We're All Religious

Michael Knowles, of The Daily Wire, spoke at a YAF event at George Washington University Wednesday. During the Q&A, he answered a question about social degeneracy and religion. This was his answer:

Michael Knowles speaking at YAF event
at George Washington University, October 2, 2019
screenshot from here

Conservatives need to talk, not just about policies and economic issues, but about culture. And not just about culture, but about religion, because, there was a famous cardinal who said, “At bottom, all political disagreements are theological disagreements.” St. Andrew Breitbart, the patron saint of Hollywood conservatives said, “Politics is downstream from culture.” And cult and culture are related words. What the culture worships defines that culture.

Nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, says, “Aaahhh! We’ve got to lower the top marginal tax rate by 0.2%. We have to! And then we’ll have a country.” But no one cares about that. I like low taxes as much as the next guy, but that is not motivating to people.

Because, ultimately, we are religious beings. We long for religion. And everybody’s got to serve somebody. So, when the left abandons traditional religion, they don’t just become materialists; they become weird cultist materialists.

Just last week you had children taking off school for multiple days at a time to protest the weather or something. And it was being organized by the government, so I don’t even know what they were protesting. They were all on the same side.

Bernie Sanders came out and said that we need to sacrifice our children to the climate gods. We need to stop global warming by not having children anymore.

You hear this on— NBC News came out and created a climate confessional. Very Catholic; I kind of like that. But it’s like the opposite of Catholic, because they’re worshipping the creation, rather than the creator.

The rot begins at that level—at the religious level. You will not have an irreligious America that’s successful. John Adams put it very well. He said the country is built for a moral and religious people. It is not fit to the governance of anybody else. Moral and religious, because morality doesn’t just float in the air. It has a shape. It has form. It looks like something. And, if you are not going to enact that, if you are not going to deal in metaphysical reality, then you are going to find yourself very very confused. Not without religion, but with a very very strange looking religion, where you are clamoring and screaming at the sky for it to stop being so sunny everyday.

I’m considering that idea, near the beginning, about political disagreements being theological disagreements. This may be true, even when people who disagree aren’t aware of their religious premises.

Let’s take a look at a historical example: slavery. The anti-slavery movement took root among people who came to believe it was morally wrong. What kind of people think about the morality of something that had been legal and practiced in most societies for millennia? People who believed some basic things: human beings are divinely created by God. God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34, Galatians 3:28). God grants us certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, the right to property ownership, and the choice to choose how to pursue our life’s work. Such people can see that taking the liberty of another person and using it for your own enrichment is morally wrong.

It took a religious people to recognize the divinity of human life, to raise awareness in a society that had accepted it as just the way the world always was, and then root it out.

That was a big task. And it took a good long time, which included a civil war here in America. But that society-wide repentance did happen. While slavery still may exist in the world, civilized people the world over all agree that it is morally wrong, and we must work to root it out.

There’s another divide now: abortion. The more we learn medically and scientifically, the more obvious it becomes that abortion is the killing of a human life. Looking at it morally, it appears to be a sacrifice to the religious belief that sex is a good, and a right, and should not have a negative consequence such as pregnancy. That’s not a Christian view. But it is religious—as Knowles calls it some “weird cultist” type of religion. This view actually sees killing a baby up to (and sometimes including shortly after) birth as a holy right (rite?), so moral that they require support of it by all of society through taxpayer money. It’s also political in our day.

Look at the religion of our founders. Sex outside of marriage was considered immoral. Sinning in that way, resulting in a pregnancy, was to be compensated for through marriage, since the important thing was to correct for the sin, for the sake of the new life coming from it. Killing the baby to cover up the sin was seen as abominable. That view was so long-standing that it is part of the Hippocratic oath, dating to about 275 AD Greece—not a Christian land, but you don’t get civilization without living the laws of civilization.

As a reminder, what are the principles necessary for civilization? You need a particular type of religious people—for the reasons I’m talking about today—who recognize God the Creator as the arbiter of good, to whom we are accountable, and from whom we are given our human rights. Such religious people need at least these five things: they honor God, life, family, truth, and property rights. As we’ve said here before, that is a summary of the Ten Commandments. And we emphasize the need for strong families—ideally a married husband and wife raising their own children in love and righteousness—in order to pass along the principles of civilization from one generation to another.

People can’t progress to being beyond a need for sexual morality, or beyond property rights. But many societies have decayed, or regressed, into sexual immorality and theft. Putting a government imprimatur on those things—or even government mandate for them—does not magically make them moral, good, or righteous. They lead inevitably to poverty and savagery.

So what we need is a moral revival—away from the pagan, selfish, prideful, life-sacrificing, liberty-depriving religion, and back to honoring God our Creator and right-giver, and therefore also honoring life, family, truth, and property ownership.

The question then becomes, how? Slowly, incrementally? Or fast, cataclysmically?

David Barton
screenshot from here

David Barton, at Wallbuilders, did a Facebook live this week (October 1), laying out the case for incremental progress in the right direction. He used the analogy of a football team, making relatively small progress down the field. From time to time they might make a long pass, but if they attempted the long pass every play, they’d probably be denied the progress they really want. He pointed out how slavery might have ended sooner if an incremental approach had been accepted at a certain point, but abolitionists insisted on all or nothing, and so the small step wasn't taken, and it was decades and war later before slavery was abolished.

I waiver between accepting small steps and wanting large leaps. We can celebrate small wins for civilization. But when we’re still wading in the muck of southern hemisphere tyranny and savagery, it’s hard to be patient enough to work our way up out of the swamp.

But the hopeful point is, social evils as long-standing as slavery can be overcome by a repentant people seeking to live the principles of civilization.

In my son’s elementary school, many years ago, the teachers used to give out awards—small things, such as a pencil, bearing the message “caught doing good.” It was an opportunity to interact with the kids when they were behaving in a way the teachers wanted to reinforce, and give them the idea that authority wasn’t always just looking for their mistakes. So, I’m in favor of catching people doing good.

Memorial Service for Sandeep Dhaliwal
screenshot from here

The outpouring of love in our local community for an officer, shot in the line of duty, was heartwarming. The incident happened just a few miles from our house. And the funeral yesterday was just a few miles further west. The love for this man, Sandeep Dhaliwal—and for his police brothers and sisters, and for the people of his religion (he was Sikh)—seemed unanimous.

Another heartwarming moment followed the upsetting trial of an officer who killed an innocent civilian when she entered the wrong apartment and thought she was facing an intruder. In the sentencing phase, the brother of the victim showed a sincere example of forgiveness, and asked if he could hug the convicted officer. She was found guilty and was sentenced to ten years, which is perhaps what society needed to do. But the brother—he was able to let go of the hurt and anger and see a contrite woman who had ruined her own life as well as his brother’s, and his compassion for her will be the most memorable part of that trial.

While both of these stories had people of various races and religions, these differences weren’t part of the story. Politics wasn’t part of the stories. Human love and decency were the important details.

If we keep finding the good, and refusing to accept the evil, maybe we can make incremental yardage toward the interrelated goals of freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Start with Ourselves

During weeks like this, when the news is covering mainly one horrible event, it can wear on a person.

One response is, as Mr. Rogers’ mother advised, to look for the helpers. And there have been many. Stories of heroes, in Las Vegas, who acted instinctively to do what would help others—those are the stories that really tell who we are as a people. Here’s one.

Johnathan Smith, hero
image from CNN

The less helpful response is to insist that anyone who doesn’t believe in taking all the guns from all the law-abiding citizens lacks compassion. And I feel the urge to respond. If pinned down, these gun haters aren’t against all guns; they’re against anyone but the government having them. Because they won’t be against police and military having them—unless they’re in favor of dying defenseless. So, they’re really just against non-government citizens having weapons to defend themselves. I’d like to know why they suddenly trust the government so much.

There’s talk of outlawing the bump stock, apparently used in the Las Vegas shooting to make a semi-automatic rifle fire almost like an automatic rifle. Fully automatic weapons are already outlawed. The NRA is not against outlawing the bump stock. Most shooting ranges already forbid them. If a person isn’t trained in rapid fire—the kind of training you might get in the military—it’s easy to lose control and shoot the ceiling or anything (or possibly anyone) within range.

So there’s a good chance there will be some agreement on this. At the very least there may be some control over where such items can be owned or used, since they make a legal weapon into what is essentially an illegal weapon.

I don’t know how the debate will go. What I expect, though, is that when a murderer doesn’t have access to one way of killing, he will find another.

What we really need is a better way to identify the kind of mind and heart willing to mass murder. I don’t know if that’s possible. Isn’t that the idea of the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report? I don’t think things went well when interventions pre-empted actions.

Even better would be creating minds and hearts that don’t go so far awry.

Scarlett Lewis, the mom of one of the Sandy Hook Elementary victims, says that gun control isn’t the answer; misuse of guns is a symptom of a larger societal problem. She suggests teaching young people social and emotional learning. A program she promotes focuses on five points: how to have positive and healthy relationships, deep connections, coping skills, resilience and compassion.

Lewis believes we can see the end of these killings, if we teach every child how to cope with anger, how to be compassionate, and how to love.

Getting out of savagery and up to civilization is a simple but not easy process. We live in a fallen world, with too much evil. A lot will still go wrong. But we can start with ourselves, and with helping and encouraging those around us. The basics include those things that get us beyond our selfishness, the things we get from the Ten Commandments: honor God, life, family, property, and truth. A person who follows this path doesn’t plan and carry out savage atrocities.

During the LDS General Conference last weekend, Elder M.Russell Ballard said this:

We need to embrace God’s children compassionately and eliminate any prejudice, including racism, sexism, and nationalism. Let it be said that we truly believe the blessings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ are for every child of God.

I testify that “the trek continues,” and I invite you to stay on the gospel path as you continue pressing forward by reaching out to all of God’s children in love and compassion, that we may unitedly make our hearts pure and our hands clean to receive the “multiplicity of blessings” awaiting all who truly love our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son.

Basics of the Civilization Sphere

 

This is the third in an anniversary series reviewing the basics of the Spherical Model. The March 1st post was on the Political Sphere. The March 4^th post (the actual 2-year anniversary of the start of this blog) was on the Economic Sphere. Today’s post is on the Social Sphere, or Civilization Sphere. I have varied on the terminology for this sphere, since the three legs of the conservative stool are political, economic, and social. But my emphasis is on the goal of civilization, so I often use that word rather than the more general word social. The northern hemisphere is Civilization; the southern hemisphere is Savagery. The goal is not just to be barely at or above the equator line; it is to be far enough north to reside above the 45^th parallel, in the Civilization Zone, where there can be true, sustained, thriving civilization.

Since the November election, I have spent more time on civilization than on political and economic freedom. Of the three, it is the most essential. You can’t have self-governance is you don’t have people who can and do govern themselves. Nor can you have a thriving economy without people who have a strong work ethic and honesty about earnings in exchange for labor (replacing the uncivilized desire to get something for nothing). And that starts with individual families, regardless of what sort of regime the family is subject to, to pass along the behavior required of civilized people.

A critical mass of healthy, civilized families leads to strong communities, then outward to cities, then states, then nations. Going north on all three overlapping spheres starts with going north on the Civilization Sphere.

Here are the two basic premises for the Civilization Sphere (covered in detail in two parts at Spherical Model, here and here):

1.      Not all religious societies are civilized (according to my definition, which differs from the archaeological definition—see below in “What does civilization look like”), but every civilized society is a religious society. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.

2.      The family is the basic unit of civilized society. Whatever threatens the family threatens civilization. So preserving and protecting the family is paramount in laws and social expectations in a civilized society.

Sometimes people claim to be conservative on economic issues, but not on social issues. They are misguided; it isn’t possible to successfully follow free market principles and get economic prosperity in a decaying civilization. It likewise isn’t possible to talk about the rights guaranteed us in the US Constitution, and the philosophical concept of ultimate good the Constitution is based on, without acknowledging the giver of those inalienable rights: God.

I just finished reading Hugh Hewitt’s latest book, Talking with Pagans, a collection of debates, mostly from his radio show, collected over the past several years. One section was with Christopher Hitchens, who believed he had deflected the pro-religious argument by insisting that he did believe in ultimate good and ultimate standards of right and wrong. He simply believed the sense of ultimate good we have, in anyone choosing to be ethical and good, is the result of Darwinian natural selection. I’m glad that worked for him; being around people who are good and ethical is always better than being around the savage opposite. But it is capricious, since the ultimate arbiter of right is the person himself, with no higher authority (other than just civil law) to contradict his opinion.

Hitchens, along with some of the others on the atheist side, claimed that there’s a lot of disagreement among religious people on the code of living righteously. Almost without fail these debaters take as evidence the relatively rare fanatics, a few of whom in history have been violent, claiming to act in the name of their god(s). They choose to cherry pick, however, leaving out the savage atrocities of anti-religious tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, just to cover the past century.

In fact, over the centuries there has been a great deal of consensus about how to live a basically moral life. The primary list is the Ten Commandments, which outline our requirements to honor God, the giver of life, liberty, and free will, along with limitations that show respect for those very rights in those around us. No community ever progressed to civilization while simultaneously allowing murder, theft, and promiscuity. In fact, you will find life, family, and property rights valued in any community that can be construed to be truly civilized.

In addition, there are refinements, positive behaviors to develop, many listed in the New Testament. (See The Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-12, plus the definition of charity in I Corinthians 13, and Paul’s admonition on seeking virtue in Philippians 4:8. I keep returning to the BoyScout Oath and Law as well.)

What does civilization look like? This description is from the Spherical Model:

In the northern circle that is the goal—Civilization—families typically remain intact, and children are raised in loving homes, with caring parents who guide their education and training, dedicating somewhere between 18 and 25 years for that child to reach adulthood, and who then remain interested in their children’s success for the rest of their lives.

Civilized people live peaceably among their neighbors, helping rather than taking advantage of one another, abiding by laws enacted to protect property and safety—with honesty and honor. Civilized people live in peace with other civilized people; countries and cultures coexist in appreciation, without fear.

There is a thriving free-enterprise economy. Poverty is meaningless; even though there will always be a lowest earning 10% defined as poor, in a civilized society these lowest earners have comfortable shelter and adequate food and clothing—and there’s the possibility of rising, or at least for future generations to rise.

Creativity abounds; enlightening arts and literature exceed expectations. Architecture and infrastructure improve; innovation and invention are the rule.

People feel free to choose their work, their home, their family practices, their friendships and associations. And they generally self-restrain before they infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Where there are questions about those limits, laws are in place to help clarify boundaries of civilized behavior. When someone willingly infringes on the rights or safety of another, the law functions to protect that victim as well as society from further uncivilized behavior from the offender.

I haven’t spent a lot of time writing about what savagery looks like; I prefer looking at the positive goal. However, I’m concerned that we may be missing the signs of the savagery we’re suffering. It’s like the problem abuse victims have with their thinking: “I’m surviving this; it’s not that bad. I’m just glad it’s not worse.” Only when they get out and get some perspective can they recognize how wrong it was for them to submit themselves to so much abuse.

So I’d like to continue this series with one more post, on Friday, to look at where we are—not so we can feel miserable about it, but so that we can take that first step of recognition that must come before doing something about it.

Living Core Values

A new issue of my alumni magazine arrived a week or so ago, and I’ve been reading the articles. One featured piece is a reprint of a speech given there by Mitt Romney in April 1999, at the business school convocation. Brigham Young University is also my alma mater: Romney graduated with a BA in English in 1971; I graduated with a BA in English in 1980. English, at least back then, was a major often used as a base for going on to law school. It trained a student in thinking and communicating.

Romney family
photo from here

After BYU, Romney went on to earn law and MBA degrees from Harvard. By the time he gave this speech, he had experienced quite a lot of success in the business world—even though it was before he rescued the Winter Olympics, and rescued Massachusetts from overwhelming debt as their governor, and before either run for president.

For those who didn’t know who Romney was while he was running (or came to know him late in the process), I thought this was worth sharing. He talks about success in life, and how you measure it. I offer a few excerpts:

How will it seem to you 20 and 30 and 40 years on? What bases will you have chosen to conquer? What games will you have played? Will your life have been a success?

To be honest, these questions were very troubling to me as I sat where you are sitting today. Virtually every speaker said something to the effect that life’s success was in my control. They quoted authors like Napoleon Hill, who wrote Think and Grow Rich. Success, they said, was up to me—how I prepared and worked, how I thought, how I created and followed a mission statement, or how I put it all together would ensure the success they knew I wanted.

Now, 30 years on, I have come to a very different conclusion. The worldly success stories I have seen result from a blend of factors: yes, the choices you make and control but also the mental equipment you were born with, more than a fair measure of serendipity, and, where He does choose to intervene, the will of our loving Father. I am not convinced that it’s all up to you. Nor do I believe that if you live righteously, your stock will rise in value, you’ll get a promotion, you’ll win an election, or you’ll get your research published.

He tells the story of a cousin who trained for the Olympics but got the flu during the Olympic trials and thus failed to qualify. And another story is of a friend who bounced around from business to business and ended up at eBay with holdings over $1 Billion, which may, looking back, appear to be a planned path. He goes on to say,

There’s an element of unpredictability, of uncertainty, of lottery, if you will, in the world that has been created for us. If you judge your life’s success by the world’s standards, you may be elated or you may be gravely disappointed.

So what standards does this inarguably successful man use for his life? Love, family, service, and devotion. 

A consultant once helped Bain principals identify their core values. He asked them each to think of five or six people they most admired and respected, whether living or historical. Romney listed these:

I chose the Master, Joseph Smith [founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830, Romney’s religion, and mine], Abraham Lincoln, and my mother, father, and wife.

They then had to write down five or six attributes they thought of connected to each person. And the result was to show that, whatever they listed most frequently would identify their core values.

If they did not live in integrity with their core values, they would experience stress, ill health, and regret. But if they did live in harmony with these identified values, they would experience what they would eventually identify as success and fulfillment. The Bain leaders, it turned out, shared core values already, but had not all identified them. So they went from seeming to work at odds to working in a united direction—which incidentally led to company success.

But the good thing was that success in living according to these values did not depend on others—others’ opinions, others’ votes, others’ willingness to offer opportunities. Romney says it’s more about successful living, rather than financial or worldly determined success. Examples:

On my father’s 80^th birthday, I asked him what had brought him the most satisfaction in his life, what his greatest accomplishment was. He had been a three-term governor, United States Cabinet member, presidential candidate, CEO, multimillionaire, and prominent Church leader. His answer was immediate: “My relationship with your mother and with my children and grandchildren is my greatest accomplishment and satisfaction.”

Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel, voiced the same truth in an interview on the Today Show. She explained that being a mother was her life’s greatest accomplishment.

Both lived a life of fulfillment and success, not because of their worldly endeavors but in spite of them. They lived in harmony with values unaffected by the vagaries of markets or elections or praise.

He warns that living with integrity to your core values will be challenging. The world will seem at cross purposes.

Unless you purposefully hold fast to living first by your innermost values, … you will read too much into your worldly successes and, perhaps just as dangerously, read too much into your worldly setbacks.

Romney suggests that if you focus on the right things, you can actually control your success:

It is empowering, invigorating, and emancipating to live for the success you can control yourself, to live for your most deeply seated values and convictions.

This next anecdote about his father, told, remember, in 1999, is interesting to read at this point in history:

young Mitt Romney with his father, George Romney
photo from here

I remember my father’s reaction in 1964 when running for governor. [Romney didn’t actually run for President until 1968, briefly, but in 1964 he worked in the primaries against Goldwater, whose views on civil rights were a point of friction, among others.] President Johnson had swamped Goldwater, and my dad’s pollsters confidently predicted that he’d be pulled under [in his gubernatorial campaign] by the Democratic landslide. I was devastated. What would my friends at school think? My dad would be a loser. I looked at him. He looked calm—even relieved. Winning or losing wasn’t what was important, he told me. He had done what he felt was right by running in the first place and by speaking out on issues he cared about. The people’s votes didn’t affect that. [He was reelected as governor in a Democrat state, against the odds.]

If there is one thing verified by everyone who has known Mitt Romney over time, it is that he lives his values. He loves his wife and family. He serves whenever and wherever he sees the need—not just the easy way by donating money, but by giving his personal time and attention. And he seems to gain energy the more he serves. And tied with that is his devotion to God, which is evidenced in how he lives his religion.

The presidential run was not a personal failure. He did what he believed God was asking him to do; that was what he had control of. That was what he cared about. And what next? Enjoying his family. Serving where he sees the need. Offering help to our nation where it can be given.

It is my opinion that we have not had such a good man—brilliant, well prepared for the challenges we face, but also generous, giving, and devoted to God—run for US President since possibly George Washington.

Rush Limbaugh gave a similar opinion last week, and then pointed out that the media managed to take this sterling character and portray him as uncaring, out of touch with regular Americans, and lacking in the basic values most of us share. It took lies, repeated lies, and exclusion of truth to create that negative image. Discussion of this media malpractice can come another day, but let me repeat this verse:

Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!—Isaiah 5:20

And then let me point out that valuing love within family, generously offering service, and turning to God for direction are civilizing principles. We have very little control over what the world (or even other voters in our own nation) will do. But we can control what we personally do. As Joshua of old said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).