The People Really Mean It: No More Tyranny

I’m back. I didn’t really stop writing this blog. For the past month I’ve been inundated with work on the state platform. Got subcommittee files sent out last night. So today I vacuumed, which I hadn’t done for some weeks, so that we were practically swimming in dog hair. And I did some grocery shopping and other things I’ve put off.

I’m a little bit compulsive about details, things like formatting and consistency. But much of this long effort just has to do with the overwhelming amount of work—done by me and other volunteer/unpaid editors. This is the first year we’ve done the file preparation; in past years RPT staff did it. But we hadn’t been satisfied (some senatorial districts—mine included—had not been included, so that was a serious problem). We now have better ideas for process, for next time. Ways that I thought were going to be done this time, since we had done it at our district level, but I guess what was in my head did not coincide with others. Anyway, it takes a lot of tedious work, regardless of process. But we do have plans for a better process in the future.

There were more than 3500 resolutions that came in from the 31 senatorial districts across Texas. There were duplicates of many of them; several SDs submitted the exact same wording. And there were additional near duplicates, where just some of the wording was different. And there were many more resolutions of the same ideas but that were expressed in different wording. And here and there are unique ideas, also worth noticing.

We have a huge platform—over 330 planks, before adding more this year. People are very concerned about ideas they’ve worked on in the past being lost, so they insist that we start with the previous platform. If no resolutions come in related to a particular plank, that doesn’t mean it goes away; it means it probably didn’t generate strong concerns this year. It may not even get talked about. So it stays. And the issues garnering attention this year get added. Most of the time, the committees don’t disagree with what was put in the platform the year before—unless it’s an idea that still stirs up emotion—so they leave those ideas alone. So, alas, it will probably always be long.

What has gotten my notice this year are the themes. And these are repeated from what I saw at our district convention.

The people of Texas are against tyranny. They’ve seen too much of it—from the federal government and state and local. The platform is a way to express that. The ideas come up from precinct conventions to district and county conventions, and now on up to the state convention.

Some of the resolutions are minutely specific and detailed. Some just express a broad sentiment in a sentence.

Two years ago we were already expressing concern about pandemic response being used as an excuse for tyranny. There’s even more on that this year. But that concern has broadened—because the government overreach, attempting to control our lives, is even greater, with more invasive tentacles.

We do not want tyranny in our healthcare choices. We also do not want tyranny in our media—social media, news media, entertainment. We think more open discussion is better. And we’re really sick of truth being labeled “disinformation” by people who are lying to us. And, by the way, we don’t want the government surveilling us and keeping that data—just in case they can come up with probable cause someday.

Parents have the inherent right to the
care and upbringing of their children. That's
Mr. Spherical Model doing that job with
two of our now-grown kids.

A huge part of the pushback this year is related to families. It goes way beyond school choice, which is becoming a main Republican theme that legislators better listen to. But it’s bigger than that. Parents have the inherent right to the care and upbringing of their children. Parents—and taxpayers in general—aren’t going to tolerate sexualized and racialized indoctrination of our children.

If this were not a real issue, if this were something that is just a rumor with no real life examples, we would not be hearing the uproar from across the state.

Think about numbers. Most people do not attend a precinct convention, let along write a resolution to put forward at one. So that person who writes the resolution probably represents several hundred people in his or her precinct who feel the same way but aren’t involved. Maybe they don’t know how to get involved or express that idea.

So this person writes a resolution on a topic of concern—like Social Emotional Learning, and anything under that umbrella, being taught in our schools. We get similar resolutions on the same topic from maybe dozens of local precincts, meaning it’s widespread here. It means several thousand people have the same concern.

And then you get together at a district convention and find out tens of thousands of people have the same concern. You can extrapolate at the state level, when the same idea comes up in maybe 20 out of the 31 districts, that there are hundreds of thousands of people with the same concern, probably millions.

People want sex out of the schools. Let’s just remove sex ed entirely, since the public schools have already proven they can’t be trusted—and because that’s not the basic function of schools. We want NO LGBT-plus-any-other-letters-or-symbols agenda being foisted on young people. Parents resent schools doing sneaky things like leaving parents out of the information loop, or telling kids not to tell their parents about something.

When schools fail to meet the needs of families, the parents feel stuck. They want school choice. Here we are paying taxpayer money, and it goes to this failing monopoly—actually preventing parents from getting the kind of education their children need. We want our legislators to hear this: we want the money to follow the child WITHOUT government strings attached.

Related to that is the horror people feel about permanently mutilating minors for the sake of “affirming” a confusion that most of them will grow out of.

First and Second Amendments

People care about their First Amendment rights—religion and speech mentioned mostly. And people care about their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. What part of “shall not be infringed” does the government not understand?

During the 2018 convention season—it was May—there was a school shooting in Texas, in Santa Fe. As a result, people were concerned about the same type of conversation going on now, following the Uvalde school shooting. The pro-tyranny crowd tries to use such tragedies to gain power. Pro-freedom Texans want to make sure the over-emotional “we’ve got to do something” crowd that gets all the media attention doesn’t take away our rights.

Do we or do we not have a God-given, inherent right to defend ourselves? Texans know we do. And none of the hue and cry gives us a reason for law-abiding citizens to stop defending themselves against the criminals/crazies. It’s not the guns that are evil; it is those who wield those weapons in the perpetration of crime that are evil. Taking away the means for good people to defend themselves from such evil does not make anyone safer. In fact, we argue that it makes us less safe. Schools are targeted because they lack defenses.

And, no, we can’t wait for government officials to show up after a crime is underway to protect us. In Uvalde, we still can’t understand all that happened. But we know the shooter was inside the school for most of an hour, continuing to kill, before an official came in and took him down while other officers waited safely in the hallway. An armed teacher might have made a huge difference. An armed security officer actually on campus and doing his job might have helped.

We can’t trust elected officials to respect our right to self-defense. So there’s a lot being voiced on that in the platform resolutions. And, I should mention, the resolutions were turned in weeks before the Uvalde shooting. But, because of the tyrannists going for our guns, these resolutions should get attention in platform committees.

Can you think of other ways the government has been overreaching? They’re probably mentioned here.

The detentions related to January 6^th come up a few times. Detention of citizens without charges is wrong on so many levels.

Election integrity is a huge issue. I’ll be writing more about 2000 Mules soon—you and everyone you know should definitely watch it. Catherine Engelbrecht is from here. True the Vote started here in Harris County. We’ve been paying attention to these issues longer than most—but still come up against the same wall of frustration. “Here’s the evidence. Do the prosecution.” And nothing happens. So the cry comes up, through the platform, to the legislature to do something about it.

People have many ideas and specifics they’re offering that they think will help. People are concerned about the machines that do the counting and think paper ballots might help (there are arguments against that as well, because there’s a long history of cheating with paper ballots). People are calling for forensic audits—which are expensive but probably necessary if we’re ever going to regain trust in our election system. People want voter rolls cleaned up—and they don’t want some outside company, like the ERIC system [Electronic Registration Information Center], meddling in the process.

Here’s a pretty good general list, from one resolution:

New Election Law Bills:  The New Election Law Bills provide:

a.     Voter Registration database with restricted input/output access.

b.     Limit voting to precinct or adjacent precinct only voting.

c.      Paper Ballots that are sequentially numbered, hand marked, & watermarked.

d.     Paper Poll Books for voters to sign.

e.     Basic Optical Scanner/Vote Counter only to tally vote results.

f.       Printed Vote Result Tapes – Early Voting and Election Day.

g.     Limited Early Voting with no gap between Early Voting and Election Day.

h.     Hand Counts are allowed at the judges' discretion.

i.       No wireless, Lan, cellular, or computers in voting sites.

j.       Third party verification and audit.

k.      Unique identifiable seals on ballot boxes.

l.       Vote results delivered to central count on paper.

m.    Vote results tabulated from paper record with calculator.

n.     Chain of custody from start to finish.

o.     Unofficial results called into SoS and media.

p.     Poll watcher protection: Standing to sue, and ability to use video surveillance.

q.     Lawsuits can be filed in adjacent counties.

What all this tells me is, the people mean business. They’re waking up. They’re taking action in ways they believe are both effective and civilized. I hope the next legislative session responds. But I don’t place my trust there. When a large group of people are declaring their love of God and family, and are doing all they know to do to make things right in a world gone very wrong—that is when we can expect to see God step in to protect us in ways that are miraculous.

Good people of Texas standing together
might be able to do some good in the world.
This is a University of Texas class photo, found online in 2015,
link no longer active.

There may be more appalling things before that end comes, as the opposition ripens in iniquity. But that end will come. When it does, I will be very glad to be on the side of freedom, family, and truth—on God’s side. He can win His battles without us; but we cannot win these battles without Him.

Ideas Rising

I haven’t written here for a couple of weeks. I’ve been busy, working on the platform. At our precinct conventions on March 5, a few days after the March 1 Primary Election, one of the things we did was put forth resolutions for the platform. As I explained recently, the wording can have some “whereas” statements, explaining the background reasoning, and then end with a “therefore” statement. The whole thing gets sent in. Sometimes the only thing we get is the statement of an idea, as best as someone could figure out how to spit it out, maybe even just handwritten.

In my senatorial district, over 600 resolutions were submitted. These included a number of duplicates—exactly the same sent in by different precincts. And there were also a number of duplicate ideas—sent in with their own wording, but essentially saying the same thing. And then there were ideas sent in singularly.

Some resolutions contained multiple ideas—ideas that seemed related, to those who sent them in, but that actually identified multiple separate ideas, usually related to the same section of the platform, but not always.

So, we scanned all the resolutions the day of the Precinct Conventions (I helped do that). Then they got categorized and placed in a huge spreadsheet. And that got divided up among the various subcommittees of the Resolutions Committee in my senatorial district. And then the subcommittees placed them near similar ideas in existing platform planks, so we could begin working on wording.

I was on Education and Health & Human Services subcommittees; I led the Education subcommittee. I didn’t realize ahead of time what that was going to entail. It turns out, Education is where there is a whole lot of interest this biennium. Of those 600+ resolutions we received, around 230 of them, so more than 30%, were for Education. I also have been handling the platform document that our resolutions turn into. So, for the past couple of weeks I’ve been working long hours just about every day. Our Senatorial District Conventions in Harris County were held this past Saturday, so my intention is to catch up on sleep now. And then grocery shopping. And maybe then some house cleaning.

The SD7 2022 Resolutions (Platform) Committee;
at the SD7 Convention March 26, 2022. That's me on the right.

There were fifteen on the committee, according to rules, plus a few extras who also worked hard but didn’t get to vote on issues. My Education subcommittee attracted all the women on the Committee. We worked well together. I love them all as friends now. We began each meeting with prayer, and I often felt God’s Spirit confirming to me His approval and help in the work we were doing. I mean that quite literally. That sense that we were working together for God's glory was present in all the committee meetings I was in. What a joy to work with such good people, who also happen to be bright and well-informed, and dedicated to preserving our freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

Today, then, I’ll share some of what we—and the people who submitted all those resolutions—came up with. What I’m showing here is what we suggest as changes to the 2020 Republican Party of Texas Platform. We’re not actually causing these changes yet; we’re passing them on up to the state committee. (A little more on that below, near the end.)

If there is a theme, it is that we want our freedoms back. We’re not willing to take tyranny any longer, and we’re trying to find solutions.

In Education, many of the ideas were specific. And oddly they weren’t as strong as what was in the existing platform. They were clearly not asking for a weaker platform; they just were thinking, “What can we do?” and coming up with ideas. So, be assured we didn’t weaken things.

In short, what parents want is to take back their power. The schools have had too much power over our kids, and they have proved untrustworthy.

As you’ve been seeing around the country, people are upset about Critical Race Theory being taught in schools—and, yes, it is being taught, even here in Texas, no matter how many times they say, “No, that’s some theory taught in graduate schools; we don’t teach that.” They are teaching that America is flawed, and our founders were evil; they are not teaching the Constitution, and how the founders identified principles of freedom, overcoming millennia of other traditions. They divide children by race—to compensate for what they’re calling “systemic racism,” even though our children don’t treat each other differently by race—until they’re taught to. Parents don’t want their children to be told, “You’re either an oppressor or a victim, and no matter what you do, that’s what you are because of the skin you’re born with.” This “anti-racism” concept, which is part of CRT, is very racist.

Connected to racism is intersectionality—gaining power according to your various grievance claims. These can be race, sex, sexual orientation, transgenderism. So a black transgender would have more intersectional power than a black woman. A black woman would have more than a Hispanic or Asian woman. A white woman would have more than a white male—who is at the bottom. It’s a power scoring system based on happenstance rather than accomplishment or character—exactly the opposite of MLK’s dream.

And because of the power generated by being homosexual or transgender, that LGBTQ agenda is promoted—even to the very young. And to that, parents are saying, “No! Now you’ve gone too far.”

So that’s what we are seeing. Other issues related to wanting more transparency, and of course more choice. People want the money to follow the child—without government strings attached.

We can go into this another day, about how education isn’t actually a proper role of government. That’s why the federal Department of Education is about nothing but control. It does not help educate, period. But in the states, including here in Texas, the government sees education as its responsibility, in fact it’s main responsibility. That’s unfortunate, because you can’t even bring up choice without major outcry reaching the ears of legislators, accusing them of hating kids, and failing them by threatening to take money away.

That’s a mindset we need to get out of. People “believe” in public schools as if it is a religion. They actually say, “I believe in public schools.” Well, I believe they exist. But I don’t believe they are “the way” to educate the next generation to be productive good citizens. Public schools tend to do that more poorly than every other option. But they suck up all the taxpayer dollars, and hold onto those dollars with clenched fists.

So what did we come up with?

We addressed the CRT issue, probably in multiple places. We kept the existing Basic Standards plank (added Texas history to the list). And then we pointed out that schools are there to provide academic education, not to mold students in some way. Schools are not families; they have no business dealing with things like Social Emotional Learning (SEL is a way of indoctrinating wokeness), mental health evaluations, sex ed, anything related to gender identity, and of course CRT and any other socialist/Marxist ideology. Schools don’t have a say in the care and upbringing of children; that right is retained by the parents. (Red means we added that.) 

134.Basic Standards: The educational system should focus on basic standards, which include, but are not limited to, a curriculum of reading (with an emphasis on phonics); spelling; writing; civics (must pass the US Citizenship and Immigration Services test); the arts; music; literature; mathematics (including personal finance); science; geography; economics; and Texas, United States, and world history. We encourage teaching critical thinking skills, including logic, rhetoric, and analytical sciences within these subjects. We advocate the value of vocational training programs.

134A.  Schools Are Not Families: Schools are hired to provide academic education, while parents retain every right to the child’s care and upbringing. Therefore, we insist on the elimination in school of any Social Emotional Learning (SEL), mental health evaluations, sexuality education, gender-identity ideology, Critical Race Theory (CRT), socialism, Marxism, and other social indoctrination. Schools must be limited to teaching the Basic Standards as listed in the Basic Standards plank. All school districts, individual schools, or charter schools are prohibited from contracting with or making any payment to any third party for material concerning any of the above prohibited topics.

 

We already had a plank saying we want no sex ed taught in schools—at any level—because schools have failed in that assignment abysmally. So the multiple requests to teach abstinence 75% of the time weren’t ignored; they just weren’t added. 100% > 75%. But we strengthened the existing Sexual Education plank an added this new one related to the Obscenity Exemption plank:

145A. No Sexualization of Children: Because the fraudulent research by Dr. Alfred Kinsey has been used to allow children access to harmful, explicit pornographic materials and to be induced into sexual performance, we support repeal of the obscenity exemption [Texas Penal Code 43.24(c)], which allows children access to harmful, explicit, or pornographic materials under the guise of education [see Obscenity Exemption plank above]. We require criminal penalties from a misdemeanor to a felony charge for each count of breaking the law by showing obscene materials to a student. An educator—including teachers, administrators, board members, or personnel, as well as guest speakers—so charged must be immediately suspended, and upon conviction must be dismissed for immoral and unprofessional conduct.

 

We have a disagreement among those who want school choice—because of some fears and some misunderstandings. The typical understanding is that families can choose from four types of schools: public, private, charter, or homeschool. But that limits the possibilities. If we had, say, an education savings account sort of plan, those four options would be available, but so would a mix-and-match version of any or all, plus online programs, plus private lessons and tutoring, plus therapies (for example, equine therapy or speech therapy). If the parents could choose the options, they would be limited only by the amount in the account plus whatever additional they might want to pay. It would work similar to a health savings account: you can use the money in an HSA for any qualifying medical service or product. In an ESA, that would be true of any qualifying educational service or product.

But the fear is in the “qualifying.” In general, it would be up to the parents to decide. But it would have to be something related to their child’s education. For example, a museum pass might qualify, but a new skateboard would not. The money simply can’t be used for a nonqualifying purchase.

The fear crowd tends to be homeschoolers or private schoolers worried about intrusion by government into what they’re doing. But they do not have to take any taxpayer money. I believe their fears should not be preventing choices from happening for all the other parents—including homeschooling parents who prefer to be vigilant against government intrusion while exploring multiple options.

Anyway, we rewrote the previous School Options plank to be two planks: Education Mission Includes All Children, which explains why the money should follow the child, rather than be held in the public school monopoly; and Free Market Is Solution to Education, which reminds us that the free market is the way to higher quality at lower costs. Imagine the innovation that would be spurred in the market if parents held the purse strings and intentionally chose the customized combination of materials and approaches that would work best for their child.

141. School Options: Texas families should be empowered to choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options for their children’s education, using tax credits or exemptions without government restraints or intrusion.

141.Education Mission Includes All Children: The state of Texas has a mission to educate the next generation to become productive good citizens, and it collects taxes for this purpose. Public school is only one tool parents can choose for accomplishing this mission, but public school is not the mission itself. The state must never create roadblocks for families for whom that tool does not meet their goals for their children. Taxing families on top of what they pay out of pocket for another choice does not further the mission. Monies allotted to education must follow the child without government restraints or intrusion.

141A. Free Market Is Solution to Education: We know that the free market leads to higher quality and lower costs. If Texans want higher quality education and would enjoy getting that for lower cost, Texas must incorporate the free market into every aspect of pre-K-12 education. This would lead to greater satisfaction for parents and teachers, could eliminate indoctrination problems, and would lead to generally improved outcomes at lower costs than what we have seen with government monopoly.

 

Beyond education, the big outcry from the public was for freedom from government overreach, and a reassertion of our God-given rights. Two years ago we were writing the 2020 Platform near the beginning of the pandemic. So we had a plank last time about Healthcare Decisions. We extended that with a new Medical Freedom plank, to get rid of those mandates of all kinds that we’ve suffered.

250A. Medical Freedom: We call for an addition to the Texas Bill of Rights that explicitly states that Texans have the natural right to refuse vaccination or other medical treatment. Therefore, the following are expressly forbidden even in an emergency or a pandemic:

a.     Any attempt to mandate, force, or coerce any medical test, procedure, or product, including vaccines or masks.

b.     Any attempt to use a citizen's health, infection recovery, or vaccination status as a condition to maintain or obtain housing or employment or employee benefits, attend school or childcare, or access state services.

c.      Any mandates by public, private, government, or medical entities for treatment, vaccination, vaccine passports, mask requirements, health insurance surcharges, or use of controlled substances of any kind.

d.     Any involuntary isolation or quarantine of anyone not experiencing an active contagious infection.

e.     Any prevention of visitation to the ill when risks are acknowledged and mitigated according to patient and visitor choice.

f.     Any Nuremberg Code violations—including but not limited to the requirement that use of experimental use medications must provide full knowledgeable consent and be free from any form of coercion or inducement.

 

That was in Health & Human Services. In addition, we altered and added a couple of specific planks up in Business, Commerce & Transportation:

58.    Mask Mandates: Government should not be able permitted to force businesses or governmental workers (including election workers and school personnel) to require face coverings.

58A.  Vaccine Mandates: The Republican Party opposes vaccine mandates, opposes any effort to impose such mandates through emergency declaration, legislation, or regulatory action, and supports legislative efforts to allow consumers and patrons to freely conduct business without regard to vaccination status.

 

There are other intrusions into our freedoms as well. I like this addition:

234A. One World: The United States is a sovereign nation founded on the principles of freedom.  We call on the dissolution of the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, New World Order, One World Government, The Great Reset, and other groups who have taken on the role of a government entity and act as such to control freedom of thought, speech, religion, and trade.

We find that these things coming at us from multiple directions, so people are trying to list every iteration and prevent any new ones.

Speaking of which, concerns of mine, which I put forth as resolutions that were accepted, were to stop ESG scoring and DEI programs—both by governments and by businesses, which are being recruited to take away our freedoms at the behest of governments when the governments know they can’t get away with that sort of tyranny outright:

21A. Values Scoring: The Republican Party opposes the use by financial institutions, social media companies, businesses, or any level of government, of any social credit system (such as used by the Chinese Communist Party), ESG (Environmental, Social & corporate Governance) scoring system, or similar system or method designed to discriminate against a person’s beliefs, values, medical decisions or lawful behaviors. The use of such systems prevents citizens from exercising their constitutional rights, including the rights of free speech, assembly, and religion, and further prevents citizens from the full enjoyment of the unalienable rights of our Republic. The Republican Party calls for federal and state legislation banning governmental use of such systems and protecting the rights and liberties of citizens from the use of such systems by businesses.

21C. No Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policies: When Diversity means no diversity of thought; when Equity means equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities; and when Inclusion means exclusion of anyone not fitting the DEI orthodoxy; then DEI is an abominable forced bigotry and must be made illegal in public and private businesses, government at all levels, schools and universities, and financial institutions.

 

We had a fairly strong Abolish Abortion plank last time. But we’re strengthening that.

325. Abolish Abortion: Since life begins at conception, we urge the Texas Legislature to enact legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing through enacting legislation that would immediately secure the rights to life and equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization and by ignoring and refusing and would ignore or refuse to enforce any and all federal statutes, regulations, orders, and court rulings that would deny these rights, and to oppose legislation that discriminates against any preborn children and violates the US Constitution by denying such persons the equal protection of the laws.

 

Of course we’re asking for some additional safeguards for the election system. We added to the existing Fair Election Procedures plank, and added a new plank detailing what would trigger a full forensic audit:

210. Fair Election Procedures: We support the right of eligible voters to cast a ballot in each election once but oppose illegal voting, illegal assistance, or ineligible persons registering. We support:

a.     Vigorous enforcement of all our election laws as written and oppose any laws, lawsuits, and judicial decisions that make voter fraud very difficult to deter, detect, or prosecute.

b.     Voter Photo ID.

c.      Prohibition of Internet voting for public office and any ballot measure.

d.     Sequentially numbered and signed paper ballots to deter counterfeiting.

e.     No private funding of the election process.

210A. Forensic Audit: For races contested by the candidates, Certification must be postponed, and a full forensic audit of preserved paper ballots and voter records must be performed, including a hand recount of paper ballots, if any of the following is detected:

a.   Statistical anomalies and/or impossibilities.

b.   Voter turnout is more than voter registrations.

c.   Missing audit logs.

d.   Dropping signature verifications for mail-in ballots.

e.   Astronomical numbers of error events in vote tabulators.

f.         Extremely low rejection rates for mail in ballots.

g.   Suspiciously high adjudication or participation rates.

h.   Accepting votes that "scanned" faster than the scanner could physically scan.

i.        Any tabulation error, such as "votes exceeds ballots cast", which must be investigated, allowing no override.

j.        Counting ballots after the Election Night Deadline if the resulting numbers significantly change the outcome.

 

We don’t do a lot of asking for programs—more often we ask to get rid of them. But a resolution came in asking for the restoration of an education program for families. Those of you familiar with “The Family: AProclamation to the World” might recognize the call for citizens and governments “to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.” So we were able to echo some of that proclamation in this plank:

240A. Healthy Family Formation: We call upon the Texas Legislature, in conjunction with responsible citizens, to promote measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society. Toward this end we recommend reintroducing a Healthy Family Formation program, providing messages on risk avoidance and abstinence outside of marriage, complete fidelity within marriage, and equipping parents to share in the responsibilities of rearing children in a nurturing atmosphere of love and mutual respect and providing the necessities of life and protection for the family.

 

In all, we’re suggesting an additional 41 planks, with changes to many existing planks. The process from here is for us to submit these to the Republican State Platform Committee. So ours get assessed along with suggestions from around the state’s 31 senatorial districts. And the state committee will be comprised of a representative from each of them.

It’s more formal at that level. In subcommittees there is a fairly open exchange of ideas, but when the Committee of the Whole meets, members address the Chairman, not each other, and parliamentary rules are strictly followed.

It looks like I will be editing for the State Platform Committee again this year (3^rd time). It’s an interesting thing to do, and I feel like I’m contributing, using my skills. But at that level I get very little say in how things are worded, and no input on what should be said. So my opportunity to do that was at the senatorial district level. I forget how many times I’ve done this level, but I think I started in 2014; if that is so, then this is my fifth time. As contributions to the party go, this is my wheelhouse.

What new people on our committee commented on was how much respect we show to every resolution that comes in. We’ve always paid attention to each one, but this time we tracked on a spreadsheet what we did related to each resolution, so those who submitted could actually see whether and where their ideas were included.

The system is designed to grow the platform, which explains why it’s so long. I wish that weren’t so. And yet, most of what was in there from last time was worth keeping, at least in some form. We added far more ideas than we took out.

Each of those ideas started out in someone’s head, and they got written down and submitted at the precinct level. We have now handled them at the district level. And they will make their way up to the state level, where they will direct our grassroots work—and the work of our elected officials—for the next two years.

This system is designed to hear what the grassroots are saying. Those are the ideas that are rising up. People are figuratively shouting, “We want our freedoms back!” We want to run our own lives, including our own medical decisions. And we don’t want governments or anyone else telling us how to raise our children, or what we are supposed to believe.

The question now is, will our voices be heard? People with power—the ones who have usurped that power from the people—don’t willingly give it up. But in the end they can only rule by the consent of the governed. And that’s those of us who are speaking up.

 

 

Be It Resolved

It’s a new year, so it might be time to start anew.

Mutts cartoon for January 1, 2022

We hear a lot about resolutions this time of year, and we may think we understand that word—without thinking much about it. So let’s take this time for a somewhat deep dive into the meaning.

Re-  is a prefix meaning again.

Solve is a word that comes from the idea of loosening, releasing, or freeing. You can see that in “dissolve.” In noun form, a solution can be a mixture of separate things, such as salt in water—a saline solution. Chemically, the salt and the water do not change, but they combine fairly well in solution.

But another way of thinking of the verb solve is to “find a satisfactory answer or explanation.” You can solve a crime by figuring out who-done-it, or how the crime was done. You can solve a puzzle by figuring out the right answer, or the right way to get the desired outcome.

from Webster's New World Dictionary, 2nd College Edition, (c) 1982

So resolve might be to get the right answer again.

But we tend to think of it as “reaching a decision or intention,” and resolution as determining or deciding upon a future action.

In the adjective form, to be resolute is to show unwavering determination. 

Resolute  is the name of the historic desk in the Oval Office, given to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, a gift from Queen Victoria. It was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute.

Pres. John F. Kennedy giving a TV address from the Resolute Desk
Getty image, found here

A decade or so ago I stopped writing down goals as New Year’s resolutions, and chose a word (or sometimes a two-word phrase) for the year. One year it actually was resolute. Other years it has been healing, resilience, and fruition. In 2020, ahead of knowing what was coming, my word/phrase was “hold on,” which turned out to be very appropriate. I think about my yearly word for a good long time, and let it come to me, hopefully as inspiration, from the Source of inspiration. So I am resolute to focus on that word and see where it takes me during the year. Sometimes I’m slow, and it takes into February to decide. This year I’m early. Maybe another time I’ll let you know what this year’s was and how that played out.

I do like looking at the inspirational ideas and quotes that come up at this renewal, resolution time. So I’ll share a few of those today.

I found this last year and made it into a meme to share.

A couple of days ago I read a piece in The Imaginative Conservative by John Horvat on how to deal with “not normal” times, such as 2020 to present. His advice: improvise and dare. He explains: 

To better understand what this entails, we might recall a story about Churchill during World War II. A particular commander in a difficult fight with the Germans asked for instructions. Churchill sent an order with three words: “Improvise and dare!” The commander followed his advice, and Churchill, in a flourish of grammatical audacity, wrote that he “improvose and dore.”

In short, rather than visualizing a particular outcome, we need to be flexible, so we can be ready for anything. The challenge is doing this when you’ve already been through a couple of years with all your resources stretched to the breaking point. So, maybe at this top of the year, do an assessment of your resources—of the things that you can be resourceful with, such as your good humor, your resilience, your positive attitude, and maybe even your ability to cook from scratch or do your own plumbing (what we’re doing here in the Spherical Model household as I write this).

Horvat adds,

Improvise does not mean winging it, doing things unprepared or without study. We must take all necessary precautions. We learn to work with God’s grace to inspire us. When the time comes to act, we know things can change quickly and are ready to adjust accordingly.

He goes on to talk about daring, but I’ll let you read that.

If you’re serious—resolute—about making your life better, you might go ahead and read Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life, and follow that up with his latest book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.

He has been talking about these books and their concepts in a number of videos. A few days ago there was a compilation listed as “A Guide to Fixing Your Life in 2022 (how to change your life this year).” There’s so much in there that can be put into practical application.

In another video, he talks with Dr. Christopher Kaczor and Dr. Matthew Petrusek about their book, which includes his name in the title: Jordan Peterson, God, and Christianity. The two are from a Catholic organization called Word on Fire. The conversation was not confrontational, but a deep and thoughtful exploration of God and meaning and how to live a good life.

Dr. Kaczor tells this incident that was related to him. His friend went to a lecture on God’s existence, and after the lecture this friend went up to the lecturer and challenged him:

After the lecture my friend came up to him and said, “You know, everything you say is a bunch of malarkey. There’s no God. It’s just—your lecture is just meaningless.” And the guy said, “OK, what I want you to do is, for the next week, I want you to treat everyone that you meet as if they were Jesus in disguise.”

And the guy left the lecture, and he went home. And, you know, he gets home and Mom’s there doing the dishes, and he thought to himself, well, if this were Jesus in disguise doing the dishes, I’d probably go up and, like, help my mom do the dishes.

And then Dad came home from work, and rather than ignore him, he said, “Hey, Dad, how was work? How’s everything going?” And, you know, because, if that were really Jesus in disguise, I would do that.

And then they were eating dinner together with the family, and there’s one hamburger left. And he turns to his brother and says, “Hey, why don’t you have this?”

And the guy told me, his life was completely transformed by literally one week of acting in this sort of way.

Might be an experiment worth trying.

One thing that experiment required was a relatively good understanding of how to behave toward Jesus—or maybe how to behave if you’re trying to emulate Jesus, which is another way to look at it: what would Jesus do? So, for that, you need to have either a terrific imagination or some grounding in the scriptures.

Reading more scriptures is a not uncommon New Year’s resolution. I actually do read scriptures every day. I’ve done that for decades, rarely missing. But if that's not you, I don’t think it’s a good idea to set a resolution to read every single day this year—because then, if you miss a day in January, it messes up your goal for the full year. Better to resolve to set up a pattern in your life that will allow for more scripture reading. If you get distracted in the morning by all the necessities of getting ready for the day, find a different time, or a different way. At times I’ve had my phone or tablet read aloud to me while I do my face and hair. Maybe it’s not that concentrated study time I’d like, or that I imagine I ought to demand of myself, but it adds up to significant time in the scriptures. 

If just before bed is bad for you, because you fall asleep before you get to it, then find another time. Set your scriptures where you can reach them at some point every day. Maybe have them on your phone to replace some of that scrolling time.

If last year you were only reading maybe half of the days, or less, then 4 or 5 days a week would be an improvement, even if you were aiming at 7 days a week. Celebrate your improvement, rather than berating yourself for not having a perfect record. That sort of “better batting average” approach might motivate you more than perfection resolutions. Worth a try.

Related to that, here’s a quote from the president and prophet of my church:

Keep studying the scriptures, keep doing the things that build your faith in Jesus Christ and then notice the wise choices you are naturally drawn to make.—Pres. Russell M. Nelson

 

As I send you my best wishes as you go out there and take on 2022, here are a few more thoughts about this time for resolution and resoluteness:

 

When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.—Zig Ziglar

 

You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.—C. S. Lewis

 

The great task of life is to learn the will of the Lord and then do it.

—Ezra Taft Benson

 

Prayer is a key. Pray to know what to stop doing and what to start doing. Pray to know what to add to your environment and what to remove so the Spirit can be with you in abundance.

Plead with the Lord for the gift of discernment. Then live and work to be worthy to receive that gift so that when confusing events arise in the world, you will know exactly what is true and what is not.

Serve with love. Loving service to those who have lost their way or who are wounded in spirit opens your heart to personal revelation.

Spend more time—much more time—in places where the Spirit is present. That means more time with friends who are seeking to have the Spirit with them. Spend more time on your knees in prayer, more time in the scriptures, more time in family history work, more time in the temple. I promise you that as you consistently give the Lord a generous portion of your time, He will multiply the remainder.—Pres. Russell M. Nelson 

 

"Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice reduces the imperfection."—Toba Beta

 

“The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us.”—C. S. Lewis