Don’t Mistake Rioters for Protesters

In Minneapolis Friday a police officer was arrested for the murder of a black man he was detaining and restraining in a manner that led to death. It was captured on video, so the whole country has seen it.

Protests break out calling for justice for George Floyd. The perpetrator is in custody. The other officers, who didn’t step in to prevent the officer’s actions, are also charged as accessories. All were immediately fired, not suspended, no waiting to see.

Terrence Floyd, brother of George Floyd, calls for peace.
"That's not going to bring my brother back at all," he says of riots.
Image from here.

The arrest wasn’t instantaneous. In such a high-profile case (because of the media), the prosecutors need to be careful not to charge more than they can prove. It doesn’t appear to be premeditated, for example, so if they charged first-degree murder and couldn’t prove it, the officer would be found not guilty. And, because of double jeopardy protection, he couldn’t be charged again for the same incident. So the charges are what they can prove for certain. If evidence later appears to prove a higher level crime, the charges can be raised.

There were things to take into account. I suggest this op-ed, which explains those legal details. 

But do you know anyone or have you heard anyone say that the brutality was justified and the police officer should be let off? In regular media? On social media? Anywhere?

This is one of those times that civil society is in agreement. A serious crime was committed, and there must be justice.

found on Ben Shapiro's Facebook page today

So what is being protested?

If justice is underway, what is the message of the protest?

I think it’s something like, “Until America can guarantee that this will never happen to another black person, America is evil.”

But that’s an impossible ask.

America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal—no one is entitled to more consideration under the law than another. Society isn’t stratified by birth, as it has historically been in most countries on earth throughout history.

Unfortunately, slavery of blacks was instituted on this continent by the Mother Country, and it needed to be rooted out. The Constitution was written with that expectation. It took too long, and it took a bloody Civil War to accomplish. But that’s what America sacrificed to make it happen.

Even then, people who had been taught their whole lives that people of a certain bloodline were inferior didn’t automatically unlearn that false teaching. It took another century for people to get fed up and actually grant equal rights.

We’re still divided. But let’s define things a little more carefully.

The Republican Party was created to fight slavery. All slaveholders were Democrats. Even in the northern non-slave states before the Civil War, the pro-slavery people were only Democrats. Coincidentally, it is Democrats who run the cities with most of the racial issues. This is true in Minneapolis—local on up to the governor.

The Republican Party pushed for the Civil Rights laws in the 60s. It was Democrats, mainly from former slave states, that resisted letting go of the Jim Crow laws they had perpetuated.

Then, somehow, the lie got told that it was the Republicans all along who had been racist. The lie became that what conservatives wanted to conserve were the old, pre-Civil Rights, ways. That conservatives wanted to conserve the Democrat way of thinking and living. That was never even close to reality.

So, here we are, decades later, and the lie is bigger. Now, at a time when most Americans don’t even understand the mindset of a racist, and have never felt that way in their lives, have never treated different races with disdain—those people are being told they’re guilty of systemic racism.

What are the protests saying, then? That we should stop being white, or Hispanic, or Asian, because blacks need to be knelt down to? If that isn’t it, what is the message of the protest?

Houston Chronicle May 31, 2020

I’ve seen a number of people reference other protests—implying that this is just an escalation, because we didn’t listen before. Such a message covers the full front page of yesterday’s Houston Chronicle Sports section. Colin Kaepernick protested by refusing to stand for the National Anthem, and that offended us. “If only we had heard his message!” people say.

We did hear him. It wasn’t his method of protest that offended us. It was the lie of his message—that America is an evil, systemically racist country—this from a millionaire black man playing a ball game for a living, and not playing it spectacularly well enough to merit his hiring amid the bad media he brought on.

Black Live Matter protested. And when people of goodwill answered, “Yes, your lives do matter to us. All lives matter,” those people got shouted down with, “No! You’re not hearing us. Black lives matter!”

What is that supposed to mean? That our lives don’t matter because we don’t have the right skin color?

Their protests were related to the Ferguson incident, which wasn’t a case of racist police brutality; it was a case of a black thug attacking a police officer who defended himself; even black eyewitnesses testified of that. Still the protesters shouted the lie that the perpetrator had held his hands up and called don’t shoot and was just gunned down. When it was proven that didn’t happen, the protesters insisted, “It’s still symbolic of the systemic problem.” Then where is your real evidence?

I assert that there isn’t a systemic racist problem going on in America, particularly toward blacks. Black radio host Larry Elder has the stats. Such as today, when he pointed out that police are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than the other way around. That studies that set out to prove racist police brutality found instead that, surprisingly, blacks are less likely to be harmed, because every officer is hyper-aware of the media ramifications of an error.

Elder recites the evidence often. So does black commentator Candace Owens. When they provide data, they’re called traitors. Sometimes they’re even called white supremacists, which is more than a little ironic. They get called these things because their experience and the data they provide does not coincide with the going narrative that there’s systemic racism in America. But those calling them those names don’t provide data; they only cite isolated incidents—which we all agree, when they actually happen, are injustices, and we all agree that justice should be done.

So, where is the evidence of this systemic, widespread problem that is making them so angry?

I’m not saying they don’t really feel what they’re feeling. I believe they do.

Steve Locke, who tells his story
of being detained because black
image from here

I read a story over the weekend, from an incident several years ago, that tells what they’re feeling better than most. It’s the experience of a black man, a college teacher in Massachusetts, who was heading to get a burrito for lunch before going to teach a class. Police pulled him over and questioned him, and then detained him. He fit the description, they said, of a black man, his approximate size, wearing a knit cap and a puffy coat, who had just robbed a nearby business. His jacket (a designer brand, and not a parka) didn’t look very puffy. He was wearing a lanyard showing his ID at the university. Everything he said checked out. He remained calm and respectful. Nevertheless, the police kept him, didn’t believe him, and were considering taking him to be identified by the victim. Fortunately, a detective arrived, saw that his story checked out. The new officer on the scene ran through the details and let him go.

This teacher had felt endangered. He believed it was because he was black. Literally, it was, because the actual perpetrator had been black. That is an unfortunate reality for blacks; they have a particular attribute that looks like the people who are doing an outsized proportion of the criminal activity. That’s a problem caused by those criminals, not generally by the police. But you can see how an officer—even a black officer—could come to be suspicious of people who, in their experience, so often turn out to be the bad guys.

I have sympathy for that teacher. It’s an upsetting thing to happen to a decent person. What could he have done to prevent it? Nothing. He even knew to handle the situation in a way that prevented escalation.

What could the police have done? Detected truth more accurately. Seriously. The detective who arrived later on the scene could tell almost instantly that this wasn’t the bad guy; this was a college professor, and his story rang true. Why didn’t the first officers see that? I don’t know. Maybe they need better training. Maybe they need more experience—combining more seasoned officers with newer ones until they learn? Maybe there’s something else.

But what I see is not racism, but police officers checking out someone who partly matched a not very detailed description of a criminal, a man who had the bad luck of being at the wrong place at that moment. That’s a very different thing from, “He’s black, so we’ve got it in for him. Let’s get him.”

No one’s arguing that racism never happens. Unfortunately, it does. The vast majority of Americans are not only not racist; they’re disgusted by actual racism.

We hear the peaceful protests. The message is, “We’re upset because of racism.” Yes. We understand.

It is similar to people who are afraid of the coronavirus. This fear is intensified for someone whose experience is that it has killed or severely affected someone close to them. So they insist on things that do not help fight coronavirus: economic collapse, wearing of facemasks alone outdoors, contact tracing at a point when prevalence is so widespread that such practices guarantee practically permanent loss of freedom. Yes, we understand you’re scared. The best solution is not to end society as we know it until every case of the virus in the world is gone; the best solution is for you to get a better understanding of the situation so you get over the fear. Then we can all cautiously get on with our lives with that new awareness.

We stopped being racist so long ago that most of us Americans have lived our entire lives without a racist heart. What more can we do? The best solution is not for all races to bow down to blacks in abject humiliation and repentance; that would be a lie coming from people who did not do anything wrong.

Protesters are saying this should never have happened. The people they’re protesting to? They agree. The message has been heard. The wheels of justice are underway. If you value civilization, it’s time to go home and watch the process play out.

Ah, but there’s the issue. People who do not value civilization are using this moment for their own nefarious purposes.

Protests are acceptable—even when their message is wrong, a lie, or misguided. Wrongness in a protest message has more to do with emotion overriding reason than it has to do with moral wrongness. So we value their right to express their views in peaceful protest.

Riots are not protests. Riots are evil acts of violence. They are literally anti-civilization; they are savage. They destroy property. They harm people—usually innocent people, sometimes even the demographic of people the protests were stated to support. And sometimes they take lives.

Rioters are criminals. Sometimes they get away with their crimes by overwhelming the law enforcement resources. That is intentional.

Some riots grow naturally out of crowd emotion. Mob mentality. Those are always bad.

The riots we’re seeing now are even worse; they are unnatural. They are instigated. They are planned. They are funded.

We don’t know all the details yet. And who knows whether the stories we’re seeing will turn out to be true.

Antifa is involved. US Attorney General Barr has identified them as the organizers of looting and mob violence across the country. And President Trump is right to label them a domestic terrorist organization. 

There’s a collection of photos from various cities, where people have noticed pallets of bricks showing up, mysteriously overnight, where there is no construction going on. They have cones placed around them. They’re staged strategically to be available—for throwing by rioting thugs. One instruction included a suburban neighborhood, miles from downtown, with the intention of making the previously safe feel unsafe.

Bricks pre-staged for rioting, image found here

Minneapolis, where the incident took place, and possibly Houston, where George Floyd was from, were not surprising locations. But these things are happening in cities all over the country. What is the message when thugs deface the Lincoln Memorial, where MLK gave his historic speech in the fight for Civil Rights? There is no connection between the damage caused by the evil rioters and the anti-racist message of peaceful protesters.

Anarchist rebels tend to make a common mistake—that once they set things in motion, people will rise up and join them.

What we need to have happen is the arrest and prosecution of each and every perpetrator of the crimes involved in rioting—violence, property damage, theft, assault, murder. Cleanse our free society of those who are actively working to oppress destroy our way of life so that they can get us vulnerable enough to easily oppress.

I believe the numbers of actual believers in the anarchist Antifa worldview are small. People of goodwill do not join such savages.

A community near Minneapolis held a food drive
to help victims of the riots. Image from here.

One good sign is that people showing up in the mornings—to clean up the damage. Pick up debris. Wash off graffiti. Repair what they can. That is what good people do: the exact opposite of the evildoers.

Here are eight examples of good things that have happened. 

Here’s a story of people in Minneapolis bringing groceries to the aid of victims of the riots.

Here is George Floyd’s brother calling for peace. 

What we need is overwhelming civilization to wash away the savagery. Let’s pray we can do it.

Socialism on the Sphere

Earlier today I was listening to the STA Money Hour on radio (it comes on at noon weekdays on KPRC 950 AM), and one of the hosts mentioned he’d had a conversation with his young adult son about socialism, what it means, what’s being taught in schools and elsewhere, what the young man’s friends thought. And the answer was kind of scary. There’s so little knowledge among young people, who are being taught that socialism is about “fairness” and “sharing the wealth” so that these young people get free education, free healthcare, and other free “stuff.” So the host said it was his plan to post the video of Milton Friedman on the Phil Donohue Show, from decades ago, that so clearly explains the economics of it. I’ve shared that video before, but I’m including it again at the end of today’s post.

Later today I heard Larry Elder mention on his show, that there’s a recent poll showing that large numbers of young people in their 20s and 30s favor socialism—this in the face of Venezuela. They don’t seem to make the connection.

Last week economist Thomas Sowell was asked about the growing approval of socialism in America; would we resist it? He said he hoped so, but he wouldn’t bet on it.

Socialism, in red, overlaps with other -isms,
but they're all down into tyranny.

So today I’m doing my little part of educating the world on socialism, using what we know from the Spherical Model.

How do we know where socialism is on the sphere?

The same way you know about any government type or -ism: you see how it answers the questions for reaching north on the political, economic, and social spheres.

So let’s try it. We’ll try this one sphere at a time, but be warned that the spheres interrelate.

Political Sphere

Question 1: Is socialism something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has a right to delegate to his/her government?

Answer: Depending on how we’re defining socialism, there’s some range here. Socialism could mean that government takes over various sectors of the economy, or maybe the entire means of production for a country. It’s a matter of degree, but socialism implies that government has the right to take private property without due compensation.

Socialism defines property “rights” as “whatever the government allows you to control as if you own it,” but government is ultimately the actual owner of whatever it decides to take ownership of.

But in real life—what we call natural law—we don’t have the right to take someone else’s property, which essentially means taking the fruits of labor from someone’s life, thus enslaving them; therefore we don’t have the right to delegate that right to our government.

This means socialism doesn’t pass the freedom test on this question. Socialism is southern hemisphere. The more power that government takes that the people do not have the right to grant to government, the more tyrannical the government.

Question 2: Does socialism infringe in any way on the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights?

Answer: Let’s remind ourselves of those God-given rights—just the ones listed in the Bill of Rights. (There are, of course, others.)

·         Freedom of religion, speech, press, peaceable assembly, petition government for redress of grievances.

·         Right to bear arms.

·         Right to security in our homes and papers, and from illegal searches and seizures.

·         Right to a fair and speedy trial, by jury.

·         Freedom from excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments.

The final two amendments of the original Bill of Rights add that government is limited to the enumerated powers granted in the Constitution, and that any rights not enumerated are retained by the States or the individual people.

In theory, socialism wouldn’t have to infringe on all these rights; it would only need to infringe on property rights. However, in practice, in order to enforce the coercive taking of property, in all the countries that have tried it, we’ve seen many more rights infringed. The right to bear arms gets lost early on. So do free speech rights—and all the rest of the First Amendment. The judicial system gets corrupted, and “fairness” becomes whatever the government says it is, no matter how unjust.

So, socialism falls into the southern hemisphere on this question.

Question 3: Is socialism within the proper role of government, some aspect of protecting life, liberty and property? These include national defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling (not controlling) international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency, and the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws?

Answer: Socialism isn’t about protecting life, liberty, or property. It purports to be about fairness, and “protecting” people from poverty. But, as we know, whenever government interferes in a way that is beyond the proper role of government, there will be unintended consequences, which are usually the exact opposite of the stated goal. So, if socialism intends to get people out of poverty, you can expect the unintended consequences to include putting people into poverty.

That’s what we’ve seen happening in Venezuela. The richest nation in South America fell into abject poverty in about a decade. In some countries the fall has taken longer, 30 to 50 years. But it has happened every time. China, Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, Cambodia. Everywhere it’s been tried. As it forces the people into deprivations while taking away their ability to rebel, tyranny reigns
.

screenshot from Stuart Varney report on Venezuela August 2018

Socialism is designed to fall into tyranny.

Economic Sphere

Question: Who decides what will be done with the fruits of your labors?

Answer: There’s only that single question for the Economic Sphere. Does the person who produced something through his labors get to decide how the fruits of his labors are used? Or should someone else decide? In socialism, it’s someone else. Government. Probably a distant bureaucrat, who decides that, if someone produces quite a lot—far more than the person needs for subsistence, so that the producer accumulates wealth—then government should take a portion of that wealth and distribute to someone who was not as successful at producing surplus fruits of labor.

Socialism ignores how hard a person works, how valuable a person’s work is to society, or how careful a person is to accumulate his wealth rather than quickly spend it. Socialism is only concerned that the outcomes should be equalized.

Socialism fails to take into account that, if a person doesn’t get to keep the fruits of his labors, and the government promises to give enough to everyone regardless of effort, socialism has taken away the incentive to work. And the result, before long, is that those who would have produced more will no longer bother to do so.

Socialism, therefore, not only takes what has been produced from the producers, but it leads the producers to produce less in the future—which means there’s less to take, to redistribute. That’s how poverty results.

Another option for producers is escape. Those who want to keep more of what they’ve produced will leave a place where a government takes their earnings. Even if government were to confiscate all their wealth, those producers who escape would still have their human capital, which they would take with them to produce more wealth in a less hostile environment. That’s one reason socialist countries have historically prevented their people from leaving. And you’re hearing complaints from New York's governor about the wealth producers leaving, just when they had so many uses for the exorbitant taxes they were charging.

Socialism doesn’t lift people out of poverty; it sinks entire societies (except for a few ruling elite) into poverty.

Social Sphere

Question 1: Does socialism allow for and encourage the flourishing of religion?

Answer: There’s an essential reason for this question. Rights come, logically, from either a greater than human source or a human-given source. If rights are God-given, then a person is entitled to them simply by virtue of being human. No human can rightfully deprive you of them. But if rights are not God-given, then there is no guarantee the human giver will not take them away.

Say, as in so-called “Democratic Socialism,” a majority votes that you should be deprived of your property simply because you have more than the majority (or its appointed bureaucrat) deems that you need or qualify for. You’re deprived of your property rights because you worked harder or smarter than someone else. Put another way, the majority has enslaved you to work for the majority’s benefit, rather than your own. The majority is a human tyrant.

And since the actions of a socialist government are tyrannical—i.e., go against your God-given rights—coercion will be necessary to do the enslaving, so you’ll lose additional rights.

But here is the crux of the matter: socialism claims to be a way to alleviate the unfairness of unequal outcomes, those terrible inequalities, or disparities. Without socialism, how do you deal with the fact that some people are starving or homeless while others enjoy mansions and private jets? Socialism claims to be moral and charitable.

But is it? Is it charitable for you to go on your neighbor’s property, steal the apples he has grown and was going to pick and sell at a market, and instead take those apples and distribute them to some hungry people down the road?

If your neighbor finds out and decides—voluntarily chooses—to allow for this theft for the sake of the hungry people, that says something about the charitable (and also merciful) feelings of your neighbor. But it says nothing about you except that you disrespect your neighbor’s property. You didn’t give anything of your own to feed the hungry. So you should stop smugly calling yourself charitable.

We can’t delegate our ability to give charity to government to do for us, because we don’t have the power to give someone else’s property charitably. We only have power to give our own property.

But isn’t that what we do when we pay our tax money to government to distribute to the poor?

The simple answer is no. You give tax money to government to carry out government responsibilities, of which charity is not one. When you vote (or have your representatives vote) to take tax money for charitable purposes, you’re giving your money and your neighbors’ to government bureaucrats to make decisions about who deserves what, which opens up all kinds of possibilities for favoritism and corruption.

If you donate your charity directly, not only is that actual charitable giving, rather than coerced “giving,” there’s no portion of it going to a government bureaucrat, so more money goes to the charitable cause. If you give to an organization, you can do your research to know who they serve, how they decide who’s deserving, and how much of your donation goes directly to charitable purposes rather than overhead.

So there’s a free choice way to take care of the poor, and socialism isn’t it.

But that real way does require a righteous people—a religious people, most likely—who feel the personal obligation to help out their fellow human beings.

Earlier today, the Heritage Foundation linked a piece well worth reading by historian Lee Edwards, “What Americans Must Know about Socialism.” The piece ends with this:

This is the reality of socialism—a pseudo-religion grounded in pseudo-science and enforced by political tyranny. This is the case against socialism—a god that failed, a science that never was, a political system headed for the ash heap of history

Socialism is a religious perspective, but it places government in the role of God. And instead of seeing theft and coveting as sins, it exalts them as basic principles.

Question 2: Does socialism promote the family as the basic unit of civilization?

Answer: No. Socialism tries to replace the family. It tries to be the source of rights, provider of needs, educator and inculcator of ideology, controller of messages, controller of behaviors. It assumes that people would not do what government calls “good,” left to their own devices. So it steps in, where the family used to be, to provide and teach its ways, and to coerce and punish any disagreement or disobedience. And it punishes much more severely than a loving parent would. Violence against dissent isn’t a mistake in how it has been implemented; it is an inherent practice.

Socialism is not intended to grow civilized adults, as a family is intended to do; rather, it is intended to grow submissive minions to allow the ruling elite unlimited power.

Ahead of a story on Venezuela posted on Facebook on March 8, the Heritage Foundation summarizes with this:

Socialism always promises progress, but it inevitably delivers scarcity, corruption and decay.

Rather than empower the common man, socialists believe in empowering bureaucracy. In their minds, bureaucrats will always make decisions based on science and dispassionate reason—and make sure those decisions are implemented and enforced efficiently.

It’s an elitist, intellectually arrogant belief, and it’s dangerous.

Capitalism is the economic engine of freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Socialism sinks us into tyranny, poverty, and savagery.

Here is the Milton Friedman video again: 

Malevolence

Yesterday was another example of malevolence in our world: a school shooting in Florida. We don’t yet know all the details. But it appears there are 17 dead and another 14 injured and hospitalized.

Alaina Petty, age 14, a Mormon girl, was one of 17
killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Image from LDS Living

The 19-year-old perpetrator was previously identified as troubled. When he had been a student, he had been prevented from carrying a backpack, I’m assuming so that he couldn’t hide a weapon inside. He was expelled from the school for behavioral reasons. He was known to be threatening, and some say his social media declared his willingness, or perhaps plan, to become a school shooter. However, he had no criminal record.

The story is that he set off the fire alarm, which would cause students to pour out of their classrooms, where they were vulnerable to his onslaught.

He was apprehended alive. It may be possible to learn something in this case that we cannot learn when the perpetrator is among the dead.

But the real motive is malevolence: a delight in evil. It’s a conscious choice.

It is not a mistake to gather weapons, plan ways to do as much destruction as possible, and then take as many innocent lives as possible. That is a purposeful act, with many small actions leading to it.

In most cases, for malevolence of this depravity, we assume mental illness is involved. Because no one in their right mind would do such a thing.

A healthy mind shrinks from taking human life. There has to be an overwhelming need—such as self-preservation, preservation of loved ones, or protection of innocents—that allows a human with a healthy mind to take a life.

But there is a sort of “logic” in the malevolent mind. I quoted Jordan Peterson on this in the last post. Because you face bad experiences in this world, you could take either the immoral or the moral stance. Peterson said, “If you take the immoral stance and say, Well, the horror of the world has made me bitter, resentful, murderous, and genocidal; isn’t it no wonder?” that’s the logic of the perpetrator of great evil.

But, as he adds, the malevolent act still isn’t logical: “All that does is make everything that you’re hypothetically objecting to worse.” And, “You can’t logically conclude that you should act in the way that is certain to do nothing but multiply [the horror of the world] beyond comprehension.”

Since we all face bad things, and we all have the power within us to choose good or evil, we have to make a conscious decision to choose to be moral.

During church on Sunday, a man told a story from over 40 years ago that will remain memorable. Back in high school, his mother was on a date with a young man. Just a pleasant date, out to dinner, to get to know one another better. The couple were returning to their car, ready to drive home, when a drunken gang of four men set upon them and threatened. They ordered the young man to let them take the girl, and then they wouldn’t kill her. They planned to rape her and leave her on the road somewhere.

The young man told the girl to run, and then he took on the four thugs singlehandedly, without a weapon, long enough for her to get away. But he lost his life in the effort.

The two young people were about 17, and so innocent. It’s hard to know, until you’re faced with something really dire, how you will react. This young man was courageous. And good.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.—John 15:13.

A year or two later, the young woman met another young man, in another state she had moved to. In conversation, she mentioned where she was from. This young man knew only one person from that town, whom he’d met at a camp some years earlier. The one he knew was the young man who had given up his life for this young woman. So he was aware of the story and knew what kind of expectation she had of a good man.

These two eventually married, and raised several sons, including the man telling the story at church. He said you can be certain he and his brothers were raised to know what was expected of them. They would be expected to stand up against evil, and protect the life and virtue of women—even a young woman they only knew from a date or two.

Consider the difference, in the face of malevolence in the world, between the immoral and the moral choice.

Violence isn’t something we reduce by access to certain weapons; violence is reduced when we learn to make moral choices, even when life is unfair, ugly, or malevolent.

The policy questions surround what to do about the perpetrator, and/or what to do to prevent the next perpetrator. It’s a necessary debate. As long as we have people who choose to do heinous, immoral acts, we need ways to stop them.

If it is because of an identifiable mental illness, we may need better ways of identifying and preventing. That’s a tough question, because it requires, sometimes, physical restraint before a crime has been committed.

Depriving all of innocent society from having the means to defend themselves against a perpetrator, in the hopes of depriving the perpetrator of the means to do harm—that’s a common suggestion. But it’s not a satisfying answer. Even, hypothetically, if you could remove all weapons from all people in the world, you would still have evildoers who purposely do harm—using other tools, utensils, or muscles against people without those things.

Returning to civilization is a better answer overall. It begins with the individual. With each of us, choosing to do the right thing—as best we can discern it—each and every time we are faced with a moral choice. Then we have a world that is less unfair, ugly, and malevolent giving evildoers their rationale.

Larry Elder was talking about the horrendous event on his radio show today. During the discussion, he played the audio of the testimony of Darrell Scott, a parent whose daughter was killed in the Columbine shooting in 1999. It seems appropriate again today. I searched to see if there was video of that speech, and I’ve included that 5 minutes below. But I’d like to quote a couple of sections:

Since the dawn of creation there has been both good and evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.

The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain's heart.

In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA—because I don't believe that they are responsible for my daughter's death. Therefore, I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel's murder, I would be their strongest opponent.

I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy; it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies.

He shared a poem he had written about the sad change in our culture. And then he offered this:

Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation's history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact.

What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence.

And then he suggested prayer—connection to God—as one answer.

As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America, and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him.

We get better at choosing the right thing with practice. That’s why “What religion do you belong to?” isn’t as useful a question as “What religion do you practice?” And it isn’t for one religion or sect to win out over another. It is to encourage a person in the way he has found in his life journey that leads him to honor God, life, family, property, and truth.

As I heard once: If all your life you will try to be more fair and more kind to others than some of them may sometimes be to you, then you will be happy, and your life will be full and useful."*

__________________________

* From a talk by Marion D. Hanks, entitled "More Joy and Rejoicing," October 1976.

Good Thing Coming to an End

Economist Thomas Sowell wrote his final column this week. Fortunately, he’s not dead; he’ll keep writing books, keep giving interviews. We just won’t have his frequent short pieces of wisdom to count on each week.

Thomas Sowell
image from here

He’s 86—and only retiring from the column. He said last spring he was on a photography trip to Yosemite with friends. For four days they had no access to news. And he really enjoyed that. While writing the column, he has felt obligated to keep current on news and events so he could comment intelligently about them. And now he’s letting that go.

I relate to that, since I write regularly here, and it does a good part of the time relate to current events. During this holiday season, surrounded by family, I’ve mostly tuned out radio and newspapers, and even much social media—and it is refreshing.

Thomas Sowell has me by nearly two decades, after an extraordinarily prolific career, so I think he’s entitled to the relief from news. Back before writing this blog, when I was writing a few pieces a year (mainly in defense of traditional marriage), I would take hours—weeks sometimes—to write a piece. I marveled at how Thomas Sowell could put out something so profound, well-researched, and well-reasoned a time or two a week.

Eventually I learned that there are differences in writing when you’re doing something quick and regular. I don’t polish as much. I don’t provide exhaustive footnotes as often. I just try to put out a complete thought. I think that’s what Thomas Sowell has done as well, compared to his books, which are longer, more polished, and more referential to specific research. It’s just that he has a huge body of research in his head, and all the thought connections he’s made over many thoughtful decades.

I mentioned his Basic Economics as a favorite influence in my very first blog post. I’ll probably continue to refer to his writings as a model and a resource.

In celebration of his column retirement, I thought I’d share some Thomas Sowell wisdom.

First, if you have half an hour, he did an interview on the Larry Elder radio show on Wednesday. Their conversation covers a wide range, and gives the flavor of his wit and wisdom:

You can read his final column here: https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/12/16/farewell

I wrote about a Thomas Sowell interview on Uncommon Knowledge in 2015, following the publication of his book Wealth, Poverty, and Politics. Worth a re-read. 

Townhall put together a list of “12 Fantastic Thomas Sowell Quotes in Honor of His Retirement.”

And now I’ll share a few of the quotes I’ve saved in my Spherical Model quote file:

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

Character is what we have to depend on when we entrust power over ourselves, our children and our society to government officials.

We cannot risk all that for the sake of the fashionable affectation of being more non-judgmental than thou.—(article following resignation of NY governor Elliot Spitzer)

Someone once said that a con man's job is not to convince skeptics but to enable people to continue to believe what they already want to believe.—(article on Obama’s “faith” speech 3-19-08)

One of the biggest taxes is one that is not even called a tax—inflation. When the government spends money that it creates, it is transferring part of the value of your money to themselves. It is quiet taxation but often heavy taxation, falling on everyone, no matter how low their incomes might be.—(10-29-08)

How have intellectuals managed to be so wrong, so often? By thinking that because they are knowledgeable—or even expert—within some narrow band out of the vast spectrum of human concerns, that makes them wise guides to the masses and to the rulers of the nation.

But the ignorance of PhDs is still ignorance and high-IQ groupthink is still groupthink, which is the antithesis of real thinking.—(11-11-08)

The medical care stampede is about much more than medical care, important as that is. It is part of a whole mindset of many on the left who have never reconciled themselves to an economic system in which how much people can withdraw from the resources of the nation depends on how much they have contributed to those resources.—(8-19-09)

There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.—(9-29-09)

People who call differences "inequities" and achievements "privilege" leave social havoc in their wake, while feeling noble about siding with the less fortunate.—(5-4-2010)

Among people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, those who are likely to be most disappointed are those who thought that they were voting for a new post-racial era. There was absolutely nothing in Obama's past to lead to any such expectation, and much to suggest the exact opposite. But the man's rhetoric and demeanor during the election campaign enabled this and many other illusions to flourish.

Still, it was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with.

On race, as on other issues, different people have radically different views of Barack Obama, depending on whether they judge him by what he says or by what he does.—(7-19-2010)

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be "materialistic" and "greedy" to want to keep what you have earned. But it is "idealistic" to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.—(3-22-2011)

Even if it could be proved that judges who are making rulings that go counter to the written law produce better results in those particular cases than following the letter of the law would have, that does not make society better off. When laws become unreliable and judges unpredictable, lawsuits become a bonanza for charlatans, who can force honest people to settle out of court, for fear of what some judge might do.—(3-22-2011)

The Obama administration seems to be following what might be called "the Detroit pattern"-- increasing taxes, harassing businesses, and pandering to unions. In the short run, it got mayors re-elected. In the long-run, it reduced Detroit from a thriving city to an economic disaster area, whose population was cut in half, as its most productive citizens fled.—(3-22-2011)

Since the government creates no wealth, it can only transfer the wealth required to hire people. Even if the government creates a million jobs, that is not a net increase in jobs, when the money that pays for those jobs is taken from the private sector, which loses that much ability to create private jobs.—(7-6-2011)

People who say they want a government program because "I don't want to be a burden to my children" apparently think it is all right to be a burden to other people's children.—(8-2-2011)

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

Like so many people, in so many countries, who started out to "spread the wealth," Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty.—(10-17-2011)

Politicians can solve almost any problem—usually by creating a bigger problem. But, so long as the voters are aware of the problem that the politicians have solved, and unaware of the bigger problems they have created, political "solutions" are a political success.—(10-17-2011)

Let's stop and think, if only for the novelty of it.—(8-29-2012)

The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals' expansion of the welfare state. Most black children grew up in homes with two parents during all that time but most grow up with only one parent today.—(1-15-2013)

There are no magic solutions [to getting out of poverty], at least none that I know of. Common sense, common decency, work and honesty are about all I can come up with. These things are not fancy or new or politically correct. But they have a better track record than much that we are doing today.—(5-20-2014, “Poverty and Snowstorms”)

I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.—(“Who Is Racist?” 7-2014 National Review)

If you don’t understand the issues, but want to do your patriotic duty, then stay home on election night, whether in the primaries or in the national election in November. Uninformed voters turn elections into a game of playing Russian roulette with the future of America.—(1-30-2016)

The old adage about giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish has been updated by a reader: Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries! Moreover some politician who wants his vote will declare all these things to be among his “basic rights.”—(http://l.prageru.com/29VdtqE)

Lives That Matter

It has been a time of mourning for the country, since the mass shooting of police officers in Dallas, Texas, last Thursday. Five were killed; seven others are in various stages of recovery. And the country is in turmoil.

Dallas police, early July 8, 2016, following sniper shooting
photo AP/LM Otero, found here

When the wicked rule, the people mourn.

The president, who was voted into office in a post-racial world, has been the most racially divisive president since Woodrow Wilson. Saying we told you so won’t help, but…

In Stephen Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the principles is “Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.” So, with that in mind, I’m trying to understand.

There is NO valid reason for sniper shooting of police officers doing their duty in their professional way, which was the case Thursday. They were calmly and professionally escorting protesters—protesters were claiming that police were unfair to black people. They disregarded hatred and misunderstanding aimed at them and did their job. There were heroic acts on the part of police to keep the protesters—the public—safe once the shooting started.

So understanding the perpetrators amounts to this: These were angry, hateful, evildoers who wanted to murder innocent police officers.

Because some police officers somewhere at some time may have been too forceful against particular black people? That’s the story. But so what? What if some police officer somewhere had been in the wrong? That is in the range of possibility, whether you believe the sensationalized news stories of police-on-black-brutality or not. That would still not justify murder of random cops. It wouldn’t even justify murder of any particular bad cop; such a person would be handled through the justice system.[i]

Unless you do not believe in the justice system—and since the FBI announcement last week that Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted for the long list of crimes the director laid out, maybe there’s reason not to trust the justice system.

But if we don’t trust the justice system, is being more evil and murderous going to get us to justice? Of course not.

So what we need to understand about the evildoers is that they choose to do extreme evil. And they must be stopped. We don’t need to offer sympathy or justification or rationale. There is no rationale for doing what they have done.

The ones we need to share understanding with are the protesters. I believe many of them are horrified by the violent mass murder of police officers. That was not their goal. Their goal was to raise awareness to an issue they are passionate about—an issue that may only be an issue because of bad media storytelling, because the data does not support their claims.

But stirring up anger and fomenting violence was the goal of some leadership. We need to separate out those who are merely reacting from those who are causing.

Because, among those protesters, and others across the country who sympathize with them, there may be some who can be brought to the truth when the truth, rather than lies, is what they hear and are surrounded by. Just since Thursday, I think many of them are saying, “Not all police officers are bad,” which ought to be obvious to any sentient being, but this is nevertheless progress.

Maybe, while this bit of truth has penetrated, they can also accept other truths.

As Matt Walsh put it in a July 8^th post,

It takes 17 seconds on Google to discover that more white people have been killed by cops this year than blacks and Hispanics combined. White people are almost twice as likely tobe killed by cops than black people.[ii] There were twice as many whites killed by cops last year than blacks. Yes, it’s true that black people are a smaller percentage of the population, but they also commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes, which means they are involved in a disproportionate number of altercations with police.

There were over 900 people killed by cops last year. The vast majority were not black, and the vast majority were armed. 

The false narrative they’ve been told is that police officers are racially prejudiced toward blacks, and are likely to use brutal force or even fatally wound blacks, just because they hate blacks. The data doesn’t bear this out, but something in their experience leads them to choose to believe it’s true.

I want to look for a moment at how preconceptions change our experience. And as an example, I’ll use interactions with police officers.

I don’t have a lot of experience with police; I’m not well connected with the criminal element. But I have experienced the rare but occasional traffic stop. And it is my experience that, while we are respectful to one another, police officers have never let me off with a warning; I always get the ticket.

My son Political Sphere has similar experiences. He even believes that it’s particularly important for him not to speed or roll through the stop sign—because he will get caught. And he will get a ticket. Never a warning.

Why? The mind tries to find reasons. It’s not because of gender, because we are one of each. It’s not because of race, because we don’t find this to be the standard case for others of our race. Even others of our family. It’s not even because we drive sporty cars, because I have a small SUV, and he has a minivan.

We feel a little picked on for no good reason. Even if we were speeding a bit, it wasn’t to the point of endangering others, or even out of intent; usually it’s just momentary carelessness at an inopportune moment. Can’t the police officers tell that we’re the kind of law-abiding citizens who would correct any error in behavior just by giving us a warning?

But if we were black, and we had people telling us the cops had it in for us blacks, and we read news stories and got filled with the repeated narrative that there’s something to this thing about blacks getting picked on because of race, we might think that was the cause. Even when it might be no more the cause than whatever it is in my life and my son’s.

If I were black and had that narrative surrounding my interaction with police officers, and it colored my experience, how would I come around to seeing without that inaccurate filter?

The shocking murder of five police officers might be an opportunity for clarity. Because, like we said, the internet if full of sources for the data. If, among these black protesters, there are those who love the truth, they may react to the facts with, “Oh, I didn’t know that before; that changes what I think.”

That is what should happen among civilized people.

If acceptance of the truth doesn’t happen for all, then among the unaccepting there are a couple of possibilities. One is that individuals personally have experienced something really negative, and they have generalized that such a situation happens to everyone like them. If we’re willing to say, “We understand your experience was bad. You shouldn’t have had to go through that. We’re willing to work on training and on improving the system to correct that so others don’t have to experience what you did. But can’t you see, from the data, that your experience was an anomaly and not the common experience?”

To some people, changing their point of view, even in the face of facts, is difficult. But if they really want society to be better—more civilized—then they must be accepting of truth. We all must.

If they prefer to remain angry, ignore facts, insist that the story of racism in America—and especially among cops—is what they claim it is when reality is otherwise, then they might just be race baiters. People trying to stir up anger and hatred for their own power-seeking agenda.

Until those people are willing to change, there’s no amount of non-racial-bias perfection we can live or think or do that would be perfect enough for them to admit we’re not all racists. And a blog post isn't complete enough to cure what ails them.

I’m still puzzled by those who use violence against innocents as a way of persuading the public to come join their side. This is true for terrorists of any stripe. Do they think that blowing up women and children, or using sniper fire against police officers is going to make us say, “Hmm, maybe they have a point; they’ve persuaded me they’re in the right. They’re the kind of people I want as my leaders”?

I can only assume they really think, “If enough people fear us, they will cower and succumb to our rule.” But a free people, a civilized people, will not give in to evil. Our souls and the lives of our children and grandchildren depend on our not giving in to evil.

We will stop the evildoers, because we must. We prefer to stop them by persuading them to change their hearts away from evil. But that choice will be up to them.

---

[i] I wrote about the Ferguson situation here, and violence against the police here and here. You might also want to read The War on Cops, by Heather MacDonald.

[ii] This piece by Larry Elder is worth reading in its entirety. He also spoke about the issue at length on his radio program Friday and Monday. Larry Elder grew up in South Central Los Angeles, and he is black.