The First Gift of Christmas

In The Polar Express, the first gift of Christmas is what Santa gives to a child he chooses from among those who got taken by magical train to the North Pole on Christmas Eve. It’s a beautiful storybook. But that isn’t really the first gift.

Sometimes when we look at gift giving at Christmas, we go all the way back to the wise men from the east, who brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to honor the newborn king. We give gifts to each other, following their example, to celebrate the special occasion.

But theirs wasn’t the first gift of Christmas either.

“The first gift of Christmas was a simple gift given by a father to all his children, to us. He gave us His son, the Christ. He is the gift.” That is the description for a video offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called “He Is the Gift.” It’s a beautiful little package, under three minutes, reminding us where to focus, and what to remember, while we spend time with friends and family. 

 

One of my favorite things to do, to celebrate Christmas, is to reenact the nativity story. We’ve been doing it on Christmas Eve every year since our second son, Economic Sphere, was the right age to play the baby Jesus.

I have a lot of random ornaments on our tree, but I have more nativity ornaments than anything else. And I have a few nativity scenes I’ve collected for display. I've also had my grandkids reenact a scene from the nativity for our Christmas card the last several years. This year we had them play shepherds, in a real stable with a real manger.

During a past Christmas season, the Mormons put out another beautiful video, of “The Nativity.” If you don’t have a costume box and a script to use with your family on Christmas Eve, you might want to spend eight minutes watching this together. (Or watch it together after you’ve done your reenactment.) 

 

Speaking of nativity reenactments, a couple of weeks ago a group of YouTube musicians, including The Piano Guys, Peter Hollens, David Archuleta, and many others, plus the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, plus several hundred volunteers got together and created a video of the World’s Biggest Nativity. With over 1,000 participants, I think it surpassed the previous record by several hundred. The song they do is “Angels from the Realms of Glory.” Spend five minutes with it.
 

 

Then you really have to watch the behind-the-scenes video of how they made it, and why, and how the participants felt about their experience. It’s another nearly nine minutes, but worthwhile.
 

So, that’s 2:45 for “The Gift,” 7:52 for “The Nativity,” 5:02 for “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” and 8:47 for the behind the scenes of the world’s largest nativity scene. That’s—let me get out my calculator—24:26, so a bit less than half an hour. Treat yourself. On me. As my Christmas gift to readers of The Spherical Model. Merry Christmas!

Civilization in the Home

Mr. Spherical Model and I are coming up on our 33^rd anniversary later this week. We’ve been married about a decade longer than we were growing up and single. I guess that’s an accomplishment, in today’s world. In our typical circles—among extended family and friends from church—we’re very normal. We’ve done a lot of normal (but exceptional in the world) things that have contributed to civilization.

To start, we followed the formula for avoiding poverty:

1.      Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.      Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.      Stay married.

4.      Obtain at least a high school diploma.
 

We went beyond that, as is very normal among Mormons. We were around 22 when we met. I had a college degree; he had spent two years as a missionary and was still working on a degree—eventually going on for a master’s degree. We were married in the beautiful, historic Salt Lake Temple, which requires that we come there worthy, including no sex before marriage.

We spent a few years in poverty, as students. It was the early ‘80s, with the country still digging out of the malaise of the Carter years, and sometimes we were without employment. Sometimes dinner was macaroni and cheese. And I think there was a year we didn’t go out to dinner except for our anniversary. (That meant not even McDonald’s.)

We lived in a trailer park, along with many other student couples, which we not-too-affectionately called “Poverty Park.” The jalousie windows froze shut in winter. Mold grew on the walls and crawled down toward us. We had a leak in a wall once that led to our waking up to mushrooms growing in the living room carpet.  Leaks in the ceiling used to soak into the popcorn ceiling (a standard sort of ceiling texture back in the day), and the plaster would plop down into my cooking. The swamp cooler (an air conditioner that is only useful in desert places) used to blow out the gas stove, which was kind of dangerous, since the gas was still flowing. Elm bugs used to infiltrate the add-on where our laundry and storage were; I was still finding their carcasses in boxes for another ten years.

But we grew a garden all around our place, so we had enough tomatoes to can. And we had music, because I brought a piano into the marriage. And we had books galore—one can never have enough bookshelves. We didn’t have a television for the first three years, but it didn’t seem to matter.

We never assumed that poverty was our destiny. It was just something to go through during the college years. It took probably five years before we nudged our way into the middle class, so it took some patience. It took eight years before we bought our first small home. And another nine years before we moved to Texas and built the nice home we’re in now. It’s the nicest home I’ve ever lived in, but still well below median for Houston. Thinking worldwide, though, we probably look really wealthy.

We’ve managed this mainly on a single income, since I became a stay-at-home mom in 1987. We still do our own lawn care and house cleaning. We still mostly cook at home. When our kids needed something better than public schools, we homeschooled. We’re not close to moving into the upper-middle class even now, but we’re comfortable.

We were both educated and capable of making a decent income. We could have both done that singly. But statistically speaking, the odds are that we made more together, even without my income most of those years, than we would have separately. Married people seem to have more purpose in working toward goals, such as buying  a home, and building wealth. Because there are other people counting on us.

Prosperity is one of the benefits of marriage.

There are also health benefits. Married men and women have significantly longer life expectancy than singles. Long-time married to one spouse have the best health scores. Married elderly are a lot less likely to be depressed and lonely, and more likely to stay active. I happened upon a story this week, in The Family in America newsletter, about marriage contributing to heart health.*  That has been known for men for some time. But this study showed that, while married and single middle-age to senior women have equal rates of developing heart disease, married women are 28% less likely to die from a heart attack. The study couldn’t identify the reason: no one else around to tell about the symptoms or notice the collapse? less social interconnectedness? or just less will to live for the sake of others? They simply found that, all other indicators aside, in a very large study in Britain, married women are more likely to live.

Then there are the quality of life issues. Family. I looked for the “deathbed quote,” and there are so many variations, it’s hard to identify the first, but this one is essentially it:

What do most people say on their deathbed? They don't say, 'I wish I'd made more money.' What they say is, 'I wish I'd spent more time with my family and done more for society or my community.'—David Rubenstein

What happened when we married was the birth of a family. We believe families are forever. We have three children (plus one waiting for us in heaven). Our three are grown, married, and beginning families of their own. Next month we get a third grandchild.

Grandchildren are one of the best benefits of marriage.
Little PS1 and Little PS2 at their great grandparents' farm

My parents had four children, all married. Added together, we’ve raised twelve kids, and so far we have ten grandchildren. My husband’s parents had six children. Together they have parented 30, and are, if I'm counting right, grandparents to 15. Because we’re mostly going beyond replacement rate, we’re increasing. And, for the most part, we’re increasing in contributing, educated, moral members of society. We’re building civilization.

We do that better than single people do. That’s just a fact. Statistically speaking, and also in our case in reality. Raising children with love, security, stability, opportunity—along with adequate food and shelter—leads to adults who form families and build more civilization.

Life is not about how successful you are in a career; it’s about success within your home. As David O. McKay famously said, “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” If you don’t have civilization at home, you’ll be hard pressed to find it in your surrounding world.

You may be one of those without a successful family due to circumstances you can’t control. Still, what you can control is civilization within yourself. Like attracts like. If you live a civilized life, whatever your circumstances, you will find pockets of civilization to connect to. Even when you can’t choose all of the details of your life, you can always choose truth, love, and ultimate good.

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* Bryce J. Christensen and Nicole M. King, Forthcoming in “New Research,” The Family in America. Study: Sarah Floud et al., “Marital Status and Ischemic Heart Disease Incidence and Mortality in Women: A Large Prospective Study,” BMC Medicine 12 [2014]: 42. Web. See also http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/273837.php.

 

Random Observations

Today’s post is a few short observations on what’s been going on in the news, and whatever else comes to mind.

 

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I’m glad Trey Gowdy is on the team of truth. Jonathan Gruber didn’t have a chance, repeating a scripted line given to him as PR damage control. He never said he didn’t believe the things he repeatedly said about manipulating through deception to push Obamacare through; he said it was wrong to say those things, even to those who agreed with him, because word leaks out.

If you have to lie about your policies and their likely outcome in order to persuade people to go along, maybe they’re not such good ideas. Watch 6 entertaining minutes here: Post by C-SPAN.

 

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Whites aren’t privileged. Most people, of any race, are just doing their best to get by, get along, get ahead, against great hurdles—often placed there by too much government interference. If some are less privileged, or “underprivileged,” we need to help with urgent needs, and teach the principles that lead to self-reliance and success. Start with the formula for overcoming poverty in America:

1.      Don’t have sex before age 20.

2.      Don’t have sex until after marriage.

3.      Stay married.

4.      Obtain at least a high school diploma. 

 

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Hypocrisy is exemplified by those who claim there’s a huge portion of the American people who don’t value life if it’s black. That may be true, but totally opposite of how they mean it. They fail to call attention to the raging black-on-black murder rate in places like Chicago; apparently it’s OK for black criminals to kill other blacks, but it isn’t OK for white police officers to kill during dangerous arrest situations. And they fail to value the lives of black babies: 40% of black pregnancies are aborted; 75% of black babies are born without two married parents, which leads to endemic poverty and crime. See formula for overcoming poverty, above. 

 

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Even if Jeb Bush were right that Common Core was the best standardized education system that mankind could come up with (which it isn’t), he would still be wrong. Because it’s standardized. There is nothing in the US Constitution about education. That means it’s not an enumerated power; it is therefore left to the people and to the states. Anything done at a less local level than necessary will do more harm than good. If Common Core is so good, then put it in the free market and let individual school districts (or better yet, individual teachers, or individual families) decide whether to use it in part or whole. If it can’t tolerate competition, it isn’t good enough. I already know better than some bureaucrat in Washington how my children learn best, and I’m the expert on what I want my children to learn.  

 

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The  Republicans just won handily in the House and Senate—and state governorships and legislatures. The people are saying they repudiate Obama’s policies, and Democrat policies. PR threats about shutting down the government being blamed on Republicans are pointless. Refusing to fund what the president wants is not equivalent to shutting down government. The president, throwing a tizzy fit and saying the Republicans want no government, and then spending money to shut down things that aren’t even federally funded—remember when he shut down private parking at the privately operated Mt. Vernon, and shutting down access to private hotels and restaurants on the Blue Ridge Parkway (which wasn’t closed)? Remember hiring personnel to block the view to Mt. Rushmore from public roadways, to make shutting down national parks more painful? Yeah, that was our president.  

He also equated failing to lift the debt ceiling to failing to pay our debts. Because he’s willing to break contracts if he doesn’t have unlimited funds. 

I think the American public is beginning to realize he’s an ineffectual liar, and that the liberal media have been shilling for him. That’s why alternative news sources are turned to more than the old liberal dinosaurs.  

The point is, the Congressional Republicans ought to use their constitutional power of the purse to rein in the power monger’s overspending. 

 

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The Supreme Court just heard oral arguments on the Little Sisters of the Poor and some of the other 100 cases related to the Obamacare HHS mandate. We don’t know the results yet. But it should be obvious that, anyone who is forcing Catholic nuns to pay for abortion-causing drugs is on the wrong side. 

 

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Avoiding watching inflammatory video clips allows for a more open mind. This has been working for me since Rodney King days. When the grand jury came out in the Garner case in New York last week, my first thought was, “The grand jury must know more than the news is telling us. I wonder what it is.” I did not jump to the knee-jerk conclusion that the grand jury was wrong because of a 15-second video. Some of the additional information has come out. There was no damage to the trachea; there was no evidence of choking as cause death. What we may have thought we saw on the video looks different if you have enough additional information.  

That said, there’s something really warped about charging more in tax for an item—even an “evil” product like cigarettes—than the item itself costs. Cigarettes cost $4.50 a pack in Kentucky, but $14.50 in New York. And the government assumes they can charge that without causing a black market? And then they spend police resources stamping out black market sales rather than dealing with serious crime.

A wiser government would have let the free market handle cigarettes, leaving Eric Garner alive. A wiser Eric Garner—one who didn’t make a living selling on the black market, and one who didn’t resist arrest, and maybe one who had better maintained his health—might also still be alive. The loss of a life is tragic. But there’s no evidence that it’s racially caused. 

 

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So, let me get this straight: torturing of enemy combatants is so evil that America must risk the lives of people working in her service to atone for that badness. And “torturing” doesn’t include maiming, permanently injuring, or endangering life. However, killing an enemy combatant, without trial, without indictment—even when said person is a US citizen—and sometimes killing innocents nearby (euphemistically referred to as collateral damage) is OK.  

If you were a person given two choices: be captured and “tortured” for information by Americans or Islamists, you’d clearly choose Americans. If you were a supposed enemy combatant, unless you were into suicide missions, you would likely prefer being taken captive by Americans—where you have the guarantee of relative comfort and health and life—to being taken out by a drone, possibly along with your son and friend. 

Our president and cohorts seem to think the use of enhanced interrogation with the guaranteed limits listed above is beneath American values, but execution without trial along with possible innocents is copasetic. 

I’m not willing to say there should never be drone strikes against our enemy in the war against terrorists. But I do have a problem with a president who decides to be judge, jury, and executioner against an American citizen; if there is probable cause, there should at least be an indictment. As for torture—real torture—that’s already against the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war. But terrorists are non-uniformed enemy combatants, to whom the Geneva Convention rules do not apply.  

Since they are human, however, shouldn’t we avoid torturing them? Define your terms. If torture is sadistic, cruel and risks permanent damage or health, then I have seen no evidence that the US has done that. But I wouldn’t be sad if our enemies thought we were willing to torture. If we must do PR with the enemy, it should be to make them fear us more, not less. 

I would not use the term torture for making someone really uncomfortable temporarily for the purpose of extracting valuable urgent information. What we’ve seen evidence of might not seem nice, but it’s not even in the same category as beheading innocents. So, in summary, Dianne Feinstein’s report is hypocritical, politically motivated, and mainly untrue.

How Much Is 18 Trillion?

How Much Is a Million?
by David M. Schwartz
illustrated by Steven Kellogg

We have a picture book in our home library that gives perspective to large numbers. It’s called How Much Is a Million? After dealing with the concept of a million, it goes on to a billion, and then a trillion.

This past week the national debt passed the $18 Trillion mark. I thought this would be a good time to get some perspective. I’ll start with the book.

If you stood children on one another’s shoulders, a trillion of them would reach to Saturn’s rings during the closer parts of its orbit. The book calculates the average elementary schooler as 4’ 8”, with shoulders approximately at 4’. The column of a trillion would be 758 million miles.

Multiply that by 18, and it’s 13,644,000,000 miles (13.6 Billion). A light year is approximately 5.8 Trillion miles, so we’re looking at a column of kids 3 light years long to represent our national debt.

If you take on the task of counting to a trillion (taking 6 seconds per number, because, after a while the numbers get long and hard to say quickly), it would take you 200,000 years. It’s not humanly doable.

Multiply by 18, and that’s 3.6 Million years. Our country is only 238 years old. So we’d have used 1.5 Million persons continuously counting each of those 238 years to reach that number.

Except that this isn’t how it went. We didn’t build up the debt evenly each year. At the time the National Debt Clock (a billboard that measures the debt in real time) was built, in1989, the national debt was just under $3T. For a couple of years, 2000-2002, the debt was decreasing. Then, in the follow-up to 9/11, including wars, it began rising again. In 2008 it passed $10T for the first time. It stood at $10.6T when Obama took office. Since 2012, the debt has been increasing on average $2.41B a day (229 years of counting every day, if you want a comparison). The graph below shows we're approaching the asymptote--the sort of damage that happens if you do dangerous things like dividing by zero.

This chart is from the National Debt Clock FAQ page.
I added by hand the data after 2006 to 2014.

About 70% of it has accrued during the current administration—up $7.45T so far, with two years to go. It took only 407 days to go from $17T to $18T, almost 200,000 times faster to accrue that debt than to count it. At this rate (rather than faster), it will grow to $20.8T by the time the president leaves office. He will approach doubling the national debt during his administration. He took all the accumulated debt of 232 years, and he made a bet of double or nothing (with no possibility for nothing) while in office.

More perspective. If there are 317 million US citizens, the cost per citizen of the current debt (not including interest payments) is $57,800 per person. So, for a household of four, that’s $231,200. If the debt increases another $2.4T in the next two years, that’s an additional $7,571 per person, or $30,284 per family of four—totalling $261,484. You could buy a very nice home in the Houston area for that amount. But you won’t, because it’s already spent.

This is the cost to you over and above any current costs to you, such as taxes, fees, regulations, higher health care costs…. This president will have overspent at least $65,371 for every US citizen.

You may point out that spending comes from Congress. Right. Except that, since 2006 when Pelosi and Reid took over as majority leaders, there hasn’t been a budget. Congress started putting out budgets again after the 2010 win, but the Senate has not voted on a budget. They have failed to do that basic job, and have used, as preferred practice, the stop-gap measure of a continuing resolution, which keeps the current spending levels in place plus adjustment for inflation. In other words, at a time when we are spiraling into debt, they have made certain that there can be no spending cuts.

The people have spoken, loudly, this November election. So starting next year we will get a budget through both the House and the Senate. But in the meantime, there is another continuing resolution that will last possibly through September. Then we can get a real budget, which will go into effect essentially in 2016. It will be at least a year or two beyond that before we see whether there’s even evidence of putting the brakes on the rising debt.

I‘ve written about the mounting national debt before. “Global Money Supply and Debt” shows the National Debt as a quarter of all the money currently in the world—back when it was a quaintly small (by comparison) $14.7T. “$20 ought to Do” is about the cost of essential government, which is different from national debt, but spending beyond essential (beyond budget) is what leads to the national debt. It seemed bad then; now it’s worse and worsening.

When numbers get this big, they seem unreal. That’s why the attempt to give perspective. I hope it helps.

Extremist Views

You may have missed a news item that happened this past Friday, obscured by Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas shopping sales. I did not go to a store that day. Shopping is kind of an ordeal on normal days, so I avoid the crowded ones. So I guess that made me available to hear the occasional news story.

There was a shooting in Austin, Texas. An armed gunman shot up the downtown area, using about 200 rounds, tried to burn the Mexican Consulate, and was actually shooting at the police station when he was taken down by a single shot from police. What caught my attention was the assumption that he was a “right-wing extremist.” That is said about so many individual incidents, as an assumption early on when little information is known, and almost always it turns out to be a left-wing extremist nut job, which we eventually find out without any retraction or explanation for the error.

Houston Chronicle, Tuesday, December 2, 2014

So this time I was surprised to find a follow-up story on Tuesday in the Houston Chronicle, not even front page: “Police say shooter harbored extremist views.” Apparently he really did have extremist views. They weren’t of the freedom-loving sort that could possibly be considered conservative—or, in the language of the Spherical Model, northern hemisphere. But they were what are sometimes called “right-wing.”

I thought this would serve as an example of the Spherical Model giving us better vocabulary for identifying ideology.

Here’s what the story says investigators found inside the perpetrator’s van, according to Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo:

[A] copy of “Vigilantes of Christendom,” a 1990 book associated with the Christian Identity movement known as the Phineas Priesthood. The shadowy sect holds religious beliefs against banking, abortion and a strong central government and espouses anti-Semitic and racist views. The book describes the Phineas Priesthood as Christian guerrillas who avenge Judeo-Christian traitors. A handwritten note referred to [the perpetrator] as a “priest in the fight against anti-God people.”

Looking for motivations, the FBI noted, from acquaintances of the perpetrator, “that he couldn’t find a job and believed immigrants were given more services than he was.”

OK. Beyond that, he seemed to be delusional about starting a revolution. He thought his “revolutionary” act would set off a series of revolutionary events from other fellow revolutionaries. Or something. But he acted alone. There was no broader group helping him.

I am Christian. I have never heard of the Christian Identity movement, so I looked that up. They are a loose collection of  “churches” with a white supremacist theology. Is that a subset of Christianity? Not if you read the scriptures, which declare that “God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that heareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34-35), and “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:28-29). It's not the identity; it's the behavior that qualifies a person as belonging to Christ.

So, if you’re a follower of Christ, you love and accept all people who work righteousness. You don’t “avenge” yourselves against others because of race, gender, or some other tribal issue. You live in peace with all others willing to live in peace.

Normally I allow others to define whether or not they are Christian; as a Mormon, I understand the irrationality of excluding someone just because they don’t share all your same beliefs. But in this case, I’d say that randomly shooting in a crowded city (fortunately no one but the shooter was killed), intending to murder innocent people and cause property damage—it’s safe to say Christ wouldn’t like your associating that with his name. That may be the quintessence of using the Lord’s name in vain.

But there’s the additional difficulty of not being able to find a job with the immigrants getting more services that he was. That could motivate a person to frustration, even anger. But there are ways toward improvement that don’t include shooting up a large city.

What this perpetrator did was incite chaos, as the alternative to state control: he chooses southwest quadrant chaotic tyranny to southeast quadrant statist tyranny, from what I can tell. He may be anti-state, but he isn’t pro-freedom.

I was puzzled about the anti-banking belief of the Phineas Priesthood, which I had also never heard of. So I looked them up too. They are not what we’d call a religion, or even an organization. But believers (anyone who self-declares such beliefs) is one. They are known as terrorists—for abortion bombings in the Pacific Northwest in 1996, and also bank robberies. I don’t know why they hate the idea that people can store their accumulated wealth in a way that allows the capital to be invested and bring in interest. They apparently don’t understand economics, if they think robbing a bank is an appropriate way to encourage prosperity.

The economic question that decides whether you’re in the northern hemisphere or not is whether the person who earns the income gets to decide how to spend it. They may be right that a too-big central government takes too much in taxes. But the northern hemisphere solution is to lower taxes to cover only essential government roles (not to zero taxes and no government), and allow individuals to decide on the rest. The southern hemisphere chaos alternative is to rob and plunder. There isn’t anything conservative or prosperity oriented about that.

So, we can agree this guy was an extremist. We could even call him a terrorist. But, as with all other terrorists, he believes in southern hemisphere chaotic tyranny. He may have rationalized his behavior differently than Islamist terrorists do, but his ideas fit in the same quadrant of the sphere as theirs. There is no way to get freedom, prosperity, and civilization through heinous terrorist acts.

Conservatives want to conserve and/or restore freedom, prosperity, and civilization by following the principles that get us there, and by convincing—through example and persuasive words—enough others to choose the northern hemisphere as well.

When someone refers to right-wing extremists, they almost always mean southern hemisphere chaotic tyranny. That is every bit as far from freedom, prosperity, and civilization as you can get. They are, literally, polar opposites.

But when they use the same term to refer to people who want the freedom of small, limited government, free enterprise, and cultural practices that create civilization—like many actual Christians, most Tea Party conservatives, people who honor the US Constitution, homeschoolers, entrepreneurs, and just basic decent people—then that is a lie. They are probably using that lie to discourage moving northward, where such people might not have the power to dominate.

If we can change the language, we can change the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. And then we change behavior. Then we get to enjoy freedom, prosperity, and civilization. That’s my private little revolution going on here at the Spherical Model.

Contrasting Civilization and Savagery in Ferguson

It has been a week now since the verdict came from the grand jury in Ferguson, MO, not to indict police officer Darren Wilson. I watched the press announcement by the district attorney (video and transcript available through C-SPAN). He was clear; he was thorough. He also provided a packet of material, including pretty much every iota of information set before the grand jury (available here).

Robert McCulloch, St. Louis, MO, Prosecutor
photo from here

There were, in the streets, people waiting for the announcement without the details. They did not want to know why a grand jury would not indict; they wanted an excuse to riot.

We have here the contrast between civilization and savagery.

Civilization abides by the law, and when it sees unfairness in the law, seeks to change the law through the appropriate process at the appropriate level for that law.

Savagery breaks the law and blames society for the negative consequences, and breaks more laws in defiance of their civilizing purpose.

It is a tragedy that a young man had to die. But I haven’t heard a single good suggestion on how to change a broken system—or even anything broken about the system. A very large young man, on drugs, robs a store, shoving the (Asian) store owner on his way out with unpaid-for merchandise. Minutes later, when a report of the robbery is being sent to police officers nearby, he’s walking down the middle of the street, where he will attract the attention of law enforcement. He doesn’t take direction to get out of the street, but reaches in to a police vehicle, attacks the officer, goes for his gun, threatens his life.

When the officer shoots, still with the perpetrator looming over him within the police car, the man begins to run away. He has just represented himself as a threat; it is the officer’s duty to pursue to see where he goes, particularly because this is near residential areas; people could be harmed by this man. In Officer Wilson’s statement, he never intended to apprehend the big, dangerous man alone. He had called for backup and was just keeping eye contact. But Michael Brown turned around and started coming at the officer.

Considering the previous attempt on the officer’s life, just moments before, there were a lot of things the officer could fear: another physical attack that might knock him out; losing control of the weapon and having it used on him and on other innocent civilians. He fired several rounds at the charging man. He saw a flinch, so he knew he had hit him. He paused. Michael Brown didn’t do the normal thing—stop, hold up his empty hands, surrender. After being shot, he continued to charge at the officer. He kept charging, despite additional bullet wounds. Nothing stopped him but the final head shot—when he was within three yards of the officer.

Unarmed does not mean not dangerous. Clearly this man was dangerous and was exhibiting threatening behavior. Would it have been nice if we had some sort of instantaneous tranquilizer gun, instead of real bullets? Maybe. But when you’re up against a criminal with real bullets, you might not want to risk a slow response to his getting hit. And you might not know in the moment all the details that get examined after the fact. So officers carry guns, and I think we’re in agreement that’s for our protection and theirs.

What about Tasers? Good in some circumstances. But you have to be quite close, with all circumstances right. And there is always a chance they could still cause death. So I’m still waiting to hear what problem exists with the system.

There was one sure, certain way this tragedy could have been avoided: Michael Brown could have behaved less like a thuggish threat and more like a civilized human being.

He could have raised his hands to show he had no weapon. He could have respectfully obeyed the officer. He would probably still be alive if he had done everything wrong except for charging at Officer Wilson even after receiving bullet wounds. Stopping at any point would have saved his life.

The circumstances would have been the same if a man of a different color had behaved as Michael Brown did. It’s sad that this young man didn’t get straightened out in time to see a better future. But his choices that day made it so that any police officer simply doing his job would follow essentially the same procedures as Officer Wilson.

It would have been a travesty to put this officer on trial when all the evidence validated his version and discounted the contradictory eye-witness accounts. (Witness 10 corroborates, for example. Paul Cassell, for Volokh Conspiracy, a law blog, discusses that here.)

There has been discussion about how rare it is for a DA not to recommend an outcome for the jury. There’s some context for that. Usually a DA is certain he has enough evidence for probable cause—and probably for an eventual conviction. The grand jury is there to make sure there’s not corruption in the process; the DA must actually have the evidence. In this case the DA knew he did not have sufficient evidence to prosecute the officer. In normal circumstances (i.e., without the media circus and riot instigation), the officer would simply have been examined and dismissed, since he followed procedure. The grand jury was only used in this case to satisfy those claiming an injustice had been done. If the DA simply dismissed, the complaints could continue. (Paul Cassell again gives a good rundown of the grand jury procedure, here. Cassell has spent the week going through the reports. He also has good commentary on the self-defense argument and the supporting physical evidence.)

What is puzzling in the aftermath is to see, in the face of clear evidence, that a “tribe” of racist blacks, mainly, insist on demonstrating their displeasure through rioting, looting, burning—of unrelated business people. (We talked about “tribalism” last month, including mentioning this case. It’s worth a re-read.) One store taken down the first night was a cake decorating shop, owned by a young black woman, who had saved up after starting small and mobile, and had put everything into her business, opening up just in June.

First of all, the narrative about this case being anti-black is bogus; it’s about someone being prevented from acting savagely among civilized people. People who do what Michael Brown did don't get a pass just because of their skin tone. Second, how does it prove society is unfair and uncivilized to blacks when blacks go out afterward and savagely cause mayhem? It doesn’t. And third, targeting innocent businesses—even black-owned ones—is a particularly ineffective way of claiming society is unfair to these otherwise deserving blacks. “We’re more civilized than you, and that’s what we’re showing you by going out and destroying random property.” Hmm.

But one thing I’d like to point out here is that love of goodness—love of fellow human beings, love of civilization—will win. We have seen some stories this week.

As Mr. Rogers is quoted as saying, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” That is true now, as in any civilization.

image found on Pinterest

One example concerns Natalie Debose, the cake decorator whose place was trashed. Online, people started gathering money to help her rebuild, and last report I read the crowdsourcing had raise $140,000 for her, without government help.

One example is a group of four young black men, who armed themselves and descended on a business—to protect it from the rioters. Some confusion ensued, and the business owner had to validate to police that they were there to help. So it took more than a little bravery on their part. But they saw good that needed doing, and they did it.

Another story mentioned a woman who stood up to armed thugs about to attack a Papa John’s pizza shop. She wasn’t the owner, didn’t even work there. She just saw where the thugs were headed and stood up to them. I don’t know her name (or even her race), but she’s very brave.

Standing up against tyranny—including the chaotic kind—is what civilized people do. Civilized people think, build, love, and stand strong. Savages gnash their teeth, hate, hurt, and destroy.

The civilized world is a better place to live. Anyone willing to live the rules that bring about civilization is welcome to live among the civilized.

Thanksgiving

I'm cooking today. Very little time to write. If I were more like the Pioneer Woman blog, I would have beautiful photos and recipes. But, alas, those are not my specialties.

We have a crowd here: our son Political Sphere and family, a nephew and family, a couple of other friends. And a dog or two in the chaos.

We have plenty.

I'm thankful we can be together, and watch little kids grow and learn. Little Political Sphere 2 has recently decided to talk--and talk and talk. We thought he was the quiet one. While LPS 1 has quite suddenly, since starting kindergarten, gotten quiet. It's an adjustment.

We don't have son Economic Sphere with us, but after dinner for us it will be the morning of a day off for him (he didn't get Thanksgiving off in Korea). And I'm thankful for video chat. We will probably also video chat with daughter Social Sphere, who is dropping in with extended family for at least a couple of feasts today. I'm also grateful for the new baby joining the family in about a month and a half, even though he's preventing his mommy's travel through the holidays.

There's plenty to be thankful for. Mostly personal. So this today is just to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!