Choosing School Choice

As I began writing this on Thursday, March 20, President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. So I want to give just a little space for that celebration, and then we’ll talk about the school choice debate in general, and more specifically in the Texas Legislature.

President Trump signs EO on Department of Education;
Photo from Washington Post, title from White House

 

Dismantling the Department of Education

President Trump did not, and could not, abolish the Department of Education unilaterally with an executive order; the Dept. of Ed was originated by a Carter EO, but was then established by Congress as an administrative body. Since education is not among the enumerated powers, it was never a good idea, but its establishing principles are not that terrible. Glenn Beck read through these on his show:

It is the intention of Congress in the establishment of the Department of Education to protect the rights of state and local governments and public and private educational institutions in the area of educational policies and administration of programs and to strengthen and improve the control of such governments and institutions over their own educational programs and policies.

I looked it up. The part Glenn Beck read is p. 4 under Federal-State Relationships. There was a more complete list, starting on p. 3, under Purposes, which already seem to go beyond what they had any business doing, but are not the controlling strings they’ve become over time. 

I’ve said myself that, while the federal government does not have education as an enumerated power, you could construe that there is a government interest in an educated populace. So, if there were something at the federal level (not that I would encourage it necessarily), it would be as an information source, a clearinghouse where states and local education entities could look to for research findings, and to share what they had tried and what their results were.

If this founding purpose was what the Dept. of Ed had ever kept to, we would not be needing this dismantling today.

Now, the dismantling—not abolishing—is a cut to about 50% of the workforce in the Department. Services deemed necessary by law are being kept there—such as Pell grants. Eventually—if Congress does its job in following up—those required services (if actually necessary) can be administered by other departments, and the Dept. of Ed can be completely abolished. And that would prevent it from being resurrected and re-expanded by a future administration.

But all in all, this was an important day’s work.

 

Parents Control the Care and Upbringing of Their Children

Eventually I’m going to get granular into the school choice legislation in Texas. But first I want to recommend a discussion between Jordan Peterson and author/school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis.

 

Jordan Peterson and Corey DeAngelis, screenshot from here

DeAngelis outlines a great many objective societal goods that come from increased school choice—even just the additional choice of charter schools. These include 30% increase in likelihood of graduation, and increased additional education opportunities after high school, and lower crime. Additionally, no school choice program has led to less funding for public schools (they’ve actually gotten more), nor government intrusion into private school curriculum or greater control over homeschooling.

Let’s start with his reference to the 1983 Nation at Risk report on education, which showed us doing much worse than in earlier decades. There was a push to spend more and more money on education—but we not only haven’t gotten better; in many ways we’ve gotten worse. DeAngelis says:

We spend about $20,000 per student per year now, which is about 52% higher than the average private school tuition in this country, that spending in the government schools has increased by about 164% inflation-adjusted since 1970. Have the outcomes gotten 164% better? No, obviously not. But it's because they're not focusing on math and reading; they're focusing on gender ideology and Critical Race Theory in the schools. And if you're focusing on those things and teaching kids to hate your country, it shouldn't surprise us that the academic outcomes aren’t getting any better.

If our interest was actually to get an educated populace, the data is actually telling us that paying private school tuition is both more cost-effective and more likely to get the outcomes we want (homeschooling aside—which is even more cost-effective and outcome-producing). No one in any state legislature is pushing to dump public schooling and give everyone a private school (or other) tuition voucher. School choice is always tentative—with probably far too much deference given to keeping public schools thriving.

Right now there are nearly as many desks open in private schools as there are students on waiting lists for charter schools—in other words, students who aren’t getting their needs met in public schools. It ought to be a simple solution, then, to give those families a way out of the public schools—to which they are bound by law to attend unless they have the personal resources, in addition to taxes they’re already paying, to pay for private school or homeschooling.

Opponents to school choice may claim to have many reasons, certainly worth addressing as legislation is crafted. But it comes down to saying they want to force students who are without family resources to remain in schools that are failing them.

DeAngelis uses an analogy of a grocery store.

In most places in America you live where you live, and you're assigned to a school just based on your address, which gives them no incentive to spend additional dollars wisely. I mean, just imagine if you had to shop at a government grocery store that you were assigned to based on where you lived, and they had empty shelves, no food. And when they did have food, imagine if you got food poisoning, or it was expired. And if you wanted to go somewhere else, they'd tell you to go complain to the grocery board, who wouldn't listen to you and would try to cut off your mic—which is what happens with the school boards right now. And if you had to just move houses to get access to a better grocery store, that would make zero sense. Or if you had to pay twice, basically once through taxes for the government grocery store you're not using, and then again out of pocket for a grocery store that actually provided you with healthy food.

 

That's what we have with the government school system today. You cannot go somewhere else unless you pay twice, essentially, and low-income families are basically just screwed in the worst failure factories that we call public schools.

To press the point, he adds that in places like Chicago, 33 public schools have 0% of students showing proficiency in math, while they’re spending $30,000 per kid. And of course the teacher union boss sends her child to a private school; they know they’re failing. 

So, do I believe in public schools? I do not. But in the real world, where we spend half of the state’s revenue in taxes on education—and public schools are the huge elephant monopoly in the room—pushing for options is something reasonable people ought to do.

 

Texas School Choice Bills

School choice is likely to pass in Texas this legislative session. Unlike last session, when 21 House Republicans joined with all the Democrats to scuttle school choice, this session there are 76 Republicans who have signed on as co-authors. That’s enough to pass a bill. A Senate version, SB 2, has already passed—although it hasn’t been assigned to a House committee yet. The House bill, HB 3, had a committee hearing on March 12, but was left pending, meaning no decision was made yet, so there will have to be another committee hearing on it. Eventually it will get sent on to the floor for a vote. And then there will have to be reconciliation with the Senate before a final version gets sent to the Governor for signature—which Governor Abbott will sign, because school choice in any form has been a priority for him since last session and before.

I wrote about the school choice legislation in general a few weeks ago. Today I thought I’d do a deep-dive comparison of the two bills. Normally the Senate is more reliably conservative than the House. But there are actually several things I prefer in the House version.

Both bills are essentially ESA programs (education savings accounts). That’s where a set amount of money is allocated for a specific purpose—like a health savings account. You can’t use that money for some other purpose, but within the parameters, you can choose how to use the funds.

Both bills have funds coming through the general fund—through the State Comptroller. This in no way diminishes money going to public schooling; that state allotment is untouched by this bill. (There are other bills working to increase public school funding, mainly aimed at raising teacher salaries.)

Both have similar administrative and legal accountability/anti-fraud provisions. I had AI produce a chart summarizing the differences for me. I put a red * by features I prefer; I’ll point out a couple of things below:

Feature	S.B. No. 2	H.B. No. 3
Funding Amount	Provides $10,000 per year for children in accredited private schools ($11,500 for students with disabilities); $2,000 for homeschooled students	Provides 85% of the statewide average per-student funding for K-12 students; up to $30,000 for students with disabilities; $2,000 for homeschooled students *
Online Education	Prohibits using ESA funds for online or virtual education services	Allows funding for online courses or programs *
Income-Based Prioritization	Defines low-income as households under 500% of the federal poverty level but does not prioritize beyond public school history	Prioritizes children with disabilities and low-income families, dividing them into specific income brackets (e.g., below 200% and between 200-500% of federal poverty level)
Meal Coverage	Does not allow ESA funds to be used for student meals	Allows ESA funds to cover breakfast and lunch at private schools
Payment Schedule	ESA accounts are funded semiannually	ESA accounts are funded quarterly
Funding Cap & Growth	Capped at $20,000 per student	No cap beyond general program appropriation limits *
Application Priority	Priority given to students who were in public school for 90% of the prior year	Prioritizes returning ESA participants over new applicants *
Parental Responsibilities	Requires parents to administer an approved standardized test	Does not explicitly require standardized testing *
Appeals Process	ESA funding decisions by the Comptroller are final	Allows parents to appeal eligibility decisions *
Special Education Services	Offers additional funds but does not require public schools to provide evaluations.	Requires public schools to conduct special education evaluations upon parental request

Funding is set in the Senate bill, but in the House bill it is tied to statewide average per-student funding, which would mean the bill wouldn’t have to be redone with annual cost increases (or decreases, if that should ever happen).

The Senate bill prohibits spending for online or virtual education resources. These have been common resources used by homeschoolers since well before we homeschooled. And those resources have only grown. To prohibit use of them is a tremendous drawback in the Senate bill.

The prioritization is aimed at the most vulnerable, with more emphasis on that in the House bill. The amount allotted on this “trial” of ESAs is comparatively small, which means it’s only going to offer relief to a few select winners. In my view, any parent whose child is not being well served by the public school system is vulnerable—unless that parent already has plenty of money and/or time to homeschool. A similar problem has always existed with charter schools as well; children get in by lottery. I’d like to see more opportunity, so the result seems less about luck. But this bill is a start, if there’s the intention of expanding in future years. Those who intend to say, “Well, you said competition would improve quality and lower costs,” should realize that this program is too small to provide those outcomes yet.

The Senate bill prioritizes people who are coming from public schools; this is a first-year mentality. The House prioritizes returning ESA students—so those families don’t have to re-win the lottery in order to keep their schooling choice year-to-year. I think that’s essential.

Accountability differences are significant. The Senate bill requires participating students to take an approved standardized test. The House bill does not require testing. One of the problems (among many) that people have with public schools is the standardized testing—which inevitably turns into teaching toward the test, rather than simply teaching. And we’re never happy with the standardized tests.

When I homeschooled my kids, I did annual testing, but I never used a nationally recognized standardized test. For elementary years, we used one aimed at homeschooling families once or twice. I found it to lack rigor in most things and overemphasize memorization of some certain things the company valued (memorizing the Preamble to the Constitution, for example, rather than understanding what the words mean, but memorizing can be a starting point). For my older kids, we had a PSAT and later SAT prep program by Kaplan (back then it was a thick book and a CD to use on the computer). You could take tests, and then they showed you what kinds of errors you were making, so you could improve your study. This also made taking the eventual SAT or ACT test less stressful, because they’d done that so many times. I would very much have resented anyone forcing me to have my kids take a certain test—which was supposed to be a grade on me, the teacher, and wouldn’t do anything to help my kids learn and study anything they might be missing.

 

Government Strings

One of the “conservative” arguments against school choice is that anything you do will be used as a way for government to gain control over private and homeschools. While that’s a valid concern, it’s mostly irrelevant. We’re dealing with people who opt in—most of them coming from public schools. So any “strings” are what they’ve been dealing with all along. Any “choice” is better than no choice.

Texas State Capitol, from a visit in 2018

The concern seems to be, “if a private school accepts a student with ESA money, then they have to do what the government says.” In reality, that has been limited to “public schools must be accredited.” I do have a problem with that, because most private schools are not accredited, and there is no correlation between accreditation and learning outcomes.

But there’s nothing in there related to curriculum. A church-related school can continue its curriculum as always. So, then you’ve got the other side exclaiming that we can’t have government money going to a religion-related entity—as if that church/state argument even applied here.

DeAngelis points out that we have many places where government funds are used in this manner: Pell grants, GI bills, for example, and Medicaid vouchers can be used at religious hospitals. There’s no interference with the school or hospital by the government, and no religious limitation on the user. A GI bill can even pay for a person going to a seminary to become a pastor. Why would we create such limitations on K-12 education?

I’m on a social media thread with precinct chairs across the state. You would think these would be conservatives—and they think they are. But there’s a subset in this group that are virulently anti-school-choice. They claim that any Republican voting for the school choice bill (for which there is not a final version yet) ought to be censured. They are ridiculous. They claim there are all kinds of strings attached. So I looked.

As far as I can tell, here are the “strings”:

·        The STAAR or other standardized testing is required in the Senate bill. This is already not in the House bill, and I will let my representative know I’m against standardized testing in the bill. In the House version, if a parent uses a standardized test, they’re required to send the result to the Educational Assistance Organization (EAO), which will use it to measure program effectiveness. This seems reasonable.

·        No spending on online, virtual, or out-of-state tuition in the Senate bill. Again, this is not a limitation in the House bill, and I will let my representative know I prefer the House version on this point.

·        Payments can’t go to family members. I understand the purpose for this; a person could use the money to directly pay a family member (to a third-degree relationship) for, say, tutoring or music lessons—whether the service is offered or not, or whether the service is of qualifying quality. It’s an accountability decision, and while I think it’s unfortunate, it is reasonable to prevent fraud and abuse.

·        Funds are administered by Comptroller-appointed Education Assistance Organizations (EAOs), which verify qualifications of students (so they don’t receive benefits while also attending public schools), and to disperse the funds according to the law. I don’t see an EAO as a “string,” per se. Someone has to disperse the funds, or else the Comptroller’s office has to create additional departments to handle these across the state, which is essentially what an EAO is.

·        Mentioned just above, a student can’t receive benefits while also attending public school. I understand the “double-dipping” argument, but I hope it’s one we can eventually overcome. Why shouldn’t a student be able to use part of their allotment for a public high school class—such as band or theater or being on a sports team? That would be real choice. I’ve suggested that idea to my representative, and she says our state just isn’t there yet (even though the “less free” state of Washington was essentially there 30 years ago). Texas led the way on getting homeschool freedom, but in practically ever other way, our schools are stodgy.

·        Education providers must be pre-approved by the Comptroller. I don’t know exactly what this means. I think it means, if I were a music teacher, I would need to get some sort of certification. I have taught music (at under standard rates) without a certificate. I don’t know if this would burden the education provider or the parent. It’s to satisfy those “accountability” worriers, but it’s unfortunate.

·        Only accredited private schools would qualify—leaving out all unaccredited private schools including micro-schools, which proliferated after the COVID shutdown, when parents figured out ways to do what needed doing.

·        Parents, providers, and vendors must comply with state auditing and monitoring procedures, as you would expect. (If we’d had such compliance all along at the federal level, DOGE wouldn’t need to be doing that job now.)

Overall, while it’s not perfect, and not as large a program as I would like to see, nor as open to mixing and matching options (actually, none of that at all), the House version is probably the best school choice bill I’ve seen come before the Texas Legislature.

I think it will pass. I think, to use a retail term, it’s the “loss leader,” the thing the legislature is using to convince us they’re doing conservative things, while they fail on some other fronts, which will have to wait for their turn in future sessions. We’re still kind of swampy in Texas. But we’ll take what’s pretty good and work toward better in the future. It’s a good start.

Be It Resolved

It’s a new year, so it might be time to start anew.

Mutts cartoon for January 1, 2022

We hear a lot about resolutions this time of year, and we may think we understand that word—without thinking much about it. So let’s take this time for a somewhat deep dive into the meaning.

Re-  is a prefix meaning again.

Solve is a word that comes from the idea of loosening, releasing, or freeing. You can see that in “dissolve.” In noun form, a solution can be a mixture of separate things, such as salt in water—a saline solution. Chemically, the salt and the water do not change, but they combine fairly well in solution.

But another way of thinking of the verb solve is to “find a satisfactory answer or explanation.” You can solve a crime by figuring out who-done-it, or how the crime was done. You can solve a puzzle by figuring out the right answer, or the right way to get the desired outcome.

from Webster's New World Dictionary, 2nd College Edition, (c) 1982

So resolve might be to get the right answer again.

But we tend to think of it as “reaching a decision or intention,” and resolution as determining or deciding upon a future action.

In the adjective form, to be resolute is to show unwavering determination. 

Resolute  is the name of the historic desk in the Oval Office, given to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, a gift from Queen Victoria. It was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute.

Pres. John F. Kennedy giving a TV address from the Resolute Desk
Getty image, found here

A decade or so ago I stopped writing down goals as New Year’s resolutions, and chose a word (or sometimes a two-word phrase) for the year. One year it actually was resolute. Other years it has been healing, resilience, and fruition. In 2020, ahead of knowing what was coming, my word/phrase was “hold on,” which turned out to be very appropriate. I think about my yearly word for a good long time, and let it come to me, hopefully as inspiration, from the Source of inspiration. So I am resolute to focus on that word and see where it takes me during the year. Sometimes I’m slow, and it takes into February to decide. This year I’m early. Maybe another time I’ll let you know what this year’s was and how that played out.

I do like looking at the inspirational ideas and quotes that come up at this renewal, resolution time. So I’ll share a few of those today.

I found this last year and made it into a meme to share.

A couple of days ago I read a piece in The Imaginative Conservative by John Horvat on how to deal with “not normal” times, such as 2020 to present. His advice: improvise and dare. He explains: 

To better understand what this entails, we might recall a story about Churchill during World War II. A particular commander in a difficult fight with the Germans asked for instructions. Churchill sent an order with three words: “Improvise and dare!” The commander followed his advice, and Churchill, in a flourish of grammatical audacity, wrote that he “improvose and dore.”

In short, rather than visualizing a particular outcome, we need to be flexible, so we can be ready for anything. The challenge is doing this when you’ve already been through a couple of years with all your resources stretched to the breaking point. So, maybe at this top of the year, do an assessment of your resources—of the things that you can be resourceful with, such as your good humor, your resilience, your positive attitude, and maybe even your ability to cook from scratch or do your own plumbing (what we’re doing here in the Spherical Model household as I write this).

Horvat adds,

Improvise does not mean winging it, doing things unprepared or without study. We must take all necessary precautions. We learn to work with God’s grace to inspire us. When the time comes to act, we know things can change quickly and are ready to adjust accordingly.

He goes on to talk about daring, but I’ll let you read that.

If you’re serious—resolute—about making your life better, you might go ahead and read Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, and follow that up with his latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.

He has been talking about these books and their concepts in a number of videos. A few days ago there was a compilation listed as “A Guide to Fixing Your Life in 2022 (how to change your life this year).” There’s so much in there that can be put into practical application.

In another video, he talks with Dr. Christopher Kaczor and Dr. Matthew Petrusek about their book, which includes his name in the title: Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity. The two are from a Catholic organization called Word on Fire. The conversation was not confrontational, but a deep and thoughtful exploration of God and meaning and how to live a good life.

Dr. Kaczor tells this incident that was related to him. His friend went to a lecture on God’s existence, and after the lecture this friend went up to the lecturer and challenged him:

After the lecture my friend came up to him and said, “You know, everything you say is a bunch of malarkey. There’s no God. It’s just—your lecture is just meaningless.” And the guy said, “OK, what I want you to do is, for the next week, I want you to treat everyone that you meet as if they were Jesus in disguise.”

And the guy left the lecture, and he went home. And, you know, he gets home and Mom’s there doing the dishes, and he thought to himself, well, if this were Jesus in disguise doing the dishes, I’d probably go up and, like, help my mom do the dishes.

And then Dad came home from work, and rather than ignore him, he said, “Hey, Dad, how was work? How’s everything going?” And, you know, because, if that were really Jesus in disguise, I would do that.

And then they were eating dinner together with the family, and there’s one hamburger left. And he turns to his brother and says, “Hey, why don’t you have this?”

And the guy told me, his life was completely transformed by literally one week of acting in this sort of way.

Might be an experiment worth trying.

One thing that experiment required was a relatively good understanding of how to behave toward Jesus—or maybe how to behave if you’re trying to emulate Jesus, which is another way to look at it: what would Jesus do? So, for that, you need to have either a terrific imagination or some grounding in the scriptures.

Reading more scriptures is a not uncommon New Year’s resolution. I actually do read scriptures every day. I’ve done that for decades, rarely missing. But if that's not you, I don’t think it’s a good idea to set a resolution to read every single day this year—because then, if you miss a day in January, it messes up your goal for the full year. Better to resolve to set up a pattern in your life that will allow for more scripture reading. If you get distracted in the morning by all the necessities of getting ready for the day, find a different time, or a different way. At times I’ve had my phone or tablet read aloud to me while I do my face and hair. Maybe it’s not that concentrated study time I’d like, or that I imagine I ought to demand of myself, but it adds up to significant time in the scriptures. 

If just before bed is bad for you, because you fall asleep before you get to it, then find another time. Set your scriptures where you can reach them at some point every day. Maybe have them on your phone to replace some of that scrolling time.

If last year you were only reading maybe half of the days, or less, then 4 or 5 days a week would be an improvement, even if you were aiming at 7 days a week. Celebrate your improvement, rather than berating yourself for not having a perfect record. That sort of “better batting average” approach might motivate you more than perfection resolutions. Worth a try.

Related to that, here’s a quote from the president and prophet of my church:

Keep studying the scriptures, keep doing the things that build your faith in Jesus Christ and then notice the wise choices you are naturally drawn to make.—Pres. Russell M. Nelson

 

As I send you my best wishes as you go out there and take on 2022, here are a few more thoughts about this time for resolution and resoluteness:

 

When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.—Zig Ziglar

 

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.—C. S. Lewis

 

The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.

—Ezra Taft Benson

 

Prayer is a key. Pray to know what to stop doing and what to start doing. Pray to know what to add to your environment and what to remove so the Spirit can be with you in abundance.

Plead with the Lord for the gift of discernment. Then live and work to be worthy to receive that gift so that when confusing events arise in the world, you will know exactly what is true and what is not.

Serve with love. Loving service to those who have lost their way or who are wounded in spirit opens your heart to personal revelation.

Spend more time—much more time—in places where the Spirit is present. That means more time with friends who are seeking to have the Spirit with them. Spend more time on your knees in prayer, more time in the scriptures, more time in family history work, more time in the temple. I promise you that as you consistently give the Lord a generous portion of your time, He will multiply the remainder.—Pres. Russell M. Nelson 

 

"Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice reduces the imperfection."—Toba Beta

 

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”—C. S. Lewis

 

Worship

This past weekend was the semi-annual world conference for my Church. There were three sessions on Saturday and two on Sunday. During the Saturday morning session, President Dallin H. Oaks spoke, and especially the first several minutes were meant for all people, not just members of our church.

Pres. Dallin H. Oaks, speaking during General Conference, Saturday morning,
October 2, 2021; screenshot from here

In another day or two, I expect the talks will be separate for viewing and reading—with footnotes. But today I did things the hard way and transcribed the first few minutes, so any errors are mine. 

President Oaks started with an example quoted by an earlier church leader about a good family who didn’t attend church, and why that is a concern:

Many years ago Elder Mark E. Peterson, a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, began a talk with this hypothetical example: “Kenneth and his wife, Lucille, are good people, honest and upright. They don’t go to church, though. And they feel they can be good enough without it. They teach their children honesty and virtue. And they tell themselves that is about all the church would do for them. And, anyway, they insist that they need their weekends for family recreation, and church going would really get in their way.”

Today my message concerns such good and religious-minded people who have stopped attending or participating in their churches. When I say churches, I include synagogues, mosques, or other religious organizations. We are concerned that attendance at all of these is down significantly nationwide. If we cease valuing our churches for any reason, we threaten our personal spiritual life. And significant numbers separating themselves from God reduces His blessings to our nations.

I’ve been sensing that, despite a long decrease, we’ve had something of a turning back to God recently. That seems to happen when we go through hard times—like hurricanes and floods in the Gulf Coast region. We’ve been going through it with a pandemic and the associated problems caused by the response to it, shutting down schools and businesses. I might only be sensing a regional response, and we’re in the Bible belt where people pretty openly live their religion. But is the turning toward God enough? That has been a question I've had.

There are a great many calamities scheduled for the last days, and maybe we’re in the midst of those, or on the cusp of things to come. But this nation, under God, ought to be protected, right? Unless we do not turn to God.

And maybe one way we need to do that, to show God that we have turned to Him, is to worship Him—in church on the Sabbath.

But, what about those who say they don’t get anything from Church? President Oaks talks about that:

Some say that attending church meetings is not helping them. Some say, “I didn’t learn anything today”; or “No one was friendly to me”; or “I was offended.” Personal disappointment should never keep us from the doctrine of Christ, who taught us to serve, not to be served.

With this in mind, another member described the focus of his church attendance: “Years ago I changed my attitude about going to church. No longer do I go to church for my sake, but to think of others. I make a point of saying hello to people who sit alone, to welcome visitors, to volunteer for an assignment. In short, I go to church each week with the intent of being active, not passive, and making a positive difference in people’s lives.”

I think that emphasis on taking action is important. President Oaks quoted the prophet of my youth, President Spencer W. Kimball, who taught this:

We do not go to sabbath meetings to be entertained or even simply to be instructed. We go to worship the Lord. It is an individual responsibility. If the service is a failure to you, you have failed. No one can worship for you. You must do your own waiting upon the Lord.

I’ve been thinking about that word worship. It has been confusing sometimes, here in the South, where I learned the word is used for church “singing time.” You can of course worship by singing hymns of praise; in fact, I love to do that. But I think of the word as something much larger than that.

Here’s the dictionary definition of the verb, to start us off:

1.     To show religious devotion or reverence for; adore or venerate as a deity

2.     To have intense love or admiration for; adore or idolize

3.     To engage in worship, or perform an act of religious devotion; specifically, to offer prayers, attend church service, etc.1.

from Webster's New World Dictionary, ed. 1982

Jordan Peterson, who thinks about everything deeply, including things that have been so natural to me since childhood that I may not have thought about them that deeply. He has talked about what the word worship means. He starts with what it is not: 

Now, if you’re like me, or if you’re like me when I was a kid, because I haven’t thought about this for a long time, it was never really obvious to me why God would want to be worshipped. You know, you go to church, and you offer up your praise and thanks to God, and think, “Really, does that make a lot of sense?” It’s like, “Why in the world is that what He wants?” It’s almost like you’re kneeling down in front of an ancient Middle Eastern tyrannical emperor and vowing your submission. And that never sat well with me, and I suppose it doesn’t sit well with many people. And I think that’s because it’s not the proper way of conceptualizing it.

So what does it mean to worship? Peterson, in that clip, had been talking about Abraham, and how he changed, or reconstituted himself, becoming a new person. In Abraham’s case, that even included changing his name from Abram, meaning “exalted Father,” to Abraham, meaning “Father of a multitude,” which must have been somewhat frustrating to him as he and his wife neared the end of their first century childless before miraculously having a son. Anyway, Peterson says,

The worship is something like, you know, this is alluding back to my original proposition that it’s how you act that’s the issue. And the worship is the decision to enact the good in whatever form it is that you can conceptualize it, as well as trying to continually re-conceptualize the good in a manner that makes the good that you’re conceptualizing even that much better. Right? Because, when you start aiming, the probability that you’re going to be aiming in the right direction is very low. But hypothetically, as you aim, and as you practice, and as you learn, the target is going to shift in front of your eyes, and you’re going to be able to follow it every more clearly.

To enact the good—that’s an apt definition of worship—assuming you know what the good is. I believe he means ultimate good. I’ve heard him say elsewhere that what we conceptualize as ultimate good is what our God (or god) is to us.

There’s another place where Dr. Peterson talks about the word “sin.” It has an original meaning of something like “missing the mark,” using that archery aiming idea again.

What is it we’re aiming at? And missing, and learning with practice to aim at more accurately? Dr. Peterson goes on here to say,

I suppose it’s akin to the later Christian idea that it’s the imitation of Christ that’s the sacred duty of every Christian. And every human being, I suppose, insofar as that’s an archetypal idea. And the idea is something like, well, it’s the embodiment of the good that’s the issue. And it’s not your stated belief in the good.

We worship Christ by imitating the way He lived His life. If the whole world did that, we’d have people who are (this is Paul’s list from his letter to the I Corinthians 13):

·         Charitable.

·         Long-suffering.

·         Well behaved.

·         Selfless—thinking of others first.

·         Not easily provoked.

·         Thinking good thoughts.

·         Truthful.

·         Hopeful.

·         Believing (not cynical).

·         Enduring and faithful.

·      That’s in addition to the Ten Commandments, which lead us to honor God, family, life, property ownership, and truth. These are all very civilizing things worth aiming at.

We get something out of our worship of God; it transforms us into better human beings. Also, when we do that at church, instead of some vague and not very spiritually intensive nature hike or boat outing, we connect with others who are attempting the same aim. President Oaks said,

Church attendance can open our hearts and sanctify our souls. In a church we don’t just serve alone, or at our own choice or convenience. We usually serve in a team. In service we find heaven-sent opportunities to rise above the individualism of our age. Church-directed service helps us overcome the personal selfishness that can retard our spiritual growth.

One of the problems we have, after a generation or so of decreasing church attendance—i.e., decreasing worship at church—is an upcoming generation that doesn’t understand community service. Some do. But there’s a definite shortage of volunteers for PTOs, or for Scout troop leadership, or even professional society leadership. Why put work into something you’re not getting paid for? Because service to others is a form of worshipping God. We will worship something. And if it isn’t God, it will be something aimed much lower.

There are advantages for us in attending church as well. President Oaks says,

In church we associate with wonderful people striving to serve God. This reminds us that we are not alone in our religious activities. We all need associations with others. And church associations are some of the best we can experience, for us and our companions and children. Without those associations, especially between children and faithful parents, research shows increasing difficulty for parents to raise children in their faith.

At such a time as this, we are greatly in need of children raised with faith. Civilization depends on it. It may be that our liberty here in America depends on it. And I hope we’re not too late.

Bonus: I saw this on a friend’s Facebook post (originally attributed to Sharon Martin), shortly after I’d heard President Oaks’ talk. It’s a message coming to many minds today.

Government Is Force—Not a Benevolent Provider, Not Deity

Last week on his podcast, Jordan Peterson had a long conversation with Senator Mike Lee. Senator Lee is a soft-spoken, generally nice guy, with a spine built on principles, and a very good working knowledge of what the US Constitution says and means. Dr. Peterson is a thoughtful, principled man, who likes to get down to the very bottom of what something means. And he happens to be Canadian, which means that many of the ways of thinking that come natural to Americans actually have to be explained to him.

Senator Mike Lee
screenshot from here

While he’s been living in the same world, nearby, and hears much of the same news, he hasn’t had the same historical upbringing in school. And actually that’s helpful here in getting the information out in the conversation—because a large part of young adults today lack the same things, but also lack Peterson’s willingness to come to fully understand.

So what we have is a very good elementary education in the Constitution and the proper role of government—but for adults. It’s something akin to my very purpose here at the Spherical Model. It’s a bit like reading Bastiat’s The Law or Ezra Taft Benson’s “The Proper Role of Government” by way of casual conversation.

So today I’m just going to share portions of their conversation (and encourage you to enjoy it in full as well).

A few minutes into the discussion, they were talking about the nature of government—as force, rather than a “benevolent provider of goods.” I think that difference in how a person looks at government is key to much of our disagreements. I believe Senator Lee is right, that government is force, pure and simple.

Quote from Mike Lee

Senator Lee says,

It is, however, important to remember that that’s ultimately what government is, is force.

The way government does things, the way it does anything, everywhere, at least in our country, is that it collects taxes from the people. We have a number of different kinds of taxes in this country, as they do in many countries. But ultimately that’s how government operates. And, while we call that a voluntary system, and in many ways it is, or is supposed to be, ultimately we pay those—citizens pay those, because they know that if they don’t pay them, force will be brought to bear. People will come, and there will be penalties attached to it if they don’t pay them.

That’s why it’s so important to remember that government is force. It uses force to do things that we need it to do. And, as you say, it would be chaos, it would also be terribly inefficient, it would result in all kinds of problems, if every one of us had to be our own sheriff, our own department of defense, our own army, and our own navy. That would be problematic.

Just the same, having delegated those things to a government, we have to remember what government is, why we have it, and utilize government for that which only government can do—and not attribute to it benevolence and omniscience and an omnipotence that most people reserve for deity, if they believe in God.

Lee speaks of the proper role of government again later, referring to protecting life, liberty, and property. This is in response to a question from Dr. Peterson about the Senator’s trust in government. Lee has mentioned—and shown—that he carries a copy of the Constitution around with him; he reads it and refers to it frequently. (I do that too. Instead of in a suit coat pocket, I carry it in my wallet in my purse.) As an aside, there’s a lovely segment where Lee talks about his growing up, and talking about deep things, including religion and the Constitution around the dinner table. His father, Rex E. Lee, was

a lawyer and a professor of law, later served as dean of Brigham Young University’s law school, and as president of Brigham Young University. For a few years when I was a child, he was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general… During his 61 years on this planet he devoted much of his career to the Constitution.

Carrying the Constitution is not because, as Dr. Peterson supposes, because he reveres and admires government so thoroughly, but just the opposite:

I’d take exception to one thing you said, where you suggested that I trust government as evidenced by the fact that I carry around the Constitution and I seek to follow it. I’d turn that precisely on its head. In other words, the Constitution reminds us that we don’t trust government as an institution; we trust people, but not the government.

The Constitution is our key to making sure that we unlock unlimited human potential, by recognizing the inherent dignity and infinite worth of every human being, and that we show that respect by saying that, when we use force on you—as we do whenever government acts—we will do so respectfully, and in a way that’s measured, restrained, exercised at the appropriate level, and is geared specifically toward protecting life, liberty, and property. If it’s not those things, we won’t do it.

We need to have trust and confidence in human beings, because they’re God’s creations, and because we’re all created equal.

When we put trust in government itself, we’re putting trust in force.

Already you’re seeing religious overtones in this discussion. These come up frequently throughout. You can’t revere the Constitution without that. Early on Lee spells out the connection, that our rights come from God, whether you believe in God or not:

I don’t believe that the Constitution requires, in order for it to work, for anyone to cling to any particular religious belief, or for that matter to any religious belief at all. In fact, by its own terms, it carves those things out and makes clear that government can’t mess with those. But government also may not establish those things. It’s important to have that boundary….

It helps to understand these things, if—as was the case in America at the time of America’s founding, and as I believe is still the case with most Americans—when we understand that we are subject to an all-knowing, benevolent, and all-powerful creator to whom we will stand accountable at the end of this life; and when we understand that our rights and our existence come from Him, and are a result of a bestowal of His blessings, rather than that of any government—I think that helps inform the proper role of government and the proper relationship between the people and its government.

There’s a section toward the end (around an hour and 14 minutes in), when Senator Lee talks about his concerns with the erosion of civil society. Religion is part of that:

I tend to believe that the erosion of civil society is concerning, meaning the voluntary associations that free people form when they’re allowed to be free, and that they form in the absence of any government telling them that they must, or that they may, or that may not. They just do it. And by that I mean churches, mosques, synagogues, fraternal orders, charitable foundations, universities, neighborhood watch associations—all of those things that operate as an organized entity outside the force of government. Those are things that have really helped us.

Those voluntary associations were noted by Alexis de Tocqueville when he visited nearly two centuries ago, and the United States were just beginning to thrive and be an example to the world. Lee adds,

I’ve often said that the twin pillars of human thriving—thriving of the human condition, whether in American society or anywhere else—they tend to be built upon robust institutions of civil society and free markets. If you have those two things, human beings can thrive. They won’t always choose to do so. Sometimes they will make choices that will put them on a path of self-destruction. But, if you’ve got those things in place and people make the right choices, human beings will thrive. You’ll lift people out of poverty.

Quote from Mike Lee

I worry that, as we’ve put more trust in government, we’ve allowed the muscle of civil society, and the muscle memory of free markets to atrophy. And so, it’s not just what we’ve created through a bloated government that is the problem; it’s also what we lose, what we give up in the process. People become less connected, the more brooding the government’s presence is in their lives.

Rather than two pillars, I look at the three spheres: political (freedom), economic (prosperity), and social (civilization). I think we’re not in disagreement; these three work together. We need limited government to allow for free markets, and we need a righteous people—people who can govern themselves.

But if you don’t have people who govern themselves, which civilization requires, and freedom to make exchanges in the marketplace, then you have savagery and poverty, or as he says, misery and chaos. Then force steps in, and steps on people.

At one point (around 23 minutes in) Lee says this about the relationship between people, their religion, and government:

I think once you unpack what government is and how it’s used, and you understand human beings and their relationship to each other and to their government, it becomes easier to see how this can work, and how it must work.

In other words, for me at least, my belief in my relationship with God is the most important thing in this world to me. It’s right there with my relationship with my wife and my children. It’s something without which I cannot imagine my existence.

And it is for that reason—and not in spite of it—that I don’t want government touching it.

His love of his religion is how I feel about mine; we both happen to share a religion: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But this discussion doesn’t touch on his specific beliefs. I’d love for him to have a discussion about that with Jordan Peterson someday.

Back to the discussion of religion. He continues:

In other words, there is an increasing inclination in society today, including among many Americans, that if something is really important, then it must be something that the government does, promotes, funds, or is otherwise officially involved in.

And I think this is a helpful example to all of us of the reasons why it ought to stay out. It is because it is important that it must not touch it. It’s not an appropriate place for the use of force.

There’s that theme again—that government is force. There are places in our lives in which we human beings ought not to be coerced. Lee adds,

There’s a good reason why people have for many, many centuries sought sanctuary in places of worship. People instinctively recognize that force—the use of physically coercive force—is not something we want to take place inside of a church or a synagogue or another place of worship.

And so too with many aspects of our lives that are important—because they are important, you don’t necessarily want government in charge of it.

Back to that later religious discussion. He mentions that what we may be seeing is idolatry—not that dissimilar from Old Testament idolatry:

I worry that, in many cases, we have traded faith either in an all-knowing, loving, all-powerful God who will judge us at the end of this life—or even, if not that, faith in a set of principles by which we guide our lives—has in many places been replaced and supplanted by an almost religious faith geared toward government. This is, in a sense, the new idolatry, the idolatry of our time.

Whenever I study the Old Testament, I’m struck by how much they focus, almost obsessively, on idolatry, and I thought, well, that’s weird; we don’t really see a whole lot of that here. In a sense we do. When we worship mortal institutions—mortal institutions with immense military power, aircraft carriers, government offices, $4 trillion in annual outlays—that’s an almost religious amount of faith toward something that is not God, and that doesn’t bring us closer together.

There’s a pretty good discussion on the separation of powers, which Dr. Peterson admits is confusing to an outsider. It does seem natural to us, but it isn’t typical around the world, and certainly not historically. Mike Lee explains it this way:

A minute ago we talked about the federalism, the vertical separation of powers, leaving a fairly stable pyramid-like structure: a few powers at the top, most powers at the base close to the people. Most people know their state legislators, their city council members. They interact with them at the grocery store. They might recognize them at their child’s baseball game. Fewer people know their federal legislators; that’s part of the reason why we have fewer in power and trust at the top.

There’s also a horizontal protection in the Constitution, one that says, once you’re inside the federal government, dealing with something that’s a federal issue—you know, war powers, regulating trade or international commerce, and so forth—we’re going to have three distinct branches. We’ve further subdivided the king or the Caesar—the king or the queen, the monarch there—into three distinct parts. We’ve got one branch of government, the legislative branch—Congress, where I work—that makes the laws. This was designed as the most dangerous branch. That’s why it’s made the most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals, because we have the power to prescribe the rules by which the rest of government operates. That’s the legislative branch.

The executive branch, headed by the president in our system, has the power to execute, implement, and enforce the laws passed by Congress.

Then you’ve got the judicial branch, headed by the Supreme Court, that has the power to interpret the laws and disputes about the laws, where they come into conflict between two or more parties properly before the jurisdiction of the courts.

When each of those branches stays in its lane, the legislative power remains the most dangerous branch, but it is made less dangerous by the fact that it’s the most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals.

So, insofar as we follow those guidelines—the vertical protection of federalism, and the horizontal protection of separation of powers, this document really has helped us. And it’s helped us prosper. It’s led more people out of poverty than any government program ever could or ever will, because it unlocks unlimited human potential by restraining government.

That’s the good that’s designed into our government through the Constitution. The bad and ugly is that Congress has ceded that power, mainly to the executive branch. Lee illustrates this with stacks of paper:

ML: I keep two stacks of documents behind my desk. One document is a few inches tall. It’s usually either a few hundred, sometimes a few thousand pages long, and it consists of the laws passed by Congress in the previous year. The other stack is, in some years, 13-14 feet tall. I keep it in three separate bookcases in my office. It’s sometimes as much as 100,000 pages long. And it’s last year’s federal register. The federal register is the annual cumulative index of federal regulations, as they’re released initially for notice and comment, and then later as they become effective.

Jordan Peterson
screenshot from here

JP: Well, so that’s a very interesting metric too. So that’s a ratio of paper necessary to document regulatory change?

ML: Yes. It is prescribing affirmative legal obligations.

JP: So that is the index of the relative power of the two institutions, so to speak?

ML: Yes, in a sense. Now, it’s not a precise measure, because some of that is not an apples-to-apples comparison. But a lot of it really consists of lawmaking. These are new affirmative legal obligations imposed as a generally applicable rule on the American people, enforceable by the overpowering force that is the federal government.

The difference between those two stacks is that this small stack, one that’s only a few hundred to a few thousand pages long, made by elected lawmakers. The one that’s 13-14 feet tall, 100,000 pages long in some years, made entirely by unelected unaccountable bureaucrats. That’s scary.

Senator Lee ends this segment with a definition of liberty and of tyranny that I find useful. So we’ll end with this:

In any country where there is a societal tendency to trust the people and be skeptical of government, we call that liberty. In a society where people are encouraged to trust the government and be skeptical of the people, we call that tyranny.

Quote from Mike Lee