Conserving

Conserve: to keep from being damaged, lost, or wasted; save.[i]

Conservative is one of those words I use fairly frequently, even in reference to myself. I’m talking about conserving the Constitution and it’s principles of freedom. I’m talking about living the principles that build wealth and spread prosperity, rather than waste or profligacy that lead to poverty. I’m talking about the principles that lead to civilization, away from savagery.

But I’m finding it doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.

I started thinking about this after I happened to hear a discussion on Glenn Beck radio last week. He and crew, Pat and Stu, were talking about the Republican candidates (including those not yet officially in the race) and what factions of the party those individuals could satisfy.

Beck is libertarian (which I am not quite), so I shouldn’t expect the same point of view I have, but we agree on so many things, I forget there are differences. But he described the “conservatives” in the party as something other than I would understand.

The discussion followed an interview with Gov. Rick Perry, prior to his announcing a campaign a week or so from now. It was in that interview that Perry recalled a meeting with the president in which he mentioned that National Guard being kept 50 miles from the border wasn’t close enough—and the president turned to Valarie Jarrett and asked if that was the case, because he didn’t know where he had stationed troops. Anyway, that was May 20^th, if you have the ability to go hear it.[ii]

After the interview, Glenn and team started discussing the various candidates, and how they attract the various segments of the Republican party. Glenn asserts that there are four boxes:

GB: So, what it is, in one box, you have to have the GOP. That is the one with the most number in it. Establishment. People who just pull the lever for the Republican, no matter who the Republican is. So there are four boxes: one is GOP; one is conservative; one is religious; one is Tea Party/libertarian.

And then Stu asks for a better definition, which gets to the part that I’ve been thinking about:

Stu: Can you explain the distinction, in this particular scenario, what conservative is? Would you say it’s more like a hawkish...?

GB: Fiscal conservative, yeah, hawk. You know, somebody who is…

Stu: What differentiates it from Tea Party?

GB: Um..

Stu: Hawkishness?

GB: No. I would say Tea Party is more small government.

At this point they have some discussion about Reagan, that he was conservative, but he wasn’t small government. I took issue with it. Their examples were the border—which was supposed to be the one-time amnesty combined with closing the border, so that the issue would be gone forever. But, since the border wasn’t closed, that amnesty was the example to prevent us from ever giving in again. A learning opportunity. Knowing what we know now, would Reagan today offer amnesty? I don’t think so.

And the other example was that Reagan didn’t get rid of the Department of Education, and the Tea Party/libertarians want to. But they forget—Reagan wanted to; he tried. But he was working with a Democrat Senate and House the whole time he was in office. The measure of whether he was conservative would be, did he do the most conservative things he could get done (like lower taxes, which boosted the economy big time)? And what would he have tried to do with a willing Congress?

And I don’t really relate to the term “hawkish.” Reagan was able to end the Cold War without conventional warfare—because he was willing to fight if needed, and he stood firm. What a concept!

In the end of their discussion of candidates, they decided that two candidates—who are leading in Glenn Beck’s monthly online poll (so, not scientific, but gives you a sense of what his listeners believe)—each fill three of the four boxes. Gov. Scott Walker has the GOP establishment box, the conservative box, and the Tea Party/libertarian box. And Ted Cruz has the conservative box, the religious box, and the Tea Party/libertarian box—but he’s missing the biggest box, the GOP establishment. Which, if you define the bigness of the GOP as “People who just pull the lever for the Republican, no matter who the Republican is,” is irrelevant, because whoever gets the nomination will get those people. What’s really at stake is the fundraising and support of establishment politicians and their supporters. By the way, here in Texas, the GOP loves Ted Cruz; he ran away with the straw poll at the state GOP convention last June.

I understand that it’s a game to measure candidates with these four boxes. But it’s imperfect. I’m a Republican precinct chair, as several members of our local Tea Party are, and I’ve tried to do my civic duty all along. Many Tea Partiers awoke in 2010, when Obamacare got pushed through. I was already awake. Tea Partiers at that point began educating themselves—with more training on the Constitution among regular non-student adults than I’ve ever seen. Maybe more than have studied it on their own since the founding. So Tea Partiers are for small government—because the Constitution is about limited government. So I’m a conservative, religious, Tea Party, GOP-er. Hmm. And I don't think I'm all that rare.

What is a conservative if not for small government, as enumerated in the Constitution? It’s hard for me to picture conservatism without all four boxes—with the possible exception of GOP establishment, although conservatives are totally willing to reform an imperfect party that at least has potential.

The Political Sphere
of the Spherical Model

This is where the Spherical Model helps. We don’t need to separate out into local or big government Republicans; the questions that get us to the freedom zone are about the proper role of government and about the proper level (lowest, most local level possible) for any particular issue.

And the economic question is not whether we are pro-business or not; you can’t be a fiscal conservative unless you’re in favor of freeing up the free market. That’s beats crony capitalism or centrally controlled socialist economies every time. A conservative conserves the principles of the free market—which might at times require radical change from the status quo of regulatory tyranny.

People who claim to be fiscally but not socially conservative are not deep thinkers; they cannot get prosperity without civilized people making it possible. Sure, we’ll welcome their vote, but they’re not the leaders toward the world we want.

So then, the social question is, simply: Do you favor civilization or savagery? We know what gets to civilization. A religious people are required, because no one else will self-rule. We self-rule because we live God’s laws, which are higher than our own personal, changeable sense of ethics. God grants us our rights, so without God, the tyrannical leaders grant or take away “rights” at their whim. And our laws reflect our own willingness to live the Ten Commandments: honor and protect family, respect private property, be honest, don’t murder. Without these basics, it really doesn’t matter what you think about race, gender, climate, or some other pet virtue.

You can’t know what good is, if you don’t know who God is; He defines good.

It would be nice to have a better word than “conservative.” I looked up synonyms in a thesaurus, and that was disheartening: cautious, conventional, die-hard, establishmentarian, guarded, hidebound, middle-of-the-road, moderate, quiet, reactionary, right-wing, sober, Tory, traditional, unexaggerated, unprogressive, verkrampte.

I did a Google Translate on that last one; it means cramped. I tried translating “conservative” into German, and it gave me a much kinder cognate: konsesrvativ. Plus some other adjectives that mean essentially, cautious, careful, wary, or prudent, which are at least better than cramped.

So, the thesaurus thinks conservative means something very uncool. I can live with uncool; I pretty much always have. But I don’t like inaccurate.

I could use the Spherical Model shorthand of north on the sphere—and I do. But until the world catches on to this new vocabulary, I will probably keep saying I’m a Constitutional, fiscal, and religious conservative.

I very much prefer the Webster’s definition for conserve, which I used at the top of this piece. I want to conserve our Constitution and the way of life it offers. I want to keep it from being damaged, lost, or wasted. I want to preserve—conserve—the highest freedom, prosperity, and civilization that we have obtained, or return to that pinnacle by repairing the decay we’ve experienced.

I don’t trust that a single elected official, even a president, can undo all the damage. But having someone who loves those things worth preserving is a start. And such a person could inspire many more to work on the challenging restoration. So I won’t be looking for a person who fits enough boxes to win an election; I’ll be looking for a person who understands what’s at stake and loves freedom, prosperity, and civilization as much as I do.

---

[i] Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition © 1982.

[ii] Glenn Beck Radio, May 20, 2015, from 1:44:30 to about 1:58:00, available by subscription.

Texas or California

Yes. Yes I do think Governor Walker’s victory Tuesday in Wisconsin is indicative of what will happen nationally in November. It was a statement about what works better: doing what’s right to get people working and keeping more of their own money, instead of mounting debt to pay for union and special interest demands.

This special election doesn’t necessarily show who will win the Wisconsin electoral votes in November, but it might. One thing that it wasn’t was close. That is going to be important, because rigging elections only work when they’re within a couple of percentage points. In Wisconsin, I understand, Madison had an incredible turnout: 119% of registered voters. We shouldn’t worry with Eric Holder’s DOJ sending in an army of poll watchers, though. Oh yeah, except it’s his DOJ that has refused to prosecute voter fraud but claims that voter ID laws are intended to cause voter fraud. (Read Injustice, by J. Christian Adams. I wrote about it October 12th, October 18th, and March 14th. )

Anyway, my reasoning for believing the Walker victory is a predictor is that I believe the ideas of truth win out over the lies that are necessary to convince people to submit to tyranny.

A couple of days ago I read a piece by political analyst Michael Barone, wherein he talks about the migration from high-tax states to low-tax states—which happen to be more economically vibrant places to make a living. With the current downturn in the economy nationally, mobility has nearly subsided. But what happens when (if?) the economy improves? Here’s his summary:

Continued domestic out-migration from high-tax states? Certainly from California, where Gov. Jerry Brown wants to raise taxes even higher. With foreign immigration down, California is likely to grow more slowly than the nation, for the first time in history, and could even start losing population.

Fortunately, governors of some other high-tax states are itching to cut taxes. The shale oil and natural gas boom has job-seekers streaming to hitherto unlikely spots like North Dakota and northeast Ohio. Great Plains cities like Omaha and Des Moines are looking pretty healthy, too.

It's not clear whether Atlanta and its smaller kin--Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, Jacksonville—will resume their robust growth. They've suffered high unemployment lately.

But Texas has been doing very well. If you draw a triangle whose points are Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, enclosing Austin, you've just drawn a map of the economic and jobs engine of North America.

Texas prospers not just because of oil and gas, but thanks to a diversified and sophisticated economy. It has attracted large numbers of both immigrants and domestic migrants for a quarter century. One in 12 Americans lives there.

America is getting to look a lot more like Texas, and that's one trend that I hope continues. [Emphasis mine.]

I think we could reasonably use California and Texas as the metaphorical picture for what doesn’t work and what does. The snapshot hasn’t always looked like this. California was at one time vibrant and rather conservative. When that changed, outgrowth began (somewhat balanced up until recently by international immigration); since 1990, Californians have been pouring into other states. We left in 1989, only to find ourselves followed to the northwest by Californians who drove up housing prices and tended to institute some of their cultural oddities in their new home. (This was affectionately called “Californication.”)

Texas, on the other hand, was run endlessly by Democrats up until the early ‘90s. In-migration increased in Texas once air conditioning was invented, but oil and computer technologies have been major draws. Since the state became statewide conservative (except for a few odd pockets like Austin and inner cities), it became a great place for business. We came here in 1998, a few years after the conversion.

What we have before us is evidence that high taxes and strangling regulations give you economic calamities of European proportions. But low taxes (Texas has zero income tax; California is about to raise theirs to 13%), and business-friendly laws lead to relative prosperity. From where I sit, inside this triangle of economic engine, unemployment is too high and opportunities that were here before the recession that started in 2008 have not yet returned. But compared to the nation, our distress is much less—and we are likely to recover as soon as the federal government gets out of the way, because we’ve already gotten out of our own way.

Wisconsin has made significant progress since Governor Walker was elected on a promise to do exactly what he did that so upset the unions that they tried to recall him. This week the people strongly voted to keep moving toward being more like Texas. Good direction.

Verify the Recall

If you’re among those of us who want to take action to protect our country, this is a call to action.

I’m assuming you’re aware that there is a recall election going on in Wisconsin, to recall Governor Scott Walker. He stood up to the labor unions, and they don’t like that. This is in addition to an attempt last summer to change the outcome of elections that left unions out of favor in the state senate. The outcome of that onslaught was a net loss of two for Republicans, but leaving them in the majority. So there is an additional attack on four state senators: Wanggaard, Galloway, Fitzgerald, and Moulton.

Are you aware of the Cloward-Piven strategy to overwhelm the system? That is happening in Wisconsin. If the unions who are pushing for recalls can dump literally millions of signatures onto the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, they can make it impossible for the GAB to verify the signatures—which opens the way for fraudulently forcing the recalls.

In step the volunteers from King Street Patriots, whose project True the Vote has attempted to prevent fraud in elections across the country. (I was trained by them as a poll watcher, which I have done several times now.) They have an additional project called Verify the Recall. Mark Antill and a small team of other volunteers in Houston, TX, have developed database capabilities to verify the signatures quickly and accurately.

The verification has already taken place for the four state senators. Verify the Recall does not work for any candidate, nor even contact them. The purpose is simply to allow for the possibility of verifying that the system is just. Nor can they expect the Wisconsin GAB to simply accept the information from an outside party. But those candidates who want to can use the Verify the Recall results to question specific records to challenge whether there are adequate signatures (when/if the results show there may be too few eligible signatures).

The recall verification is going on this week for Governor Walker’s signatures.

Here is where you come in. The actual entering of data requires many many volunteers. So far more than 16,000 unique volunteers from around the country have stepped up. If you want to join this volunteer force, go to www.verifytherecall.com. What you do is sign up. They will shortly send you a login ID. Then you can go to the site and login to volunteer to enter data. You can do just a page or two, or as many as you have time for. (Mark Antill says, "One hundred minutes for one hundred records; that's all we ask.)

You will see a scanned page of signatures, and you will enter the data, as you discern it, into the form. At least two other people will enter that same record (each name is a record), so there can be comparisons to identify the most accurate information. Then the data is compared to voter rolls and other state data to verify that the person signing is an actual person, and actually lives in the jurisdiction, and that there are no duplicates.

Do not put this off. They are trying to get Governor Walker’s recall petitions entered by this weekend, so that the miraculous software can do its thing in time for the governor's deadline at the end of February.

I’m assuming that Verify the Recall will continue to be useful as unions and others use recall petitions elsewhere in the country, so stay tuned. You can sign up for updates by email or Facebook.