         Is the policy being debated something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the right to delegate to his/her government?  For example, a person has the right to protect his own life and property. He can, therefore, combine resources with his neighbors and hire a government entity, such as a sheriff, to do that job for him. Similarly, the several states can combine to delegate the power of defending the nation to a national government entity. Conversely, a person does not have the right to take his neighbor’s excess grain production, for example, and bestow it on himself, because his neighbor was more prosperous in a particular season. He can, of course, ask his neighbor for charity, but he cannot coerce the neighbor to give. That would rightfully be considered theft. Therefore, the person cannot delegate the redistribution of wealth to the government to do for him.

·         Does the policy infringe in any way on the rights enumerated in the US Constitution Bill of Rights? Does the policy infringe on the free exercise of religion or try to establish a particular sect as a state religion? Is political speech hindered? Does the policy infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms? Does the policy constitute an illegal search or seizure? Does the policy deprive a person of life, liberty, or property when the person has not committed a crime for which that deprivation is the just sentence? Does the policy try to claim for government a power that was not specifically granted in the Constitution? etc. If the policy infringes on God-given rights, then government cannot take that power without usurping power from the people.

·         Is the idea being debated a proper role of government; i.e., some aspect of protection (including defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea is outside the Constitution and south of the freedom zone.

·         

Go North to the Prosperity Zone

The basic principle for economic prosperity is: the person who creates the wealth gets to decide how to spend it.

The Economic Sphere

The closer we get to that principle, the more prosperous the society.

Inequality of outcome is not a problem government should solve. In fact, protecting property is pretty much the only assignment of government related to the economy. We know from long experience that government interference in the economy, for whatever well-intentioned purpose, will cause negative consequences—usually the exact opposite of the stated goal of the interference.

Included in its job of safeguarding our wealth, government can be charged with coining/printing money. But whenever it prints/coins/creates money not representing actual created wealth, it devalues money, robbing earners of some portion of their wealth.

So, above all, we get prosperity in a free-enterprise society where government is limited to protecting property.

What do we do about the poor?

That is a combination of an economic question and a social question. “For ye have the poor always with you,” (Matthew 26:11). If we want to help one another, it has to be a free-will charitable gift—not a coercion of government. Government is incapable of charity; it is only an exertion of power, or coercion. So government needs to stay out of the issue of helping the poor.

If we live in a civilized society, we will care about one another. We will go through churches, organizations, and individuals to help those who need help.

There will always be a bottom 10% of earners. But the goal is to raise the standard of living so that even those lower earners have basic food and shelter, and, whenever possible, the opportunity to get out of poverty and become self-sufficient.

Respecting one another’s property rights, obeying laws, and honesty in business transactions are also necessary for economic prosperity, so the interrelationships of the spheres becomes evident. Political freedom from limited government, plus the self-government of civilized people set a background for economic prosperity.

So, economic prosperity comes when we have a free-market combined with philanthropy, and a government strictly limited to protecting property.

Go North to the Civilization Zone

The Social Sphere

In the Spherical Model, Civilization is more than a society where people write records, have a certain amount of technology, and live together in cities. It is a society free from savagery. Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

As with the other spheres, where good people agree that freedom is better than tyranny, and prosperity is better than poverty, civilization is better than savagery. These are not close choices; they are clearly different.

A civilized society requires a critical mass of people who live a certain way.

·         A civilized society must be a religious society.

o   Not all religious societies are civilized (according to my definition), but every civilized society is a religious society. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.

o   Rights come from God, not from government or some human grantor; so belief in God is the basis of freedom.

o   Individuals feel accountable to God in this life and the life to come, so they choose to self-govern.

·         The religious beliefs of the people must include honoring God, life, family, truth, and property (this is the summary of the Ten Commandments).

·         Because it perpetuates the civilization, family is the essential basic unit of civilization. There must be a critical mass of married mothers and fathers raising their own children to be civilized people.

So those are the basic principles of the Spherical Model.

If we can agree that we want freedom, prosperity, and civilization—as opposed to tyranny, poverty, and savagery—that’s a lot of agreement. And then we can move the conversation on to how we get those outcomes. I’ve proposed what I believe are the true principles. Most of what I write about here relates to how these principles are playing out in our world.

What Freedom Looks Like

It seems natural to me that people would want to enjoy freedom. I don’t mean leisure time activities, or having great wealth so you don’t have to work. I mean freedom to make decisions about your own life and how you’ll spend it.

So I am puzzled by the large numbers of the population who choose less freedom. What is it they believe they are getting?

I don’t know the answer to that question. But I am always looking for better ways to explain the Spherical Model goals of freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Back in January I wrote a post defining freedom, liberty, and some related words. It included a quote from Lincoln, showing he had thought about the definition of freedom, well enough to look at all sides and come to a conclusion based on principle. That truth was known in 1864, so it ought to still be known today.

I recently came across a piece written by Frenchman Benjamin Constant in 1816. This was in the decades following the American Revolution, the French Revolution and their various attempts at self-rule, and British movement toward a more representative parliamentary rule. The whole of the piece was on comparing the then-modern definition of liberty to the ideas used in ancient societies, which excluded individual rights. In the piece he has a description of liberty—a synonym for freedom—that I think we can still find useful.

I have used only Benjamin Constant’s words, but I turned it into a bullet-point list to make it easier to grasp:

First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a French-man, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today by the word “liberty.” For each of them

·         it is the right to be subjected only to the laws,

·         and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals.

·         It is the right of everyone to express their opinion,

·         choose a profession and practice it,

·         to dispose of property, and even to abuse it;

·         to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings.

·         It is everyone’s right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they and their associates prefer,

·         or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is most compatible with their inclinations or whims.

·         Finally it is everyone’s right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed.

If that is freedom, which we mainly agree we want, then why do so many people want government that will take, by force, wealth from some and arbitrarily give it to others?

Why are there speech codes to prevent free speech on school and college campuses?

Why are there unelected government officials deciding how a person can use his own property, if a puddle gets called a wetland, or a particular creature is found upon the property?

Why are people compelled to buy insurance, at ever higher rates, regardless of their health or willingness to pay for care out-of-pocket?

Why are business owners being compelled to violate their own religious practices, or else be forced out of business?

Why did my school district get threatened with a lawsuit (by someone not even in the district) for having an opening prayer at its board meetings?

Why are people blacklisted, or have their property defaced, for supporting one particular candidate or another, or for belonging to a particular party, or holding the beliefs that our country was founded upon?

Why are people being forced to share bathroom or locker room spaces with people of the opposite sex?

Why are certain officials allowed to break the law with impunity while the rest of us are prosecuted?

Why is there so much indoctrination and enforcement in education, at such high cost for such poor results?

Why are states being forced by a bare majority of unelected judges to redefine marriage away from what it has been for all the millennia of recorded history?

Why is government outlawing entry-level jobs that bring in less than $15 in value per hour?

The questions could go on. On one side of the spectrum—the liberal elite, the progressives, the socialists, or whatever you want to call them—people are in favor of coercion, manipulation, and tyranny. In Spherical Model language, they are all for southern hemisphere tyranny and against freedom—although they are often just fine with libertine licentiousness.

On the other side of the spectrum—the Constitutional conservatives—people are in favor of northern hemisphere freedom, prosperity, and civilization, based on principles.

There is no point to compromise. Example: Say you have a very bad house guest who is found with the good silverware, falling out of his sleeve as he says goodbye at the door. Instead of returning it, he unabashedly keeps all the pieces still awkwardly up his sleeve and says, “I’ll just take this fork, and you can keep that knife.” When someone is taking our freedom, that is what compromise looks like. It’s not acceptable.

The appropriate response would be to detain the guest, recover all of your silverware, warn all of your friends—and possibly call the police to prevent the guy from stealing from others. In order to do that, you have to have a concept of what is right, what you own, and what civilized behavior requires of guests. For most people, that’s pretty clear.

So, with recovering our freedom, maybe we could use some righteous indignation. Maybe we need to speak up and remind everyone what freedoms God endowed us with--and stop giving in to that thief pretending to be your guest, who requires even more of you after you notice the thieving.

Dream Nation

If I were to found a nation from scratch, what would it be like? It would look a great deal like the US Constitution. It would base government on the underlying principle that rights come from God. People will try to take away those rights, and they must be prevented. Government serves that limited purpose. Government should be used to protect our lives, liberty, and property—and the free choice of work to acquire property.

This new nation would have to be a break-off or restart of something existing, since the world is pretty much fully named and occupied now. The words declaring this new nation might include something very much like

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

And then they would go on to describe why there should be this new government in place of the old:

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

There might follow a list of the grievances—the laws broken by the previous government. And after that list of government’s crimes against the people, the new nation would declare its independence. The signers would invoke their “Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence,” and they would “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

This is how it was done 240 years ago, at the birth of the United States of America. Appeals to the law that was supposed to guarantee their natural rights had been underway for decades. It appeared every avenue of making things right was exhausted. At the time of the Declaration, war was underway, and continued for several more years. Only Divine Providence could have led to the miraculous victory. Eventually the fledgling nation grew and prospered, and the mother country stopped trying to re-wrest control.

Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Texas Declaration of
Independence was signed in 1836
photo from Wikipedia

Similarly, in 1836, a section of Mexico listed grievances, and after exhaustive efforts to redress wrongs by appealing to the constitutional law of the nation were attempted and rebuked by the illegitimate dictator, independence was declared. So the Republic of Texas declared independence. A war was already underway, and continued. But with miraculous help from Divine Providence, the dictator-president was defeated in a brief battle at San Jacinto, to the east of present-day Houston.

The fledgling nation struggled, and before many years asked to become one of the United States of America. And has prospered considerably since—far beyond anything imagined by the mother country. As a single state within the US, it is the twelfth largest economy in the world.

So, there’s a pattern. A constitution is in place, promising the people protection of their God-given rights. Then tyrants get power and ignore the law. The free people then try to assert their rights through legal appeals, through reason, through common sense. And their appeals are ignored. Then the people—enough of them—come to see that a complete break is necessary, so that they can form a new nation that doesn’t allow government tyranny.

The tyrant nation doesn’t want to let them go peacefully and attempts to force submission. But, God willing, the free people win their independence.

If the tyrant nation didn’t try get the people to submit through brutal force, the war part of becoming independent would be eliminated.

So, if I were to have what I wanted, it would be to jettison the tyrants from the government—and any portions of the country where the voice of the people prefers the tyrants—and return to the Constitutional laws.

If that is not possible—as it was not with either mother country England for the original thirteen colonies, nor with mother country Mexico for Texas—then there would need to be a declaration of independence.

I am speaking hypothetically only. I am in favor of abiding by the US Constitution, and I don’t think we have yet done everything possible to exhaust the possibility of restoring the Constitution and jettisoning the tyrants.

But, while the United States is considered “indivisible,” that is only while the government guarantees “liberty and justice for all.” Our list of grievances is already as long and serious as was the founders’.

I am where the US founders were between 1760 and 1776, while John Adams was stationed in England making appeals. And I am where Stephen F. Austin was in 1830-1835, before he came out of a dungeon where he was imprisoned for asking that the constitution be followed.

So, hypothetically speaking, since I live in Texas, let’s suppose all avenues of Constitutional restoration have been exhausted. And Texas declares independence from the post-Constitutional Socialist States of America. Let’s further suppose that, because of close proximity to the other states, and the long years of people moving in and out among states, that the Socialist States of America would hesitate to declare war on Texas, but would allow a peaceful secession.

Other states could join—maybe Oklahoma, which is adjacent, but maybe also Utah, which wouldn’t be contiguous, but might prefer joining Texas rather than asserting its independence while surrounded by the Socialist States. There may be others.

So, we have this new nation, formed the way other freedom seekers have formed nations (except peacefully). And now we need to set up the laws.

I think the abandoned US Constitution is an excellent starting point. We would need to form a Constitutional Republic: representative government, by the voice of the people, but with guarantees against majority—or minority—tyranny.

Let’s keep most of it, and then add what we need to clarify and to maintain. We keep power divided into three branches of government. But we would spell out that all national laws must be duly legislated by the bicameral legislative branch and none else. Let’s add that every piece of legislation must deal with a single issue, and that it must identify the power in the Constitution granting authority for that duty.

The executive branch would have no power to issue any such thing as an edict, nor any executive order other than to indicate to workers the procedures for executing the legislated laws. Executive regulatory agencies, which currently have lawmaking, judicial, and punishment self-appointed duties would be entirely eliminated.

As now, the third branch would be the judiciary, which deals with judging according to the law—and has the bonus obligation of identifying whether a duly legislated law is legal according to the ultimate law, the Constitution. But let’s add that a two-thirds majority of the legislative branch could overrule the judiciary. (I’ve heard that suggestion for an Article V Convention to amend the Constitution.) This would prevent the judiciary from asserting illicit lawmaking authority.

We should make it both easier and probable for the legislative branch to impeach (remove from office) the president or vice-president either for attempts at unconstitutional acts or for crimes and corruption. And we could add that the people could also call for impeachment or recall (in a way similar to an Article V convention), if they see that the legislative branch isn’t responding to their appeals.

In addition, the legislative branch—as well as the people—could impeach a justice for failure to abide by the Constitution, or for crimes and corruption.

All would have term limits. The president would have no more than two terms (eight years). Senators would have no more than two terms (twelve years). Representatives would have no more than six terms (twelve years). Justices would have no more than sixteen years. (Length of terms might be negotiable; but this is my daydream, so I get to say.)

We would keep the Bill of Rights—maybe clarifying where courts have tried to interfere with our God-given rights.

Religion would be encouraged, in public and private life. No specific religion or sect would be given preferential treatment by government. But government could do nothing to hinder the free expression—public and private—of religion and religious people. Public prayer would be common at civic gatherings. Such prayers can be done according to the religion of the one praying, and those of differing religions would be expected to be respectful—as others would be to them at other opportunities.

We would also be free to speak opinions—even unpopular opinions—without fear of prosecution. Limits would include defamation, libel, slander, provoking violence, pornography and lewdness. But would not include civil discourse. And, of course, there would be no laws preventing others from saying things a person or group disagrees with, thereby “offending” them.

People clearly have not given up the right to defend themselves, just because they have hired a police force to help protect them. Only criminals would be prevented from owning and using firearms for protection, hunting, sport, or whatever use they see fit.

Families must be protected as the basic unit of society. Marriage would be defined as it has for millennia, as a man and a woman. Other definition powers would be retained locally. Preference would be given to married husband and wife. Other family forms, while permitted, do not expect government or public approval. Parents have the right and responsibility to see to the care, education, and upbringing of their children. Only when parents drastically fail would the law step in to protect the child.

Any power not enumerated in the Constitution would not be granted to the federal government, but would be held by local jurisdictions or the individual people. The local jurisdictions (states, provinces, or whatever they are called in this new nation) would decide when to assert their rights—regardless of what a Supreme Court says. The final arbiter should be the people, not a national government-appointed judiciary, which clearly has a conflict of interest in such cases.

Government’s only economic powers would include standardizing weights and measures, standardizing money, maintaining federal infrastructure, and preventing monopolies. A flat tax of no more than 10% could be imposed more maintaining government purposes of border protection, sovereignty duties, and enumerated government purposes. With government limited to its enumerated powers, there should be little difficulty in maintaining a balanced budget and avoiding debt—but rather than trust on this, the laws should make it mandatory (with possible temporary exceptions, such as natural disasters and attacks on the nation’s soil).

The new nation would secure its borders, and have an orderly, fair, and consistent immigration and naturalization policy.

The national government would refrain from interfering where it is not granted powers, such as in education, charity, environmental regulation, and subsidizing particular industries or market sectors.

We need informed voters committed to maintaining the Constitution. While there should be no financial or racial test for voters, I’m willing to believe we could come up with a test that is part of voter registration—something that proves the voter understands the basic form of government, the limits of government, and who one’s current national elected officials are. And we could have candidates sign an oath showing their understanding of and dedication to the Constitution—with punishments including possibly prison and fines for breaking this oath.

What I dream about is a country well up into the northern hemisphere of the Spherical Model—where we have freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Our original founders did everything right—except prevent us from ignoring the law and slipping southward. But that is not a problem with their system; that is a problem with the people.

So let's start with civilizing people, so that they naturally want--and work for--freedom and prosperity. 

Let Us Reason Together*

I heard a couple of opinions this past week that gave me pause. One was from a news program on a BBC station. The story was about a particular sect that performed exorcisms on children who were misbehaving. The practice looked very much like abuse—probably was, by every definition. There were interviews with young people who had suffered through such practices in their childhood. It was a particular story, a particular sect. Rare. Uncommon. Almost unheard of, which I guess is what made it interesting enough for a news story.

One of the news commentators at the end of the story said, “And that’s why religion is so dangerous.”

The other item was from an online seminar, generally about positive thinking. But it lost me when the interviewee said that, because some Muslims are violent terrorists, that is why organized religion is a bad thing.

People are entitled to their opinions. Even when they’re wrong. But they don’t get credit for being logical when they’re not.

Mistakes in a tiny portion of a particular, uncommon, obscure religion do not mean that all religions and religious people are in the wrong.

And evil among a small but scary portion of a worldwide religion (which is not even what you’d call “organized” in the sense we use it for religion) does not negate the good among all the other religions in the world.

Logic is math. So let’s set up the problem.

Let’s call the set of all religions R. And we’ll label the particular sect S. S is part of the set of R. S does not make up all of R, only a very small portion. S is always R. But R is rarely S. It is therefore inaccurate at best to say, if S is bad, then all R is bad.

For a non-math analogy, you might look at sorting apples. Every now and then you find a bad apple. You can cull it and toss it. Or you can say, “Because there’s a bad apple in the basket, all apples are bad, and we should throw out the whole basket.” If you choose the latter, then you never get to enjoy the basketful of good apples.

While we’re reasoning together, let’s ask the question, Do we need religion?

I believe we do—as an essential element in civilization. Civilization requires a critical mass of people who honor God, life, family, honesty, and property—those are the basic categories covered in the Ten Commandments, and are pretty easily agreed to by any civilized people.

Honoring God is essential for comprehending where our rights as human beings come from. If we do not have any inherent right to life, liberty, and property, which God has granted us, then we have only what the current tyranny—benevolent or, more likely, malevolent—deigns to grant us.

Without God, there are no rights. Government should be for the express purpose of protecting those rights, and leave everything else to the free people.

You can live a moral life among moral people even as a nonbeliever. Still, we need a critical mass purposely living lives dedicated to good, in order to have a thriving civilization.

I won’t solve the God versus reason debate here, in a blog post. But I do believe it is more reasonable to believe in God than not to.

Christianity and science are opposed… but only in the same sense as that which my thumb and forefinger are opposed—and between them I can grasp anything.—Sir William Bragg, Nobel Prize for Physics (1915)

I will claim that religion—the search for truth and the earnest striving toward goodness—is more likely to yield civilization than the random whims of self-dedicated individuals.

I got to take a look at civilization—and civilizations past—this past week. I was in London. My first trip there. I spent a lot of time doing tourist things: sight-seeing, going to museums. And I’m fascinated by the various appearances of beauty in art and architecture.

While the Spherical Model talks about Civilization, Freedom, and Prosperity—the northern hemisphere goal—as a destination, in actual life, we find pockets of the good often surrounded by the decay of tyranny, poverty, and savagery. But where we find beauty, historically it’s likely to connect to a time when people were thinking, reasoning, and seeking the Good.

I was in the British Museum, and the Rosetta Stone is one of the first exhibits to draw you in. Photos were difficult, because of the glass surround and the lights causing reflections. But that got me thinking about writing in general. I love seeing the various examples of ancient writing. Some of it was mundane, such as a receipt for goods. Others were more monumental, such as describing the life and battles of various royalty. It’s miraculous when it has survived. Writing is probably a necessity for civilization, for passing along information and thinking.

I was looking at ancient Assyrian and Egyptian works, and then there was a doorway into the Greek room. It was like walking into light, or enlightenment. The art was more realistic, less stiff, more for the purpose of beauty than other purposes, such as honoring or impressing through monument, although many were depictions of either eminent people or their gods and mythological beings.

Since we can also read the philosophy and thinking from this time period, it’s not surprising we keep looking back to this particular civilization.

I was interested in the dates, because some very accurate, detailed art happened very long ago, in various places.

When you study art from early Renaissance through the 19^th Century, you see a progression from stiff to more lifelike, better perspective, more natural movement and accurate nature. But, while it is a progression, it isn’t always continuous. There were times when art was lifelike, with the grace and movement we recognize as beauty, long before this latest millennium.

The Tower of London was one of my favorite sites. There’s so much contrast there. The artisanship and art that went into armor, weapons, and displays—like the carved horses in the Parade of Kings—are pretty amazing. And then you can visit the dungeon torture chamber. There’s a pub nearby called the Hung, Drawn, and Quartered, named after that practice. Beheadings were common—we saw the location—and heads were put on pikes along London Bridge. The savage seemed quite content next to the civilized and beautiful.

We toured the Globe Theater, which is a relatively new reproduction of Shakespeare’s theater. The original was built on “the wrong side of the river,” where plenty of uncivilized behavior took place. And boisterous crowds packed in, in Shakespeare’s day, to watch, and call out loudly and participate from the audience. Food and drinks were sold during the show, like we see today at baseball games. And yet the beauty of the plays themselves lets us know, people could write and think and understand long before internet and keyboards were available to help out.

We saw churches, but they tend to be old—very old, and picturesque. And some of them definitely worth exploring for their history and beauty. We toured St. Paul’s Cathedral—which is where the song “Feed the Birds” comes up in Mary Poppins. A church has stood on that site for 1300 years. That’s about a millennium longer than anything built in the US.

The final few days we stayed near Kensington Park, and walking the neighborhood there revealed a number of churches—all old. One was a synagogue, also old. Some churches had long since been turned into other uses. There seems to be a reverence for the past, and the history, even though maybe not so much for God in current daily lives.

There’s so much about the city that tells of longtime civilization. It’s not forgotten. 

There’s still some traditional special feeling about royalty, but in general the class system has moved toward the egalitarianism we have in America. I think that is our influence for good.

People there are from everywhere. I heard more languages than I could identify, just about everywhere we went. And a lot of African and Indian accents (and others) among the variations of British. I enjoy that variety. I noticed no racism—except in news stories that seemed to try to bring it up more than necessary. (I’ve seen that in our media as well.)

People in London seem to me generally good, friendly. Helpful when I was lost on the underground. It is goodness in people that is key. Even with decay around, a people whose hearts long for goodness, truth, and beauty, civilization hangs on. I’m glad it’s still there for visitors like me.

Civilization is always worth preserving—and restoring.

________________________

*Isaiah 1: “17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow./ 18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”