Preamble to the Constitution: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part II

 

image of the US Constitution Preamble from Wikipedia

This is Part II of a monthly series, the way I’m celebrating our country’s 250^th birthday. Last month, in Part I, we went over the Declaration of Independence. This month we’ll begin looking at the US Constitution, covering just the Preamble.

First of all, let’s note that not all countries have a birthday. The US does: July 4, 1776. We chose the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, separating the 13 original colonies from Great Britain’s colonial rule.

The Revolutionary War was underway already, begun April 19, 1775, at Lexington and Concord. And it continued until September 3, 1783, nearly 8 ½ years later. By then the country was functioning under a rather loose document, the Articles of Confederation. The new independent colonies were tied together as the states’ league of friendship, a perpetual union, but loosely defined.

Reenactment of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 2025,
at Jesse Jones State Park, in Humble, TX.
I played music, in costume, for the celebration, but I wasn’t in the reenactment.

There were, you might be surprised to learn, ten presidents of the United States of America prior to George Washington. But during their terms, the presidency was much weaker, and their administrations not too memorable. The central government, such as it was, did diplomacy and territorial disputes, but couldn’t manage to raise funds, regulate commerce (including between and among the states), or get delegates to assemble to work out issues.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Right Questions to Get the Right Stuff

We just got past an election a month ago. It was an off-year election, but here we had a very important school board problem to take care of. That took a lot of energy to accomplish. But now, before we even have time to breathe and enjoy the holidays, the primary election season is upon us.

In a primary election, you get to choose who your candidates will be to represent your party. In some cases, when an area is strong in your party, say R+7 or so (meaning Republicans, based on past voting history, are expected to win by 7 percentage points), then what you’re likely doing in the primary is choosing your next representative, because the November election will be mostly a formality.

That’s the situation for our congressional race. Texas got two new congressional seats following the US census. One of them plopped down in Houston, and that affected my area. I’m now part of the new CD 38. There are eight Republican candidates. We heard from seven of them in a forum last Wednesday evening, for precinct chairs and their invited volunteers. We’ll have another forum two weeks later, in a larger place for all interested Republican voters. We heard from several candidates at our November Tea Party meeting, and we’re hearing from several more this month. I haven’t committed yet, but I’m leaning toward a candidate, someone I know well, who is very knowledgeable about the Constitution and conservative principles. I believe that’s what we need. I’m resistant to some higher-level party apparatus that is pushing a candidate who has not yet connected with the grassroots.

Another important race is the Harris County Judge position. In larger counties like ours, the County Judge is an administrative position. They work with the Commissioners Court to decide on policy and budget decisions. The County Judge we have now got in three years ago, when there was a huge amount of outside money supporting the Beto O’Rourke campaign for Senate, which fortunately failed against Ted Cruz. But the money did have the ability to tip the scales in Harris County, which had been 50-50 Democrat-Republican for some time and has crept slightly more Democratic the past few years. The County Judge, Lina Hidalgo, was elected as a 27-year-old without job experience. Harris County is maybe the second largest such local government entity in the US, with more than four million people. Hidalgo has been both incompetent and corrupt.

There are four Republican candidates in this race, and we should hear from all of them at this month’s Tea Party meeting.

We precinct chairs are hoping we can make our decisions in these races early, so we have campaign time before the March 1^st election.

In this effort to vet and choose candidates, we ask a lot of questions. Most of the time we only get a few minutes of speech plus a brief Q&A for each candidate, which is why we need multiple forums. There’s a group in Northwest Harris County that does a questionnaire as well, so I look forward to seeing that.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about the kinds of questions I’d like to ask. Some questions must deal with the particular duties of the job being sought. But some things are more principle based. And, particularly for the US Congress seat, understanding the Constitution—and loving it—is essential.

There are people who see politics, and campaigns, as a sort of sport. I do not. I see it as a serious duty for citizens to govern themselves. I want the best representation we can get. And I believe this is more urgent today than it has ever been. In each race, we need the best person to win, for all our sakes. Maybe asking the right questions will help us find the people with the right stuff.

Back in 2013, another off-election year after a presidential election year, I wrote a series of questions, based on the Spherical Model, with questions related to the Political, Economic, and Social Spheres. I find that these are still useful. There are a few issue-related questions I included in that post. So I’m repeating all of those, and then adding a few that seem relevant today. Feel free to ask these of any candidates you get a chance to talk to.

Political Sphere

·       What do you believe is the proper role of government, and what are the limits?

·       Do you have favorite portions of the US Constitution, and/or any portions that you think ought to be changed, clarified, or improved?

·       When the US Supreme Court makes a ruling that you believe is at odds with the Constitution, what do you think the executive and/or legislative branches should do in response to the ruling?

·       What do you believe is the proper balance between public safety and individual freedom, and what do you believe government needs to do to reach that balance?

·       Who are your favorite examples of a good president—since 1900—and what about them do you admire?

·       How do you define extremists, and what views do you think are examples of extreme?

 

Economic Sphere

·       What do you believe is the optimum percentage of GNP that should be taken in taxes?

·       What do you believe is the government’s role in contributing to economic health? For example, if there is a sudden recession (as we were hit with in 2008), how should government react?

·       What do you believe is government’s role in the distribution of income when there’s a wide discrepancy between the poor and the wealthy?

·       What do you believe should be government’s role in charitable help to the poor and suffering?

·       What do you believe are the purposes and limits of the commerce clause of the Constitution?

·       What do you believe is the role of the Federal Reserve, and how/whether it is benefiting the economy?

 

Civilization Sphere

 

·       What do you believe about the connection between moral values and the law?

·       Which institution is most responsible for raising a generation that will benefit society, and why: schools, government, churches, nonprofit organizations, sports teams, families?

·       Which constituency’s desires is public education best accountable to, and why: US government, state government, local government, teachers, students, parents/taxpayers?

·       What do you believe should be government’s role in homeschooling, private schools, charter schools, and school choice?

·       What do you think is government’s role in defining marriage, and why? 

 

Specific Issue Questions

·       What are your feelings concerning Obamacare, and what do you think should be done?

·       What do you believe are the motivations of people who support traditional (man/woman) marriage and family?

·       What are your beliefs about border security and immigration?

·       What do you believe is the proper role of government concerning climate?

·       What do you see as the US role in the world, and what is your view of the UN?

·       What are your opinions on national debt, national deficit, tax increases and/or cuts, and national budget?

 

New Questions This Year

·       It is likely that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade this year. How do you see Texas and the United States moving forward on this issue?

·       In the Declaration of Independence, we dissolved political bands, not for “light and transient causes,” but for a “long train of abuses and usurpations.” Assuming that restoring and preserving our Constitution is the goal, could there be a catalyst for dissolving political bands, intended to be indivisible, and returning Texas to an independent nation? What would trigger such an action after the long train of abuses and usurpations we’re already seeing?

·       One of the actual responsibilities of the federal government is protection of our national borders. When the federal government fails in that duty, what should our state do to protect our sovereignty?

·       When the government deprives a person of property, such as a business, as it did during the pandemic shutdowns, what is the government’s obligation to restore that property to those who were deprived of it?

·       Is there anything that can/should be done about election law crimes of the past election? And what do you see as the way to restore election integrity going forward?

·       While conservatives generally support freedom for business, what can/should we do when large monopolies censor certain points of view on their platforms, or companies make requirements for employment or attendance based on private health decisions?

Government Is Force—Not a Benevolent Provider, Not Deity

Last week on his podcast, Jordan Peterson had a long conversation with Senator Mike Lee. Senator Lee is a soft-spoken, generally nice guy, with a spine built on principles, and a very good working knowledge of what the US Constitution says and means. Dr. Peterson is a thoughtful, principled man, who likes to get down to the very bottom of what something means. And he happens to be Canadian, which means that many of the ways of thinking that come natural to Americans actually have to be explained to him.

Senator Mike Lee
screenshot from here

While he’s been living in the same world, nearby, and hears much of the same news, he hasn’t had the same historical upbringing in school. And actually that’s helpful here in getting the information out in the conversation—because a large part of young adults today lack the same things, but also lack Peterson’s willingness to come to fully understand.

So what we have is a very good elementary education in the Constitution and the proper role of government—but for adults. It’s something akin to my very purpose here at the Spherical Model. It’s a bit like reading Bastiat’s The Law or Ezra Taft Benson’s “The Proper Role of Government” by way of casual conversation.

So today I’m just going to share portions of their conversation (and encourage you to enjoy it in full as well).

A few minutes into the discussion, they were talking about the nature of government—as force, rather than a “benevolent provider of goods.” I think that difference in how a person looks at government is key to much of our disagreements. I believe Senator Lee is right, that government is force, pure and simple.

Quote from Mike Lee

Senator Lee says,

It is, however, important to remember that that’s ultimately what government is, is force.

The way government does things, the way it does anything, everywhere, at least in our country, is that it collects taxes from the people. We have a number of different kinds of taxes in this country, as they do in many countries. But ultimately that’s how government operates. And, while we call that a voluntary system, and in many ways it is, or is supposed to be, ultimately we pay those—citizens pay those, because they know that if they don’t pay them, force will be brought to bear. People will come, and there will be penalties attached to it if they don’t pay them.

That’s why it’s so important to remember that government is force. It uses force to do things that we need it to do. And, as you say, it would be chaos, it would also be terribly inefficient, it would result in all kinds of problems, if every one of us had to be our own sheriff, our own department of defense, our own army, and our own navy. That would be problematic.

Just the same, having delegated those things to a government, we have to remember what government is, why we have it, and utilize government for that which only government can do—and not attribute to it benevolence and omniscience and an omnipotence that most people reserve for deity, if they believe in God.

Lee speaks of the proper role of government again later, referring to protecting life, liberty, and property. This is in response to a question from Dr. Peterson about the Senator’s trust in government. Lee has mentioned—and shown—that he carries a copy of the Constitution around with him; he reads it and refers to it frequently. (I do that too. Instead of in a suit coat pocket, I carry it in my wallet in my purse.) As an aside, there’s a lovely segment where Lee talks about his growing up, and talking about deep things, including religion and the Constitution around the dinner table. His father, Rex E. Lee, was

a lawyer and a professor of law, later served as dean of Brigham Young University’s law school, and as president of Brigham Young University. For a few years when I was a child, he was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general… During his 61 years on this planet he devoted much of his career to the Constitution.

Carrying the Constitution is not because, as Dr. Peterson supposes, because he reveres and admires government so thoroughly, but just the opposite:

I’d take exception to one thing you said, where you suggested that I trust government as evidenced by the fact that I carry around the Constitution and I seek to follow it. I’d turn that precisely on its head. In other words, the Constitution reminds us that we don’t trust government as an institution; we trust people, but not the government.

The Constitution is our key to making sure that we unlock unlimited human potential, by recognizing the inherent dignity and infinite worth of every human being, and that we show that respect by saying that, when we use force on you—as we do whenever government acts—we will do so respectfully, and in a way that’s measured, restrained, exercised at the appropriate level, and is geared specifically toward protecting life, liberty, and property. If it’s not those things, we won’t do it.

We need to have trust and confidence in human beings, because they’re God’s creations, and because we’re all created equal.

When we put trust in government itself, we’re putting trust in force.

Already you’re seeing religious overtones in this discussion. These come up frequently throughout. You can’t revere the Constitution without that. Early on Lee spells out the connection, that our rights come from God, whether you believe in God or not:

I don’t believe that the Constitution requires, in order for it to work, for anyone to cling to any particular religious belief, or for that matter to any religious belief at all. In fact, by its own terms, it carves those things out and makes clear that government can’t mess with those. But government also may not establish those things. It’s important to have that boundary….

It helps to understand these things, if—as was the case in America at the time of America’s founding, and as I believe is still the case with most Americans—when we understand that we are subject to an all-knowing, benevolent, and all-powerful creator to whom we will stand accountable at the end of this life; and when we understand that our rights and our existence come from Him, and are a result of a bestowal of His blessings, rather than that of any government—I think that helps inform the proper role of government and the proper relationship between the people and its government.

There’s a section toward the end (around an hour and 14 minutes in), when Senator Lee talks about his concerns with the erosion of civil society. Religion is part of that:

I tend to believe that the erosion of civil society is concerning, meaning the voluntary associations that free people form when they’re allowed to be free, and that they form in the absence of any government telling them that they must, or that they may, or that may not. They just do it. And by that I mean churches, mosques, synagogues, fraternal orders, charitable foundations, universities, neighborhood watch associations—all of those things that operate as an organized entity outside the force of government. Those are things that have really helped us.

Those voluntary associations were noted by Alexis de Tocqueville when he visited nearly two centuries ago, and the United States were just beginning to thrive and be an example to the world. Lee adds,

I’ve often said that the twin pillars of human thriving—thriving of the human condition, whether in American society or anywhere else—they tend to be built upon robust institutions of civil society and free markets. If you have those two things, human beings can thrive. They won’t always choose to do so. Sometimes they will make choices that will put them on a path of self-destruction. But, if you’ve got those things in place and people make the right choices, human beings will thrive. You’ll lift people out of poverty.

Quote from Mike Lee

I worry that, as we’ve put more trust in government, we’ve allowed the muscle of civil society, and the muscle memory of free markets to atrophy. And so, it’s not just what we’ve created through a bloated government that is the problem; it’s also what we lose, what we give up in the process. People become less connected, the more brooding the government’s presence is in their lives.

Rather than two pillars, I look at the three spheres: political (freedom), economic (prosperity), and social (civilization). I think we’re not in disagreement; these three work together. We need limited government to allow for free markets, and we need a righteous people—people who can govern themselves.

But if you don’t have people who govern themselves, which civilization requires, and freedom to make exchanges in the marketplace, then you have savagery and poverty, or as he says, misery and chaos. Then force steps in, and steps on people.

At one point (around 23 minutes in) Lee says this about the relationship between people, their religion, and government:

I think once you unpack what government is and how it’s used, and you understand human beings and their relationship to each other and to their government, it becomes easier to see how this can work, and how it must work.

In other words, for me at least, my belief in my relationship with God is the most important thing in this world to me. It’s right there with my relationship with my wife and my children. It’s something without which I cannot imagine my existence.

And it is for that reason—and not in spite of it—that I don’t want government touching it.

His love of his religion is how I feel about mine; we both happen to share a religion: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But this discussion doesn’t touch on his specific beliefs. I’d love for him to have a discussion about that with Jordan Peterson someday.

Back to the discussion of religion. He continues:

In other words, there is an increasing inclination in society today, including among many Americans, that if something is really important, then it must be something that the government does, promotes, funds, or is otherwise officially involved in.

And I think this is a helpful example to all of us of the reasons why it ought to stay out. It is because it is important that it must not touch it. It’s not an appropriate place for the use of force.

There’s that theme again—that government is force. There are places in our lives in which we human beings ought not to be coerced. Lee adds,

There’s a good reason why people have for many, many centuries sought sanctuary in places of worship. People instinctively recognize that force—the use of physically coercive force—is not something we want to take place inside of a church or a synagogue or another place of worship.

And so too with many aspects of our lives that are important—because they are important, you don’t necessarily want government in charge of it.

Back to that later religious discussion. He mentions that what we may be seeing is idolatry—not that dissimilar from Old Testament idolatry:

I worry that, in many cases, we have traded faith either in an all-knowing, loving, all-powerful God who will judge us at the end of this life—or even, if not that, faith in a set of principles by which we guide our lives—has in many places been replaced and supplanted by an almost religious faith geared toward government. This is, in a sense, the new idolatry, the idolatry of our time.

Whenever I study the Old Testament, I’m struck by how much they focus, almost obsessively, on idolatry, and I thought, well, that’s weird; we don’t really see a whole lot of that here. In a sense we do. When we worship mortal institutions—mortal institutions with immense military power, aircraft carriers, government offices, $4 trillion in annual outlays—that’s an almost religious amount of faith toward something that is not God, and that doesn’t bring us closer together.

There’s a pretty good discussion on the separation of powers, which Dr. Peterson admits is confusing to an outsider. It does seem natural to us, but it isn’t typical around the world, and certainly not historically. Mike Lee explains it this way:

A minute ago we talked about the federalism, the vertical separation of powers, leaving a fairly stable pyramid-like structure: a few powers at the top, most powers at the base close to the people. Most people know their state legislators, their city council members. They interact with them at the grocery store. They might recognize them at their child’s baseball game. Fewer people know their federal legislators; that’s part of the reason why we have fewer in power and trust at the top.

There’s also a horizontal protection in the Constitution, one that says, once you’re inside the federal government, dealing with something that’s a federal issue—you know, war powers, regulating trade or international commerce, and so forth—we’re going to have three distinct branches. We’ve further subdivided the king or the Caesar—the king or the queen, the monarch there—into three distinct parts. We’ve got one branch of government, the legislative branch—Congress, where I work—that makes the laws. This was designed as the most dangerous branch. That’s why it’s made the most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals, because we have the power to prescribe the rules by which the rest of government operates. That’s the legislative branch.

The executive branch, headed by the president in our system, has the power to execute, implement, and enforce the laws passed by Congress.

Then you’ve got the judicial branch, headed by the Supreme Court, that has the power to interpret the laws and disputes about the laws, where they come into conflict between two or more parties properly before the jurisdiction of the courts.

When each of those branches stays in its lane, the legislative power remains the most dangerous branch, but it is made less dangerous by the fact that it’s the most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals.

So, insofar as we follow those guidelines—the vertical protection of federalism, and the horizontal protection of separation of powers, this document really has helped us. And it’s helped us prosper. It’s led more people out of poverty than any government program ever could or ever will, because it unlocks unlimited human potential by restraining government.

That’s the good that’s designed into our government through the Constitution. The bad and ugly is that Congress has ceded that power, mainly to the executive branch. Lee illustrates this with stacks of paper:

ML: I keep two stacks of documents behind my desk. One document is a few inches tall. It’s usually either a few hundred, sometimes a few thousand pages long, and it consists of the laws passed by Congress in the previous year. The other stack is, in some years, 13-14 feet tall. I keep it in three separate bookcases in my office. It’s sometimes as much as 100,000 pages long. And it’s last year’s federal register. The federal register is the annual cumulative index of federal regulations, as they’re released initially for notice and comment, and then later as they become effective.

Jordan Peterson
screenshot from here

JP: Well, so that’s a very interesting metric too. So that’s a ratio of paper necessary to document regulatory change?

ML: Yes. It is prescribing affirmative legal obligations.

JP: So that is the index of the relative power of the two institutions, so to speak?

ML: Yes, in a sense. Now, it’s not a precise measure, because some of that is not an apples-to-apples comparison. But a lot of it really consists of lawmaking. These are new affirmative legal obligations imposed as a generally applicable rule on the American people, enforceable by the overpowering force that is the federal government.

The difference between those two stacks is that this small stack, one that’s only a few hundred to a few thousand pages long, made by elected lawmakers. The one that’s 13-14 feet tall, 100,000 pages long in some years, made entirely by unelected unaccountable bureaucrats. That’s scary.

Senator Lee ends this segment with a definition of liberty and of tyranny that I find useful. So we’ll end with this:

In any country where there is a societal tendency to trust the people and be skeptical of government, we call that liberty. In a society where people are encouraged to trust the government and be skeptical of the people, we call that tyranny.

Quote from Mike Lee

 

Is the Cure Worse Than the Disease?

There have been a great many confusing things surrounding this pandemic. This was addressed with good humor in a video online by humorist Adley:

Clarity would be nice.

We have shut down the economy, taking away people’s livelihoods, which brings on many social/emotional issues that are directly related to losing a steady income. And also taking away people’s other healthcare that is deemed non-emergency. Some things can be put on hold for a week or two, or maybe a month. But non-emergencies can get more urgent as days pass. Things like cancer treatments, heart disease care, joint replacement surgery, or even impacted wisdom teeth removal.

In the face of an emergency, we can be compliant. But we want to know that there’s a darn good reason for doing what we’re being asked to do. And we reserve the right to say when enough is enough.

I thought this would be a good time to look at this basic Spherical Model axiom and see how it applies during the pandemic:

Whenever government attempts something beyond the proper role of government (protection of life, liberty, and property), it causes unintended consequences—usually exactly opposite to the stated goals of the interference.

This pandemic response is an interesting case. There’s certainly some element of the proper role of government. But there also appears to be using that as an excuse for asserting power. So let’s take a look.

Asking the Question

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo
screenshot from here

What is the stated goal of shutting down our economy, leading to 27 million unemployed and a self-imposed depression? To save people from dying from the virus. OK. But people have been confined long enough to begin asking, “Is the cure worse than the disease?” That question was actually put to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo yesterday, and here’s how that went: 

Cuomo: The illness is death. What is worse than death?

Reporter: What if somebody commits suicide because they can’t pay their bills?

Cuomo: Yeah, but the illness is maybe my death, as opposed to your death. You said they said the cure is worse than the illness. The illness is death. How can the cure be worse than the illness, if the illness is potential death?

Reporter: What if the economy failing—

Cuomo: Worse than death?

Reporter: Equals death?

Cuomo: No it doesn’t. It doesn’t equal death. Economic hardship—yes. Very bad. Not death. Emotional stress from being locked in a house. Very bad. Not death. Domestic violence on the increase. Very bad. Not death. And, not death of someone else. See, that’s what we have to factor into this equation.

But the illness doesn’t mean certain death. The illness is very close to certain survival. Except for a few with certain underlying conditions, “the odds are always in our favor.”[i] Just today a study announced that the state of New York has a 13.9% infection rate. That’s 2.7 million people statewide. Infection rate within New York City is probably 21.2%. But as an Epoch Times story reports today:

With about 15,500 current fatalities linked to COVID-19 in New York, the death rate, or mortality rate, would be 0.5 percent.

That means that in New York, the hardest hit place in the US, where the disease has killed more than most of the rest of the US combined, contracting the infection means survival for 995 out of every 1000 people. As diseases go, 0.5% fatality rate is high. Flu is about 0.1%. But 0.5% doesn’t equal death, as Governor Cuomo implies.

In fact, as we went into this society shutdown, lacking even the data we have now, we feared the disease might kill 3-5%. That still means 95-97% survival of those who contract it, but that was considered too risky. It’s several orders of magnitude higher than the flu. So we shut down the world based on that fear.

What would we have chosen to do if we had known the rate was 0.5% in our worst hit area, and maybe equivalent to the annual flu for the rest of us? We didn’t have that information, but I’m asking it hypothetically.

Does shutting down save some lives? Probably. But denigrating anyone as heartless and selfish for wanting to risk going back to work is disingenuous. We don’t shut down the world because of the annual flu, or because of car accidents. Why this particular virus, then?

In government’s basic role of protecting life, liberty, and property, can government protect life from this virus at the expense of our liberty and property without limit?

Government’s Goal

Let’s state government’s goal a little more specifically. It is to slow the spread of the virus:

·         to prevent the medical resources from being overwhelmed.

·         to buy time for development of treatments, preventions, testing, and medical resources.

People have been pretty willing to accomplish those things. The first has been accomplished in most areas. New York is past their peak. New Jersey and some other areas are still facing bad times, but so far we haven’t faced what Italy did, having to choose who had to die for lack of resources.

Governor Abbott of Texas pointed out[ii] that, while we have a number of cases in our large cities, and at places around the state, overall, we have had a death rate of 17 per million population. This is while New York has had a death rate of 989 deaths per million. The US as a whole has had 131 deaths per million.

That shows that Texas has been doing something right—or has been very fortunate.

With New York’s mortality from the virus 58 times higher than Texas, should Texas continue requiring people to stay home until New York gets to our levels? Remember, that means taking people’s liberty and property. Can that be justified when the medical resources, even in New York, are not overwhelmed, and the spread has already been delayed?

Or can we balance saving lives from coronavirus while getting back to regaining our liberty and property?

It seems reasonable, in places like Texas, to slowly start going out. As Governor Abbott explained the opening up process:

If you’re going grocery shopping or whatever the case may be, you know that you’ve gone to the store and you’ve been able to do that without spreading the coronavirus. We want people, as they begin to go to the hair salon, or as they begin to go to restaurants, as they begin going to a movie theater—whatever they may be doing as we begin to open up businesses—maintain those safe, healthy, distancing practices so that we can assure that we can open up without spreading the coronavirus.

There will be some uptick in cases as we do this. But if we can maintain a manageable level, that seems more prudent than a siege mentality that locks us in our homes until we starve or get evicted. Whatever we’ve been doing has already been keeping the death rate low. Opening gradually doesn’t mean we necessarily kill more people. It means the Governor is keeping those two “slow the spread” goals in mind and is avoiding using the crisis to grab power.

The Governor is hopeful that by fall schools can open. Most people attending schools are less susceptible to severe illness. Those who are in higher risk groups (that includes me) may need to be hypervigilant longer than young, healthy people. And we can hope that treatments are available by fall so that we can find a way to normalize post-Covid-19.

Here in Houston the public health data shows that we hit our peak around April 4^th or at the latest April 9^th.

Houston Daily Case Count as of April 23, 2010
provided on Facebook by Leslie Joan May

Yet I heard on news that we’ll hit our peak around the first week of May, inconsistent with the data. That’s confusing.

The county set up a temporary hospital in a stadium parking lot downtown; not a single bed was used. It is being dismantled.

Nevertheless, yesterday our county judge Lina Hidalgo announced a new requirement that everyone leaving their homes needed to be wearing a facemask, starting Monday, for 30 days. Noncompliance can result in $1000 fine and jail time.

Why now, when the voluntary social distancing we’ve been doing has done its intended work already? Where is the data showing that wearing a mask when not near people avoids spreading the virus person-to-person?

This same county judge has been attempting to let felons (including violent felons in her first attempt)  out of jail because of the virus—because the virus spreads there. So, she would like to let felons back out on the street, not with a 14-day quarantine, because—where would they quarantine if they have to find housing first? Yet if we law-abiding citizens want to walk to the park without a mask on—away from all other humans, outdoors—we are the criminals.

Something is wrong with this picture.

People have been willing to wear masks. And do all the social distancing that has been asked of us. Mostly in the name of helping others rather than ourselves, regardless of Governor Cuomo’s accusations about heartless people who want to get back to work. Most people are reasonable and considerate. If they’re going to a place with a lot of contact (grocery stores, doctors’ offices, essential work around others), they’re going to be willing to wear a mask—now that government finally admitted that mask wearing helps to prevent spread both from the infected and to the uninfected. But being coerced to wear one in places where there is no need because there is no human contact with someone who hasn’t been in our house with us all along—that’s not even reasonable.

What if someone is already recovered from the disease and is no longer either contagious or susceptible? Are they exempt? No. They are considered criminal for not wearing a mask, even in places where they couldn’t spread it regardless.

To add to the lack of credibility, Judge Hidalgo wore her mask at the press conference yesterday, at least part of the time with her nose uncovered—unclear on the concept. One would assume that she is far enough away from others at a press briefing that wearing a mask, other than for demonstration purposes, would just make her harder to understand and would contribute nothing toward safety.

In a rather embarrassing lack of attention to detail, the graphic covering the story on the news listed things you can use as “homemade masks, scarfs, or bananas,” which had social media coming up with some creative responses.

Found on Texas State Rep. Valoree Swanson's Facebook page

The question is not whether masks might be effective in preventing the spread of the virus. The question is whether coercion is a valid way for government to encourage the practice.

Threats to Life, Liberty, and Property

What does coercion do? Does it protect life? Maybe a tiny bit under some circumstances. But our goal has never been to prevent all cases, or even all deaths (although we wish we could); our goal has been to slow the spread for those two purposes listed above. Since what we’re doing has already accomplished that, why this added coercion now?

If we don’t ask the questions, then we suffer significant loss of liberty and property for the sake of some vague sense that we’re preserving life when in reality we might not even be doing that.

Government isn’t in control of the existence of the virus. In an emergency—which this seemed to be—we were willing to take some drastic temporary measures to preserve life. But even under these circumstances, when government takes away a person’s business, that relates to the “takings” clause; government can’t take that without just compensation. And because government produces nothing, that just compensation comes from taxpayers—which means workers making income; it is a finite amount made smaller by the stay-at-home orders.

Has government done the right thing to shut down? We may not know until we have hindsight and a whole lot more data.

Is government doing the right thing when it continues a suspension of our liberties and the taking of our properties in the name of saving lives? Certainly not if it can’t connect the dots between its actions and lives saved. Certainly not if there are other ways to accomplish the saving of lives (special care for the most vulnerable, for example.) Certainly not if the “cure” is worse than the “disease.”

So, about government interference. Does the purpose—saving lives from coronavirus—qualify as a proper role of government? Probably. Does saving all lives from this virus at the expense of other possible causes of death and at the expense of our liberty and property qualify? The protests we’re beginning to see show that the people say no.

Are there unintended consequences to government stepping beyond its proper role? Yes. Some of them life threatening. Most of them threatening to our liberty and property—which amount to the living of our lives. When government “saves” our life by taking our “livelihood,” preventing us from “making a living,” is that really saving our life? In a few cases out of a thousand, possibly. But in an overwhelming majority of cases, the answer is no. Maybe we’re getting to the point where sensible people can assess their own risk and act accordingly.

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[i] Yes, I’m quoting from The Hunger Games.

[ii] On Glenn Beck Radio, Wednesday, April 22, 2020. Behind a paywall, here. 

Crisis Legislation

When a crisis comes up in your world, who do you turn to?

I turn to God, who has all power.

Some people turn to government, which has all the power—that is, all the power we people had already, that we granted to government to do for us—plus all the power it usurped from us.

Neither God nor government is a wish-granting service.

I plan to continue turning to God for what is actually essential. And I’ll keep an eye on government because of its power-usurping propensity.

One of my concerns during this pandemic is government response. Will it be enough to do what we need for protection of life, liberty, and property? Or will it be an interference that will do the opposite of the life-liberty-and-property-preserving goal?

CDC Coronavirus illustration, found here

We’re in the middle of things, and there’s so much we don’t know that I can’t clearly predict. But I want to have a way of looking at things that is principle based, which means it will apply even in these unusual circumstances.

Should everyone not in a critical job be staying home, working from there if possible, or just waiting things out and hoping to recover economically later? I think so. We’re doing that. We worked from home beforehand, so it’s our non-work life that is largely affected. That doesn’t mean we’re not economically affected. It has been scary.

And what about all those little businesses, working so very hard to make a success of things? This isn’t their fault. This isn’t—as the crisis in 2008 was—the result of a whole lot of really bad business decisions. This is more like Hurricane Harvey, where a disaster came upon us. Some businesses got wiped out. Others held on and slowly worked their way back up.

In that case, the rest of the economy—outside the flood zone—was doing pretty well. This time, there is no outside unaffected zone.

I think a government disaster response is appropriate in this case—to preserve life, liberty, and property. So now it’s a matter of what response is appropriate.

This past weekend the Senate put forth a bi-partisan relief bill, of almost $2 trillion. There have already been two other bills; this is a phase 3. The purpose is to keep businesses and individuals afloat so that, after the crisis has passed, the economy can naturally get back into full production. If there’s mass bankruptcy, that will greatly hinder a bounce back.

However, the Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi, put the kibosh on it.   It wasn’t to her liking. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is angry. My Congressman, Dan Crenshaw, is angry—and as a veteran specially trained to take strategic action rather than give in to emotion, anger is not common for him. 

I think I have questions we can ask about what might be acceptable in such a relief bill:

·         Does this mitigate economic damages to businesses and individuals caused by the virus and our response to it?

·         Does this help preserve businesses so that recovery will be possible faster following the end of the crisis?

That’s pretty simple, in theory. If we have such a bill, it should help individuals get by for now, while they may not be able to work for no fault of their own or their employer’s, so that they can continue to have food and housing necessities. And it should help businesses who would otherwise face bankruptcy or massive downsizing (job losses)—not because of their bad decisions, but because of the pandemic’s effect on supply and demand—so that those businesses still exist and can keep people hired, or hire people back on, following the crisis. Without businesses available to hire people, it will be a longer, harder time to get back on our feet economically.

But the House Majority Whip James Clyburn let slip their real reason for refusing to accept, reject, or even discuss the bipartisan Senate bill that was sent to them: “This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” Similar to Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, referencing basic Marxist theory when he said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

House Majority Whip James Clyburn and Speaker Nancy Pelosi
photo credit Greg Nash, image found here

In the Spherical Model, we can see that it’s a tyranny approach: use the fear people have during chaos (create the chaos, if you need to), so you can offer them security if they will just grant you power over their freedoms. You move from chaotic tyranny to statist tyranny, because they’re really close together.

As a result of the Democrat stonewalling, the market dropped this morning. If the procedural vote had gone the other way, chances are good the market would have had a bit of a rally.

Rep. Crenshaw sent out examples of what the bipartisan Senate bill would have done:

·         Provide immediate relief to businesses large and small. Payroll, rent, and utility expenses FORGIVEN for small business loans.

·         ‪Put cash in the hands of Americans in need with direct payments.

·         ‪Bolster unemployment benefits for people out of work.

·         Limit relief money from going to CEO compensation or stock buybacks.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw post, from Facebook

Then he passed along examples of what the Democrats put in their 1,119-page alternative emergency relief bill: 

·         Conduct risk-limiting audits of results of elections.

·         Bail out the US postal service from its current debt.

·         Compare pay among racial and ethnic minorities.

·         Require early voting nationwide.

·         Require same day voter registration.

·         Protect collective bargaining and official time for federal employees.

·         Require airlines to fully offset their carbon emissions.

·         Improve consumer information regarding release of greenhouse gases from flights.

·         Modify minimum funding standards for community newspaper plans.

While this wasn’t on the list he sent out, I heard from The Blaze that Pelosi was trying to put an abortion slush fund into the coronavirus relief bill. And Guy Benson added in a tweet, expansion of wind and solar tax credits.

Apply the questions. Pelosi fails to convince me that postal debt, same day voter registration, taxpayer-funded abortions, or alternative energy tax credits will help mitigate damage to anyone, businesses or individuals, who might be suffering economic damage caused by the virus and our response to it.

Earlier today on the STA Money Hour, the guys were talking about this game-playing by the Democrats, on a show that is rarely political: 

This is an illness, a global pandemic that came from some other part of the world that ultimately infected our country, and now we have to deal with this. And we have told businesses and people to just shut it down. Close your doors. Stop coming in. So there is the demand shock, and then there’s the supply shock, because you can’t get anything made, can’t get anything bought, unless it’s just generally the essentials.

And that’s what these payments are for. To vote that down because ultimately it didn’t provide things that they wanted longer term is unbelievable to me.

They agreed that, with all the gains of the first three years of the Trump presidency wiped out suddenly, while not his fault, the recession we’re probably already in will cause political difficulty for his reelection. However, the obvious game playing by Democrats in this time of crisis is shameful and ought to cost them politically as well.

At the Spherical Model, we have a general list of questions about whether a policy is a proper role of government, or will be an interference that will cause unintended consequences, likely the exact opposite of the stated purpose. These are the 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? 

·         Does the policy infringe in any way on natural right, including but not limited to those enumerated in the Bill of Rights?

·         Is the idea being debated a proper role of government, as enumerated in the Constitution?

My reflex is to say, if there’s an economic problem, government should do nothing but get out of the way. So I’m definitely skeptical that whatever is in the $2 trillion Senate relief bill answers those general questions the right way. But, if something indeed should be done this time, then, under difficult circumstances—time pressures, and legislators themselves being quarantined—we won’t get “perfect,” and may have to settle for “acceptable for now.” We’re doing damage control—for our economy and, probably later, for our Constitution.

At least I see reason to trust my Congressman to be asking these questions and applying them to policy. And I’ve been pleased with our president’s approach of involving the free market, rather than dictating to it.

What I don’t trust are Democrat legislators who see this crisis as leverage to purposely go against our Constitution, against the proper role of government, and against the good of the American people.

via GIPHY