We Are All Enlisted

At our Tea Party meeting on Saturday, we were, as always, stirred up to action. The people who take a couple of hours out of a Saturday to learn about issues and find ways to take action are a particular breed to begin with. But we were also chastised for not doing enough. There was a Harris County election fraud issue we were presented with a couple of weeks ago (it's example 2 in this post), to pressure the Attorney General’s office to act on. Six hundred or more were given the information and the how-to for making that contact. Only 12 acted. (I was one, I believe, although mine so far was to contact only by email; I haven’t yet followed up by phone.) If we all see voter fraud as an important issue, then why don’t more of us take a simple action when it’s placed before us?

Texas State Capitol, 2018

 

What to Take Action On

One man said he accepted the chastisement, but then pointed out how, even at these meetings, there are so many things to take action on, we feel overwhelmed. Even in getting an answer to that comment, he got a list of six or seven important things to do. And he said, that’s his point. Life is full of these injustices and issues. How do we know where to spend our limited time?

The simple answer is, wherever you feel a passion, enough to learn the issue to speak intelligently on it, so you can share that with your circle of influence, and with your representatives.

I’ve been doing that for quite a number of years now. Decades. There’s not a lot of payoff. There are places I can see my work has been useful. But there are many more where I don’t feel I have the energy to do one more thing, and I hope others step up.

Here are some of the issues I’ve worked on over the years:

Defense of Marriage. I lobbied the state legislature in 2003, which worked, but was almost immediately overturned by the US Supreme Court. Continual work was eventually done in by the Supreme Court in Obergefell, and even the most effective advocates have gone silent. (See my Defense of Marriage collection.)

School Choice and Parental Rights. School failures consist of failure to teach what is needed and also teaching what is subversive to civilization. It is a basic God-given right for parents to see to the care and upbringing of their children. That’s why these two issues are closely related. We’re losing ground, because of teachers’ unions and international anti-family pressures. School choice is only a tiny effort to whittle away at the problem. I’m on a committee working on this issue for the current legislative session. We have yet to get a good school choice bill, despite promises from some of our best elected officials. This is in a state where the vast majority of parents would like school choice and probably 90% would say parents need to have the final say. I don’t know that public education is solvable. We need market solutions, with parents taking on the main decision-making for their own children. For a good overview of the parental rights problem, I recommend this video: “Overruled: Government Invasion of Your Parental Rights.” (H/T to Janice for passing this along to me.)

Abortion. There are always those who have been more activist than I am on this. I trusted them to do this important work while I work on other issues. But I have written on it, and lobbied for it, and worked for appropriate wording in the state platform. There is greater willingness from the public for abolishing abortion (with exception for life of the mother and, among some, in cases of rape). Meanwhile the minority opposition is more starkly contrasting—favoring abortion up until the moment of birth, or maybe beyond. We have passed a no dismemberment abortion bill, and a 20-week bill. Some states have passed heartbeat bills. But these all accept the assumption that we get to decide when it’s OK to kill a developing human baby. Even as we gain traction in the society on this issue, we make very little legal progress.

The Electric Grid. It became more than apparent a couple of weeks ago that we don’t do well without electricity. A freeze in Texas is going to be brief. But even from that 2-3 days without power, there were dozens of lives lost, and people are going to spend months dealing with the mess caused by frozen pipes. And everyone is casting blame. I’m more concerned about a longer and more extensive loss of power such as would come from a solar flare or an EMP strike. Loss of life, from starvation or disease mainly, could be beyond something we’ve seen since medieval plague times. We did finally this past week get a bill in the legislature that we think might address it. It’s relatively inexpensive and doable. But for reasons I don’t fully understand, there has been huge resistance (no pun intended) by the electric providers to get it done, even when the cost is not placed on them.

For the sake of brevity, but not for lack of importance, I’ll just add Religious Freedom and Healthcare Choice, without comment.

 

The Frustration

I do what I can on these issues, fitting my little bits of activism into and around a pretty full schedule of just living my life. I don’t know how to tell when an issue becomes so urgent that it requires setting everything else aside for a time until it is resolved—because some of these things don’t get resolved in a normal human lifetime.

Let’s add to this, we’re living in times when the odds are stacked against the side of freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

I was listening to the Viva & Barnes Sunday Night Livestream, and they were discussing particularly the Pennsylvania case dismissed by the Supreme Court last week. Robert Barnes was skeptical of Justice Amy Coney Barrett from the outset, and now is saying something like, “I told you so,” since her vote would have been sufficient for cert (only 4 of 9 are needed to take on a case). But the Court is saying there isn’t a time they will take up a case on this issue. Justice Thomas, in his dissent, called them out on this.

Robert Barnes offers them these seasonal excuses when they're determined not to take a case [around 28 minutes—the fuller discussion starting around 18 minutes]:

It’s not ripe in spring,

It’s no standing in summer,

It’s laches by fall,

And it’s moot by winter.

There’s a rule that should apply to whether a case can be considered moot. If it’s capable of repetition, —in order to set down rules for future similar situations—and if it’s likely to evade Supreme Court review—because it will be beyond remedy by the time it reaches the Supreme Court. If those two things are present, then the case is not moot. For that reason, election disputes should never be considered moot, and historically for decades have not been. Justice Thomas was right in his dissent. The Democrat appointees and three of the Republican appointees, including two appointed by President Trump, were simply wrong and have done harm to our Constitutional Republic.

So, we have an expectation of justice. We have laws. We have rules. We have precedent. But we do not get justice.

We elect officials to represent our views and defend the Constitution of the United States, yet so often they fail to do so.

We pressure them—taking time from our lives to force them to do their job—and only sluggishly, and only on occasion do they even listen to us.

Frustration builds up.

That is why, when you get a chance to hear from the former President who was elected four years ago because he would stand up to this frustration, you listen.

President Trump spoke at CPAC yesterday, which was more highly anticipated that anything Biden has said since inauguration. The crowd was ready and willing to support him in whatever he said. It wasn’t, certifiably, his best speech. It wasn’t polished. It probably wasn’t cleaned up and shortened enough. But he did say we would carry on. He was still in the fight (politically speaking).

President Trump giving speech at CPAC 2021, February 28, 2021
screenshot from here

He would have nothing to do with starting any new party; why do that and divide the Republican Party, which he owns from the grassroots up at this point? He told us we’ll work on election reform at the local and state levels. We’ll win things back in 2022. And he hinted that he might run again in 2024. “Maybe I’ll beat them a third time,” is how he put it, since this crowd knows he won the vote in November. He did suggest going to his website and contributing. There’s speculation this is part of a move to build up a new and separate—and uncensored—communications alternative, which will be necessary to reach people.

I don’t see how we can last up to and through another election cycle with the totalitarian dictators making the moves they’re making now. It’s not like past eras of even a decade ago. We can’t stand for this.

But how do we stand against it?

Supporting a champion for our side has been useful the past several years. It has helped clarify things. But I think we can see that no single champion is going to be enough. We have to keep soldiering on, in the face of apparent overwhelming odds. I think, instead of assuming continuing to do that is insanity, we must assume that, as we do all we can, God will fight our battles for us.

 

All We Can Do[i]

It’s that question of “all we can do” that occupies my thoughts. I don’t know how to tell when my contribution is enough. But I do believe that, if I trust God to guide me, I must act when prompted. And that will be enough. If all of us act when we’re prompted to act, we will collectively be the champions we need. We won’t each cover all the causes that are worthy. But enough of us will cover each one that we’ll represent the pressure out here from a freedom-loving people.

Become a Heritage Action Sentinel

If you need some guidance on where to get info, I suggest—well, several things. But let’s start with this one: become a Heritage Action Sentinel. When you’re in this national group, you’re tied in to what’s happening each week in Washington. There’s a weekly half-hour call. You can listen on your phone, or live on Facebook. Or the recording. Or get the call notes in your email inbox. When it’s time to act, they let you know and help you with what to say to your elected officials. They also encourage state and local work on similar issues. You can of course contribute money, but none is required to be a Sentinel. 

Become a Precinct Chair or Party Volunteer

Another way is to be a precinct chair or volunteer for the Republican Party. I’m not all about party loyalty; I’m about loyalty to our Constitution. Right now there’s none of that to be found in the Democrat Party (although you may find it among individual Democrats). Whatever part of it you could get in the Libertarian Party, you can get among Republicans, so that’s just a better place for your efforts, I think.

Right now, in my general vicinity (the area covering my church congregation, for example) there are five precinct chair vacancies. That means no one in the 2-3,000 people living in that precinct has stepped up to do the basics of running elections and attending a quarterly meeting to do party business. I’d say, if you become aware of this need in your area, and you’ve been looking for a way to take action, this assignment is for you. Look up your county party website and find out how to sign up. (Harris County info is here.) 

 

New precinct chairs being sworn in at our meeting January 25, 2021

If you have an active precinct chair, let them know you’re available to help. That might mean doing some block walking to identify like-minded people in your precinct, and helping get them connected to good information ahead of any future elections. Maybe it will be working on a committee, like outreach, or vetting candidates for local elections.

Join Clubs and Groups

There are clubs to help get people informed and activated. My local Cypress Texas Tea Party is one. We meet the fourth Saturday of the month at a barbecue place. I’ve been attending since 2010, very shortly after it began. Last month we had standing room only. This month was a more normal full room. There are groups for women, for college students, for Hispanics. Find a group of like-minded people meeting in your area. This will get you informed and connected—so the promptings to act will show up as you’re needed.

Become an Election Worker

You could step up to work elections. Presiding judge, alternate judge, and clerk are all paid positions. Poll watchers are unpaid but also essential. If you do the numbers, we need either a presiding or alternate judge plus one clerk and one poll watcher per polling place; in our county, that’s around 800 workers and 1200 poll watchers on election day. Plus there are the people who do the ballot counting—and the observing of the ballot counting. It takes a brigade to run a free and fair election.

Alan Vera, who has been our soldier in command in the election integrity fight, told us at a recent meeting, his sons have served deployments, a year at a time in Afghanistan and Iraq, to preserve our freedoms. Alan is a retired Army Ranger (and, really, they never retire). And I believe he said his father and grandfather had also served. So look at your life, he said, and see if maybe you can deploy for just a day.

 

These are not peace times. There is a war ongoing against our Constitution—and with it our freedoms of life, liberty, property—and our culture. We are all enlisted[ii].

---

[i] In the Book of Mormon, in 2 Nephi 25:23,  we read, “for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”

[ii] This is the title of a hymn, text anonymous, music by William B. Bradbury. 

The Purpose of Education

I’ve been putting together a presentation for this coming Saturday. At our Tea Party, we’re spending two consecutive meetings on education issues. My part will be on homeschooling. The beginning segment is about the purpose of education, and some history of education. Since that’s where my thoughts are today, I might as well give a preview here.

The purpose of education, according to Aristotle, is to produce a great soul.

Joe Harless, in his book The Eden Conspiracy, says education should be about producing an accomplished citizen. It should teach the knowledge, skills, and information relevant to becoming accomplished members of society.

What should an accomplished member of society be accomplished at doing—regardless of how the person makes a living?

·         Obedience to the law.

·         Informed voting decisions.

·         Contributions to stability.

·         Resolution of interpersonal conflict.

·         Contributions to community improvement.

The Northwest Ordinance, one of our lesser known founding documents, written in 1787, the same year as our Constitution, says “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall ever be encouraged.”

So the purpose of education, then, is to teach religion, morality, and knowledge so that we can have good government and happiness.

Note that encouraging schools and the means of education did not mean government provided it, only that it would offer a gift of land—after surveying, one 16^th of the land would be sold to private owners, and the proceeds would be used “within that township” to help with the building of schools. No state or national oversight. No ongoing support. Simply a one-time grant to encourage building schools.

So far we’re using different words, but we’re pretty much in agreement about what we want schools to do.

According to Oliver Van DeMille, in A Thomas Jefferson Education, there are three types of

education, each with its particular purpose:

·         Public education

·         Professional education

·         Leadership education

We’ll take these in turn.

First, public education. It’s intended to prepare a person for a job, or for servant labor. It teaches what to think. It is implemented in cultures to give opportunities to the poor, to lift them from being a burden on society. The downside—everywhere it had previously been tried—is the deterioration of other education, which can’t complete with “free.”

Second, profession education. It’s intended to prepare for trade, often through apprenticeship, for skilled artisan work, and for law, medical, MBA, or other professional training. It teaches when to think, or under what circumstances to use their specialized training. So, the purpose is to create expertise. It meets this goal, but it is not a substitute for leadership training.

Third, leadership education. It’s intended to produce leaders in home and communities, entrepreneurs in business, statesmen in government. It teaches how to think. So it trains thinkers. It develops character, competence, and capacity to do the right thing—and to do it well—in business, government, church, school, family, and other organizations. It perpetuates freedom.

Historically, for thousands of years, those with resources provided home tutoring, often followed by trade apprenticeship and professional training. Meanwhile the poor got whatever minimum was necessary to make them useful—usually emphasizing physical labor over brain labor.

Public education—that first type, for preparing the poor for service labor—was first tried in America during a time when many immigrants were working in factories, and their children were left to wander the streets. This coincided with the industrial revolution.

In comes Horace Mann, an atheist “progressive.” He said,

What the church has been for medieval man, the public school must become for democratic and rational man. God will be replaced by the concept of the public good…. The common schools… shall create a more far-seeing intelligence and a pure morality than has ever existed among communities of men (quoted in Christopher Klicka, The Right Choice—Home Schooling, p. 32).

Within two generations, Mann's ideas flooded the nation. There was the problem of large numbers of poor students from uneducated families. He offered the factory model. Subjects were separated, rather than integrated. Timing was determined by ringing bells, just like in the factories. Schools were top-down authoritarian. Uniformity was paramount.

Then along came John Dewey—of Dewey Decimal System fame. In 1916 he published Democracy in Education. He’s more or less the father of “progressive” education. He had plans to “revolutionize” child training. “Self-realization” became the goal instead of “learning.” He gave no more than a casual nod to teaching English grammar, ancient history, US history, geography, classics of Western civilization, or science.

He looked upon the schools as a wonderful opportunity to indoctrinate America’s youth in the “virtues” of a glorious age where private property, the free market, open competition, and profits would all be eliminated.

What was his background? He got his PhD from Johns Hopkins, studying under G. Stanley Hall—a disciple of German socialist Wilhelm Wundt. Dewey visited the Soviet Union in the 1920s. He failed to recognize the revolutionary desolation and widespread destruction of human values, and instead described it as “a popular culture impregnated with esthetic quality.”

According to W. Cleon Skousen, in The Freeman’s Digest, May 1984, “Today we are reaping the tragic results of the pedagogical misery that America inherited from Dewey’s misadventure in experimental education.” As he explained Dewey’s history before that Soviet visit,

Long before, in 1904, he had joined the faculty of the Teachers College at Columbia University. He had then teamed up with James Earl Russell, the dean of the Teachers College, who was also a student of Wilhelm Wundt, and together they had worked for a quarter of a century diligently building this branch of Columbia University into the largest institution in the world for the training of teachers. By 1953, about one-third of all the presidents and deans of teacher training schools in America were graduates of Columbia’s Teachers College.

One of his contemporaries, Dr. Robert M. Hutchins, saw through the scheme to its logical consequences:

The disappearance of great books from education and from the reading of adults constitutes a calamity. In this view, education in the West has been steadily deteriorating; the rising generation has been deprived of its birthright; the mess of pottage it has received in exchange has not been nutritious; adults have come to lead lives comparatively rich in material comforts and very poor in moral, intellectual, and spiritual tone (Great Western Books, vol. 1, preface; pp. xii-xiii).

I may have told this story elsewhere, but there’s a segment of To Kill a Mockingbird, where the young protagonist, Scout, describes her disappointment with school. Her description of the first day of first grade (no kindergarten back then) is worth retelling.

Scout’s teacher discovers that she not only knew the alphabet, but she could read all the readers and The Mobile Register (newspaper), which she had learned naturally just by sitting with her father and reading together in the evenings. The teacher says,

“You tell him I’ll take over from here and try to undo the damage—”

“Ma’am?”

“Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.”

I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. I never deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowing illicitly in the daily papers (p. 22 of my copy).

Apparently John Dewey was to blame. She goes on:

The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem [her brother] called the Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could only look around me: Atticus [her father] and my uncle, who went to school at home, knew everything—at least, what one didn’t know the other did. Furthermore, I couldn’t help noticing that my father had served for years in the state legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent of the adjustments my teacher thought essential to the development of Good Citizenship. Jem, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis, seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Jem was a poor example: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him from getting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gathered from Time magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on at home, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me (p. 37).

Maybe it’s time we re-think what is normal.

In six thousand years of human history, children have been brought up and taught by their parents. Turning that responsibility over to the state is a social experiment—an undeniably failing experiment—begun only about a century ago.

While we homeschoolers may look radical to the people around us who don’t know anything different from government institutional factory-like schools they grew up with, we are the ones following the traditional pattern.

We homeschoolers are the ones doing leadership education. We’re the ones teaching how to think.

And insofar as we do well in teaching the knowledge, skills, and information relevant to becoming accomplished members of society, we’re producing great souls.

My kids were worth it.

Being Capable of Self-Rule

I don’t like the idea of elite vs. the great unwashed, or the proletariat, or the uneducated masses. I’m with Martin Luther King, Jr., willing to look at the content of a person’s character, rather than where they come from or some other arbitrary detail.

But the purpose of politics is to persuade large numbers of people—people who may or may not be educated or clear thinking enough to understand the issues on their own and be capable of recognizing solutions.

The difficulty is that, in a democratic society, the persuaded masses rule, whether they’re right or not.

Our founding fathers tried to prevent the damage that could happen from a straight-up democracy—which is essentially mob rule. They gave us a Constitution, which limited government to certain enumerated powers. And within those constraints, they set up a representative government, with a bicameral legislative body, with the House of Representatives based on population, and the Senate based on the separate states equally. The House would respond more directly to the people, but the Senate would be a more deliberative body, thinking more of state interests than individual interests.

"Scene at the Signing of the Constitution"
painting by Howard Chandler Christy
image from Wikipedia

They separated the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, with more or less equal powers that would be a check and balance on each other. All of this was to prevent any branch from usurping powers it was not granted.

The founders took great care to set up government to do only what it was intended to do: protect life, liberty, and property.

But a self-ruling people—that is, a people who set up their own government, rather than become subjects of a ruler—must be capable of ruling themselves.

Usually I have a lot of faith in people in general to think things through and try to do the right things. That’s what I do. So sometimes I believe any normal person does that.

But there’s a lot of evidence that large portions of the populace do not think things through. And that leaves them subject to being swayed by propaganda rather than truth.

There was an example this week. Steven Crowder did one of his “Change My Mind” sessions at a college campus. This one was “White Privilege Is a Myth: Change My Mind (2nd Edition)” on the campus of Texas Christian University. It’s rather long, most of an hour. But I’ve included it in full below.

Most of the conversation is between Crowder and a young black woman who defers mostly to her white friend (Crowder points out that the white girl is “white-splaining” for the black girl). The white woman claims that America was set up by white men for the sole benefit of white men, and has been corrupt and oppressive from its inception.

While she is right that women didn’t originally have the right to vote (and, depending on the state, neither did white or any other race of men if they didn’t own property), she fails to understand that all of the Bill of Rights pertained to women every bit as much as men. Slaves were originally excluded in slave states—but of course we suffered a Civil War to correct that.

When Crowder asks what evidence she has of men having privilege today, she claims it is really white male privilege; there’s no privilege for black men, who get sent to jail for having a quarter ounce of weed while white men would get away with it. Crowder asks for statistics; she has none. He uses his handy phone and looks up data on the NAACP website, which shows that black men are incarcerated at higher rates, but that site has no mention of behavior. The girl insists that of course black men don’t commit crimes at higher rates, because it’s all about the racist system. She knows that is so, but she doesn’t have data. Crowder provides some for his side, but she cannot. But she’s sure it’s just a matter of doing a little online search, and then her views would be proven.

Except they’re not.

After Crowder talks with her, he has a young black man and his Asian friend, neither of whom believe they’re oppressed in America. Their conversation is more uplifting.

The earlier white girl was absolutely certain that she was right. And she was absolutely certain that what she was saying was common knowledge and common sense. Even though it was either unsupported opinion or provably false.

She was a college student, and made it clear she had gotten a scholarship for being top of her class. So she knew what she knew—accusing Crowder of enjoying privileges that were unrelated to his life growing up in a French Canadian culture with a fair amount of oppression and difficulty, not coming to the US until adulthood.

As Reagan used to say,

“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”

On Tuesday, working at the polls—primary elections where Republicans and Democrats had to awkwardly share a room for their separate polling places—I was gratefully aware that voters were trying to do their civic duty. But I was also aware that not very many spend as much time as I do researching and figuring out who to vote for, especially for the many smaller judicial races. I do believe if everybody studied as hard before voting as I do, we would have better outcomes, even though they wouldn’t always agree with me. 

In order to be an informed—instead of a propaganda-manipulated—people, we need to know the criteria to look for. A nice candidate who seems articulate isn’t enough. And it certainly isn’t enough for a candidate to try to sway voters by appealing to their tribal issues (race, gender, etc.) We need voters who understand how our government is set up.

When you’re looking at candidates, there are questions that help gauge just how likely a person is to pursue freedom, prosperity, and civilization for all. These are Spherical Model questions, rather than right/left questions. I laid them out in 2015, here.

If you—or your representative—need to decide on an issue, you can ask these freedom-leading questions: 

·         Is the policy being debated something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the right to delegate to his/her government?  For example, a person has the right to protect his own life and property. He can, therefore, combine resources with his neighbors and hire a government entity, such as a sheriff, to do that job for him. Similarly, the several states can combine to delegate the power of defending the nation to a national government entity. Conversely, a person does not have the right to take his neighbor’s excess grain production, for example, and bestow it on himself, because his neighbor was more prosperous in a particular season. He can, of course, ask his neighbor for charity, but he cannot coerce the neighbor to give. That would rightfully be considered theft. Therefore, the person cannot delegate the redistribution of wealth to the government to do for him. 

·         Does the policy infringe in any way on the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights? Does the policy infringe on the free exercise of religion or try to establish a particular sect as a state religion? Is political speech hindered? Does the policy infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms? Does the policy constitute an illegal search or seizure? Does the policy deprive a person of life, liberty, or property when the person has not committed a crime for which that deprivation is the just sentence? Does the policy try to claim for government a power that was not specifically granted in the Constitution? etc. If the policy infringes on the God-given rights, then government cannot take that power without usurping power from the people.

·         Is the idea being debated a proper role of government, some aspect of protection (including defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea is outside the Constitution and below the northern 45th parallel.

Two years ago I listed the Five Essential Attributes of Active Citizens, as outlined in a speech on Citizenship by Lawrence C. Walters.

1. Accept responsibility.

2. Do their homework.

3. Engage with others.

4. Take action.

5. Learn from their experiences.

If we’re going to remain a self-governing people, rather than slip downward into being ruled by power mongers, then we need a critical mass of educated populace, willing to do their part. If you’re reading this, that’s a start. You’re probably doing your part. So share it with anyone who has a sense of civic responsibility. If enough of us do that, then we can trust it will be enough.

In the Fifteen Years...

A few days ago we were driving down the freeway and came upon this billboard. Interesting question, I thought.

During the early days after the attack, we Americans were remarkably united. There weren’t two ways of looking at things: we were attacked, unprovoked, on our own soil, with the intention of killing as many Americans as possible, and causing us to cower in fear. The enemy’s goal then, and still, is either our totally annihilation or total submission.

That didn’t work, because we’re Americans. We stood up, fought back, and rebuilt.

But the billboard question is relevant, because after just the first year or so, there was a separation between Americans who love America and want to be good citizens, and Americans who disapprove of America as a constitutional republic and insist America is evil until it is fundamentally transformed, preferably into a democratic socialist regime. We’re separated into those who became better citizens of America and citizens-in-name-only who do not pledge allegiance to the Republic.

Good citizens of America know the Constitution better now than we did in 2001. We pay more attention, contact our representatives more often, and speak up more often.

Good citizens vote more regularly, and more informed, than they voted before 2001.

Good citizens support our first responders—the police and fire department, the FBI, and other protectors—and acknowledge the daily risks they take to keep us safe. Good citizens support our military, who have risked and sacrificed so much to fight the enemy abroad, to avoid having to fight the enemy here.

Good citizens tend to be puzzled by the growing number of fellow Americans who assume, without evidence, that America is more racist and stratified than ever before (and more than just about anywhere else), and that America’s intentions internationally are imperialistic and oppressive. We’re puzzled by the twisting that calls evil good and good evil, and the pervasive media that assumes we all agree on these twists.

How could there be this divide, when we were so united after the attack that is still fresh in our minds after 15 years?

Maybe it isn’t fresh enough in some minds. Maybe that’s why we have to keep memorializing this day.

This painting, “Out of the Ashes,” by Ken Turner, continues to be my favorite image of 9/11. There are a several versions of it, one in NYPD headquarters, another in NYFD headquarters. The ghost images, different in each version, represent actual people who died in the attack and the aftermath.

Several years ago there was a Darryl Worley song, “Have YouForgotten,” shared among the citizens around 9/11, with images to remind us. The words are still  appropriate; this is the chorus:

Have you forgotten how it felt that day
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away?
Have you forgotten when those towers fell
We had neighbors still inside
Going through a living hell?
And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout Bin Laden.
Have you forgotten?

This year I came across a new one. The song isn’t new, but the rendition along with the images is new. It’s Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” done grittier, with the images we shouldn’t forget. Worth watching in remembrance.

Another video I hadn’t seen is from a girls’ dorm room at NYU. They record what’s happening after a plane crashed into the first tower. They don’t yet understand what is going on; they think it is a freak accident, and while they’re shocked, they’re still pretty calm. Then the second one hits, and someone receives news that it’s terrorism, and the panic hits. This is not for the faint of heart, but it bears watching, to remind us we weren’t exaggerating the magnitude of the attack. The link is here.

On Glenn Beck’s show today, he interviewed a man who survived the attack on the Pentagon, because he had stepped out of his office to use the restroom. He was badly burned, but no one else in his office survived.  I think he is allowing this episode available for viewing without a subscription, at least for a time.

I think we need to keep these images in mind. Not so we can remain angry and vengeful. But so that we can recognize that there is a real battle still going on—between good and evil. Good citizens will be very clear about which side they’re on.

“A people that no longer remembers has lost its history and its soul.”—Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Restoring

This past Saturday, at our senatorial district convention, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick dropped in to say a few words. He used to be our state senator, so he’s at home here. He’s been on the road, helping with the Ted Cruz campaign, seeing people around the country. He told us, “There are lots of people who love the country like we do, and they want it to be restored.”

My blurry phone photo of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick
from the Senatorial District 7 Convention, March 19, 2016

I’ve been thinking about that lately. Last week I watched an Uncommon Knowledge interview with Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a Constitution lover frequently coming to my attention lately. This was the longest interview I’ve heard with him. He had more time to give context and background. I recommend watching the whole thing, but I thought I’d quote a few things here today. 

The overarching question here is, how bad are things, and how can we get back to the constitution? Peter Robinson is the interviewer:

PR: How recently did Congress work?

Sasse: Well, let’s define what work meant. In the mid-1960s there was a radical revision of what the federal government’s role was in the 1964, 1963…

PR: Great Society.

Sasse: Right. So we should celebrate the Civil Rights Movement at the same time. But in the Great Society program, there was a radical expansion of the federal government’s role in life. And it begged all sorts of questions about why we have limited government. We have limited government for a whole bunch of reasons that I hope we talk about some today. But after the 1960s, promises that were obviously bogus when they were made were never really revisited. The Medicare expenditure, the Congressional Budget Office equivalent from the mid-1960s, that projected what will Medicare cost from 1965 to 1975, was off by 1100%. What Medicare as of 1975 was costing—the original projections had been that it would be 9% of what it was actually costing. Where are the adults that have tackled that problem? It was a mess, obviously. But the mid-1970s—all sorts of things have been on autopilot since those mid-60s, and big problems are not being addressed.

So the deviation from the Constitution has been going on for a while, and seriously awry for half a century. Some of it has to do with a loss of understanding about what philosophy is behind out Constitution:

Sasse: If you sort of tried to think about, let’s teach the American Revolution to the present day, and create the sort of arc of what it means to have this really breathtaking experiment in self-governance, this idea—this big, anthropological claim that humans are created with dignity, and government doesn’t give us rights, but government is a shared project to secure those rights—that idea has really been under assault in certain ways since the middle of industrialization. It’s true that there was lots of complexity as the economy shifted from mostly agrarian to mostly urban and industrial.

I didn’t know, until this interview, much of Senator Sasse’s background. He graduated from Harvard, got a doctorate from Yale, worked at the Boston Consulting Group. He held a job at the Department of Justice, a job that was once held by Antonin Scalia. Then he taught at the University of Texas, and if I understood right, he was President of UT. 

Then he moved back home to Nebraska, a small-town suburb of Omaha, to raise his children. And run for the Senate. He’s still young. Very energetic. Very down-to-earth for someone that academically qualified. He has the valuable skill of being able to talk about important, deep, philosophical ideas in simple words that any thinking person ought to be able to understand.

I am beginning to think that simplifying skill, because it is too rare, is extremely valuable. Especially in our day, when clarity, and getting the message through in a few short words, is needed to match how information gets exchanged. 

He even uses Twitter to good effect. He was asked about a recent Twitter exchange with Donald Trump. Among other things, he connected Trump’s infidelity—and in fact his bragging about having sex with married women (who brags about that?)—with a failure to understand and keep his oaths.

There was also a challenge to Trump’s penchant for executive unilateralism. Here’s the Tweet, followed by Sasse’s explanation:

  

@realDonaldTrump  The President’s job is NOT 2 “run America.” This is precisely Obama’s error….   

Sasse: Yeah. We believe that all three branches are separate but equal, but the Article 2 branch, the executive—I mean, in some of the founders’ deliberations, president wasn’t even the term they used some of the time; they talked about the administrator. And president really just means presiding officer of the executive branch, and it’s supposed to be somebody who takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws that were passed by the Legislature.

PR: Donald Trump displays no evidence that he has any constitutional understanding?

Sasse: It is really hard to find him ever saying anything about limits and restraint, and executive restraint, which…  I’m not going to have accused him of any of these particular, you know, ugly analogues, but, man, of the things that he says about winning and power.…

The Senator tries to understand those who approve of Trump. Some of that comes because of the feckless president we’ve had on foreign policy—unfortunately combined with unilateral executive overreach. Sasse is kinder than I would be about Trump, but he says,

He’d be great to have a beer with, and he’s funny, and he’s got charisma. I get all that. Where does he ever articulate a constitutional sense of the limits of the executive branch?

Looking at solutions, he offers this:

Sasse: So, first of all, let’s just recognize that America is much much much bigger than the federal government. And so let’s not start by identifying the two. Washington that thinks it can solve every problem caused far more unintended consequences errors, mistakes, new troubles, than anything they’ll possibly solve. So first of all, we should have an American vision that can transcend what we think the federal government can get done.

Then, inside the federal government, we should want all three of these branches to all be vigorous defenders of a constitutional system of limited government.

But then, underneath that, policy initiative should ideally be coming—in the domestic policy space—should ideally be coming from the Article 1 legislative branch….

We should yearn for more deliberation that can bring us together as a people. And the supermajoritarian requirements of the Senate, to go back to your opening questions about the differences between House and Senate, we should desire solutions that can bring along a lot of the America people. That happens in dialogue. That happens among people over dinner tables. And a hundred people who should get to know each other in the Senate trying to not always put the worst construction on your policy opponent’s position. You should actually try to understand it before you reject it.

This is from his consultant background. He spent his first year going around to meet and talk with each of the other senators, to get a full view of the system, including its culture and problems.

He’s asked to explain this quote from his maiden speech in the Senate, this past November:

“While I am in favor of more civility, my actual call here is for more substance. This is not a call for less fighting [in the Senate]—but for more meaningful fighting.”

It’s the meaning—the understanding of the Constitution, and the very idea of limited government—that needs to be explained, taught, and defended. As Reagan said, in his farewell speech, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

Restoration and preservation are about culture. At the 33-minute mark, Sasse makes this brilliantly simple point:

Sasse: It’ll sound too romantic, but I believe we’re incredibly blessed. We live in the most exceptional nation in the history of the world, and it’s based on an anthropological claim about the dignity of people. I really believe that people are created with dignity—the world is fallen; we need government to restrain certain kinds of evil, and to create and maintain a framework for ordered liberty.

But life is lived in neighborhoods, in our cities, and in small towns across cattle country. The center of the world is the Rotary Club in my town; the center of the world is your listeners, churches, and synagogues, in the small businesses that they’re founding, and the little league, and the PTA, and the fire department.

That is where life is lived, that textured, meaningful life.… and I want your and my grandkids to grow up in a nation that believes in limited government, because we believe in the nearly limitless potential of humans who have dignity.

He answers questions about Justice Scalia—because the interview was recorded the week after his death—and that he wasn’t “conservative”; he was about the written law.

Sasse: I read my Constitution; I see no party affiliation in the Supreme Court justices. And even progressive and conservative is wrong, because there are progressives and there are people who believe in doing their job, which is to hide anything about their own policy preferences.

The job of a Supreme Court justice is not to be a super-legislator. That would be an anti-democratic attack on a constitutional system where we the people are supposed to be in charge and be able to fire the legislators. And so if the court is going to be super legislators, they surely shouldn’t have lifetime appointments.

And so to call Scalia conservative, as the papers have done all this week, misses the fundamental point. His job was to protect the rights of the people against bad laws that overreached. He was an originalist. He was a constitutionalist.

One last section I want to share. Peter Robinson asks the senator about a quote from conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt:

“We may be seeing the eclipse of the Republic. I’m not an alarmist. It’s not the end of the world. But even as the ancient republic of Rome became a more imperial structure, our government has grown so large, its responsibilities so immense, under the burdens of the modern world, that it will be impossible to take it back.”

And then Sasse is asked, is it too late?

Sasse: We need a constitutional recovery. And we need to bring along the republic, which is three hundred and twenty million souls.

This is where he offers the Reagan quote, and reminds us that Reagan also used to say this while running for governor of California, teaching these truths to labor movement people along the railroad tracks. Then Sasse says:

It only goes on if you teach it. And I do think there is an obsession of the 535 [US legislators] to think their job is small-ball legislating. A huge part of our job is to be advocates and defenders and teachers and lovers of the constitutional system.

And we have to teach that system to the next generation. So I’m with Hugh, in that you can’t talk about the decline of self-governance as the only thing that possibly matters in a world where the reason we believe in the American system of government is because of all these other aspects of what make full lives well lived, what define human flourishing outside of government.

But I think we would be really naïve to not be having the kind of conversation that he wants to have about the risk of slipping from Republic to Empire.

PR: It’s not too late?

Sasse: It’s not too late. But, we need to recognize this president has repeatedly talked like an emperor. We have a president who says it isn’t that big of a deal “if the Congress doesn’t pass the laws I want them to pass—I have a pen, and I have a phone, and I can just make it up as I go along.”

That sounds like something that you might have heard at a certain moment in Rome’s decline. And we now have a front-runner in the Republican Party who says maybe president Obama has paved a new way, as far as its executive unilateralism goes.

If you talked constantly about power and strength—and, let’s be clear, our foreign policy needs to be defined more by power and strength, and when you make political promises you should keep your word with power and strength—and yet George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison didn’t believe when they became president that their aspirations should look like King George III.

They believed they had a servant leadership responsibility underneath the Constitution…. If you go back and read Washington’s farewell address at the end of his eight years as president, he worried that the constitutional system was in peril.

So we’re in uniquely troubled times, but not totally unique, because, in our system, you always need to teach it to the next generation. And we’ve not been doing that.

On Sunday I listened to a rebroadcast address on BYUTV, Lawrence C. Walters spoke on “Citizenship,” April 1, 2014, telling us how to incorporate being good citizens into the various aspects of our lives. Also worth hearing in full. But we're over our limit for today, so, he says there are five things we can make part of our lives as citizens, rather than as consumers or subjects.

Five Essential Attributes of Active Citizens:

1. Accept responsibility.

2. Do their homework.

3. Engage with others.

4. Take action.

5. Learn from their experiences.

I experienced these things in action the past week, culminating (so far) in Saturday’s district convention—even more than in past years, because I was on the resolutions (platform) committee. So, after all the work last week, we took additional resolutions and testimony, finalized our recommendations, and presented them before the body (about 375 attendees). I got to see first-hand how someone’s idea at a grassroots precinct meeting makes its way into the platform, which will be considered by legislators this coming session.

What we do really matters. I have hope that there are enough of us who love our Constitution to do this.

Moral Dilemmas

As I was writing the last post, on being good citizens even in difficult times, I recalled a book I read some years ago, for a homeschool book club. I’m uncertain of the name, but I can give you the basic story, and several books that tell it.

Back in WWII Germany there were three teenage Mormon boys, approaching the age when they were required to join the Hitler Youth. Their religion had taught them about the value of freedom, which became at odds with their nation and the tyrannical pressure there during the war. They also found that what the government was telling them wasn’t true.

The boys learned from BBC radio—which was forbidden to listen to, but they heard it nevertheless, over a short-wave radio—that the war wasn’t going the way the government was telling the people. There were a lot of things the German news was saying that the outside world knew wasn’t true. The boys were troubled by the dissonance between their beliefs and the laws and actions of their country.

Helmuth Hübener, center, with Rudolf Wobbe, left,
and Karl Schnibbe, right
photo from Wikipedia

It was not policy for Mormons to be encouraged to rebel against their government, even under tyranny. But still they were taught the value of freedom and God-given rights. So it was a dilemma.

German Mormons were not condemned for fighting in the war, even if they believed their country was in the wrong; they were obliged to do as directed, and the blame would be on the hands of the nation’s leaders. However, if they could find ways to do good to their fellow man, or to find nonviolent ways to seek freedom, they were not forbidden by the Church. In other words, they were taught the principles and allowed to make their best decisions—just the same as today. (A similar situation comes up in the movie Saints and Soldiers, when Mormons fighting on opposite sides find their common religion important enough to help one another. Also, I told my Dad’s story of an encounter with a German Mormon soldier here. )

So here were three boys, in a Mormon congregation in Nazi Germany. Their congregation’s leader was strictly obedient to Hitler and insisted that was the right choice. But the boys felt directed to act differently. They listened in to the BBC, copied what they heard, typed it up, and distributed flyers to let the German people know the truth.

It was dangerous—and illegal. But it wasn’t violent. It was definitely brave. The boys were eventually caught. The main leader of the three, Helmuth Hübener, was tortured and beheaded, even though execution of youth for such crimes was rare. He wrote from prison: "I know that God lives and He will be the Just Judge in this matter. I look forward to seeing you in a better world!"

Here’s a quote from one of his treasonous pamphlets:

German boys! Do you know the country without freedom, the country of terror and tyranny? Yes, you know it well, but are afraid to talk about it. They have intimidated you to such an extent that you don't dare talk for fear of reprisals. Yes you are right; it is Germany—Hitler Germany! Through their unscrupulous terror tactics against young and old, men and women, they have succeeded in making you spineless puppets to do their bidding.

The other two friends, Rudi Wobbe and Karl Schnibbe, survived, with 5-10-year prison sentences. Wobbe told his personal account in Before the Blood Tribunal, published in 1989, and Three against Hitler, with Jerry Borrowman, 2002. Schnibbe wrote his version of events in When Truth Was Treason, published in 1995. Other book versions include the biography Hübener vs. Hitler, by Richard Lloyd Dewey, 2003; Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow, 2005, and The Boy Who Dared, 2008, both by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Her first one, a Newbery Honor book, includes Hübener’s story among others, while the later one is a fictionalized novel of the boys.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell which one I encountered. I think it might be The Boy Who Dared, but the date on that makes it barely fit as a possibility, so I’m uncertain. I only know that the remarkable story of these boys is something that sticks.

What is my conclusion about the dilemma? The boys were right, and heroic, to act as they did, because the tyranny surrounding them was wrong. Nevertheless, they did commit treason in the eyes of the law, such as it was, and they acted with the full knowledge that they would face punishment if caught. It would not have been sinful for them to have followed their adult leaders’ advice, keep their heads down, and make no waves. But it would not be a dilemma if there weren’t two competing positions. Since they were old enough to know their own conscience, and know what God was personally leading them to do, it was right for them to act.  

When Sir Thomas More faced the dilemma between supporting King Henry VIII and remaining loyal to the Catholic Church, he scrupulously remained silent. Nevertheless, his silence was interpreted as treason, and he was convicted. Before execution, he went ahead and voiced his true beliefs. (The story is beautifully told in the movie AMan for All Seasons.)

Most of us will not be in a position where we face death if we act according to conscience. But it’s something to think about ahead of time, to know ourselves well enough to know what is most important—eternally important, beyond comfort and life. Because if we don’t stand up for the important things while we are able, freedoms slip away, leaving us at greater risk when we do stand up to stronger tyranny.

Good Citizenship in All Times and in All Places

Our Sunday School lesson this week was on good citizenship. A little background: in our worldwide religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), there are more members outside the US than inside. The same Sunday School lessons are taught in every congregation around the world, within a week or so of the same schedule. So this wasn’t a lesson on being a good American, although it applies here as well.

This year’s class curriculum is on church history (the history of this religion, what led to its founding in 1830, and mainly what happened in the first few decades). The book of study for this year is the Doctrine and Covenants, a set of statements of revelation guiding the early leaders, often in answer to particular questions and circumstances, but also, as other scripture, applicable in our lives today as well.

So this week’s lesson was on Doctrine and Covenants Section134, written August 17, 1835. It is a declaration of belief regarding governments and laws in general, twelve verses long, about two pages. I’d like to first share some highlights:

1.      We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society.

So, two things: governments can be a blessing for a society, for our good and safety; and we are accountable for the making and administering of laws to meet that purpose.

6        …[leaders are] placed for the protection of the innocent and the punishment of the guilty; and that to the laws all men show respect and deference, as without them peace and harmony would be supplanted by anarchy and terror…

In Spherical Model terms, laws protect us from the tyranny of anarchy—the southern (tyranny) hemisphere, the western (anarchy) quadrant. Include the limitation of government’s purpose, and we can avoid the southeastern (statist tyranny) quadrant as well.

There is another item of Mormon doctrine, from a list of beliefs called The Articles of Faith, referring to our status as citizens of nations in the world. This is Article 12:

We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.

As a people dedicating our lives to God, we are submissive to the governments where we live—even tyrannical governments, while striving to bring about as much freedom as we can.

The next verse of D&C 134 refers to the free exercise of religion, which I plan to spend a full post on soon, because of cases before the Supreme Court this year.

7        We believe that rulers, states, and governments have a right, and are bound to enact laws for the protection of all citizens in the free exercise of their religious belief; but we do not believe that they have a right in justice to deprive citizens of this privilege, or proscribe them in their opinions, so long as a regard and reverence are shown to the laws and such religious opinions do not justify sedition nor conspiracy.

So there is a two-part expectation of governments: they must protect the free exercise of religion, and they must not deprive citizens of the free exercise of religion. In return, religious persons will not hide behind their so-called beliefs to commit sedition or conspire against the government or the people.

This sounds very much like the two-part religious freedom included as the very first words in our Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” So there must be freedom to believe as we choose, without special privilege toward any state-sponsored religion; nor can there be government interference in our religious practices.

One more verse, in case you wondered about the 2^nd Amendment:

11    …we believe that all men are justified in defending themselves, their friends and property, and the government, from the unlawful assaults and encroachments of all persons in time of exigency, where immediate appeal cannot be made to the laws, and relief afforded.

If you’ve submitted to a government for protection, you have not relinquished your right to defend yourself at times when the protectors can’t get there. Someone breaks into your home, you don’t have to wait for the police to arrive.

Latter-day Saints force out of Illinois
cross frozen Mississippi
image from LDS.org

It’s interesting to look at the times when these things were written. The Church was founded in upstate New York—in the area of Palmyra (which you can visit if you’re ever in the neighborhood of Niagara Falls). Persecution there soon led to a move to the area around Kirtland, Ohio. In just a few years, persecution there led to a move to Missouri. Persecution there soon led to a move to Missouri counties on the other side of the state. Persecution there—including an extermination order, which made it “legal” to murder Mormons in Missouri, not rescinded until just a few decades ago—led to a move to a swampland near Quincy, Illinois. The swamps were drained, and the city of Nauvoo was built, where the Mormons, in some isolation, thrived for a few years. (Some of my Mormon ancestors date to this period.) But persecution grew (are you seeing a pattern?) including the murder of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his Brother Hyrum. Promises of protection from the governor were broken, and by 1846 the Mormons were forced out of their homes yet again, in winter, across the Mississippi to Iowa and Nebraska, where they gathered in tents and dugout homes to survive until they could ready themselves to cross the plains, which they did in 1847, eventually arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, where the isolation for a longer period of time, in a place no one else wanted, allowed them to thrive.

The sesquicentennial of that trek across the plains was celebrated in 1997. There was a reenactment of people making all or part of that trek. A family (a mother and daughters—her husband stayed home on their farm) near where we lived in eastern Washington did the trek, experiencing as much reality as they could. She sewed her own tent. She dried her own buffalo jerky. She learned to drive a team of horses. (The originals drove mainly oxen, but for various reasons, sturdy horses were used in the reenactment trek.) I was asked to write about her and send her story to the media.

Pioneer Trek reenactment
photo from LDS.org

Sometime after that I got a call from a reporter at Germany’s Der Spiegel newspaper. The question the reporter had for me was about freedom of religion. This was America, where we had freedom of religion guaranteed in our Constitution since its beginning. How could the Mormons be treated this way? And all I could say was that this was the frontier, and a lot of wild things happened on the frontier that might not have been tolerated in the more settled parts of America.

It was at that time, while suffering persecution for their religion, with government entities failing to do their duty toward them, that the people declared their support of the principles of limited government to protect our God-given rights. The principles are true, regardless of whether the government is “true” to its proper purpose.

Back to the question of how to be good citizens:

·        Vote—if you’re a citizen, you are obligated to vote.

·        Attend precinct meeting—the grassroots meeting where you decide on what to contribute to the party platform and delegates for the next level. I believe that if we had a God-respecting person familiar with the Constitution at every precinct meeting, that would be very powerful for good.

·        Contact your leaders. For every contact, the legislator assumes there are 10 constituents who hold that opinion; for an in-person visit they estimate there are 100 others who hold that opinion. Be the one to do the contacting.

·        Help in campaigns.

·        Work at the polls.

·        Volunteer as a poll watcher.

·        Share information with your friends, in person or through online media.

This list is just participation in the world of government. Being a good citizen also includes respecting the law, living a moral life, and volunteering and serving in the community.

One way to prevent government from stepping in to “do good” is to be doing the good that needs to be done, using our free will, rather than government coercion. If we want to live in the northern freedom/prosperity/civilization part of the sphere, we need to live according to those principles.