More Post-Apocalyptic Tyrannies

Lately it seems like every book I pick up (often young adult novels and series) is someone’s imagining of a post-apocalyptic tyrannical society. I read The Hunger Games a couple of years ago, but the movie came out last spring, so I revisited that series (and might again as each movie in the series comes out). Plus, Mr. Spherical Model just got around to reading them—one after another, just like the rest of us did (no one can read just one).

This past year I read the Matched trilogy, by Ally Condie. Since Christmas I’ve picked up The Mazerunner, the first in a series by James Dashner, and Incarceron, the first in a series by Catherine Fisher. And this past weekend I finished Glenn Beck’s latest (with Harriet Parke), Agenda 21.

Here’s what post-apocalyptic tyranny stories seem to have in common: Some historical event changed things—a war, an uprising, maybe a pandemic. Whatever it was (and sometimes the characters don’t know what it was), some scary chaos was “resolved” by the authority, for which everyone is required to be grateful. Allegiance to an entity other than the authority—such as God or family—is discouraged or forbidden (or forced underground).

There is an all-pervasive authority, monitoring all behaviors, and controlling most choices. Reading and writing tools are often missing or strictly controlled. Food is provided, pre-made, regardless of personal taste (or sometimes size and other nutritional need differences). Marriage choices are controlled by the authority—which has eugenic purposes. Personal belongings are discouraged or prevented. Understanding of how to subsist without the help of the government is extinguished. Schooling, if allowed, is scrupulously controlled by the authority to indoctrinate with authority doctrine, and generally weeding out any differences, innovations, or creative thinking. Beauty, art, and open-minded science are absent or strictly controlled.

Everyone is ostensibly equal. But there are always those with more power, who exert authority over the plebeians, and who also enjoy privileges—better food, better technology, better living conditions.

Life is cheap and disposable—particularly for anyone born with imperfections, anyone who has developed an illness that requires significant treatment resources, and anyone who rebels against the authority. Even when these societies appear on the surface to be “civilized,” they are, either visibly or just below the surface, savage and inhuman.

Usually the main characters begin with a lack of understanding or awareness. They’re just busy going day to day, moment to moment, without getting into trouble. Somewhere along the way, the stakes get higher—often with a threat to a loved one. Then they rise to heroism out of necessity of the higher goal of human love, to some combination of thwarting/changing the authoritarian society or escaping from it with the hope of something better outside.

Most of these stories are fictional warnings, someone’s imagination of worst-case scenarios. Glenn Beck’s book is essentially that as well, but with the hint that it is based on real possibilities. In the Afterword, he explains that Agenda 21, the title, comes from an actual UN program. The fictional story is simply a way to illustrate where such a plan could lead if followed to its logical inevitable conclusions. He lists nine basic principles that the real Agenda 21 intends to pursue, some of which we can already see evidence of in current policies:

1.      Move citizens off private land and into high-density urban housing.

2.      Create vast wilderness spaces inhabited by large carnivores.

3.      Reduce traffic congestion and slash fuel use by eliminating cars and creating “walkable” cities.

4.      Support chosen private businesses with public funds to be used for “sustainable development.”

5.      Make policy decisions that favor the greater good over individuals.

6.      Drastically reduce the use of power, water, and anything that creates “carbon pollution.”

7.      Use bureaucracies to make sweeping decisions outside of democratic processes.

8.      Increase taxes, fees, and regulations.

9.      Implement policies meant to incentivize a reduced population (i.e., “one-child” type laws). [p. 281 of Beck's book]

In "Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet," Dan Sitarz gives this rather frighteningly frank goal statement:

Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced—a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level. [quoted on p. 279 of Beck's book]

There was one quote in the Afterword that may merit an economic post of its own in the future from the 1976 Vancouver Declaration:

[Land] cannot be treated as an ordinary asset, controlled by individuals and subject to pressures and inefficiencies of the market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to social injustice. [quoted on p. 282 of Beck's book]

There is something terribly wrong with the idea that accumulating wealth is evil because it is unequalizing. As I’ve written in the Economic section of the Spherical Model, “Wealth, simply, represents the accumulation of the results of labor.” A person’s wealth is only limited by his personal time, talents, and energy. When you take away the results of a person’s work, you are stealing from him the results of how he spends his life; that is slavery. Helping the poor with free giving can benefit both giver and receiver, but stealing from the producer to give to the non-producer benefits neither and discourages work and innovation. Concerning land, there’s the tragedy of the commons, where commonly owned land is always overused and resources are not guarded or developed (see Thomas E. Woods, 33 Questions about American History, p. 22).

As a review, I thought the Beck/Parke book was enjoyable and well written. As a story in the post-apocalyptic tyranny genre (is there such a genre now?), it stands up well. The possible realities underlying the story give it another layer of interest.

The scariest and most evocative of the tyranny books I’ve read are not fiction; they are the biographies and histories from WWII. I recommend Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, by Eric Metaxas, and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, about Louis Zamperini, by Laura Hillebrand. We don’t have to rely on imagination to see what could happen in a savage tyranny; we have recorded evidence. We need to be aware, to prevent it from happening among us her in what is left of the free world.

Civilizational Structures

Bill Whittle of PJTV gave a speech last September at St. Michael’s College Toronto. A friend linked it on Facebook this week, and I ended up listening to the entire hour and 44 minutes, it was so well done. Particularly I’d like to recommend the first 37 minutes or so. It piqued my interest because it reinforced, using different terminology, the Spherical Model.

Whittle asserts that Western civilization is “is the best civilization in the history of the world.” That’s a big assertion, but I think he’s probably right. Certainly it is provably the best in the world today, and historically as far as we have knowledge to compare. People are treated better within Western civilization than in any other. People are more likely to enjoy freedom, prosperity, and safety.

He claims there are three basic foundations Western civilization is built on:

I think you can probably define the West’s success, and the West’s magnificence by looking at three different qualities about Western civilization. And those three different foundations of Western civilization are: Judeo-Christian morality, Greco-Roman philosophy, and Anglo-Saxon law. You understand these three foundations, and you’ll understand why this civilization is unmatched in history [at about 27 minutes in].

In the Spherical Model, there are three overlaying spheres: civilizational (or social), economic, and freedom. As I listened to his speech, I think we are in agreement; he is simply describing the underlying historical sources for the three spheres.

What does he mean by Judeo-Christian morality, and why is it important? Judeo-Christian belief is that there is one God. “If there’s one God, then there’s absolute truth” [at 28 minutes in]. Absolute truth means there is right and wrong, and God is the judge. Things like the Ten Commandments list the barbaric, uncivilized behaviors you must not do. And you judge yourself, with your conscience. Even if the police do not catch you stealing, you are guilty of stealing because you know you did it. You are responsible for governing your own behavior.

He boldly uses the word virtue.

Virtue is the ability for individual people to do the right thing most of the time. And the entire theory of our system of government (meaning the United States, Canada, the Anglo sphere, the British system of government), the entire theory of government is that virtuous people can be trusted to rule themselves. They don’t need to be governed by other people, because they govern themselves. And the more virtuous a people are, the more freedoms they can be given [at about 30 minutes in].

I believe this coincides with the Civilization vs. Savagery Sphere. To be in the northern hemisphere, where civilization thrives, requires a religious people, who recognize the rights and responsibilities God requires for basic harmonious living—civilization.

Next, what is it about Greco-Roman philosophy that is important? In short, he says that Greco-Roman philosophy made the leap to understanding that the world is not chaotic, but there are natural laws at work in the world:

The Greeks and the Romans believed that the universe was understandable, that there were laws at work that were beyond the ability to interfere. And that it was up to us to figure out what these laws were. And if we developed a way of looking at the universe, which eventually became known as science, we might be able to interrogate nature, and we might be able to isolate these laws. And once we isolated these laws, we could wield those laws [about 33 minutes in].

He is referring specifically to the progress and development of science. But I think that is an outgrowth of free market economics. If a person, or a people, is kept within the constraints of subsistence day after day, with no surplus, there is neither time nor resources to make capital improvements. With surplus time, wealth, and knowledge, there is the possibility of development—and science is a form of capital. So I think the Greco-Roman philosophy fits in the Spherical Model essentially within the Economic Sphere.

What does he mean by Anglo-Saxon law, and why is that important? Briefly, it is God’s natural law, which is above any political human-organization-imposed law.

For instance, there’s not a person on this earth that wants to be murdered. There’s not a father or mother on this earth that wants to see their daughters raped. There’s not a person in the world that wants to have their hard-earned property taken from them. Not one. Natural law says that these are universal truths [about 35 minutes in].

You might notice the connection here with the Ten Commandments. God gives us our rights, and also gives us the responsibility to govern ourselves so that other’s rights are also protected. A political law can only protect our God-given freedoms when it does not usurp authority over those rights. And all members of the society—governors, kings, presidents, or street sweepers—all are subject to the same rules. Laws aren’t what the potentate decides they are; laws are what is aligned with natural law. So his reasons for valuing Anglo-Saxon law line up pretty neatly with the Political Sphere, with freedom up north and tyranny down south

Life, liberty, and property (along with the choice of how to pursue property, or how to spend our time and enjoy our lives) are protected within Anglo-Saxon law. With those protections of our natural rights, we have the opportunity to build wealth and invent capital improvements, as you see coming out of Greco-Roman philosophy. All of these societal benefits come out of a virtuous people, who govern themselves with accountability to God, as you see in Judeo-Christian morality.

The connections of these historic ingredients are the subject of Hillsdale College’s free online History 101: Western Heritage. The lesson list includes:

1.      Jerusalem, Athens, and the Study of History at Hillsdale College

2.      The Hebrew Legacy

3.      The Greek Miracle

4.      The Greek Legacy

5.      The Roman Legacy

6.      Early Christianity

7.      Church and State

8.      Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation

9.      The Scientific Revolution

10.  From Elizabeth I to the Glorious Revolution

You can see you’ll be getting the three ingredients of civilization with even more detail.

This is only the first third of Bill Whittle’s speech. The rest of it covers the deterioration we’re seeing in civilization—in all three of these structural ingredients. I think there is no question we are seeing decay—just as past civilizations have experienced decay. How do we solve this? I don’t know. I’m not sure Whittle completely covers the answer either.

Glenn Beck was commenting on the overwhelming nature of our many problems the other day, and he said, “The problems are so big, the solutions are basic” (Glenn Beck radio program, 1-30-2013). Basic, or simple, is not necessarily easy. But the simple answer is that each of us needs to govern ourselves.

That’s fine for those of us who already do. But I think we need to understand why we do what we do, understand the value of the magnificent heritage that brought about our phenomenal civilization, so that we inculcate these ideas into the understanding of those that aren’t paying attention. Start with ourselves and our families—don’t expect the schools or even the churches to do it; parents must do it. And then in our choices of entertainment, literature, and ways we choose to spend our time, we can, with God’s help, move our communities, and then larger entities like states and nations, back up where civilization thrives.

Another Word about Life

When I envision what I’m about to write in a blog post, I see an overall structure of what I expect to say, and then I’m surprised about how many words it takes to accomplish my plan. My last post was such a post. I thought, before I started writing, that I would just give a little background, and then I would write my personal viewpoint. But just laying the background turned out to be a long post in and of itself. Then I’ve had to decide if the personal viewpoint is still worth telling. I’m going ahead as if it is.

My experience is that the unborn life is my child to love. The baby moves, has a heartbeat, his own DNA.

I’m going to share a poem I wrote thirty years ago. I am not a particularly accomplished poet. I used to write more; now I manage to come up with about one a year for Mr. Political Sphere for Valentine’s Day. But during the childbearing years I wrote enough that I have a small collection of them I refer to as The Motherhood Poems. This one is from my first pregnancy, about the beginning of the second trimester. I was reading parenting magazines and learning all I could about this new passion and calling. One of the books I read detailed development you could expect at each week’s gestation. That is the essence of the poem below, my first conversation with this child—a boy, but we didn’t know that until birth, back before ultrasounds were as clear as they are today.

This child I was talking to was born about two and a half months later—more than three months early. We got to hold him for only a matter of hours, with all kinds of tubes hooked up to him in hopes of overcoming the first hurdle—breathing. After thirteen hours, we realized we weren’t going to get that miracle and had to say goodbye. But there were some profound things I learned about developing life from that difficult experience.

I learned that a baby can look complete and perfect when born at 23 weeks. He was small, a little over a foot, a little under two pounds. But he looked fully human—enough that we could recognize him and see features of family members that he resembled. I think he may have looked a lot like my husband’s paternal grandfather, who was near 90 at the time. The spirit that was in my baby made him so completely alive and lovable. Days later at the funeral home, my mother-in-law was there with me to see how they had dressed him and prepared the casket. I remember wanting to share with her how beautiful he had been alive, how less than him the tiny remaining body was. I couldn’t express it.

In our religion we believe we will live together as families again after we die; he is not completely lost to us. There are times when I have seemed to see him in my mind, looking grown up, tall like my other boys and his dad. My daughter has a similar vision of him and describes him as I would; she even remembers eye color, which I cannot.

I believe this: my young son was alive within me; he was alive those few hours with us; and as a resurrected human being he lives yet again. His whole person is even more important to our Heavenly Father than he has been to me. Life of this little angel was such a blessing to have. His life matters.

So here is the poem:

Twelfth Week Talk 

It’s strange to me not knowing you,

So close in proximity.

I know my love is growing along with you,

But we haven’t talked together before now. 

I’ve read about you; yes, a little.

This week you’re growing fingernails.

Good luck with that endeavor;

I still have trouble growing mine.

And I saw you, a sort of picture

On a screen the doctor showed me.

I saw your head and form

Enlivened by a heartbeat—and mine quickened.

Yes, now I know you’re more than indigestion.

So much more that I panic weekly

That I may not be grown up enough

For you to grow from me. 

It’s only perspective now that separates us,

Now you know what I have long forgotten.

And I know what you’ve yet to feel.

Remember where you are—will you, for me? 

If you remember, then you will know

Why you must hurt and hunger here.

But I will hold you;

I will fill your hunger while I can. 

I will teach you to remember

That where you are is love-filled home,

For here we fill our home with love

In that same, not quite forgotten tradition. 

I’ve enjoyed this little talk.

We’ll do this again soon

So I can help you feel at home in the neighborhood

Until you’re ready to meet more of it. 

—Linda Nuttall

                                August 24, 1982

Life Matters

TX State Sen. Dan Patrick at TX pro-life rally Saturday
photo from Dan Patrick's Facebook page

I don’t often write about the issue of abortion, because there are so many dedicated civilized people who express well the side of life. I thank them for that. But this past week marked 40 years since the Roe v. Wade decision, and after so many millions of babies have been killed, I want to add my voice at this time.

There is a rhetorical technique used by the opposition to truth: deny and contradict over time, then admit to the veracity of the statement while adding, “So what?” Bill Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman” is a classic example. Months later, after all the denials, when the proof was undeniable, he admitted to the original accusation along with, “It was only my private life,” a version of so what?

Hillary Clinton used it this past week in her “testimony” to Congress about Benghazi. She said,

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.

We know for certain—and she knew the day of the event, if she wasn’t entirely out of the loop of national security—that it was neither a protest nor “guys out for a walk”; it was terrorists. So, months after the event, saying over and over, “we don’t know,” when we know, and we know she knows, she deflects by avoiding the real issue and saying, “what difference does it make?” or, in other words, it doesn’t matter, who cares? so what?

I had not expected the so what? technique to be used on the abortion issue. But that is what I recognized this week is now happening.

The argument over abortion has continued to be over whether the fetus is human life or not: if yes, then that human life is to be valued and protected as other human life; if not, then the woman is simply making a choice about a clump of cells that are part of her own body. This same argument has continued for decades.

As technology gets better, it has become clearer and clearer that the growing fetus is a human baby, with its own DNA separate from the mother’s, with the ability to feel and hear within the cushioning environment of the womb—including feeling pain. Technology has improved greatly on moving the viability to earlier and earlier weeks. The result of this technological progress has been that only a handful of doctors are still willing to perform third trimester abortions; people who understand the procedure are virtually unanimous in disapproving of partial-birth abortion. Laws now recognize the death of a fetus as separate and additional to the death of a mother in accidents or murders.

What I expected, being the positive, civilized person I strive to be, is that more and more people would become convinced that the growing life is a valuable human life, and would move from “the choice is up to the mother” to “because it’s human life, we need to value and protect it.” What I did not expect was the so what? at this point.

Mary Katherine Ham wrote a piece last week referring to a Salon piece that I find shocking. The Salon writer, Mary Elizabeth Williams, admits, very clearly, as practically any pro-life person would, that the fetus is a human life separate from the mother. These are the paragraphs Ham highlights:

I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells” and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby” and “this kid.” I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

As I said, I would expect such understanding to lead to the decision to protect life. But Williams goes the exact opposite direction. On the pro-life side (actually, on the side of truth for many issues), we are subject to the imposition of terms from the opposition. Pro-choice is an example. This term is particularly repugnant because it’s not about choice to act; it is about choice of consequences. If a woman purposely engages in sex, she has made the choice to risk pregnancy—the creation of a new human life. If she does that and then finds she is pregnant when she doesn’t want to be, does she then have the right to choose to avoid the natural consequences—when a separate human life is now involved? Pro-life people are pro-choice—you get to choose your behavior, but God’s natural laws choose the consequences that follow your choice.

The president revealed his disapproval of God’s law when he said (off script at a Townhall in Johnstown, PA, during the 2008 campaign), of the hypothetical that one of his own daughters could finding herself pregnant, “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.” This is the same person who, in the Illinois legislature, went further than any pro-abortionist to insist a mother has the right to bring about the death of a baby after birth if she hadn’t intended for the baby to be born alive.

The Salon writer expresses her distress that the term “pro-life” is too strong to fight against. So, she grants that the fetus is indeed a human life, and then says so what?

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides….

The “life” conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.

She believes, unlike our founders, that some human life isn’t worth protecting, but calls those of us who believe “that all men are created equal” are “wingnuts” and “archconservatives” and “right wingers,” while insisting her viewpoint is the reasonable side of the debate.

So let me be clear: there is nothing civilized about a person who chooses to kill a human life because it is not convenient for her to allow him or her to live. That behavior—the very line of thinking that leads to that behavior—is savage.

Thank the Lord if you can still recognize the difference. The slip from apparent civilization to savagery among the Germans and Japanese in the last century was amazingly swift. It coincided with the faulty belief that some human lives are inferior and not worth bothering about.

In a civilized world, we can never say, “So what if it’s human life? What does that matter?” Life matters.

Measuring Rulers

There is a significant difference between the rulers in Freedom (northern hemisphere on the Spherical Model) and Tyranny (southern hemisphere). In tyranny, the ruler controls the governed based on the authority of something like accident of birth (royal lineages, for example) or having garnered more firepower with which to coerce behavior. In freedom, the ruler has only the authority granted by the consent of the governed.

Tyrants seem to believe that “good” is defined as what they the rulers are, what they believe, and what they do. Leaders of free people define “good” as “what God has declared is right,” given in the revelation of scripture and upheld by a righteous people who mostly govern themselves. The tyrant claims goodness and perfection embodied in the ruler. The free people recognize the limits of human nature, including the corrupting influence of power, and therefore limit the power of any leader over the people.

The tyrant believes in classes, with certain strata being privileged while others are deprived of privileges. The free people believe that all people are created equal and are guaranteed certain inalienable rights given by God.

So it might be possible to measure a ruler (leader, or potential leader) based on the person’s belief in God, adherence to God’s law (try looking first at the Ten Commandments), and whether the person puts himself above the people being led.

Have there been good kings, historically? You can probably find a few. But if they were good, they followed God’s laws, which naturally bring the most freedom to all. And the people ruled by them were simply lucky, during that temporary rule, because righteous kings are not nearly as common as the alternative.

There’s a quote from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court that I have long found useful:

Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst form that is possible (Chapter X, “Beginnings of Civilization”).

I happened upon a chapter of scripture yesterday that makes a similar claim and goes on to detail some of the difficulty of getting out from under such a tyrant, and therefore recommends choosing leaders by the voice of the people:

13 Now it is better that a man should be judged of God than of man, for the judgments of God are always just, but the judgments of man are not always just.

14 Therefore, if it were possible that you could have just men to be your kings, who would establish the laws of God, and judge this people according to his commandments,… if this could always be the case then it would be expedient that ye should always have kings to rule over you….

16 Now I say unto you, that because all men are not just it is not expedient that ye should have a king or kings to rule over you.

17 For behold, how much iniquity doth one wicked king cause to be committed, yea, and what great destruction!...

21 And behold, now I say unto you, ye cannot dethrone an iniquitous king save it be through much contention, and the shedding of much blood.

22 For behold, he has his friends in iniquity, and he keepeth his guards about him; and he teareth up the laws of those who have reigned in righteousness before him; and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God;

23 And he enacteth laws and sendeth them forth among his people, yea, laws after the manner of his own wickedness; and whosoever doth not obey his laws he causeth to be destroyed; and whosoever doth rebel against him he will send his armies against them to war and if he can he will destroy them; and thus an unrighteous king doth pervert the ways of all righteousness….

25 Therefore, choose you by the voice of this people, judges, that ye may be judged according to the laws which have been given you by our fathers, which are correct, and which were given them by the hand of the Lord.

26 Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people. (Book of Mormon, Mosiah 29)

We live in what is designed to be a free country. The founders strictly limited government power to best protect our God-given rights. But we are seeing that, even with the written guarantees, it is the tendency of leaders to usurp power—especially when they don’t see the full vision of prosperity that God has offered us. If they are closed to viewing only the southern hemisphere, with the alternatives of either statist tyranny or the tyranny of chaos, they put themselves forward to have power over others as the alternative to others having power over them. They are blind to the variety of happiness our founders meant to make permanent.

It took the Declaration of Independence, followed by a long and bloody Revolutionary War, followed by some trial and error leading to the Constitutional Convention that brought about our miraculous American experiment in freedom. As we see that slipping away, how do we regain the freedom, without a similar convergence of education and resolve within a righteous people? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s possible. For now, the beginning of an answer is to be personally righteous, educated in truth, and resolved to stand firm—and then hope that our vision spreads. It is a time to try our souls.

The Dreamer

Back when I was in elementary school, the federal government hadn’t gotten involved in moving dates to the nearest Monday and deciding which days we would all stop working or going to school. So in those ancient days, we were in school learning about our 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln, on February 12^th. And then, ten days later we’d be in class learning about our 1^st President, George Washington. There are certain things about that world that made sense.

Martin Luther King, Jr., giving "I Have a Dream Speech"
photo found here

Eventually these were combined as a federal day off called Presidents’ Day, on the Monday closest to Washington’s birthday. The only other holiday related to a person was Columbus Day (which also was a day for historical study back in my childhood, rather than a day off). So I felt some natural resistance to making a special federal holiday to honor the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., a man from my lifetime, who was somehow deemed more significant than all our presidents and other historical figures. We had no practices to fill the day, no cultural festivals, no family feasts. So, while I could see noting the day, it seemed to me to make a lot more sense to use school time to cover the significant historical details.

Nevertheless, there has been a day off in mid-January since 1986, mostly used for shopping, as far as I can tell. But last week I drove past a neighborhood school that had on their marquee that school would be held this Monday. So students will actually be in class where they can learn about the man the day is meant to honor. That makes more sense to me.

Some historic details are probably worth noting. MLK, like Gandhi, valued non-violence as a strategy toward change. He stood up for what he believed and was willing to spend time in jail to show his seriousness. That willingness to stand up for principle no matter the unpleasant consequences is something to admire.

MLK was a conservative in many ways that I am. Our Constitution says it guarantees the rights God has given to all human beings. It was not the Constitution that was wrong, but the people in the country who hadn’t opened their eyes to the validity of human rights for all races. So the Constitution was worth conserving. MLK was a Republican, because that party was (and has been, since Lincoln or before) the party ideologically aligned with applying the Constitution to all citizens. Conservatives, half a century ago as well as today, look at MLK’s words, and find resonating truth.

His “I Have a Dream” speech was given 50 years ago this coming August 28^th. I hope schools will take the opportunity to share the speech again at that time. I hope our young people can hear or read the words for themselves and understand them without any rewriting of history.

For today I thought I’d quote a few words from that speech, plus a few other favorites phrases from this man who was able to speak so clearly and convincingly.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

 

Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see

the whole staircase.

 

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. 

 

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right. 

 

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. 

 

Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.

 

Gun Non-Violence

As one who loves our Constitution, I have strong feelings in favor of the 2^nd Amendment. I don’t write about that issue very often, because there are many others who are more clearly laying out the issue than I can. But the onslaught since last month, along with the president’s unprecedented 23 executive order yesterday, merit some comment.

Here are the two main points:

·       The main purpose of the 2^nd Amendment is to guarantee the God-given right for individuals to protect themselves against attack—from any (Spherical Model) southern hemisphere attacker, either from the chaos side, as criminals are, or from the state tyranny side, either foreign or domestic.

·       The only purpose of an executive order is to direct federal employees in the manner in which they will enforce duly legislated laws; the executive branch does not have power to make laws for individual or all Americans.

One of the best things I’ve read in the past month is a 13-part essay by my Facebook friend Shawn Rogers. He does have a blog, with a small part there: www.sbrogerstx.blogspot.com. But to get the full essay, you’ll need to “friend” him and start reading in the last half of December 2012. One article he recommends a piece by Larry Correia, from December 20, 2012, called “An Opinion on Gun Control.” It’s a very long but worthwhile piece (18 pages, about 10,000 words). This part comes after you’ve scrolled down a ways (links are from original):

It doesn’t really make sense to ban guns, because in reality what that means is that you are actually banning effective self-defense. Despite the constant hammering by a news media with an agenda, guns are used in America far more to stop crime than to cause crime.

I’ve seen several different sets of numbers about how many times guns are used in self-defense every year. The problem with keeping track of this stat is that the vast majority of the time when a gun is produced in a legal self-defense situation no shots are fired. The mere presence of the gun is enough to cause the criminal to stop….

So how often are guns actually used in self-defense in America? http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

On the high side the estimate runs around 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year, which dwarfs our approximately 16,000 homicides in any recent year, only 10k of which are with guns. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm Of those with guns, only a couple hundred are with rifles. So basically, the guns that the anti-gunners are the most spun up about only account for a tiny fraction of all our murders.

But let’s not go with the high estimate. Let’s go with some smaller ones instead. Let’s use the far more conservative 800,000 number which is arrived at in multiple studies. That still dwarfs the number of illegal shootings. Heck, let’s even run with the number once put out by the people who want to ban guns, the Brady Center, which was still around 108,000, which still is an awesome ratio of good vs. bad.

So even if you use the worst number provided by people who are just as biased as me but in the opposite direction, gun use is a huge net positive. Or to put it another way, the Brady Center hates guns so much that they are totally cool with the population of a decent sized city getting raped and murdered every year as collateral damage in order to get what they want.

Unlike the DOJ (I’m referring to the Fast and Furious debacle), I am in favor of keeping guns—of any kind that will shoot even a single bullet—out of the hands of violent criminals. That is already the law. So it’s puzzling why it would take four full years before this president finally mentions to his employees that they should enforce that law.

I am also in favor of keeping guns out of the hands of the criminally insane, even if they haven’t yet committed a violent crime. But doctors are not employees or agents of the federal government, and any directive to them is an overreach. And, as with all power overreaching, the unintended consequences bring about almost exactly the opposite of the stated intended result. If people thank that simply going for treatment for a mental illness, either for themselves or for a family member, could result in forfeiting their 2^nd Amendment rights, that discourages people from seeking treatment, resulting in more untreated mentally ill.

While I appreciate having a criminal data base, so that background checks can be quick and thorough, I am against any federal database identifying law-abiding citizens who own guns. There is no Constitutional reason for such a database, but it does hold the potential of laying the groundwork for the federal government to move ahead with an incremental encroachment on our civil liberties.

I appreciate the Texas response to the president’s overreach, pointing out the hypocrisy. I also appreciated the Wyoming response, to arrest any federal agent who attempts to enforce federal gun laws in that state. A growing number of states have responded that they will nullify any attempt by the federal government to infringe on the 2^nd Amendment rights of citizens within their states. In addition, various US Congressmen, such as Rand Paul, are putting forth legislation to nullify those 23 executive orders, defund them, and press the Senate to file a court challenge to them.

Standing up against tyranny is exactly what the 2^nd Amendment is about, so that’s what I like to see.

That being said, one of the interesting things I came across this week was Glenn Beck’s suggestion on Monday that there is a better way of standing up against tyranny than shooting any federal agent that shows up to take your guns. Resist, but don’t attack. (The full video clip is below.) I’m reminded that Ghandi spent a number of years in prison, when the government was in the wrong to put him there. It may be that, before Americans have a moral right to violently respond, a number must first be willing to say no, stand firm, and suffer even wrongful incarceration, to prove the wrongfulness of the tyranny—which is something best thought of in the calmness of theory before any of us must face it in reality.