Year-End Review of the Spherical Model

It has become somewhat traditional for me to celebrate year ends by reminding readers of what the Spherical Model is. I tend to do this the end of December and in early March, which marks the time I started this blog in 2011. The Spherical Model is a new way of looking at ideas, in the three categories of political, economic, and social. This is an alternative to the left/right model, which is both arbitrary and inaccurate.

Also sometimes near the end of a year I’ll do a sort of “best of” post, or collections of posts that go together. Typically that would be posts related to the political, economic, or social spheres, plus maybe some related to education, or the courts. This year’s collections are possibly more topical. But that may be because the big news stories show the attacks on freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

So today I’ll share again a short reminder about what the Spherical Model is, and then I’ll show some of the ways that it applied to issues in the news this past year.

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Back in 2004, during our homeschooling decade, I was looking for a way to explain political ideas. And I began to ask questions, like: Is there a better way of looking at political ideas than right or left?

Because there is nothing innately conservative about the right or innately liberal about the left. In fact, the directional terms come from the seating arrangement of European parliaments, in which conservatives favored retaining the monarchy while liberals were in favor of people’s power.

So the typical line model we use to describe political ideas as right and left is just a seating arrangement. Yet we’ve come to think of this line as a spectrum.

Political conversations tend to describe the far ends as extreme, assuming there’s some virtue in being balanced in the middle. And we refer to our nation as center right—just a little more conservative than exactly center.

But what are the extremes? Do we assume communism or socialism at the extreme left, and fascism at the extreme right?

That can’t be right, because communism and fascism are both totalitarian statist tyrannies, just slightly different flavors. Nazi means “national socialist party” and the communist Soviet Union’s name was Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

So if Nazism and communism aren’t diametric opposites, then what are the logical extremes?

How about total government control, or tyranny, versus total lack of government control, or anarchy?

  

That’s better. Then freedom is that perfect balance in the middle.

But wait; there’s a problem with this model too: It’s common in history for people suffering in anarchy to turn for relief to total government control—anything for security. But in this model, as a people move to the left, they have to pass through that balanced freedom section. You’d think that it would be very common for someone to stop and say, “Hey, this freedom is good. Let’s stop going leftward and stay here.” Yet that pretty much never happens. But going directly from chaos to state control is historically common.

Plus, notice that there’s not that much difference between the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of anarchy. Total government control means the state has all the power—the police, the military. The state can do what it wants, and the mere citizen is without any rights except what the state decides to grant.

Anarchy, on the other hand, means that power belongs to whoever is stronger and meaner than the next guy. If you threaten to beat people up (or kill them) if they don’t give you all their belongings, and you’re strong enough to mean it, then you have power. If someone else is stronger or better armed than you are, then you have to yield power to them.

In other words, anarchy, while less organized, is power in the hands of the strongest and best armed—just like a tyrannical government.

So maybe government tyranny and anarchic tyranny are pretty close to the same thing. When I show this, I use a ribbon, labeled at the ends, and fold it in half, so it looks something like this:

 

Tyranny and freedom are really the opposite extremes.

Not bad. But it puts all those different kinds of tyrannies in the same location, and maybe there are differences.

A simple line doesn’t give us the dimensions we need.

So, how about if we use three dimensions—a sphere? If we draw a line at the equator, we can separate freedom (northern hemisphere) from tyranny (southern hemisphere). And then we can draw a longitudinal dividing line, with more local interests in the western hemisphere and larger interests—from state to nation, to international, in the eastern hemisphere.

I call this the Spherical Model.

The Political Sphere of the Spherical Model

Down in the south, you can see that one side of tyranny is the chaos of anarchy, and the other side is the totalitarian control of government tyranny. It’s easy to get from one to the other—which is what much of world history has shown us. You can have communism, socialism, and Nazism as separate patches in their quartersphere, based on how much control they exert on their people (southern direction), or how far they plan to expand (toward the eastward extreme of world domination).

Up north in the freedom zone, location is mostly a matter of whose interest. Free people don’t yield power to a governing authority beyond the appropriate interest. Families make their own decisions about the care, upbringing, and education of their children. Communities on up to cities and counties decide on local law enforcement and protection needs. States (or provinces) deal with their particular infrastructure and laws. Only very limited powers are granted to a nation—as are enumerated in the US Constitution. And that sovereignty would never yield to an international power, but would cooperate with other free sovereignties concerning international issues.

If we identify ideologies according to level of control exerted onto free people, and also their level of interest, we can identify location on the sphere. And that will tell us how close we are to thriving in the northern freedom zone.

We can use the spherical model again for economic ideas: the north will be the prosperity of free enterprise, and the south will be the poverty of controlled economy. Those differences have direct relationships with political ideologies, so we can overlay the economic sphere right over the political sphere and see how things interrelate.

And what about social ideologies? Again, we can use the same sphere; the north will be civilization, and the south will be savagery.

The Political Sphere, Economic Sphere, and Social Sphere 
of the Spherical Model

 

In all three overlaying spheres, the question becomes, not which is better, left of right? But what are the principles of freedom, prosperity, and civilization? There’s no too far north extreme; there’s only getting north enough and doing what it takes to stay there, generation after generation, without southward slipping.

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The political, economic, and social spheres all have their own set of principles for reaching true north. And those are the things we deal with in this blog. Here and there we identify these principles. I’ve listed them a few places—in the most detail on the website. And also these versions:

·         “The Basic Principles”—January 2, 2017 

·         “What Is the Spherical Model”—March 1, 2013

·         “Economic Sphere Basics”—March 4, 2013 

·         “Basics of the Civilization Sphere”—March 6, 2013 

·         “Economic Principles for Volatile Times”—August 27, 2015 

For practical use, I’ve written questions based on the Spherical Model, to ask political candidates—if you get a chance—to determine whether they’re aiming at the northern hemisphere or just trying to control the southern hemisphere. Since we’re Primary Election season right now, I recently added to the list, including a few questions related to issues for this year:

·          “The Right Questions to Get the Right Stuff,”—December 6, 2021. 

And there’s one this year on the proper role of government, worth reviewing:

·         “Government Is Force—Not a Benevolent Provider, Not Deity”—April 22, 2021 

OK, so, what issue-related happenings can we view from the Spherical Model?

 

THE 2021 COLLECTIONS

I usually write two articles a week, so around 100 a year. This year I slacked off to around 85 pieces, but they trended longer. It was a heavy news year.

 

Family

Let’s start with a few posts about the value of family to civilization, and related to that some successes in the fight against abortion.

·         “What Matters Most”—May 6, 2021 

·         “Don’t Forget That We Need Fathers”—June 10, 2021 

·         “Speaking Up for the Family”—October 29, 2021 

·         “Denial of Reality and of Womanhood”—November 8, 2021 

·         “Much Power of Speech”—December 2, 2021 

 

The Election—and Election Integrity

I’ve covered this topic fairly frequently over the years. And I wrote about it once or twice weekly the last couple of months of 2020. So I’ll add just a couple from 2021:

·         “Things Will Play Out One Way or Another”—January 4, 2021 

·         “Three More Updates on the Neverending Election Saga”—February 8, 2021 

 

January 6th

The big news of January 6 relates to our freedoms. The event was a rally intended to encourage legislators to question the electors sent from states with big questions about election fraud. It was a legal, constitutional procedure—done by Democrats multiple times just this century, albeit without cause. While Trump was yet speaking to an enormous crowd, big disturbances began at the capitol building a mile away. Doors were breached, and legislators were evacuated quickly to safer places. While there was violence, no one was killed by the so-called “insurrectionists,” and business got done later that evening. No one was found to be carrying a weapon. The only death was committed by capitol police against an unarmed woman who was not a threat. Meanwhile, capitol police are seen inviting people into the capitol to walk around.

Afterward, barriers went up. Biden described this as the most heinous act against our country since the Civil War—eclipsing Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The more time passes, the more this looks like a government attempt at entrapment, a failed attempt to paint all Trump supporters as domestic terrorists. Just this past week more surveillance footage was publicly released, showing capitol police beating an unarmed woman, who was charged and held; this video footage was not available for her defense until a week ago. It seems likely now that at least one of the deaths of participants labeled as due to natural causes was actually another police killing. And word is leaking out about abuse of prisoners held without trial for all these months, some without access to representation or their other constitutional rights. The corruption is far beyond any we thought we could see while there still exists a remnant of our constitutional republic.

·         “Living Through Another Historic Day”—January 7, 2021 

·         “What I Think Happened”—January 14, 2021 

·         “Time for the Annual Pointless Impeachment Trial”—February 4, 2021 

·         “Non-Theoretical Conspiracies”—June 28, 2021 

·         “Some Are More Equal Than Others”—October 21, 2021 

 

 

School Board Battles

During this year’s Texas legislative session, I worked hard on a very good school choice bill that got voted out of the Senate committee but failed to get a floor vote. Legislators are afraid to touch the issue and get labeled anti-public schooling. There are things we simply can’t depend on legislators to do. Related to schools, across the country parents are fighting school boards on Critical Race Theory and LGBT agendas being taught to their children. We had that fight locally—and won all three of the school board seats on the November ballot.

·         “Fighting Off the Infestation”—May 20, 2021 

·         “Stand Up, Speak Up”—June 14, 2021   

·         “Just Another Parent Speaking Out to the School Board”—June 21, 2021 

·         “School Board Meeting Debrief”—June 25, 2021 

·         “How to Retake the School Board”—July 26, 2021 

·         “The Critical School Board Races, Part I” and “Part II”—September 16 and 21, 2021 and 

·         “It’s Not a Class; It’s an Ideology”—October 11, 2021 

·         “We Won Some Battles in the Ongoing Idea War”—November 5, 2021 

 

Pandemic

The pandemic continued throughout the year. I wrote about it frequently in 2020. In March of this year I wrote a sort of timeline. And I’ve added pieces fairly regularly the rest of the year. Information—i.e., science, with data—keeps coming from reliable sources, which are censored by media. But the information is there for those willing to look for it and do some of their own research. And that has meant a lot more freedom for the self-educated than for those frozen with fear and giving in to government and corporate overlords. This pandemic—along with the plague of the authoritarian response to it—has affected all three spheres: political, economic, and social.

·         “The Two Weeks That Stretched into a Year, Part I”  and “Part II”—March 6 and 11, 2021 

·         “Go Ahead and Party: or The Two Weeks That Stretched into a Year, Part III”—March 16, 2021 

·         “That Explains It”—April 8, 2021 

·         “So Many Reasons—or That Explains It, Part II”—April 14, 2021 

·         “Hesitancy Might Be a Good Thing This Time”—May 11, 2021 

·         “Something Is Up—and It’s Worldwide”—May 13, 2021 

·         “Who Can You Trust?”—June 4, 2021 

·         “Panel of Experts”—August 3, 2021 

·         “Have a Plan”—August 16, 2021 

·         “I Have More Questions”—September 3, 2021 

·         “Trying to Make Sense of What Makes No Sense”—September 27, 2021 

·         “So This Is Why People Have Ears That Do Not Hear”—October 8, 2021 

·         “Three Books and Some Other Research Assignments”—November 18, 2021

·         “Holidays—Must Be Time for Another Crisis”—November 30, 2021 

·         “Coming to a Fortunate End”—December 14, 2021 

·         “Not Like the Others”—December 27, 2021 

Go Ahead and Party: or The Two Weeks That Stretched into a Year, Part III

Our current occupant of the White House made his first actual public address last Thursday, for about 20 minutes. Among the words he read to us, he told us that, if we’re good little children, and have our vaccinations in the next month or two, then, maybe, by the 4^th or July we can consider getting together with close family who also have their vaccinations, maybe outside, and to be safe wear masks:

Because here's the point, if we do all this [get vaccinated], if we do our part, if we do this together, by July the 4th, there's a good chance you, your families and friends will be able to get together in your backyard or your neighborhood and have a cookout and a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day.

That doesn’t mean large events with lots of people together, but it does mean small groups will be able to get together.

He added,

We need everyone to get vaccinated. We need everyone to keep washing their hands, stay socially distanced, and keep wearing the mask as recommended by the CDC.

So, if we get everyone vaccinated, we still need to keep washing our hands, stay socially distanced, and keep wearing masks. But if we do all that, we can be in the presence of other vaccinated people maybe by July 4^th?

image from Sen. Ted Cruz's Facebook page

Does this make sense?

If it were small pox—a much more dangerous disease—and you got vaccinated, would you wait an extra half a year to be around other people that are also vaccinated? If you’re my age, you got vaccinated for small pox as a small child. You didn’t have to quarantine for any time at all. You got to be around everybody right afterward, and the whole rest of your life (in this case, because the disease was eradicated; other vaccinations, like tetanus, may need a booster). Because that’s how vaccinations work. You might want to make sure you’re not exposed to the disease within a couple of days of the shot. Beyond that, you’re considered to be immune.

For this much less risky disease (not risk-free, but only likely to cause death in 1/10,000 people who are young and healthy), why the extra time?

Actually, they haven’t even made a case for getting the vaccine at all when the illness is so unlikely to cause death and is so treatable. In fact, people are starting to note that, if you’re in those younger healthier demographics, your risk of death by vaccine is considerably higher than your risk of death by the coronavirus. And the virus is treatable, while reaction to the vaccine is not.

image found here

Then there’s this other truth that seems to be forgotten: in most parts of the country, businesses were opened to at least partial capacity sometime early summer 2020, and have expanded since. Our church gatherings started at 50 during late summer and expanded to about 100 in the fall, assuming all other precautions are taken.

Small gatherings of up to 10 people were allowed almost everywhere, maybe even California.

While we Americans didn’t have many big gatherings (except maybe for BLM protests) all year, we were seeing our families, with some precautions. We had July 4^th with family last year. And birthdays. And Thanksgiving. And Christmas.

Now that many are vaccinated, we should be feeling even more free to do those things.

Vaccinated people—and people who have recovered from the illness in the past half year—should not have to wear masks (assuming masks actually work at all); they can neither get nor spread the virus. The only reason for them to social distance is to avoid spreading some other illness, like the common cold or the annual flu. We ought to get used to seeing people without masks and assuming they are immune—rather than assuming they care so little about others that they don’t care if they spread the illness.

Biden also said,

Listen to Dr. Fauci, one of the most distinguished and trusted voices in the world. He's assured us the vaccines are safe.

Fauci also just came out and said we don’t need 6 feet of social distancing; 3 feet is sufficient. Did science change? Or is he just throwing out whatever he thinks at the moment, the way he has been doing all along? I don’t think Dr. Fauci has been a trusted voice for a very long time.

Biden offered up this sort-of-sentence (I challenge you to diagram it):

Just as we were emerging from a dark winter into a hopeful spring and summer is not the time to not stick with the rules.

So much for clarity.

There was actually something in the speech I agree with—the words, anyway. He said,

Look, we know what we need to do to beat this virus. Tell the truth. Follow the scientists and the science.

Depending on the scientists, and whether politics has infiltrated, yes, I agree. And he emphasized with this anecdote:

Last summer, I was in Philadelphia, and I met a small-business owner, a woman. I asked her, I said, “What do you need most?”

I will never forget what she said to me. She said — looking me right in the eye, she said, “I just want the truth, the truth. Just tell me the truth.”

If only they would!

Despite the lack of truth, there are some things we know.

The estimate of 2.5 million dead was based on a radically flawed model; besides wildly exaggerating, it also assumed we would do nothing to protect ourselves.

The only way to eradicate the virus early on was to isolate every case. This wasn’t going to be possible, because, as we were told, there was a long period between exposure and onset of symptoms, and a person could possibly spread the virus for several days before the onset. Unless everyone locked down for longer than that contamination period, then the virus would still exist.

The loss of life due to shutting down the entire world for 2-3 weeks would be tremendous. It would mean shutting down hospitals and any other type of care. It would mean shutting down food supplies—and every other kind of supply. None of this “essential workers only.” You’d have to shut down all workers for that length of time, including treatment of those already ill with the virus.

If you can’t shut down the entirety of society, the shutdown has no expectation of eradicating the virus. And that means worldwide. There was a brief period in which New Zealand, an island nation, was able to isolate long enough to eradicate all cases. Done. But as soon as there was any contact with the rest of the world, cases started happening again.

In short, shutting down the entire world to beat the virus was never an option.

Remember, the purpose of the 2-3-week shutdown, begun exactly one year ago, was never to eradicate the virus; it was to “flatten the curve,” which meant to prevent the healthcare system from becoming so overwhelmed it would have to leave some people untreated.

We flattened the curve. But that, in itself, came at a cost—beyond the obvious costs to people’s businesses, and plans for other healthcare that they needed. It made eradicating the illness by natural means further away. It delayed herd immunity.

Herd immunity is the goal of vaccination: get enough people in the population to have antibodies so that the virus doesn’t easily find a new host to spread to. We could have done that months ago if we had:

·         Been accurate about the risks to the different population groups (age and other risk factors), which were known quite early on.

·         Protect those most at risk by limiting their possible exposure.

·         Allowed appropriate low-cost treatments from the beginning (they were actually known by 2005, but were being used by March, until, while continuing to research other treatments, possibly while also working toward a vaccine.

·         Taken good care of ourselves (diet, exercise, vitamin D and zinc levels, etc.)

·         Carried on with our daily lives without lockdowns or masks.       

If we had done that, our deaths would have been exponentially lower, and deaths to other causes (delayed care, suicide, etc.) would also have been lower. Extending the time to "flatten the curve" way beyond the original need magnified all the costs.

What we went through this year was not a necessary tribulation; it was imposed hardship by government seizing power while claiming it was all for our good.

tweet image passed along by Buck Sexton here

What we haven’t had is truth. And what we do not get—and will continue not to get—from this president and his ilk is truth.

He claimed the lie that we were hit with “a virus that was met with silence and spread unchecked, denials for days, weeks, then months.” Actually, while Democrats—him included—were deriding President Trump as xenophobic for closing travel from China, and were calling people to attend Chinese New Year celebrations in large downtown gatherings, President Trump set plans into action. He brought back manufacturing of PPE and critical supply chains, which shouldn’t have been sourced through our enemies in the first place (Obama/Biden administration), and gathered information and data, and spread information as we got it in daily briefings. Anything President Trump did went overnight from fearmongering to being in denial. Meanwhile the President put together Operation Warp Speed and set a goal to have a vaccine by the end of the year—years faster than any previous expectation. Pre-election Biden mockingly said it would take a miracle. The other night, he said,

The development, manufacture and distribution of vaccines in record time is a true miracle of science. It's one of the most extraordinary achievements any country has ever accomplished.

All of this was done prior to his administration, but he gives no credit where it is due. He announced on inauguration day that the previous administration had failed to even have a plan, and there was no promised vaccine—even though he had already had both doses himself.

By mid-December 130,000 people had received the vaccine, in “the biggest mass vaccination in US history.” 

President Trump’s team provided 20 million doses by the first week of January, plus 30 million more later in January, with a plan for an additional 50 million in February. That’s 100 million. Enough for 50 million to have both doses. I expect he had manufacturing underway and a rollout plan for March, rather than just halt everything. I think we can conservatively assume a million more for March. We credit 200 million to Trump, then. This is only two-thirds of the number of doses hoped for in early projections. But since the normal expectation at this point—and for several years hence—would be zero, let’s just admit it’s far better than nothing.

Biden claimed in his speech to have just ordered another 100 million, enough for 50 million more adults. He says it’s months ahead of schedule to have enough doses for every adult by the end of May. That’s about 241 million adults, or a total of 482 million doses. Doing the math, Trump provided 100 million, with plans for maybe that much more in March. Biden just added 100 million more, for April. That’s 300 million, leaving him just 182 million needed by May to reach the absolute maximum.

That, of course, is far more than is necessary—because not every adult is willing to get the vaccine. To get herd immunity totally from the vaccine (disregarding those who have immunity from getting the disease, and just lumping them in as if there aren’t any such people), you’d need 70% to get herd immunity. That’s about 170 million. So he really needs just an additional 40 million doses by the end of May. Considering that Trump’s original plan was for 300 million ASAP, it doesn’t look like the Biden administration is doing anything but saying, “Carry on.” Yet he says in his speech this is “months ahead of schedule.” Hmm.

Adult Population	70% to reach herd immunity	Doses needed	Doses provided or lined up by Trump administration: December-March	Doses by Biden administration: April	Additional needed: May
241 million	~170 million	340 million	200 million	100 million	40 million

 

There’s the additional lack of truth surrounding the relief package, creatively called the American Rescue Plan, that just passed. Each person gets $1400. But the $1.9 billion bill as a whole costs each person—I’ve seen estimates between $5,800 and $50,000. Any way you look at it, having someone take your money, give you back a pittance of it, and then insist you call them generous is just plain ludicrous. (Rep. Dan Crenshaw did a good parody of the situation, using the lower estimate.)

Biden claims this generous package will magically “cut child poverty in this country in half” and “create millions of jobs.” If you hadn’t stopped believing him long ago, you probably ought to get around to that now.

Who knows what he’ll say next time he’s allowed in front of a mic to read a teleprompter? But you can be pretty sure it won’t be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

In the meantime, unfortunately we must continue to distrust our government. To compensate, I suggest a party. With family and loved ones. And no masks. Invite the neighbors too. Do it for St. Patrick’s Day. And Easter. And Memorial Day. And Flag Day. And any birthdays that come up. Waiting until July 4^th is unnecessary and unthinkable.