Those Who Stir Up to Anger vs. Those Who Inspire

There’s an important difference between feeling passionate about something because someone stirred you up to anger, and because someone inspired you to defend something good.

How do you know whether you’ve been stirred up to anger or inspired? Anger might be one clue.

Another clue is that stirring up tends to take one singular incident and extrapolate from there that an entire system is irreparable because of it.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Examples of Stirring up to Anger

George Floyd

George Floyd was killed while in police custody, in Minneapolis. It was on video. It appears to all Americans that he was unjustly killed in this incident. And yet, because of this incident, there were riots, lootings, murders—not just in Minneapolis, but all over the country, and even all over the world. And they continue more than a month later.

Why? What is the narrative? That this single death in this one city shows that racism is so rampant that no black is safe anywhere? And that it has always been this way, and it’s time for an uprising to stop this ubiquitous injustice? 

It’s a leap. And it’s unsupported by facts.

First, if racism were ubiquitous, you’d find a large segment of the population that cheered for the death of George Floyd, simply because of his color. You don’t see that. In fact, you hear zero examples of such views. Maybe there are some fringe racists out there in a country this large, but you’d have to seek them out and purposely give them a voice, because that viewpoint simply doesn’t have a place in our society.

The data, as we’ve gone over, shows that blacks are less likely than whites to be fatally killed in an interaction with police.

The cries of protesters for what they claim to want—to end racism, especially as it pertains to police brutality—we can accomplish today. Now. Immediately. As if by magic. Done! Simply by changing the perceptions and attitudes of the protesters. Because those goals are not only achievable; they are achieved, according to all objective measures.

So why the leap to “We need to defund the police,” or “We need to eliminate the police”? It doesn’t accomplish the stated goal. It accomplishes something else—the goal of those doing the stirring up to anger.

Bubba Wallace

Take a look at another related example, the supposed racism at Nascar, when a noose was found hanging in the garage of the only participating black Nascar driver, Bubba Wallace. The immediate response was that some racist had targeted him. Nascar was concerned. Media labeled all Nascar fans racists. In a show of solidarity with Wallace, participating Nascar drivers spontaneously walked his car to the post position—to show their racism? Exactly the opposite.

And then, it turned out the “noose” was a loop handle on the garage door, which had been there, according to photo evidence, at least since last October, so it could not have targeted Wallace. And it wasn’t intended to represent a noose at all; it was simply a looped rope to use as a garage door pull.

It’s one thing for Bubba Wallace to see it and wonder. It’s another thing for the entire world to jump to the conclusion that all of Nascar and all Nascar fans are racist—with no evidence other than a looped rope that had been there for quite some time, and was intended an entirely non-racist purpose.

Why the leap? Because someone benefits from the narrative that racism is rampant, even in a place where there has been no evidence of it. It meets some goal of those stirring-up-to-anger people.

Vanessa Guillen

How about an example other than racism? OK. There was a murder at Ft. Hood, near Killeen, Texas. US Army Spc. Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old Houston native, went missing from the base on April 22^nd. While it may not have been apparent, the search for her, with multiple investigative arms, has been ongoing since then. This past week remains were found that were thought to be hers—finally verified on Sunday. As the investigation reached this climax, investigators confronted Spc. Aaron David Robinson, and he shot himself. His girlfriend, Cecily Aguilar, has been charged with conspiracy to tamper with evidence.

mural for Vanessa Guillen in Austin
image: JayJanner/Austin American-Statesman, found here

From what I gather from various news stories, Guillen worked with Robinson on base, and saw him shortly before she went missing. The evidence seems to be that Robinson killed her by bashing her head with a hammer. Then he disposed of her body by cutting it in smaller pieces, mixing with some sort of concrete, and burying those pieces in various places. Robinson’s girlfriend, Aguilar, is believed to have participated in the disposal of the body.

Friends and family have said that Guillen complained about sexual harassment by Robinson. At this point, I do not know what details are involved in that charge, or whether they were being pursued by authorities. It seems likely that such complaints led investigators to Robinson. It appears similar to the kinds of cases that show up on NCIS (US Navy investigators) pretty regularly. While TV shows always get the criminal during the hour of their investigation, which appears to cover only days, in real life two months is not particularly slow.

There were complaints that the Army couldn’t even handle the investigation; they had to bring in an entity that finally tracked down the remains, I believe with animals. Except, an entity that handles tracking down remains would nearly always come from outside and is not unusual for such a circumstance.

And yet there are calls—including a petition on Change.org—to shut down Ft. Hood entirely, supposedly because the rampant sexual harassment on base makes it unsafe for women to be soldiers there.

That’s kind of a leap. There is only a single case we’re looking at. One piece I read from 2017 (and updated to include Guillen in the data) was trying to show that there are a mysterious number of soldiers who die at Ft. Hood. But I looked at the list. Of all non-suicide causes of death, there was only one other woman. Sexual harassment did not appear to be a factor. And that case was several years ago.

Why does the death of one woman, while tragic, lead to the call for the closing of the base because of rampant sexual assault against women?

I don’t know if sexual harassment is an ongoing problem. Wherever men and women work together closely, it tends to show up. That is not the same as rampant sexual assault and murder. Nor is there any evidence provided to show that the Army was doing anything other than pursuing the case in the time that it took to make a solid case. That 2017 story was also calling for the closing of the base. So maybe this incident is just another arrow to sling.

Extrapolating from a single incident to claim that an entire entity must be done away—that’s not caring about people of color or people of a certain sex; that is stirring up to anger for some other purpose, which seems to be a tearing down, rather than building up, purpose.

Examples of the stirring-up-to-anger variety seem endless these days. But, if we look, we can also find examples of inspiring to defend the good.

Examples of Inspiring to Defend

President Trumps’ Mt. Rushmore Speech

President Trump and First Lady at Mt. Rushmore July 3, 2020
image found here

Let’s just be honest and admit that President’ Trump’s speech at the Mt. Rushmore celebration this weekend was excellent.  And yet, here are samples of what the stirring-up-to-anger media called overtly racist, dark, and deeply divisive:

Being thankful:

Let us show our appreciation to the South Dakota Army and Air National Guard and the Air Force for inspiring us with that magnificent display of American air power, and of course our gratitude as always to the legendary and very talented Blue Angels. Thank you very much. Let us also send you our deepest thanks to our wonderful veterans, law enforcement, first responders, and the doctors, nurses, and scientists working tirelessly to kill the virus. They are working hard. I want to thank them very, very much.

July 4^th Is Historic:

We gather tonight to herald the most important day in the history of nations, July 4th, 1776. At those words, every American heart should swell with pride, every American family should cheer with delight, and every American patriot should be filled with joy because each of you lives in the most magnificent country in the history of the world and it will soon be greater than ever before.

And

Our founders launched not only a revolution in government, but a revolution in the pursuit of justice, equality, liberty, and prosperity. No nation has done more to advance the human condition than the United States of America and no people have done more to promote human progress than the citizens of our great nation.

Only in America:

We are the country of Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Frederick Douglas. We are the land of Wild Bill Hickock and Buffalo Bill Cody. We are the nation that gave rise to the Wright brothers, the Tuskegee airmen, Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Jesse Owens, George Patton, General George Patton, the great Louis Armstrong, Alan Shepard, Elvis Presley, and Muhammad Ali, and only America could have produced them all. No other place.

Anything dark or overtly racist so far? No. Not even anything covertly racist. There was a call to defend against America’s enemies:

It is time to plant our flag and to protect the greatest of this nation for citizens of every race in every city in every part of this glorious land. For the sake of our honor, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our union, we must protect and preserve our history, our heritage, and our great heroes. Here tonight before the eyes of our forefathers, Americans declare again, as we did 244 years ago, that we will not be tyrannized, we will not be demeaned, and we will not be intimidated by bad, evil people. It will not happen.

So, we’re inspired to stand together, as Americans, against bad, evil people—like those tearing down our cities and our statues and monuments. That’s what the media call divisive? They need a better dictionary.

If you’re looking for words to unite, and to inspire to defend what is good—this speech is a good place to look.

Senator Lee’s Resolution

Senator Mike Lee
image from here

Last week Senator Mike Lee of Utah put forth a resolution intended to unite Americans on what we can agree on. He starts with some “whereas” points, all of them verifiably true, both positive about America and its intent, and an acknowledgment of what we’ve been facing in recent weeks. The comes the “resolved” section:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that—

(1) the rising tide of vandalism, mob violence, and the mob mentality that feeds it—including its cruel and intolerant ‘‘cancel culture’’—should be condemned by all Americans;

(2) peaceful demonstrations and mob violence are different in kind;

(3) physical assault and property destruction are not forms of political speech but violent crimes whose perpetrators should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law; and

(4) the innocent law enforcement officers, public officials, and private citizens who suffer the mob’s violence and endure its scorn while protecting our communities from them deserve the thanks and appreciation of every American.

Senator Lee said he thought it was straightforward: Mob violence shouldn’t happen. It is happening. It should be stopped. We can all agree on this, unanimously. 

The resolution came in the wake of a shooting in Provo, UT, last week. [local accounts here] An older gentleman was driving downtown and found himself surrounded by a protest. He was very slowly trying to make his way through and out of the area. But a protester began shooting through the passenger side window of the man’s truck, and one bullet hit him. In a panic, the driver bolted through the crowd (none reported injured). People were yelling and claiming he was a white supremacist who entered the crowd on purpose to run someone over—all evidence to the contrary.

Eventually the shooter was found and is being prosecuted. But, if you’re not aware, this is an area called Happy Valley, not sarcastically. People tend to be peaceful and law-abiding and basically just decent to one another all the time. Crime and violence aren’t unheard-of, but they are less usual than most cities of this size. And the idea that the police there are racist or brutal is a figment of someone’s imagination. The protest in this city is, in itself, without merit. So there was no reason for people in the area to expect they’d run into a protest—right across the street from a Latter-day Saint temple.

Senator Lee was saying, essentially, “We can all call this wrong, can’t we?” Apparently not.

Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, insisted on adding a line specifically calling out President Trump, which would have been, not only inaccurate, but would have defeated the purpose of the politically neutral resolution. Menendez went further, referring to Lee’s description of our founding, saying it “reeks of a supremacist view,” and fails to condemn America’s “original sin, which is slavery.”

The US didn’t invent slavery; in a world in which slavery had been endemic for millennia, at last America created a setting in which “all men are created equal” could become a commonly accepted thought, and slavery could be abolished. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, wherever slavery has been abolished in the world today—including the few places to accomplish it before the US—did so because of America’s founding ideals.

So, Senator Lee’s words, to unite and inspire to defend what is good about our nation, are called racist and divisive by someone who would rather stir people up to anger.

There is clearly a division going on. But it is not being created by those who inspire to defend.

Archbishop Vigano’s Letter

About a month ago, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote an open letter to President Trump.  He described something in the opening that strikes me as true:

In recent months we have been witnessing the formation of two opposing sides that I would call Biblical: the children of light and the children of darkness. The children of light constitute the most conspicuous part of humanity, while the children of darkness represent an absolute minority. And yet the former are the object of a sort of discrimination which places them in a situation of moral inferiority with respect to their adversaries, who often hold strategic positions in government, in politics, in the economy and in the media. In an apparently inexplicable way, the good are held hostage by the wicked and by those who help them either out of self-interest or fearfulness.

There are definitely two sides. Those who seek for and inspire to defend the good are in the light. Those who stir people up to anger in an effort to tear down, destroy, intimidate, and terrorize are in the dark.

One thing about being in the light—we can see more clearly. But, as Archbishop Vigano said, we need to recognize we’re in the majority. We need to stand firm, and cast a light on what’s going on, so that those in the dark because of fear or confusion and see their way out of darkness and into the light with us.

Why We Celebrate

On this date in 1776, July 2^nd, The Resolution for Independence was signed. Some thought this would be the document and the date that would be celebrated. According to Wikipedia, it resolved that the Thirteen Colonies in America were "free and independent States," separated from the British Empire and creating what became the United States of America. It was the act of the body. But it was not yet the declaration to the world. That came two days later, July 4^th, 1776. I’m glad we went with celebrating the declaration to the world, rather than the resolution of the Continental Congress. For one reason, it says why becoming a separate and independent nation was proper and good. And it said it beautifully:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.

The Declaration of Independence 

There are ideas there that had never in the history of the world been put together as the reason to establish a new nation. Where liberty has spread around the world, it has happened because these ideas rang true for additional people. The ideas were revolutionary. And they are timeless.

A day or two ago Ben Shapiro mentioned on his show the speech President Calvin Coolidge gave in Philadelphia in celebration of the 150^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. I hadn’t been familiar with that speech, so I looked it up. Here we are 94 years later, and the words are still fresh and true. Maybe even more apparently true for those of us witnessing the assault on our ideals.

So I’d like to share some of his message. The rest of these quotes are all from Calvin Coolidge in that speech. 

These are the reasons for our celebration:

President Calvin Coolidge
image from here

[T]o reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.

This birth of a new nation was not based on geography or tribe, as had been the basis for all new nations heretofore. This new nation was based on principles. I highlighted the three main principles:

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

Even the act of declaring independence showed the order of a self-governing people:

It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world. It was not only the principles declared, but the fact that therewith a new nation was born which was to be founded upon those principles and which from that time forth in its development has actually maintained those principles, that makes this pronouncement an incomparable event in the history of government.

It was an orderly process. It wasn’t rebellion, but resistance to usurpations. It conserved rights the citizens had come to expect from lawful order:

The Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.

It was the movement of the people. Who were these people?

It was in no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.

These were God-loving people. That made their movement a spiritual movement. An irreligious people couldn’t have come up with those three founding ideals. And the people recognized the morality of their movement; they recognized God’s stamp upon it:

…Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his “best ideas of democracy” had been secured at church meetings.

Samuel Adams could say “The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven.”

They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.

Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the Colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.

In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish.

our family Bible

Their intellectual life centered around the meeting-house. They were intent upon religious worship. While there were always among them men of deep learning, and later those who had comparatively large possessions, the mind of the people was not so much engrossed in how much they knew, or how much they had, as in how they were going to live. While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures. Over a period as great as that which measures the existence of our independence they were subject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought. They were a people who came under the influence of a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power.

To carry out this self-governing experiment required a self-governing people. The documents are things of beauty, but, without the people acting on them, they would be simply pieces of paper with fancy writing on them:

The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

There might be governing details that can be improved upon, new laws written. But those three founding principles cannot be improved. They are the final word. Progress exists only in adhering to them. Any other direction is regression:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Looking back, we see the fruits of a nation that has put these ideals into action:

In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people. Even in the less important matter of material possessions we have secured a wider and wider distribution of wealth. The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guaranties, which even the Government itself is bound not to violate. If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self-government—the right of the people to rule. If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them.

It would do us well to understand their thoughts, so we can continue to think them:

Under a system of popular government there will always be those who will seek for political preferment by clamoring for reform. While there is very little of this which is not sincere, there is a large portion that is not well informed. In my opinion very little of just criticism can attach to the theories and principles of our institutions. There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes. We do need a better understanding and comprehension of them and a better knowledge of the foundations of government in general. Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been a great blessing to the world. Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought.

We’re in great need of a review of the ideals that went into the founding of our great nation. To forget is to lose. I remember. As it says in the third verse of our national anthem,

Oh, thus be it ever, when free men shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Another Bad Abortion Ruling

Everything the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on comes out today or tomorrow, since their end of term is the end of June.

It’s the divisive cases that get the attention. Today’s is an abortion case: June Medical Services v. Russo. Russo is the Interim Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health, so we could call it June Medical Services v. Louisiana Dept. of Health.

The case is very similar, according to the plurality (not majority) opinion, to the case from Texas in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. The essence is that each state legislated a law requiring doctors at abortion services to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, for the sake of women’s health.

That part of the Texas law was overturned in 2016, based on the possibility that too many abortion facilities would close, which, using the Casey standard (Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992), was deemed to have placed an undue burden on women seeking abortions.

Justice Roberts dissented in that case. But, now that it has been precedent for a whole four years, he concurs with the plurality (winning) opinion because of stare decisis:

I joined the dissent in Whole Woman’s Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided. The question today however is not whether Whole Woman’s Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.

Chief Justice John Roberts
image: Leah Millis/Associated Press, found here

The dissents explain his error, but it’s notable that, of the most controversial cases this session, he as sided with the conservatives only once—on the Seila Law decision, splitting with constitutional textualism on Bostock, DACA, and now June Medical Services. Because of personal interest? 

I wrote several times on the Whole Woman’s Health case, since it was pertinent here in Texas.

·         Texas Abortion Ruling (November 1, 2013)

·         Angels of Death (November 4, 2013)

·         Admitting Bias, Part I (August 7, 2014)

·         Admitting Bias, Part II (August 11, 2014)

·         About That Wrong Abortion Ruling (June 30, 2016)

Here’s some background on the Texas case, from my 2016 piece, which applies also to the Louisiana case:

It was a reaction to the Gosnell case, in which an abortion clinic was filthy, grisly, and engaged in late-term and post-birth abortions (i.e., murder of newborns). There were two basic requirements to make sure Gosnell-like conditions wouldn’t risk the lives of the women receiving abortions. One was that clinics would be required to have doctors with admitting privileges at a relatively nearby hospital (the miles were far enough to offer flexibility in all cases). The other was that the facilities would have to meet the same standards as other ambulatory surgical centers.

So let’s be clear: the abortion industry fought all the way to the Supreme Court to avoid securing basic health care for women.

Both states faced similar infractions in their states. Louisiana, however, wrote the legislation carefully considering the requirements the Court decided to make law following the Texas case. While the evidence below was dismissed by the plurality, Justice Gorsuch, in pointing out why legislatures are better suited to deciding these things, shares with us some of what the Louisiana legislature heard:

The legislature heard, too, from affected women and emergency room physicians about clinic doctors’ record of abandoning their patients. One woman testified that, while she was hemorrhaging, her abortion provider told her, “‘You’re on your own. Get out.’” Eventually, the woman went to a hospital where an emergency room physician removed fetal body parts that the abortion provider had left in her body. Another patient who complained of severe pain following her abortion was told simply to go home and lie down. When she decided for herself to go to the emergency room, physicians discovered a tear in her uterus and a large hematoma containing a fetal head. The woman required an emergency hysterectomy. In another case, a clinic physician allowed a patient to bleed for three hours, yet a clinic employee testified that the physician would not let her call 911 because of possible media involvement. In the end, the employee called anyway and emergency room personnel discovered that the woman had a perforated uterus and a needed a hysterectomy. A different physician explained that she routinely treats abortion complications in the emergency room when the physician who performed the abortion lacks admitting privileges. In her experience, that situation “puts a woman’s health at an unnecessary, unacceptable risk that results from a delay of care… and a lack of continuity of care.”

The dissents agree on this: the plaintiffs lack standing. (The dissents, by the way, are all written singularly, although Justice Kavanaugh concurs with most of Justice Alito’s dissent.) The law is in place to protect the health of women who seek abortions—that is the state’s interest. If there is an undue burden placed on women in order to accomplish that interest, then those women are the damaged party and entitled to be plaintiffs against the state. But there are no such women. Nor were there, I might add, in Texas.

This is a third-party complaint—from abortion providers, whose interest is in avoiding regulation on them that could cost them money or inconvenience.

Justice Gorsuch, in his dissent, points out,

The plaintiffs before us are abortion providers. They do not claim a constitutional right to perform that procedure, and no one on the Court contends they hold such a right. Instead, the abortion providers before us seek only to assert the constitutional rights of an undefined, unnamed, indeed unknown, group of women who they hope will be their patients in the future.

The Court’s granting of standing in these circumstances is extraordinary in its wrongness. Justice Alito, in his dissent, does not mince words about the political reason:

And the idea that a regulated party can invoke the right of a third party for the purpose of attacking legislation enacted to protect the third party is stunning. Given the apparent conflict of interest, that concept would be rejected out of hand in a case not involving abortion.

There are three Louisiana abortion providers in the suit, claiming to be the only providers available, comprising six doctors. And yet, even as the suit was underway before the Court, two additional providers made themselves known—but their existence was ignored in the plurality’s ruling on the case.

The doctors at these clinics were required to get admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. They claimed they made an effort but couldn’t.

Figure 1 from the SCOTUS ruling, page 32.
The numbers in parentheses are the estimation of abortions
done by that abortion doctor annually. 

As Justice Alito points out in his dissent, the plurality depended on the testimony of people who had an interest in not getting privileges:

[T]he factual finding on which the plurality and THE CHIEF JUSTICE rely—that the Louisiana law would drastically reduce access to abortion in the State—depends on the District Court’s finding that the doctors in question exercised “good faith” in their quest for privileges, but that test is woefully deficient….

[I]t primarily rests on the anecdotal testimony of June Medical’s administrator. Neither the plurality nor THE CHIEF JUSTICE explains why it should be accepted….

[T]he doctors had everything to lose and nothing to gain by obtaining privileges….

If these doctors had secured privileges, that would have tended to defeat the lawsuit….

[T]hey had an incentive to do as little as they thought the District Court would demand, not as much as they would if they stood to benefit from success.

I notice in the Texas case as well, the determination wasn’t on whether the law placed an undue burden on women, but on whether it placed a burden on abortion providers, who would then of their own volition stop providing services. The law didn’t shut down the clinics; it required an improved standard, which the providers could choose to meet or not. It they chose not to, then was it incumbent on the state to go out and help recruit providers who would meet the standard? That seems ludicrous. And yet, here we are.

The Whole Woman’s Health case added a burden on states to do some kind of balancing act that was not required in Casey. Justice Alito suggests,

The Court should remand this case for a new trial under the correct legal standards. The District Court should apply Casey’s “substantial obstacle” test, not the Whole Woman’s Health balancing test. And it should require those challenging Act 620 to demonstrate that the doctors who lack admitting privileges attempted to obtain them with the same zeal they would have exhibited if the Act were in effect and they stood to lose by failing in those efforts.

To summarize,

·         The case should never have come forward, because the plaintiffs lack standing.

·         The dependence on the anomalous Whole Women’s Health balancing standard was incorrect, as it overrode the longer-standing Casey test.

·         The case overlooked the benefits of the law for women’s health, a state interest.

·         The case assumed, without question, as fact that the doctors in question could not meet the requirements, and therefore no doctor could be found who could.

There are more. But what fascinated me was Justice Thomas’s dissent, which was very frank:

The plurality and THE CHIEF JUSTICE ultimately cast aside this jurisdictional barrier to conclude that Louisiana’s law is unconstitutional under our precedents. But those decisions created the right to abortion out of whole cloth, without a shred of support from the Constitution’s text. Our abortion precedents are grievously wrong and should be overruled. Because we have neither jurisdiction nor constitutional authority to declare Louisiana’s duly enacted law unconstitutional, I respectfully dissent.

And,

But today’s decision is wrong for a far simpler reason: The Constitution does not constrain the States’ ability to regulate or even prohibit abortion. This Court created the right to abortion based on an amorphous, unwritten right to privacy, which it grounded in the “legal fiction” of substantive due process. As the origins of this jurisprudence readily demonstrate, the putative right to abortion is a creation that should be undone.

He’s not finished. He lays out a pertinent history lesson for us—and for his apparently ignorant colleagues in the plurality:

The Court first conceived a free-floating constitutional right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). In that case, the Court declared unconstitutional a state law prohibiting the use of contraceptives, finding that it violated a married couple’s “right of privacy.” The Court explained that this right could be found in the “penumbras” of five different Amendments to the Constitution—the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth. Rather than explain what free speech or the quartering of troops had to do with contraception, the Court simply declared that these rights had created “zones of privacy” with their “penumbras,” which were “formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” This reasoning is as mystifying as it is baseless….

Just eight years later, the Court utilized its newfound power in Roe v. Wade (1973). There, the Court struck down a Texas law restricting abortion as a violation of a woman’s constitutional “right of privacy,” which it grounded in the “concept of personal liberty” purportedly protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court began its legal analysis by openly acknowledging that the Constitution’s text does not “mention any right of privacy.” The Court nevertheless concluded that it need not bother with our founding document’s text, because the Court’s prior decisions—chief among them Griswold—had already divined such a right from constitutional penumbras. Without any legal explanation, the Court simply concluded that this unwritten right to privacy was “broad enough to encompass a woman’s [abortion] decision.”…

In 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, a majority of the States and numerous Territories had laws on the books that limited (and in many cases nearly prohibited) abortion. It would no doubt shock the public at that time to learn that one of the new constitutional Amendments contained hidden within the interstices of its text a right to abortion. The fact that it took this Court over a century to find that right all but proves that it was more than hidden—it simply was not (and is not) there.

You go, Justice Thomas!

Justice Clarence Thomas
image: J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo, found here

In the Texas platform this year, our district is proposing a plank to simply outlaw abortion, in one single bill. No skirting around limits that, on their face, concede the “right” to murder some innocent life under some circumstances. We’ll see how that goes at the convention. But it’s time to stop compromising with evil and boldly go where we should have gone all along.

I’ve already written too much. But I want to add with this opening statement from Justice Gorsuch’s dissent:

The judicial power is constrained by an array of rules. Rules about the deference due the legislative process, the standing of the parties before us, the use of facial challenges to invalidate democratically enacted statutes, and the award of prospective relief. Still more rules seek to ensure that any legal tests judges may devise are capable of neutral and principled administration. Individually, these rules may seem prosaic. But, collectively, they help keep us in our constitutionally assigned lane, sure that we are in the business of saying what the law is, not what we wish it to be.

Today’s decision doesn’t just overlook one of these rules. It overlooks one after another. And it does so in a case touching on one of the most controversial topics in contemporary politics and law, exactly the context where this Court should be leaning most heavily on the rules of the judicial process. In truth, Roe v. Wade (1973), is not even at issue here. The real question we face concerns our willingness to follow the traditional constraints of the judicial process when a case touching on abortion enters the courtroom.

The Choice Is between Freedom and Coercion

There are some things we think are self-evident, such as that we our endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (which includes owning property).

But a whole lot of what was obvious, or self-evident, up until recently may not be so obvious today.

Here at the Spherical Model, we make the assumption that the good things we’re going for are freedom, prosperity, and civilization—rather than the alternatives of tyranny, poverty, and savagery. The choice seems obvious.

And yet there are many people who literally do not value freedom. It may be that they’ve had it redefined out of existence, like so many other truths. But I thought we might do a bit of awareness raising on freedom today.

Here’s how I define terms, using my 1980 Webster’s Dictionary combined with my words: 

Freedom: absence of hindrance, restraint, confinement, repression. In the political sense, it is ownership of one’s own life and the production of wealth and property that results from one’s use of life and effort. A government should protect the freedoms of life, liberty, and property; it does not grant these things, but protects them from infringement. A government that takes life, liberty, or property unjustly—when the person has not unlawfully infringed on those rights of another person—that is a tyrannical government, which is the opposite of freedom.

Political freedom means living in a society in which our God-given rights are protected rather than infringed. These would include freedoms of belief and expression, such as freedom of religion and freedom of the press, as well as freedoms of property and security, such as freedom from illegal searches and seizures and the right to bear arms.

Liberty: synonym of freedom. It is ownership of one’s own life, to pursue as one chooses, and to enjoy the fruits of one’s efforts. No person or government or other entity owns a person or controls how the person pursues happiness.

And yet, in today’s world, we have a rising generation that favors a change from our system of freedom to a tyranny they might call socialism, without knowing what that means either.

There’s another term that is useful here: Agency. Sometimes we combine it with the word free, as in free agency. You’ve probably encountered it when sports professionals leave a team and become free agents, open to a contract with another team. That might be the limit of how you've used it. But it implies the ability to choose. So you can see that agency is related to liberty.

There are various words we use as opposites to the ability to choose: coercion, oppression, tyranny.

When you look at a political ideology, you can simplify the search for the good and true by looking at its closeness to freedom, liberty, ability to choose—or by how dangerously close it is to coercion, oppression, tyranny.

·         Do you get to believe what you choose to believe?

·         Do you get to choose your profession and way of life?

·         Do you get to speak your opinions freely?

·         Do you get to associate with people you choose to associate with?

·         Do you get to enjoy the fruits of your own labors?

It wouldn’t be very convincing to offer you a truthful opposite, such as: “Wouldn’t you rather believe what we the powerful tell you to believe?” Or “Wouldn’t it be better for you if we the powerful decided what work you were allowed to do and for what pay?” Or “Wouldn’t it be better if you were allowed to speak only the words we the powerful told you to?” Or, “Wouldn’t it be better for all of us if you gave us all your earnings and we the powerful dole them out to those we favor?”

No, it has to be done more subtly than that:

·       Let’s stop others from believing things that we believe are just wrong—shut down churches, political groups, nonprofits, businesses, schools, or any individual or organization that does or says things we don’t like.

·       Let’s stop others from making a living in ways we don’t like—like using fossil fuels, or maybe just because the business owners believe things we don’t like.

·       Let’s cancel or coerce others to make them stop hurting us by saying things we don't believe—because their words are violence.

·       Let’s take the money from the rich and give it to the poor, like us, who are more deserving.

You get the idea. To someone with some enlightenment, the “progressive” or “woke” or “socially just” way is pretty dark. It takes away individual choice. It oppresses individuals. It rules over people tyrannically. If that’s OK with you as long as they’re on your side, not only is that evil of you, but it’s also just a matter of time until the powers-that-be come after you for some perceived infraction.

It’s a continuation of a very old war—a war that predates earth history. It’s a war between good and evil, between light and dark. I told this story here.   

Let me tell another old story that maybe we can apply. Versions of it show up in fantasy literature all the time. It’s from the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, chapter 13 mostly. But I’ll be retelling it in a slightly more narrative form.

"La Bete de la Mer" tapestry in France, depicting
John the Revelator observing the dragon and the sea beast
image from Wikipedia

There is an evil force, in the form of a dragon, who is a scourge to all the earth. He is an enemy to light, goodness. He doesn’t build; he destroys. Chaos and coercion are his right- and left-hand weapons. He controls two monsters, hideous in form and function, who do his bidding. One monster comes up from the depths of the waters over all the earth. She is filthiness and all the worldly evils, and she rides and controls the powers of rulers and organizations over all the earth. She seduces them with power, and brings them together in secret oaths, so that they simultaneously threaten and support one another in their schemes to amass greater and greater power, buying and selling the souls of men.

The other monster comes up from the earth. Its form appears much less dangerous than the dragon, but it speaks with the tongue of the dragon. It voices the dragon’s words, which are lies. Some call it the false prophet. Another interpretation might be propaganda. It can be found flowing out of ivory and other towers, in and through the airways—redefining in the dragon’s lying lexicon what is “good” and persuading people to worship the dragon, along with his beasts.

The dragon and his forces will eventually lose in their efforts to harm and destroy all the people of the earth. Bur for now the dragon marshals his forces, stirring them up to larger and louder attacks, knowing his time is short.

What does it mean? Revelation, told in a sort of symbolic dream form, can be confusing. But suppose it does say that there will come a time when the organizations of the earth make secret agreements with one another in an effort to amass power? Is that happening? I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory; it's not theory. You might try checking these out for a sample: here, here, here, here, and here.

And about that propaganda monster—that seems like a good explanation of how:

Rioters tear down statue of
Father Junipero Serra in CA
screenshot from here

·       Religion becomes “bad,” but lasciviousness and licentiousness become “good.”

·       Treating all lives as equally valuable becomes “racist,” but favoring a particular race above all others is “social justice.”

·       An elderly friend who suggests florists who could help service a same-sex “wedding” when her religion prevents her becomes “intolerant,” but taking away that woman’s business and savings for so doing is done in the name of “tolerance.”

·       Speaking reasoned opinions with data to back them up becomes “hate speech,” but shouting down a speaker for even holding different opinions is supporting “free speech.”

·       Honoring a free nation and its flag is “hateful,” but disrespecting the flag and tearing down monuments is understandable, considering the circumstances.

You get the idea. Look at the news. Almost every story will provide an example.

The lies appeal to a certain uncivilized human characteristic: selfishness. If they’re working on you, or on someone you know, selfishness is an underlying factor, often disguised as “this makes me feel virtuous,” so you won’t look carefully enough to notice the lies.

Whether or not these are the times described in Revelation, the description seems fitting for today. We may not know how each episode will turn out, but we do know how the story ends.

In the meantime, let’s see how much loving truth-telling we can do to rescue those who might want the light of freedom, prosperity, and civilization if only they could see it.