Another Little Civics Lesson on the Three Branches of Government

Today’s civics lesson is on the three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial. This seems basic, but there are people who need reminding that the legislative branch writes the laws and budgets the money; the executive branch carries out the laws; the judicial branch adjudicates on lawbreaking and settles disputes.

Article I, Sections 1 and 7, of the Constitution

Why the need for the lesson today? Because of the hue and cry about an executive branch out of control—because it wants to reduce the regulatory burden.

Here’s an example from an “educator” in my school district (I do not know her, so I have deleted name and school identifiers).

Libs of TikTok discovered this example of a local Texas educator

First of all, authoritarians don’t, by definition, make people freer. So there must be something wrong in the perception of what’s happening. I think the misperception is that the regulatory agencies are independent, and therefore are a check on the power of the executive. That’s not accurate.

Regulatory agencies are part of the executive branch. But in many ways they are a perversion of all three branches, combining lawmaking authority with prosecution and adjudication of rulebreakers: all three separate branch authorities in a single agency—like a monarchy, or your common tyranny.

Regulatory agencies are formed when Congress, the legislative branch, decides that something is too complex for them—or for any non-expert—to understand and make rules on, so they dump their lawmaking duties into the agency and set it up to rule unilaterally.

To break that down, what Congress has done is relinquish its lawmaking duties to the agency, which will be—not a part of the legislative branch, but of the executive branch. The “law” the legislature set up was something like, “this agency will do anything outlined in these 998+ pages, plus anything they deem necessary to regulate this aspect of life for Americans.” And then that agency, with its experts in charge, will write myriad rules and regulations—too many for any person to be familiar with.

And, just to clarify, a just law must be known and declared to the people, so that compliance is possible; otherwise, it’s just a capricious ruling power—a tyranny.

Then the agency—because the assumption is, no typical judge would have the expertise to understand how and whether an accused violator had even done something wrong—creates its own internal judiciary to carry out sentencing, which could be anything from assessing a fine, denying property rights, shutting down a business, on up to incarceration for criminal actions. And up until recently, there wasn’t much an accused violator could do to appeal such a ruling.

You may remember that the Chevron deference was eliminated by the Supreme Court last summer. In the 1984 Chevron decision, the Supreme Court had decided that regulatory agencies were the "experts" in their field, and the courts should just defer to their "interpretation" of the law—thus the term “Chevron deference.” It was a bad decision. It meant that a regulatory agency could come in, inform you that you were in violation and were therefore a criminal, and they might sentence you on the spot. You didn’t get a jury trial; you often didn’t get to mount a defense. And you probably couldn’t appeal to anyone but the “judge” inside the agency.

The Loper case, which led to the Chevron deference being overturned, concerned a fishing company, Loper Bright Enterprises, which was being charged $700 per day by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to monitor their company. Federal law never authorized NMFS to charge businesses for this monitoring “service.” NMFS just started charging the exorbitant fee in 2013. And it put any but the most lucrative businesses into bankruptcy. So it was about time they were challenged.

SCOTUS could have ruled narrowly, on just this NMFS case. But they broadened the ruling, to allow challenges to essentially all regulatory agency tyrannies—in other words, to throw out Chevron deference.

As Tom Woods commented at the time, 

Whenever something like this happens, when a wicked but seemingly irreversible feature of American life is suddenly overturned, it should lift our spirits: things we assume are forever may not be so forever after all.

The opposition to freedom has been clamoring on about the danger of weakening the regulatory state ever since.

And right now, with the Trump administration challenging—and cutting budgets and authority to—these agencies, the opposition is apoplectic. But their claim that this is authoritarian overreach is exactly opposite of true. What we are seeing, at last, is an administration willing to reduce centralized authority and tyrannical, unconstitutional regulatory agencies—and put lawmaking power back into the hands of the legislative branch where it belongs.

Madison, from Federalist #62, which Sen. Lee refers to below

So, that’s my opinion. But, while writing this I happened to hear Senator Mike Lee talk about this very thing with Glenn Beck on his Thursday radio show. The specific conversation was about the REINS Act, or Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, which is a proposed law that would require congressional approval for major regulations issued by federal agencies before they can take effect. Here’s some of that conversation:

ML: The REINS Act, bottom line, is that it requires what the Constitution already mandates. In Article I Sections 1 and 7 we read that you cannot make a federal law without Congress. And that to pass a federal law, that requires a couple of things. First, bicameral passage, meaning passage of the same bill in the House and in the Senate. Secondly, you have to present that to the President, who can then sign it, veto it, or acquiesce to it.

Now—and it should be simple, right? Because Article I Sections 1 and 7 make that clear. And yet, for the last 85 years or so, Congress has been in a death spiral of delegating its lawmaking powers. In short, we will say things like, “Well, we should have good law in area X, and hereby delegate to agency Y the power to make good law in that area.” That’s nonsense. That makes the work easier for members of Congress, and it insulates members of Congress from political accountability, but in the wrong way.

GB: But even more, does it not violate my right to representation? No taxation without representation?

ML: 100%. Because these people who make most of your laws—measured by weight, volume, regulatory compliance costs, you name it—are now made by men and women not of our own choosing. This is a real problem.

Remember that Madison said, in Federalist 62, he said in effect, “It will be of little avail to the American people that their laws may be written by men of their own choosing, if those laws be so voluminous, complex, and ever-changing, they can’t know from one day to the next what the law says and what it requires.” We now live in that dystopian nightmare, Glenn. 100,000 pages a year—is what these bureaucratic pinheads put out every year.

And not only are they so everchanging you can’t know what the law says from one day to the next, they’re not even written by men and women of our own choosing. This is tyranny of the sort that would have made King George III blush with envy. These guys are tyrants. And we’ve got to take it back. It is Congress’s fault; Congress must fix that. Congress may fix it, and must fix it, by passing the REINS Act.

It is Congress’s fault. But it is also the fault of presidents who signed those bills to create administrative agencies—over 400, and only now for the first time is that number going to go down instead of up. And it is the fault of a judiciary who also allowed their power to be usurped and did not declare unconstitutional what these agencies have been doing.

For those concerned about the constitutional
authority of DOGE, Mike Lee clarifies.

So, no, we are not about to “lose our democracy”—unless what you define as democracy is a bureaucratic tyranny, rather than the will of the people. Finally, we have an administration acting to recover from this rule by bureaucrat.

As Elon Musk said recently, 

“If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the President and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.”

For those in fear that a loss of regulations leads to a loss of safety or some other fear, I’ve written about that a few times:

·        Regulation—Too Much of a Bad Thing, April 5, 2011 

·        Regulatory Tyranny, August 26, 2013  

·        SCOTUS Finale, July 6, 2024  I linked to this above, with the Tom Woods quote. The middle section talks about the repeal of the Chevron deference.

·        Vote for Freedom, Faith, and Family, October 21, 2024 This was a “why vote for Trump as a person of faith” piece, but quotes Sen. Mike Lee saying very close to what I quoted him saying in today’s piece. 

That ends today’s lesson. I’m sure there will be plenty more to review about our Constitution in days to come.

Vote for Freedom, Faith, and Family

I started this post last Thursday but didn’t finish. With Early Voting starting today, November 21^st, I needed to post my recommendations for the November election (which I did here). Spoiler alert, this time, without exception, I recommend voting Republican from top to bottom. (Plus some conservatives in nonpartisan races.)

So now I’m back to this post on the presidential race. I am taking note of a video call from last week (Sunday, October 13^th) talking with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about why good Christians—including our particular type of Christian—should vote for Trump. (I wasn't on this call; I saw the recording.) I think most Christians will find that this resonates with them as well. It’s a way to talk with friends and loved ones who see themselves as seeking the virtuous choice, but have been getting their information from, well, less than truthful sources.

Donald Trump speaks during the LDS Roundtable video call
October 13, screenshot from here

 

A Vote for Trump is a Vote for Freedom, Faith, and Family

As some of you may remember, I did not support Donald Trump in 2016 (I absolutely did not vote for Hillary; I did a protest vote in a state where Hillary could not win). In the Primary I supported Ted Cruz. I was annoyed at Trump’s way of belittling all of his opponents, and I thought the attacks on Ted Cruz were unfounded and over the top (that he was a liar, which he isn’t; that his wife was ugly, which she isn’t; that his father supported Castro in Cuba and/or was related to the Kennedy assassination, which were pure fabrications).

These are what people summarize now as “mean tweets,” although I really never went to Twitter back then. They aren’t insignificant. But Ted Cruz forgave him and endorsed him, in exchange, it appeared, for promises of conservative judicial nominations. I saw that Cruz believed he’d gotten such a promise, but I hadn’t personally gotten that promise. (It turns out Cruz saw that promise kept.)

But, worse, Trump had been, up until almost that point, as far as I could tell, a Democrat billionaire playboy, which was a repugnant image, and I didn’t see a conversion story from that to constitutional conservative family man.

Statements from Trump’s 2016 campaign aligned with my views, but I didn’t believe him—until he proved himself as President.

When he won the Primary, I was morose, believing that was the end of our constitutional republic. But the Spirit whispered to me, “Trust Me.” I didn’t know what that meant. It didn’t seem to mean I should vote for Trump, or maybe it meant that it didn’t matter at the time, just that things were not as bleak as I thought they were. And that was true; we had some pretty good years on the way to recovering from the Obama malaise. And I have come to believe that God is making good use of the unique person that Donald Trump is.

I disagreed with President Trump about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 “vaccine,” but there was a lot to agree with him on in his presidency. He severely cut illegal immigration at the southern border. He cut regulations. The economy flourished—right up until the pandemic shutdown, which was nevertheless in recovery by election day. He moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. There was a lot related to that, including treaties with surrounding Middle East countries—the Abraham Accords—that convinced me of his abilities as a negotiator and statesman. He decimated ISIS, which looked more like a pet project than an enemy under Obama’s administration. And I came to admire Trump’s ability to be reverent and respectful at the right moments and of the right things. Notice his honoring Rush Limbaugh at a State of the Union address.

This is to say I strongly supported him in 2020. I was very upset at what happened with that election and severely disappointed that things didn’t get set right. I believe J6 was a setup. But whatever happened, it was not caused by President Trump inciting a riot; that is a lie. The lies that have continued during the Biden/Harris administration have been insufferable. There is so much to say against Kamala Harris (before and following her coup of Biden) that it could fill books.

But today I’d rather spend most of the time on why a vote for Trump is a vote for freedom, faith, and family.

 

Saints (Disciples of Christ) Should Seek to Vote for Trump

This past Sunday evening, as I mentioned, there was a video call featuring President Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, and Senator Mike Lee aimed at Latter-day Saint voters. The call was initiated from Prescott, AZ, and included people in Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and probably a few other invited people (or anyone the invited people knew and invited). There was a panel of other brief speakers, all of whom are prominent Latter-day Saints. In fact, Donald Trump was the only one on the call who was not a Latter-day Saint. But he was surprisingly well-versed and respectful. And that seemed genuine. We Latter-day Saints make up about 2% of the US population—much higher in those states, though.

[It was sponsored by LDS4Trump.com. I was able to see the entirety on YouTube last week, but now I don't find that video. I find only segments. The Mike Lee segment is here. Parts of speeches from Donald Trump, Glenn Beck, and Mike Lee are here. Note that President Trump's portion is audio only. The other speakers included Travis Padilla, city councilman in Queen Creek, AZ; Congressman Burgess Owens of UT; Congressman Celeste Malloy of UT; Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County, AZ; Congressman Andy Biggs of AZ; Tina Descovich of Moms for Liberty; Raul Labrador, Attorney General of ID, and Warren Peterson, Senate President of AZ.]

The premise is that there are a number of Latter-day Saints who hold Trump’s past against him; he committed adultery, ending two marriages. And—“mean tweets.” OK, except, the alternative is a woman who slept her way to power with an affair with Mayor Willie Brown while he was married. And the ultimate sacrament of this woman who never bore a child is abortion up through nine months (maybe beyond). You can’t vote against Trump for his past sins without voting for Kamala with her past and current sins.

Trump, more and more, is open about his religious faith. It isn’t maybe as obvious as some of ours, but he is more open now than he used to be. And one thing about Trump: he is authentic. If he didn’t respect religious Americans and our faith, he wouldn’t say he did, because we could tell. Stories abound now of him having prayer with people while he was in office; we just didn’t hear then about those things; they were mostly private. Since he was spared, for some special purpose, by God on July 13 from an assassination, he has been both more open about his faith and more resolute about fighting the tyranny that is against us all. And I also believe he was spared for some purpose God has for him.

Senator Mike Lee speaks during the LDS Roundtable video call
October 13, 2024, screenshot from here

During this video call, Senator Lee outlines reasons to vote for Trump. He references Doctrine & Covenants 98:10, about seeking wise and good leaders for government. Then he goes on—and this first part is more of why Kamala Harris doesn’t qualify to get our vote:

Point number one that I want to make is that a lot of Latter-day Saints seem to fall into the trap of assuming that, yes, because it's a good idea and we've been admonished in scripture to seek out good and wise people to do it, that what they need to find is someone who reminds them of their bishop [congregation leader] their stake president [leader over multiple congregations in a local area] or their Relief Society president [women’s auxiliary leader] in order to support them.

Now, look, I know both of these candidates, and I will tell you right up front neither one of them is going to be mistaken for your stake president or Relief Society president. They didn't grow up in our faith, much less in our culture. They may not use the same words. They may not have the same customs that we do. Nonetheless, that doesn't mean that this supports their [the people supporting Harris] conclusion.

And after having worked with both of them for years, I can tell you, if you're looking for an example of character and decency and civility as between the two, Kamala Harris is not going to come out on top of that equation. She's just not.

If you want to talk specifics, I'd be happy to talk to you about specifics. But just as Donald Trump is not a member of the Tabernacle Choir, neither is Kamala Harris. So don't hang your hat on that.

Senator Lee’s second point is about the US Constitution, on which he is an expert. This next section compares the two candidates regarding their understanding and dedication to the Constitution:

As I look at this, and I look at each candidate's approach toward the Constitution, I don't think this is a close call, not by a mile. Whether you're looking at basic respect for the fundamental structural protections in the Constitution—the vertical protection that we call federalism, or the horizontal protection of separation of powers—those things are upstream from every other protection in the Constitution.

And remember the whole darn point of the Constitution, the only reason we have this Constitution, the only reason why anyone has any constitution, is to temper the passions of a democratic society. They are designed to be counter-democratic, because sometimes you need that in order to protect the rights of minorities: minority viewpoints, minority interests—and yes, even minority religions like ours. I'll get back to more of that in a moment.

So, the structural protection: Donald Trump has shown 100 times more understanding, compassion, and devotion to those structural protections of the Constitution than Kamala Harris has. Donald Trump understands that it was a good thing that the Supreme Court of the United States undid the tyrannical move from Roe v. Wade in 1973 in the Dobbs decision two years ago. The Supreme Court said this is not a federal issue, made a federal constitutional issue by the Constitution. Therefore, questions like these not being made federal by the Constitution are up to the states primarily, to be decided at the state and local level. He understands and respects that.

He also understands and respects the fact that it's tyrannical that most of our laws, measured by word length, page length, weight, volume, regulatory compliance, economic impact—you name it, almost any measure—the federal laws made by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats now vastly outnumber those made by Congress, notwithstanding the fact that Article 1 sections 1 and 7 of the Constitution make clear you cannot make a federal law except through Congress. Both houses of Congress have to pass it on, present it the president, before you—  All these things show Donald Trump's much more favorable commitment to the Constitution has been.

Kamala Harris, she rejects those things fundamentally. She belongs to a party that has become overtly contemptuous of things like the Electoral College, of things like the non-representative Senate, because the Constitution says that every state shall be represented equally in the United States Senate. Kamala's party is openly hostile toward those viewpoints. Then, when we get to the Bill of Rights, you look at your First Amendment rights freedom of speech, freedom of religion, redress of grievances. Kamala has sought to curtail those things, as she has Second Amendment interests.

I realize I’m quoting most of Senator Lee’s speech here, but these are important points. He next gets to religious freedom, which is of paramount interest to Latter-day Saints, as it should also be to other Christians, and other religious people:

Then, let’s talk about the big elephant in the room: religious freedom. This is one of the areas where I find most disagreement with our Latter-day Saint friends who have chosen to defend and protect and advocate for Kamala Harris, because one cannot support Kamala Harris and call her a friend of religious freedom. Those two things don't exist.

Now, the news media—including, unfortunately, to a significant degree, with an assist from the news media empire owned by our Church: KSL and the Deseret News—have unfortunately helped to sort of sanitize and gloss over Kamala Harris's legislative record. But having served with her for the entirety of her four years as a US senator, I can tell you something very, very disturbing that every Latter-day Saint should be aware of before casting a vote for president this year: she's the sponsor of a bill called the “Do No Harm Act.” And like many bills introduced by Democrats, this title is deceptive. It is deceiving because this bill is anything but one that does no harm. The purpose of the Do No Harm Act is to essentially gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Lee gives a hypothetical example of a medical school, noting that Brigham Young University, his alma mater (and mine) and in his hometown of Provo, UT, has just announced it will be adding a medical school to the university. I don’t believe BYU plans to build a hospital; for now it plans to associate with nearby hospitals, but the point is nevertheless valid:

When you have a medical school, you inevitably have doctors, you know, professors at your medical school who practice medicine, and if at some point a Kamala Harris administration were to step in and mandate either that all hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funds must perform abortions or sex change operations or you name it, and BYU's medical school decided that it couldn't do that consistent with BYU's religious mission, that's an easy case for you to invoke the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But in Kamala’s America, under Kamala’s bill, that would be off the table. And I can point to thousands of other hypothetical examples and not so hypothetical examples of where this would come into play.

He adds this summation:

If you elect Kamala Harris as our next president, you are sowing the seeds for the destruction of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and with it religious freedom itself.

The stakes are high in this election. As Elon Musk has put it (elsewhere, of course; not on this video call), if we lose this election, we may never have a free and fair election again. Our elections will be decided by the ruling regime, as in Venezuela or Russia or China.

Glenn Beck speaks during the LDS Roundtable video call
October 13, 2024, screenshot from here

This is already long, but I’d like to add just a part of Glenn Beck’s speech, about our heritage of being a Constitution-loving people:

Our faith believes in the freedom of speech. Our faith believes in the freedom of religion. Our faith—  When Brigham Young and the Saints were chased out of the country, they ended up in a faraway place that wasn't even part of America at the time, and that was Utah. And one of the first things they did was hold a parade with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. I don't know who was there to watch it, when there weren't any streets or anything else, but it was to drive home the message that people can go wrong, but the principles of our country are true. That doesn't mean we always live up to them.

I and many others on the phone are constitutional conservatives. We don't want a theocracy or anything else. We want the Bill of Rights that have been enshrined and built our country. That's all we want.

I should mention that there is a statement from Joseph Smith—not with the full force of prophecy, not canonized, but often referred to—that there may come a day when the Constitution is hanging by a thread, and if it is to be saved, it will be because of the righteous saints who come to the rescue. President Trump referred to this in his talk; I imagine someone briefed him on it. We are at such a thread-hanging time.

This is one version of the Constitution hanging by a thread statement,
image is from Christian Fire Poppy, the portion of her video of the
LDS Roundtable that was her commentary before the clips of the speakers.

We can't stand on the sidelines. Glenn Beck was wearing a T-shirt with the Deitrich Bonhoeffer quote, “Not to act is to act. Not to stand is to stand. Not to speak is to speak.” Then he ends with this call to action for our time:

Your vote, even if it's happening in a place where you're like, “Well, it's all going to go to the Democrats,” or “It's all going to go to the Republicans,”  your vote counts. You know where it counts? In the eternities. We are all going to be held responsible, especially us with additional information. We are going to be held responsible. What did you do when the freedom of, not just your children and your grandchildren, but the children all over the world was at stake? What was it you couldn't get past? What was it you ignored? This is the time. And this is the time that we are to rise up as God-fearing people with our voices and our votes.

Quote from Ezra Taft Benson about the Constitution being saved,
which should give us hope, if we are doing our part. Image
is from Christian Fire Poppy's video, during her commentary.

Despite having diametrically opposed differences, we are to be united. What is it we can unite around? Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and our divinely inspired Constitution. We invite others to join us there. And we let go of animosities toward anyone who couldn’t see what we see. Vote. And vote wisely: for freedom, faith, and family. And bring others with you.

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

 

Those Who Stir Up to Anger vs. Those Who Inspire

There’s an important difference between feeling passionate about something because someone stirred you up to anger, and because someone inspired you to defend something good.

How do you know whether you’ve been stirred up to anger or inspired? Anger might be one clue.

Another clue is that stirring up tends to take one singular incident and extrapolate from there that an entire system is irreparable because of it.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Examples of Stirring up to Anger

George Floyd

George Floyd was killed while in police custody, in Minneapolis. It was on video. It appears to all Americans that he was unjustly killed in this incident. And yet, because of this incident, there were riots, lootings, murders—not just in Minneapolis, but all over the country, and even all over the world. And they continue more than a month later.

Why? What is the narrative? That this single death in this one city shows that racism is so rampant that no black is safe anywhere? And that it has always been this way, and it’s time for an uprising to stop this ubiquitous injustice? 

It’s a leap. And it’s unsupported by facts.

First, if racism were ubiquitous, you’d find a large segment of the population that cheered for the death of George Floyd, simply because of his color. You don’t see that. In fact, you hear zero examples of such views. Maybe there are some fringe racists out there in a country this large, but you’d have to seek them out and purposely give them a voice, because that viewpoint simply doesn’t have a place in our society.

The data, as we’ve gone over, shows that blacks are less likely than whites to be fatally killed in an interaction with police.

The cries of protesters for what they claim to want—to end racism, especially as it pertains to police brutality—we can accomplish today. Now. Immediately. As if by magic. Done! Simply by changing the perceptions and attitudes of the protesters. Because those goals are not only achievable; they are achieved, according to all objective measures.

So why the leap to “We need to defund the police,” or “We need to eliminate the police”? It doesn’t accomplish the stated goal. It accomplishes something else—the goal of those doing the stirring up to anger.

Bubba Wallace

Take a look at another related example, the supposed racism at Nascar, when a noose was found hanging in the garage of the only participating black Nascar driver, Bubba Wallace. The immediate response was that some racist had targeted him. Nascar was concerned. Media labeled all Nascar fans racists. In a show of solidarity with Wallace, participating Nascar drivers spontaneously walked his car to the post position—to show their racism? Exactly the opposite.

And then, it turned out the “noose” was a loop handle on the garage door, which had been there, according to photo evidence, at least since last October, so it could not have targeted Wallace. And it wasn’t intended to represent a noose at all; it was simply a looped rope to use as a garage door pull.

It’s one thing for Bubba Wallace to see it and wonder. It’s another thing for the entire world to jump to the conclusion that all of Nascar and all Nascar fans are racist—with no evidence other than a looped rope that had been there for quite some time, and was intended an entirely non-racist purpose.

Why the leap? Because someone benefits from the narrative that racism is rampant, even in a place where there has been no evidence of it. It meets some goal of those stirring-up-to-anger people.

Vanessa Guillen

How about an example other than racism? OK. There was a murder at Ft. Hood, near Killeen, Texas. US Army Spc. Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old Houston native, went missing from the base on April 22^nd. While it may not have been apparent, the search for her, with multiple investigative arms, has been ongoing since then. This past week remains were found that were thought to be hers—finally verified on Sunday. As the investigation reached this climax, investigators confronted Spc. Aaron David Robinson, and he shot himself. His girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, has been charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence.

mural for Vanessa Guillen in Austin
image: JayJanner/Austin American-Statesman, found here

From what I gather from various news stories, Guillen worked with Robinson on base, and saw him shortly before she went missing. The evidence seems to be that Robinson killed her by bashing her head with a hammer. Then he disposed of her body by cutting it in smaller pieces, mixing with some sort of concrete, and burying those pieces in various places. Robinson’s girlfriend, Aguilar, is believed to have participated in the disposal of the body.

Friends and family have said that Guillen complained about sexual harassment by Robinson. At this point, I do not know what details are involved in that charge, or whether they were being pursued by authorities. It seems likely that such complaints led investigators to Robinson. It appears similar to the kinds of cases that show up on NCIS (US Navy investigators) pretty regularly. While TV shows always get the criminal during the hour of their investigation, which appears to cover only days, in real life two months is not particularly slow.

There were complaints that the Army couldn’t even handle the investigation; they had to bring in an entity that finally tracked down the remains, I believe with animals. Except, an entity that handles tracking down remains would nearly always come from outside and is not unusual for such a circumstance.

And yet there are calls—including a petition on Change.org—to shut down Ft. Hood entirely, supposedly because the rampant sexual harassment on base makes it unsafe for women to be soldiers there.

That’s kind of a leap. There is only a single case we’re looking at. One piece I read from 2017 (and updated to include Guillen in the data) was trying to show that there are a mysterious number of soldiers who die at Ft. Hood. But I looked at the list. Of all non-suicide causes of death, there was only one other woman. Sexual harassment did not appear to be a factor. And that case was several years ago.

Why does the death of one woman, while tragic, lead to the call for the closing of the base because of rampant sexual assault against women?

I don’t know if sexual harassment is an ongoing problem. Wherever men and women work together closely, it tends to show up. That is not the same as rampant sexual assault and murder. Nor is there any evidence provided to show that the Army was doing anything other than pursuing the case in the time that it took to make a solid case. That 2017 story was also calling for the closing of the base. So maybe this incident is just another arrow to sling.

Extrapolating from a single incident to claim that an entire entity must be done away—that’s not caring about people of color or people of a certain sex; that is stirring up to anger for some other purpose, which seems to be a tearing down, rather than building up, purpose.

Examples of the stirring-up-to-anger variety seem endless these days. But, if we look, we can also find examples of inspiring to defend the good.

Examples of Inspiring to Defend

President Trumps’ Mt. Rushmore Speech

President Trump and First Lady at Mt. Rushmore July 3, 2020
image found here

Let’s just be honest and admit that President’ Trump’s speech at the Mt. Rushmore celebration this weekend was excellent.  And yet, here are samples of what the stirring-up-to-anger media called overtly racist, dark, and deeply divisive:

Being thankful:

Let us show our appreciation to the South Dakota Army and Air National Guard and the Air Force for inspiring us with that magnificent display of American air power, and of course our gratitude as always to the legendary and very talented Blue Angels. Thank you very much. Let us also send you our deepest thanks to our wonderful veterans, law enforcement, first responders, and the doctors, nurses, and scientists working tirelessly to kill the virus. They are working hard. I want to thank them very, very much.

July 4^th Is Historic:

We gather tonight to herald the most important day in the history of nations, July 4th, 1776. At those words, every American heart should swell with pride, every American family should cheer with delight, and every American patriot should be filled with joy because each of you lives in the most magnificent country in the history of the world and it will soon be greater than ever before.

And

Our founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity. No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America and no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.

Only in America:

We are the country of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Frederick Douglas. We are the land of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. We are the nation that gave rise to the Wright brothers, the Tuskegee airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, George Patton, General George Patton, the great Louis Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley, and Muhammad Ali, and only America could have produced them all. No other place.

Anything dark or overtly racist so far? No. Not even anything covertly racist. There was a call to defend against America’s enemies:

It is time to plant our flag and to protect the greatest of this nation for citizens of every race in every city in every part of this glorious land. For the sake of our honor, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our union, we must protect and preserve our history, our heritage, and our great heroes. Here tonight before the eyes of our forefathers, Americans declare again, as we did 244 years ago, that we will not be tyrannized, we will not be demeaned, and we will not be intimidated by bad, evil people. It will not happen.

So, we’re inspired to stand together, as Americans, against bad, evil people—like those tearing down our cities and our statues and monuments. That’s what the media call divisive? They need a better dictionary.

If you’re looking for words to unite, and to inspire to defend what is good—this speech is a good place to look.

Senator Lee’s Resolution

Senator Mike Lee
image from here

Last week Senator Mike Lee of Utah put forth a resolution intended to unite Americans on what we can agree on. He starts with some “whereas” points, all of them verifiably true, both positive about America and its intent, and an acknowledgment of what we’ve been facing in recent weeks. The comes the “resolved” section:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that—

(1) the rising tide of vandalism, mob violence, and the mob mentality that feeds it—including its cruel and intolerant ‘‘cancel culture’’—should be condemned by all Americans;

(2) peaceful demonstrations and mob violence are different in kind;

(3) physical assault and property destruction are not forms of political speech but violent crimes whose perpetrators should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law; and

(4) the innocent law enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens who suffer the mob’s violence and endure its scorn while protecting our communities from them deserve the thanks and appreciation of every American.

Senator Lee said he thought it was straightforward: Mob violence shouldn’t happen. It is happening. It should be stopped. We can all agree on this, unanimously. 

The resolution came in the wake of a shooting in Provo, UT, last week. [local accounts here] An older gentleman was driving downtown and found himself surrounded by a protest. He was very slowly trying to make his way through and out of the area. But a protester began shooting through the passenger side window of the man’s truck, and one bullet hit him. In a panic, the driver bolted through the crowd (none reported injured). People were yelling and claiming he was a white supremacist who entered the crowd on purpose to run someone over—all evidence to the contrary.

Eventually the shooter was found and is being prosecuted. But, if you’re not aware, this is an area called Happy Valley, not sarcastically. People tend to be peaceful and law-abiding and basically just decent to one another all the time. Crime and violence aren’t unheard-of, but they are less usual than most cities of this size. And the idea that the police there are racist or brutal is a figment of someone’s imagination. The protest in this city is, in itself, without merit. So there was no reason for people in the area to expect they’d run into a protest—right across the street from a Latter-day Saint temple.

Senator Lee was saying, essentially, “We can all call this wrong, can’t we?” Apparently not.

Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, insisted on adding a line specifically calling out President Trump, which would have been, not only inaccurate, but would have defeated the purpose of the politically neutral resolution. Menendez went further, referring to Lee’s description of our founding, saying it “reeks of a supremacist view,” and fails to condemn America’s “original sin, which is slavery.”

The US didn’t invent slavery; in a world in which slavery had been endemic for millennia, at last America created a setting in which “all men are created equal” could become a commonly accepted thought, and slavery could be abolished. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, wherever slavery has been abolished in the world today—including the few places to accomplish it before the US—did so because of America’s founding ideals.

So, Senator Lee’s words, to unite and inspire to defend what is good about our nation, are called racist and divisive by someone who would rather stir people up to anger.

There is clearly a division going on. But it is not being created by those who inspire to defend.

Archbishop Vigano’s Letter

About a month ago, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote an open letter to President Trump.  He described something in the opening that strikes me as true:

In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides that I would call Biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light constitute the most conspicuous part of humanity, while the children of darkness represent an absolute minority. And yet the former are the object of a sort of discrimination which places them in a situation of moral inferiority with respect to their adversaries, who often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.

There are definitely two sides. Those who seek for and inspire to defend the good are in the light. Those who stir people up to anger in an effort to tear down, destroy, intimidate, and terrorize are in the dark.

One thing about being in the light—we can see more clearly. But, as Archbishop Vigano said, we need to recognize we’re in the majority. We need to stand firm, and cast a light on what’s going on, so that those in the dark because of fear or confusion and see their way out of darkness and into the light with us.