Acting Locally Against Worldwide Evil

We live in troubled times. If you read Revelation (which I do), you might think, you haven’t seen anything yet. Just wait. But, while we face a mostly non-kinetic war, it is a war nevertheless. It is raging in our country and worldwide. We know how it turns out in the long run; that’s the point of Revelation. But it’s how to live now, and what to expend our energy doing, that is the question—or at least the question I’m looking at today.

This isn’t really a post about election integrity; that is just the story behind the point. So, here we go.

On Monday nights I frequently listen to Catherine Engelbrecht’s podcast on Locals.com (also found a couple of other places). Election integrity has been a big issue of mine since at least 2010. That was when her organization True the Vote started—locally, here in Houston, Texas. This week she told her story of how they got started.

Catherine Engelbrecht on her weekly podcast.
screenshot from here

She and a handful of friends (I don’t know all the names, but I have gotten to know some of them) met at a pub and talked about what they could do to make things better in the community. This was around 2008. One of the first things they decided to do was work an election, something she and others hadn’t done before. Then they got back together and talked about their experiences. Some of them had had a good experience, doing their civic duty, in and around people of different political beliefs, but all trying to do a good job.

But others had a different experience. This was a primary election (so I’m assuming around March 2008, a presidential election year). Our friends were working the Republican polls right next to the Democrat polls. Often such places are separated, placed in different rooms, or maybe different hallways of a school. But sometimes circumstances put them in the same room; I’ve experienced both.

There were a number of people who came in and confided to their Democrat clerk or judge, “I don’t remember who I’m supposed to vote for,” and the Democrat poll worker would tell them. In the open. Clearly illegal.

This would affect the Democrat voters, but not the Republicans, so why worry? Because, if that is what they were doing while they were being watched, who knows what they were doing where they weren’t being watched.

Anyway, by 2010 Engelbrecht and friends had formed True the Vote, a 501(c)3, to recruit and train poll watchers—not workers, but observers. I think it was within their first year, 2010, the first time I was a poll watcher, trained by True the Vote. 

True the Vote flyer, from 2011. Image first used here.

I had previously worked as a clerk at the polls a couple of times. I had also been a delegate to the district and state conventions multiple times by then—in multiple states I had lived in. I had taken my homeschooled kids to the state capitol to do citizen lobbying many times. I had been an active citizen. But clearly the election integrity problems needed to be addressed. They were serious. So I stepped up, with an army of volunteers.

I was a poll watcher for several elections. Then, in 2014 I became a precinct chair and have worked the polls ever since. Typically I have someone else (lately it has been my husband) be the Presiding Judge, and I am a clerk, because I can’t handle the 17-hour day arriving at 5:30 AM to get the polls open at 7:00, so I come in later and stay through take-down and return of equipment and ballots.

Since the Democrats took over Harris County elections in 2018, we have had one disastrous election after another. After their elected county clerk stepped down in 2020 (worries about COVID, she claimed, but there was a lot of suspicion of fraud), the county commissioners court (democrat majority) took elections out of the hands of the elected county clerk and gave it to an appointed elections administrator. The ones they chose were disastrously awful—incompetent to the point of it looking deliberate. As Alan Vera used to say, “Incompetence is the perfect camouflage for malfeasance.” In our 2022 election they failed to provide ballot paper to a number of polling locations—coincidentally in high Republican areas. Ours would have run out of paper along with the many others, but our tech support happened to have an extra couple of boxes in his vehicle, and he gave us one. Without it, we would have run out long before the county elections people delivered another box just an hour before closing. 

The map, built by Russ Long, showing that polls without
enough paper coincided with Republican voting locations. 
Screenshot from here. 

from an HCRP meeting February 13, 2023, showing where voters were
turned away from polling places for lack of ballot paper

The state legislature got rid of the elections administrator for counties of our size (specifically, really, just our county) and returned our elections to the county clerk this year. The clerk is still a Democrat, because we haven’t won a county-wide election since they took over the elections, coincidentally. For this November’s election, we got notified that my husband is assigned as the AJ (alternate judge) at our usual polling location. We have always been the PJ (presiding judge). This privilege is based on who the precinct voted for as governor; my precinct voted for Governor Abbott, the Republican, so we are entitled to be the PJ, which means running the polling location and hiring the workers. The AJ is there to provide oversight from the opposing party, and typically gets to bring along a clerk if we are allowed to hire enough people. This privilege is according to state law, so the County is breaking the law. By depriving us of our entitled PJ status, it means I and the others who regularly run our polls—and we do it better than most, because of our experience—will not get hired. I gather we’re not the only precinct they’ve done this to.

There’s an HCRP (Harris County Republican Party) meeting on Monday; I’m hoping they’re going to deal with this problem, which I and others have reported. Who knows what other fires need to be put out, a mere month before election day.

This is a long way of saying—after a couple of decades of doing my civic duty—and more than a decade of doing a whole lot more than most—our situation is still dire, probably worse than when we started. This is even though we, as the public, are more aware than we have ever been. We can be censored and labeled as domestic terrorists for saying so, however. The Biden administration is pushing for even more censorship of messages they do not approve of.

Engelbrecht was telling her story Monday to get people to see that they don’t need to set out to create a national organization or movement. They just need to act locally. That is what she did. And the Lord led her and others, one step after another, to do more—until they became a target on the national stage in this fight for free and fair elections.

Yes, act locally. Do what you can.

But we are in the midst of the book of Revelation. Do not expect that your efforts will be what it takes to bring back our constitutional republic, as much as we want that.

La Bête de la Mer, a medieval tapestry depicting John the Revelator
seeing the dragon and the sea beast from Rev. 13,
used previously in this post

My purpose in this post today is to encourage—myself and others—to do what we can, regardless. We’re not living in times that allow us to be comfortable. But we also do not live in times where our all-out effort will win the day. The Savior alone will win the day. Our part is to make sure we are fighting the war on His side. We do not want to be on the wrong side, nor can we be on the sidelines, as though we don’t care which side wins.

We’re not talking about political sides here. We are talking about choosing good over evil.

Election illegalities are a small part—with sometimes a large outcome, as we saw in the 2020 presidential election—of the overall war against evil. We’re seeing unprecedented things: the indictment on specious charges of a former president/current presidential candidate. The current office holder shows obvious signs of dementia but is insisting he’s running again, while an impeachment inquiry is open—because of the obvious, large, tangled web of influence peddling, which I would term treason, if I had a say.

The UN just met this past month, attempting to give large and sweeping powers—giving up our sovereignty—to the very World Health Organization that lied and failed us (purposely?) during the COVID pandemic. Who in their right might would think it’s a good idea to give more power to a worldwide entity that has already proven themselves untrustworthy?

These issues are all national or global. We can give our opinions to lawmakers, but that’s about the limit of our power on that level. So, locally is where we can have the biggest impact. And there’s plenty to deal with at the state and local level. Besides election integrity, there’s:

·        Education

·        Parental rights

·        Child trafficking

·        Drug trafficking

·        Border security (in a border state where the federal government has purposely failed us)

·        Crime and punishment

There’s plenty more. Very locally, there’s the school board and the HOA board. I talked about our school board race in my last post. Tonight was a work session of the school board, ahead of Monday’s official public meeting. I tuned into the livestream for a while, but my attention wandered. (This post wasn’t done, for one thing.) Paying the needed attention to school issues could be a full-time endeavor.

Today, while I was walking my dog, I had a conversation with an HOA board member, about the two board races up for election this year. She’s a nice, retired lady, a year into being on the board, willing to hear what neighbors have to say, but also a bit frustrated that more people don’t step up to make things better in our very local community. I live in a “newer” section of the neighborhood, where we’ve been for 24 years. She is in an older section, been there 32 years. While I feel safe walking our streets, even in the dark, she no longer feels that way at her end of the subdivision. There’s a house on her street where they’re pretty sure drug deals are going on. People are wondering if not just drug trafficking, but also human trafficking is happening there. We’ve heard about a lot of catalytic converter thefts in the neighborhood, as well as tire thefts. As the neighborhood ages, more of it turns into rentals, with less upkeep of the property and, unfortunately, more propensity for crime. Homeownership doesn’t always prevent crime, but it’s a signal of more care for the property, and a lot of good goes along with that (which is just one reason the idea that by 2030 you will own nothing is disturbing). There are discussions between the HOA and the MUD (municipal utilities district) about whose money should be used for what projects. Money is involved—our very local money.

But there is only so much a person can give their attention to. The more local, the more it is likely to affect your daily life, so you might want to focus there. But, as Catherine Engelbrecht was suggesting, you probably do need to look around and ask God, “What would you have me do?” Then take a step, connect with others, inform others, work together for the good of the community. If you accomplish something good in your community, it might stave off the influx of evil from a less local source.

In the community circles where I’ve served, I’ve met a lot of really good, committed Christians, giving tirelessly to make things better. They are an example and inspiration to me. I am “not weary in well doing” (Galatians 6:9), but I am often physically weary, facing limitations of age and health. So I have to ask more judiciously what the Lord would have me do. Writing and sharing information here is just one thing, and it’s very small. I’m continuing to participate in various ways when I can, within my limits.

I trust that, while what I do will never be enough to change the world, it makes me a little better. And all of us making ourselves a little better—that will sustain enough good in the world to help us survive until Babylon falls and our Savior reigns.

Our tools of defense during that great fall will be faith, patience, and courage[i]. That is what we are strengthening in ourselves during this time when doing our little part is never enough to bring Babylon down. That will happen. What we’re doing is protecting ourselves from falling with those evil forces.

Simply, look around you and do daily the good the Lord leads you to do.

 

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[i] Richard Draper and Michael D. Rhodes, The Revelation of John the Apostle, © 2016, p. 941. This is an excellent commentary on Revelation, carefully explaining translation from the Greek, done by Brigham Young University professors, with added insight from other Latter-day Saint scriptures and writings. It is nevertheless their opinion and not necessarily the views of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The book is long and detailed, and I do not understand the Greek, but the commentary is enjoyable to read, and I would appreciate such a commentary on a great many other books of the Bible.

There's No Such Thing as a Right-Wing Extremist

There’s no such thing as a right-wing extremist. There’s no such thing as a left-wing extremist either. Because the whole right-left model doesn’t work.

Yes, there are extremists. But communism (what we’ve been calling extreme left) isn’t the polar opposite of fascism (what we’ve been calling extreme right); they are almost the same. Both are nasty, misery-filled tyrannies. Trying to find some balance between two really awful things only gives us a really awful compromise.

I propose that we look at the actual polar opposites, and the world of positions between them, in hopes that we can make some better choices.

We want freedom, prosperity, and civilization. That’s our goal. We can judge an ideology or government form by how far it diverges from those political, economic, and social goal zones: near, far, or extremely far.

In the Spherical Model, the political sphere has freedom as the north pole; the south pole is tyranny. Overlaying that is the Economic Sphere, with prosperity north and poverty south. And overlaying the other layers is the Social Sphere, with civilization north and savagery south.

Lateral location on the sphere is neutral; it depends on whether the issue being looked at is relevant to local, regional, national, or larger interests, on a spectrum ranging from the individual and family all the way up to global. Lateral posistion only relates to tyranny if a higher level than necessary tries to take control.

When we look at the extremes of communism and fascism, they’re pretty close to one another. They may even overlap: the communist Soviet Union was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic. Nazi Germany was the National Socialist Party.

In this example Communism is blue, Socialism is red, Fascism is green

If we draw them on our Political Sphere, communism and fascism are both in the lower left quadrant, where you find statist tyranny, or totalitarianism. Socialism might overlap them completely. Or, as it is in some countries, there could be only partial socialism, so those versions might be less far south into tyranny. And there could be versions that are globalist, or only national or even more local. For example, Berkeley, California, has had a communist mayor and some citywide communist policies. And California is clearly more socialist than Utah or Texas. The latter two are much closer to Constitutional freedom than the current US as a whole.

From the perspective of the global interest extreme,
moving away from global interest either left or right

Communism and fascism can be different ideologies and still be right next to one another on the sphere. If we spin the globe a bit, so we’re directly facing the far eastern global line, we can place communism all the way south and next to global interests, and fascism can also be all the way south and next to global interests. It’s like being on either side of the international dateline. You might have come at the dateline from one direction, and your friend might have gotten there from the other direction, but you’re both within a couple of blocks from each other with an imaginary line between you.

Why does all this matter? Because ideas matter. Philosophies matter. That’s what determines what our governments are like.

And what our governments are like determines what our lives are like. How free we are to pursue our dreams, live our lives, enjoy the fruits of our labors and our property. Governments can either protect our life, liberty, and property, or they can limit our choices and prevent us from thriving.

And even if we, ourselves, figure out how to get to freedom, prosperity, and civilization, the government we live under is in part determined by the rest of society. So we need others to learn how to get there too.

Here’s the secret we keep trying to yell from the rooftops: Government needs to be limited to its proper role, the way it’s spelled out in the Preamble to the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

For prosperity, government gets out of the way of a free market and merely protects our lives and property. And for civilization, government that gets out of our way while encouraging good citizens to honor God, family, life, property, and truth.

Natural Feeding and Teaching

This post is about education. But I’m going to start with an analogy, about food, in hopes of helping you see the current paradigm with new eyes.

Imagine a conversation between a couple of moms at a park on a pleasant afternoon, while the kids play. This is a slightly different time and place than our current nation. Mom 1 is about to call the kids to head home for dinner; it’s time to start the cooking process if they’re going to have dinner on the table when Dad gets home. Mom 2 is surprised.

Mom 2: You cook for your own family? Really? I could never do that.

Mom 1: Yeah, I always have, and the kids are growing just fine.

Mom 2: I’d be afraid I’d do something wrong. I mean, what if I made my kids fat? How would I ever forgive myself?

Mom 1: Well, I mostly make just enough. And it’s not junk food. And we don’t have sweet snacks and desserts all the time, just as an occasional treat.

Mom 2: Yeah, I could never say no if my Emma whined and wanted more.

Mom 1: It takes being the grown up, I guess.

Mom 2: I’m just glad I don’t have to do that. I mean, it’s enough that I have to get them dressed and out the door in the morning. I’m so glad the school feeds them breakfast and lunch. And now that they send dinner home too—what a lifesaver! I’m just so glad the government cares enough about our children to make sure they get fed.

Mom 1: I figure I can do that. And I’m the one who knows what my kids will eat.

Mom 2: But, seriously, do you know what they should eat? Do you have a degree in nutrition? Are you certified?

Mom 1: No, I just use common sense and make things mostly from scratch. It’s not rocket science.

Mom 2: But all those studies—you should get them to eat more broccoli, or less, or use soy or don’t use soy. Is peanut butter really too dangerous? I mean, I’d never feed them something if I didn’t already know they didn’t have an allergy.

Mom 1: Usually you don’t find out they have an allergy if they haven’t eaten it at least once.

Mom 2: Well, still, I’m sure the government data puts the odds in our favor.

Mom 1: One of my kids does have food allergies, to dairy. So I just adjust what I’m cooking for him. You can’t even get one of the school meals without milk, can you?

Mom 2: Well, no, but you can just throw out what they don’t eat.

Mom 1: Yeah. I don’t do that. Like, if I know a kid’s never going to eat peas, I can make sure he gets some food he will eat that provides the same nutrition. I’m the one closest to the situation, so I can easily adjust.

Mom 2: Maybe so, but it’s so much easier to just let the government food specialists make those decisions. Plus, it’s no cost to me. Not only do I have time free that I don’t have to cook, we don’t have to spend that huge chunk of our budget just to feed out kids. I mean, it’s free! What could be better than free?

Mom 1: I guess we just value personal choice, personal responsibility, being able to adjust to our child’s personal needs without having to go through a government bureaucracy that doesn’t care about our child’s individual needs; we like time talking together while we eat, learning together about foods, how to cook, how to make things taste better, getting variety when we want it…

Mom 2: Yeah, strange. Whatever. Hey, gotta get going… (runs off, sits down on another bench by someone less crazy).

daughter Social Sphere dissecting a squid
during a group science day in 2009

This conversation is eerily similar to conversations I’ve actually had about our choice to homeschool. Up until a century plus a couple of decades ago, most parents saw to the education of their own children. Sometimes the mom and dad did lessons at home, taught reading and basic math, and gave assigned readings. Sometimes they joined together with some other families to hire a teacher or two in a neighborhood school. Sometimes—especially for kids who showed promise as they got older—they got to learn more as apprentices or in higher education. What we see taught in college now was frequently taught in secondary schools (calculus was aimed at 8^th grade), and undergraduate universities taught the specialized knowledge now reserved for graduate programs.

I grew up thinking public schools were the norm, and we sent our kids to them. Early on we got lucky.Our very smart kids (never sent to preschools) got funneled into a gifted program that was quite good, despite the bus ride across town. Then we moved, and spent two years coming to realize our needs could not be met in the local schools. Private schools, which we couldn’t afford for three kids anyway, were not going to solve our issues, because we needed some individual attention. So we dove into homeschooling and never looked back.

It was a difficult decision, and kind of scary. But it turned out that it wasn’t so very different from cooking every day for your own kids. You look at what they need; you know enough to either provide the instruction or figure out where to get what they need. So you facilitate their learning one way or another—just like you did when they were learning how to sit up, how to walk, how to talk, how to brush their own teeth. Those are things you have down yourself pretty well, so you just show the way.

There’s really not much necessary learning from elementary school that a functional adult doesn’t have a good grasp of. When things get tougher, at the high school level, finding specialized help, the way people do for music lessons, is easy enough. And getting easier with so many online resources.

And you learn as you go. Just as I’m a much better cook now than I was years ago. And I make it better tasting under more limited conditions (food allergies) than I ever used to know how to do. But it isn’t rocket science. And when they get to the level of rocket science (we actually studied some of that), you can get help, which we did.

Were there holes and gaps in our children’s educations? Undoubtedly. But I guarantee there were not as many holes in things important to me as the public schools would have caused. Anything they may have missed is easily compensated for with a book or an online search. Because they know how to learn on their own now.

I’m often in awe of how well all of my children do that as young adults. What a delight it is to talk over with them what they’ve recently discovered!

There’s more to say about education, but I want to end with a point and a quote. You, as a parent, have the right and responsibility to bring up your children as you see fit. Among parents earnestly striving to care for their children, any interference with that process is wrong. Outcomes for the children will be worse under government control. And our lives and freedoms will be threatened by the government control, no matter how convincing the authorities are about their good intentions.

Here’s the quote for the day, from Ezra Taft Benson, former US Secretary of Agriculture, and author of The Proper Role of Government (as well as former President and Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1985-1994):

The best way to prevent a political faction or any small group of people from capturing control of the nation's educational system is to keep it decentralized into small local units, each with its own board of education and superintendent. This may not be as efficient as one giant super educational system (although bigness is not necessarily efficient, either) but it is far more safe. There are other factors, too, in favor of local and independent school systems. First, they are more responsive to the needs and wishes of the parents and the community. The door to the school superintendent's office is usually open to any parent who wishes to make his views known. But the average citizen would be hard pressed to obtain more than a form letter reply from the national Commissioner of Education in Washington, D.C.

What Is the Spherical Model

We’re approaching an anniversary here at the Spherical Model. While the website has been up somewhat longer, the blog began March 4,2011, which is Monday. That first post was a Friday, so I think I’ll start the celebration today.

The Spherical Model is a way of looking at ideas and how they interrelate. It begins as an alternative to the left/right paradigm of politics, because that view is inadequate. Using a three-dimensional model allows for a full range of ideas, along with an understanding of how they compare to each other and whether they lead to freedom or tyranny. In addition, the model shows similar three-dimensional positions for economic and social ideas. These aren’t three separate models; they are three layers of the same model.

For the full explanation, I hope you’ll read the website. A year ago, at the one-year anniversary, I offered a shorter version, to get you started with the basics.

The Spherical Model idea is my own. It began in 2004, during our homeschooling decade, when I was looking for a way to explain the political spectrum during our history lessons, including a pretty long unit on the Constitution and government. I expanded the spherical idea beyond politics to include economic and social ideas sometime later and started writing those segments in 2008. I got the website up in 2010, when we finally graduated Social Sphere from our homeschool.  

I consider Spherical Model to be a think tank, but as think tanks go this is about as small as one can get. It consists of me and my personal research and opinions, along with input from my grown children, who happen to have personalities and interests that coincide with the three portions of the model: Political Sphere, Economic Sphere, and Social Sphere. The oldest, Political Sphere, who is a law student now, tends to offer the most input, which I appreciate. A time or two he has written a guest post. Economic Sphere has a degree in economics, and when I had more access to him daily, I often had him school me in how to explain economic principles. He’s now in the Army, studying at the Defense Language Institute. My daughter, Social Sphere, got married this past year, and is studying Family Consumer Science, which fits well into what we cover in the ingredients needed for civilization. Mr. Spherical Model, my husband of 31 years, also offers occasional general input.

For this anniversary review, I’d like to do a series on the three overlaying spheres. The goal, in all three spheres, is to follow the principles that will lead us to and help us remain in the northern hemisphere—the further north the better. So we’ll cover the principles over the next few days.

Political Sphere

The northern hemisphere is freedom; the southern hemisphere is tyranny. The longitudinal lines relate to the perspective—who has the interest. The western hemisphere is most local/individual, and moving toward the eastern hemisphere is moving toward larger interests, with national, regional, and global interests. In the south the two quadrants divide, then, into chaos tyranny in the southwest and statist tyranny in the southeast—both bad, and both the most common versions of governance throughout history. Too many people see the whole political struggle as consisting of the opposition between chaos and control; power seekers often use chaos as an opportunity to gain power by offering relief from the chaos.

These people are blind to the entire northern hemisphere, where people are more peaceful, more productive, more thriving. America, as created in the US Constitution, is probably the best example we have of northern hemisphere freedom at the national level, possibly in all of world history.

What are the principles that get us to the northern freedom zone? The following questions let us know whether the principles are being met.

• 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 without moving too far south on the sphere.
• 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 and is too far south on the sphere.
• Is the idea being debated a proper role of government, some aspect of protection (including national defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency to protect the value of wealth, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea is outside the Constitution and is too far south on the sphere.
• Is the perspective appropriately local? It is important that any issue be handled at the most local level possible. Parents should decide the means, methods, and curriculum for educating their children, for example. An issue that affects a state should be handled at the state level, not the national level. National decisions should not be ceded to some international body. As listed in the above question, some interests are national, but ceding power to a larger entity than the actual interest leads to tyranny, which means too far south on the sphere.