The Prince of Peace

My life is religious every day. I’m not particularly unusual for an observant Mormon. But usually on this blog I try to translate into the principles that are accessible to every flavor of civilized person. However, this is the week of Easter, so today I’m sharing some Christian themes.

This first video is from my Church, for this year’s Easter celebration, with the theme “Prince of Peace.”

That main piece is followed up by several brief videos of people who apply in their everyday lives the concepts we learn from Christ. If you're celebrating along with me, click on each one.

·         Faith 

·         God’s Word 

·         Compassion 

·         Gratitude 

·         Prayer 

·         Forgiveness 

·         Repentance 

·         Hope 

In past years I’ve done some Easter celebrating here, one year with art. Other years with videos about the life of Christ. With music. Music. And more music. Music is the language of the angels; you hear it and feel it, and something transcendent can happen.

Here’s a bonus, a song I came across for the first time today, with children singing. It could be for any time. But it’s appropriate for Easter, with the message “He Lives and He Loves Me.”

Education Conversation Continued

I wrote on education on Monday, and there was a thought-provoking comment I’d like to respond to.

lease April 3, 2017 at 6:09 PM

Hey! I've got a couple genuine questions for you, knowing that you've spent much of your life focused on education. As long as parents have the ability to homeschool their children, how does public education usurp power from the people? Is the main issue with spending tax dollars on education or are there other ways you feel power is being taken? And 2.) while it's admirable that the general population was relatively well educated in the early 1800s, what of the slave population during the same time period? What of the many immigrants and non-English speakers who have come since? And what of the increasing number of households who need two incomes to provide for their families, and even then still can't get by? These are issues that have increased dramatically, and they are issues public education *attempts* to address. Totally imperfectly to be sure. But I can't see how a free market or philanthropy alone would do any better. As of 2011, one in five kids live in poverty--what is the incentive to supervise/educate/feed these kids, relying on philanthropy alone? It would be wonderful if parents were able to take full responsibility, but that is not the reality for most households. Help me to see what should be done.

These are good questions, and worth taking some time to respond to, in the ongoing conversation about education.

photo source

To begin, I agree with Lease that the problem looks overwhelming. And I agree that, with things as they are now, suddenly switching to a system of “pay for your own kids’ education” plus “we’ll use philanthropy to pay for the education of the poor kids” is an idea that brings on a panic attack. I’m not advocating for anything sudden, or anything that will leave a generation of kids without what they need.

I do believe in educating every child, including those whose families can’t provide. But I think right now there is a generation not getting what they need—because of the public schools.

Texas is big enough to generalize from. So let’s use some numbers from a piece I wrote in January:

[T]here are about 5.2 million K-12 students in Texas. That means 10% of kids in the US are going to school in Texas.

More fun facts: there are 130,000 students on wait lists for charter schools—which are proliferating in Texas, but can’t meet the need. Meanwhile there are 100,000 empty seats in private schools….

Also, there are 900,000 (17% of that 5.2 million) attending 1,032 failing schools in Texas. That means the school didn’t meet the minimal yearly progress (a pretty low bar) for three years in a row.

If you’re worried about 1 in 5 students being below the poverty line, a bigger worry ought to be that nearly 1 in 5 students is stuck in a school that does not educate them, but they are trapped there by the public school system with no way out—with the exception of a lottery for the lucky few who might get into a charter school.

Failing schools are most likely to be located where the poorest students live: inner cities and rural areas.

And remember, to be just above failing is a very low bar. That means huge numbers of children are trapped in public schools that do not offer them an adequate education—let alone an education tailored to help that child reach his/her potential.

Every time the school choice movement begins to get the word out, for even tiny, incremental changes, there is a huge outcry claiming this takes money away from the kids. This is during a period during which real money per student has increased manifold with no measurable increase in education outcomes.

This is, again, from my January piece, about my highly rated school district that failed my children:

·         Student enrollment has grown 30%, with a population explosion.

·         Teacher ranks have grown 50%, which is well above that population growth.

·         Non-teaching staff has grown 102%.

If you really care about educating children, why would you spend so much education money on something other than educating children?

Let me repeat the Spherical Model axiom:

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

To apply that to education, if the stated goal is to provide an education for every child, the unintended consequence of government institutionalized education is less education, especially for poor children.

This is assuming that a quality education leading to an educated next generation is actually the goal; I suspect that the real, unstated goal of government institutionalized education is control of the populace and the inculcation of radical post-modernist ideas. I wrote about John Dewey, a founding father of modern public education here.

So, in answer to Lease’s first question, there is a problem with taking my tax dollars for public education while failing to provide my children with the education they need. And there’s also a problem with the government’s attempts to control the minds of children. There are attacks by CPS, as though homeschooling your own children is equivalent to neglecting them. There are attempts to control what is taught, attempts to “approve” of curriculum, attempts to enforce dissemination of certain messages and exclusion of other messages.

In Texas we have a lot of homeschool freedom—but we have that because of constant vigilance to prevent the (relatively conservative) legislature from encroaching on parental rights to see to the care and upbringing of their own children.

Daughter Social Sphere, citizen lobbying at the
state capitol, one of our homeschool adventures

I do believe the only antidote must consist of free market plus philanthropy. But Lease asks, with the overwhelming numbers of children whose families can’t afford to educate them, how can free market and philanthropy possibly fill that need?

As things are now, maybe they can’t. But I’m not in favor of keeping things as they are. The market for educational options needs to grow. We need more choices, better quality, and lower prices—which are the usual and expected results of innovation in the free market.

And we also need some family changes. In order for a society to support the exceptions to families providing for themselves, there needs to be a critical mass of families with married mother and father taking care of their own children. I’m guessing a critical mass is somewhere north of 75%. If nearly all children are born to married parents, and no more than 25% are then raised by single parents, poverty is greatly reduced. We know the way to avoid 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.

That’s a pretty low bar. But we’re not meeting it. Only a few of us are teaching it.

Economic and social spheres interrelate. If we don’t value and preserve marriage and family, then we get the calamities we see in inner cities today. If we don’t have schools—and families—getting this message through, we’re stuck in a downward spiral, and I have no answer other than changing direction.

Meanwhile, here are some direction-changing ideas worth acting on:

Idea 1: Get rid of the US Department of Education—and have the money that has been sent there be given back to the states for use on education. My concern here is that, simply getting rid of the Department of Education wouldn’t be combined with a cut in US taxes (or spending), and the money counted on now for education would simply disappear into the abyss of national debt. That must not happen.

Idea 2: Have all education money attach to the child. If the goal is to educate every child, then it is obvious that is not equivalent to funding public schools. No family should be forced to pay taxes for public schools and then also pay for their child’s education when the public schools do not provide for their needs. That’s true for poor families as well as the families able to make the huge sacrifices to educate their children no matter the odds.

Idea 3: Allow the parents to use the money attached to their child’s education as they see fit: for public school, for private school (including parochial), for private tutoring, for private lessons, for alternative therapies (equine therapy, for example), for online courses, for homeschool curriculum, or any combination thereof.

Step 4: Encourage businesses, through tax credits, to offer scholarships to supplement or replace the per child allotment for certain students based on need and/or merit. This is being put forward by both my state representative and my state senator in the current Texas legislative session.

Step 5: Encourage any and every form of educational choice: charter schools, ESAs, use of public school buildings for private education business uses, and ideas we haven’t thought of yet.

Everywhere it has been tried, allowing parents to control the money for their child’s education costs less than the per child cost of public education, with better outcomes. Allowing that money to stay with the child—for future years and even for higher education—encourages wise use of the money for the particular child. And simultaneously it encourages market answers to educational needs.

Already, in large part because of the growth of homeschooling, we’re seeing online educational resources proliferate. Many of these are free or low cost.

For example, I wanted to use a particular math program for homeschooling my daughter that my boys had used in a gifted school in another state. I contacted my boys’ teachers and asked what the program was. I happened to ask why, if the program was so good, it wasn’t used for all students, but only the gifted classes. The answer was that it was too expensive. I bought the teacher’s edition, everything I needed, grades 3-6, for around $350. It was one of our bigger curriculum purchases. It was intended for an entire classroom; I used it for one child. There were a few consumable pages, but otherwise you’re looking at under $100 per year per classroom. I can’t figure out why a typical classroom, spending $1100 per year per child, couldn’t afford that. By the way, the program is now available online for free.

At some point we can look at the internet as a higher education alternative to astronomically expensive college tuition. MIT has free courses online. Many universities have online courses at lower per credit hour costs than on-campus tuition. YouTube is mostly free. There’s a lot out there. What we need is a way to free ourselves from the cost of entry into society that an ever-less-valuable university degree program provides.

Meanwhile, in some third-world countries, very poor people are successfully building private schools to get the education the government schools are failing to provide. We’re told it can’t be done, but it’s happening.

I don’t know that I’ve fully answered all of Lease’s questions. I didn’t touch on the history of slaves not being educated (wish it hadn’t happened, and that no one had been deprived of their life, liberty, and property). Or immigrants (my grandfather immigrated in 1906, at age 16, speaking no English, and went on to be successful in various businesses—no government intervention needed).

The biggest hurdle is how do we get to the ideal I see from where we are. I don’t know. But I believe that recognizing that education is a parental right, not a government responsibility, is a first step.

We ought to encourage parental control of education wherever possible, allowing the market to meet growing demand for alternatives.

And we need stronger families, which will lead to less poverty and less societal need beyond what parents must provide for their own children.

Do I foresee the ideal happening? Sometimes I’m hopeful; sometimes I’m discouraged. All I can really do is what is in my power: see to the education of myself and my children, and share good ideas in hopes others will make good choices.

I know this is already long, but if you want fuller answers and more details, follow the links in the copy.

Thanks, Lease, for engaging in the conversation. I welcome respectful feedback like yours.

Education Is a Parental Responsibility

Contrary to popular near-religious belief, public education is not the best way to get an educated populace.

Back when I wrote the original articles for the Spherical Model website, I used education as an example of something government is doing beyond its proper role. And we know that anything government does beyond its proper role will cause negative unintended consequences, most likely the exact opposite of the stated intention.

I’m going to repeat, pretty much intact, that section on education. It’s relevant here in Texas during a week that the state legislature is debating school choice issues.

But I also recommend reading Matt Walsh’s blog today, about the social environment of schools. He makes a good case for not relinquishing our parental rights and responsibilities to a government institution with its indoctrination agenda.

__________________________________________________

While the nation has an interest in having an educated populace, the responsibility for educating individual children lies with each child’s parents. They care the most; they have the most interest in the child’s welfare, and the most insight into the child’s learning needs and idiosyncrasies. So, education of children is best decided and provided by the child’s parents. (If you’re not agreeing with me on that point, then carefully consider who you think does hold the responsibility for your child and why. And how did you come to believe that a government entity was more deserving of loyalty as the basic unit of society than is the family? Because whenever society degrades the importance of the family, civilization decays. See the article “Civilization vs. Savagery.”)

A homeschool science experiment, 2007

The nation’s stake in the education of its citizenry does not supersede the responsibility of the parents to provide it (despite the unfortunate ruling of the California appeals court in March 2008, declaring that parents do not have a constitutional right to see to the education of their children, that it is the right and responsibility of the state, a decision that, like many California decisions, was shortly thereafter thrown out). Usurping that responsibility does several negative things. The federal government doesn’t know what challenges a local school (or even more locally, a family) may face. By providing a one-size-fits-all approach, there may be relatively broad mediocre success, but there cannot be success for all (or maybe even most) individual children. That’s why parents who care about their children’s education have always been involved in it: paying private tutors, teaching them themselves, or paying for a high quality private education—or, as a last resort, getting very involved in the local public school to make it as good as possible.

Historically, this last option, public education system, is a recent and not very successful experiment. Government institutional education was only invented as a response to a perceived need in inner cities where a number of poor immigrant families had working parents and no one to oversee the children. Children too often were left to the streets, and were creating mischief, as you would expect. So government assumed responsibility where parents failed (either because of unwillingness or inability to provide). The problem is that government stepped way beyond the actual need (to provide rudimentary educational skills for unsupervised children so as to protect society) and imposed “free” education on all children—usurping parental responsibility and authority. And as you might expect, social engineers (Horace Mann, followed by John Dewey, among others) used this excuse to convince (dupe) the public into believing education was the government’s role, and that it was a “right” everyone was “entitled to,” “for free,” which was actually paid for by taxes filtered through bureaucracy. Since it got into the business, government has always provided this so-called free public education for the very purpose of controlling what was taught. National government education, by definition, is socialist (south/east quadrant of the model).

At the time of the writing of the Constitution, there was no public education in America. Generally children were taught the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic at home by their parents. As they got older, some went on to private, often community-provided schools or, if parents were unable to meet the need themselves, they hired tutors. Always the training went through the basics and the classics. Then the young person, when aiming for a profession, continued to be personally mentored and guided in his learning. At the time of the writing of the Constitution, education was so successful that a typical farmer in New York could understand the concepts in the Federalist Papers (as well as the responses provided by anti-federalists), many of which appeared in newspapers and were read by a large portion of the population, a skill that challenges most college students today. In order to enter college, an applicant had to be fluent in Greek and Latin, and be familiar with many of the ancient writings, having translated them. Even our best colleges today would be sparsely populated if that kind of requirement held.

When the country was still new, in 1830, Alexis de Tocqueville visited from France and marveled at how every farmer and tradesman he met could read. We had essentially a fully literate populous before public education, but have never had it since.

Daughter Social Sphere, dissecting a squid
at a homeschool science day 2009

Still, the nation clearly has an interest in having an educated populace. So how should government deal with families where parents won’t or can’t provide for their own children’s education? First of all, it shouldn’t take over a family responsibility for the entire population, at citizens’ expense, to solve a limited problem. Granted, there are going to be exceptions, but in a functioning civilized society, parents unwilling or unable to see to the education of their children will be rare. And, being few, with individual causes and circumstances, they might be best solved locally—by donations from benefactors for individual children, by local schools that provide a rudimentary education that will help a child be at least productive to society, and based on his/her own efforts and innate gifts, the student might move on to some scholarship resource later on.

The solution is free market plus philanthropy—exactly what you’d expect from a Constitution that is silent on government’s role on the issue. (Despite various tortured Supreme Court arguments to the contrary, silence in the Constitution means the federal government has no right to usurp that responsibility from more local governmental levels: see the 10th Amendment.)

Getting back to the education example, instead of the limited customized solution the free market provides, the factory style approach so common today allows very little individualization, so we tend to badly fail those who need remedial help, and, possibly worse for the nation’s future, we fail those who need enhanced opportunity and are held back by the average learning rate and tedium of the typical classroom. In addition, there is so much care taken to teaching only non-offensive “everybody agrees” philosophies of right and wrong (or worse, values the government chooses based on special interest pressure groups over the values of the family), it is nearly impossible for the government institution to instill the values needed to keep behavior in the civilized freedom zone. (See “Civilization vs. Savagery.”)

Federal interest in an educated populace could be justifiably ignored entirely, as it is in the Constitution. Or (I’m being open to meeting government’s interest in an educated populace, but I’m not being prescriptive that this or any other solution is justified) there could be a government entity, but it could be limited to becoming a clearinghouse for ideas, methods, testing, data, and resources that state and local educators (including individual parents) could turn to for assistance—like a big but powerless library. This would satisfy the central government’s interest in assuring an educated populace without usurping the responsibility and power to accomplish it from the parents and the local communities they live in. There could be debate on the issue, to decide what if any form such a government entity could take. But there isn’t any such debate taking place.

Even as you’re reading this, you’re likely thinking the very idea of eliminating federal control of education is the suggestion of a right-wing nutcase. Bringing it up instantly brings the response, “How can you be against the education of our children? Are you crazy?” which is not only untrue, it’s intellectually stilting. If you can’t even debate whether an issue belongs in the purview of federal government control, then the demagogues have already pushed the populous far south of the freedom zone on that issue.

Incidentally, the Department of Education was created, amid much opposition because of its unconstitutionality, as recently as 1979, during Jimmy Carter’s presidency. Despite immediate efforts by Reagan, demagoguery phrased attempts to get rid of the federal department as being against the very education of children. Citizens over their mid-40s today [or mid-50s, as of 2017] all managed to get educated in the US without federal oversight, but immediately federal education became equivalent with all education. Not surprisingly, the homeschooling movement began to grow from then onward.

So, the point is, federal government powers should not exceed what its responsibilities rightly are. Having a national interest is not adequate reason for usurping power from the people. Evidence is that, every time government takes on a responsibility it shouldn’t rightly have, it provides worse service than could be provided locally or through the free market. Anyone considering government’s role in health care should keep that in mind.

Upward Mobility

Here at the Spherical Model, we talk about the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres. Freedom affects prosperity, and both are significantly affected by the civilization level of the people.

I came across a long piece by Megan McCardle for Bloomberg News (I’m estimating 25-30 pages, but online it’s a bit uncertain) about the state of Utah, where I grew up. And the interrelationships are evident.

Let’s start with some descriptions. The story begins with the population: 192,672. That’s the city proper. But that’s not really accurate. That puts it in the range of the Tri-Cities in Washington State (Kennewick, Richland, and Pasco together), which has a small town feel, and not even a 4-year college. The Salt Lake metropolitan area is actually well over a million. And if you extend the area north to Ogden and south to Provo, you’re up to nearly 2.5 million. It’s not as big as, say, Houston, but it’s significant in population size.

Salt Lake City, view from airplane, May 2014

Salt Lake City and surrounding areas have a high percentage of Mormons, since the valley was settled by Mormons after they had been driven from five previous homes by mobs burning and looting their property and killing them. (The Governor of Missouri had signed an extermination order, which made murdering Mormons legal.) So, it’s no wonder they wanted a place of their own, away from threats, where they could settle permanently.

Going back there, when daughter Social Sphere went to college, she commented, “I’ve never seen so many blonds.” I hadn’t noticed it growing up, but she was right. It’s a little startling after Texas. A lot of the Utah population comes from the northeastern US, plus many from England and Scandinavia (my heritage). So blonds are common.

But there are other notable demographics as well. Hispanics are around 22%. Then there are sizable populations of Pacific Islanders, and Asians (Nepal, Myanmar, Sri Lanka), and Bosnians.

There are only about 2.7% blacks. There has never been a migration of blacks to Utah. There has also never been slavery, and blacks (and women) had the vote all along, before statehood in the 1890s (statehood took away the women’s right to vote for a couple of decades). McArdle asserts that institutional racism is the reason blacks stay away—I have to say that’s an incorrect assessment of the people, and of the Mormons. But I’ll save that debate for another day.

Anyway, some of the comparisons between Utah and other places are like apples and oranges just because there isn’t an underlying racism issue. And another overriding question is, can the things that are working be transferred elsewhere, or is it because of the Mormons?

Upward Mobility

Upward mobility—the American Dream—is more likely in Utah than in the rest of the US. The main impetus of the article is to explore why there is this upward mobility gap:

A child born in the bottom quintile of incomes in Charlotte [North Carolina] has only a 4 percent chance of making it into the top quintile. A child in Salt Lake City, on the other hand, has more than a 10.8 percent chance—achingly close to the 11.7 percent found in Denmark and well on the way to the 20 percent chance you would expect in a perfectly just world.

Government Spending

Government spending isn’t the reason. Utah’s government seems to commit very limited funds for both fighting poverty and for education. “Utah is dead last in per-pupil education spending.” It’s not last in educational outcomes, however. For K-12 schools, it ranks 22nd, but in higher education it ranks 2^nd. For overall education it ranks 9^th.

They have a surprising solution for homelessness that seems to be working, called “Housing First.” It turns out, if you just outright pay for housing for the homeless, before dealing with the cause of that individual’s homelessness, it’s cheaper and more effective than the crisis-led practice of dealing with them once they show up in emergency rooms.

As McArdle summarizes:

That’s the thing about the government here. It is not big, but it’s also not … bad. The state’s compassionate conservatism goes hand-in-hand with an unusually functional bureaucracy.

Volunteer Help

Besides actually cheerful, helpful government workers, the biggest factor seems to be community involvement, with an army of volunteers.

The volunteering starts in the church wards, where bishops keep a close eye on what’s going on in the congregation, and tap members as needed to help each other. If you’re out of work, they may reach out to small business people to find out who’s hiring. If your marriage is in trouble, they’ll find a couple who went through a hard time themselves to offer advice.

Besides the very local, very personal volunteering, there’s also larger, more institutional helping. Welfare Square is visited by governments all over the country and the world, to see how it’s done, and to see what they can replicate. It’s not just a food pantry; it’s a production facility—actually a network of production facilities: bakeries, dairies, canneries, farms, orchards, and more.

Here in Houston we have a peanut butter cannery producing for Church welfare storehouses in Utah and all over. It’s run by volunteer labor. Additionally, the cannery is used by the Houston Food Bank to produce about 400,000 jars a year for local food pantries. The only jars actually sold are to Mormons buying a case or so for their personal family pantries. All the rest is donated to the poor.

LDS Peanut Butter Factory in Houston

Help from the Church is intended to be temporary. And recipients are expected to do volunteer work in exchange for the help, whenever physically possible. Usually help will be to tide a household over for a matter of a few months, all the while helping them find gainful employment, or head toward the training or education they need. There’s no life-long welfare help in the Church.

McArdle contrasts that with government programs:

This combination of financial help and the occasional verbal kick in the pants is something close to what the ideal of government help used to be. Social workers used to make individual judgments about what sort of help their clients needed or deserved. But such judgments always have an inherently subjective and arbitrary quality, which courts began to frown on in the middle of the 20th century, in part because they offered considerable discretion for racial discrimination.

Turning government welfare into an automatic entitlement based on simple rules undoubtedly made it fairer, and kept people from slipping through the cracks. But making it harder to remove benefits from people who stopped trying also made it easier for people to make understandable short-term decisions which turned into long-term dependence, leaving a significant number of people disconnected from work and mired in multi-generational poverty.

One of the factors in upward mobility is what BYU research David Sims calls “middle classness that’s so broad it’s almost infectious.” He means that young people are exposed to social differences beyond how they were raised. Moving up looks possible. And belief leads to efforts to succeed.

Lots of Marriage, Not Much Alcohol

Mormons contribute some additional social benefits. Mormons don’t drink alcohol, so poverty-related outcomes of alcohol addiction are a much smaller problem in Utah.

Also, Mormons are more likely to be married. We’ve talked about the formula for avoiding poverty in America at the Spherical Model from time to time. That comes up again here:

Economists Isabel Sawhill and Ron Haskins famously estimated that we could reduce poverty by 71 percent if the poor did just four things: finished high school, worked full time, got married and had no more than two children — and the number of children was the least important factor in that calculation.

Salt Lake Temple,
photo from the Conference Center
in the rain, January 2012, by Social Sphere

Marriage avoids poverty not only for the couple as individuals, but also for the children in the next generation. Marriage builds social capital. In areas of the US where it looks like upward mobility is racially caused, “once they controlled for the family structure of the community, that effect disappeared. Marriage seems to have more of a correlation with mobility than race does.”

And not just the families of married parents benefit; neighborhoods benefit:

If you live in a neighborhood full of single mothers who had a hard time finishing school, that’s probably the future you’ll expect for yourself and your own kids. If you live in a neighborhood full of thriving two-parent families, that’s probably the future you’ll envision, even if your own father disappeared when you were 2. Marriage matters at the individual level, but it also matters at the community level, because the community can strongly shape individual behavior.

That sounds just like something we’d come up with here at the Spherical Model. Families are the basic unit of civilization. You need a critical mass of families with intact married parents in order to get out of savagery and into civilization.

Results

So, here’s what you need, if you want Utah’s results of exiting poverty. You need married parents raising families with stability and caring. You need a volunteer force to care for the less fortunate. You need people willing to care for one another, rather than leaving that to government. And you need minimal government bureaucracy that, where necessary, is done with care and efficiency.

You might get that where there’s not a handy supply of Mormons. I’m even hopeful that it is possible. That’s what the Spherical Model shows. But if you need social capital to get underway, it sure is handy to start with a Mormon population.

Science and Economics of Life

Our local Tea Party recently visited the local office of our state senator to let him know what bills we were following, and what we are encouraging him to do. The biannual legislative session is underway in Austin, so we met with the staffer.

Normally a staffer is pretty circumspect about saying where the legislator stands on any given issue. But we have a conservative state senator who is generally in agreement with us. He had already authored or signed on as a co-author on most of the Senate bills we were looking at, so we just wanted to thank him. Some had already passed through the Senate and had been sent to the House. A few others hadn’t been moving, so we encouraged paying attention to those. Then there were a few House bills we wanted him to be aware of for when they pass through the House and reach the Senate.

So the staffer was friendly and comfortable with us. He said it was like a breath of fresh air to meet with people like us (people who weren’t hostile or complaining, I’m assuming). He said last week he had Planned Parenthood visit him, from the clinic here in Houston that was filmed selling baby parts.* The Senator represents them as well, so the staffer’s job is to listen politely and let them know he’ll pass along their views to the Senator.

But he shared with us that one of their points was that we should be in favor of abortion, because that would mean fewer people, and that would mean a lower tax burden. So it would be fiscally conservative to favor abortion. The staffer told us they said this with a straight face.

It’s a good idea to try to understand how people with differing opinions think. So I thought I’d explore this belief. It requires some surmising on my part, but this is what I think is their though process:

·         They know our state senator has an excellent long record of being all about lowering the tax burden on his constituents (he used to the be county tax assessor, and was outspoken about making sure homeowners got every property tax advantage they could get). Therefore, a lower tax argument must get his attention.

·         They believe, because he favors lower taxes, he will favor them above any other issue, including abortion.

·         They believe he doesn’t actually value life of the unborn when weighed against money issues.

·         They believe more people mean more tax burden. That must also be true of immigration, and emigration from other states into ours as well.

So a person who is pro-abortion is making some negative and erroneous assumptions, about life in general, and about those of us who disagree with them.

All the while the governor (a conservative) is attempting to attract businesses to the state, and we’re generally pleased about being a state that’s growing. That growth includes children. But there’s an assumption among conservatives that parents take care of their children. There are school costs, but the parents’ taxes plus their neighbors’ taxes cover that so that we have productive adults in the rising generation.

That pro-abortion lobby is assuming babies are nothing but a burden—of money, energy, life.

That’s an unbridgeable divide.

This morning on Glenn Beck’s radio show he referred to a 2013 Melissa Harris-Perry news clip, in which she denies the science that a human fertilized egg is human life. She was holding a model of a fertilized egg and said,

Glenn Beck shows antique zygote models
screen shot from here

[T]he very idea that this would constitute a person, right? And that some set of constitutional rights should come to this.  Look, I get that that is a particular kind of faith claim. It’s not associated with science. But the reality is that if this turns into a person, right, there are economic consequences, right? The cost to raise a child, $10,000 a year up to $20,000 a year. When you’re talking about what it actually costs to have this thing turn into a human, why not allow women to make the best choices that we can with as many resources and options instead of trying to come in and regulate this process?

Glenn Beck also had, in his studio, some antique models of the developing fertilized egg—which were used to teach the science of human development.

The thing is, there isn’t anything a fertilized human egg can turn into except a human fetus, and eventually a full-grown human being. There isn’t any point from the moment of egg and sperm coming together that this “thing” is either “non-living” or “non-human.” That is scientific fact, not “faith,” as she claims. Melissa Harris-Perry is a science denier.

And, like the Planned Parenthood lobbyists at the state senator’s office last week, she is making the economic claim—that life is not worth protecting if a person deems it not economically worthwhile.

By that argument, who besides the not-yet-born human should it be legal to kill?

·         The already born child, if the parent doesn’t want to bear the expense of raising him/her.

·         The elderly, who are no longer contributing economically.

·         The chronically ill or disabled, who are not contributing economically.

·         The mentally ill, or disabled, such as Down’s Syndrome children, who cost more economically than they contribute.

·         Prisoners on death row or life imprisonment, who cost more economically than they contribute.

·         Anybody receiving government support long-term, costing more economically than they contribute.

·         Anybody costing another person economically—tough competitors in the marketplace, unsatisfying employees, dependent spouses and children, doctors and other service providers who charge too much for their services, etc.

What is the purpose of earning wealth? To provide for our lives—our shelter, food, clothing, and other needs and wants. Money is not the goal; it is the tool. It is to be used to support life, not measure its worth and deem it disposable.

Now, I don’t actually believe most on the pro-abortion side are in favor of murder in any other cases. I think they are not deep thinkers; they simply want what they want—sex without consequences—and believe if they keep insisting loudly enough, the entire culture will capitulate.

fetus at 20 weeks
image from here

But as science advances—so that human life is recognized earlier, and is shown more clearly, and the age of viability is lower—more people come to recognize their error. 

It will be the science deniers who hold out the longest. At some point it’s not just a difference of opinion; it is people who rebel against truth. As clear thinker Ezekiel put it millennia ago, “thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.” [Ezekiel12:2] 

  

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* The journalists in this case were later exonerated.

A Man with Integrity

"One man with integrity is a majority."

— Thomas Jefferson

I’ve watched, here and there, parts of the Neil Gorsuch hearings. I think he has done well. While we have been deceived about the promise to adhere to the written Constitution before (with Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, and others), there is reason to hope that Neil Gorsuch will be an excellent replacement for Justice Scalia.

Neil Gorsuch, during nomination hearing
photo from CNN

The balance of the Court doesn’t change yet. That fight will likely come with the next justice replacement.

The Senate’s role is to advise and consent. They advised president Obama that, during the last year of his presidency, with a presidential race underway, and no time to appoint before it was too late for last year’s rulings. During Obama’s first term the House went Republican; during his second term the Senate majority went Republican. It appears the American people would not favor replacing a conservative with one ideologically at odds with the majority of the people.

One of the (very few) reasons to vote for Trump was his promise to appoint conservative justices in the mold of Antonin Scalia. It was in exchange for that promise that Ted Cruz gave his endorsement. And he gave a strong supporting statement earlier this week during the hearings.  

The Heritage Foundation put together a short ebook describing Gorsuch’s career, and what we are likely to see from him, in comparison to Scalia. It mentions both are sensitive to overcriminalization. Gorsuch has asked, “What happens to individual freedom and equality when the criminal law comes to cover so many facets of daily life that prosecutors can almost choose their targets with impunity?”

Gorsuch has pointed out a historical example:

[H]istory bears warning that too much—and too much inaccessible—law can lead to executive excess as well. [The Roman emperor] Caligula sought to protect his authority by publishing the law in a hand so small and posted so high that no one could really be sure what was and wasn’t forbidden.

Both are textualists—which is a technical difference from originalist (although I generally think of them the same, and, along with many conservatives, use the terms interchangeably). As Scalia put it,

Textualism means that you’re governed by the text. That’s the only thing that is relevant to your decision. Not whether the outcome is desirable. Not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.

In his book, Reading Law, Scalia uses this description:

We seek a return to the oldest and most commonsensical interpretive principle: In their full context, words mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written.

It was often a delight to read Scalia’s opinions. And it was a delight to hear him speak, as a pleasant, colorful, down-to-earth human being who just happened to have a quick and well-reasoned mind.

I’m hoping to appreciate Gorsuch in many of the same ways. He will be a different personality, a different person. But it appears he uses his well-reasoned mind in similar ways—principle-based ways. He is reported to be a man of integrity. Commonsense together with integrity are greatly needed in our hopes of restoring our country to the Constitution.

Scalia and Gorsuch on a fishing trip
photo from here

Meanwhile, Democrats are threatening to fight the appointment, to the point of filibuster, along party lines, not based on anything they can find against Gorsuch.

If they do this, they will completely lose their veneer of good intent. They will have said that no one, no matter how capable, unbiased, and well-qualified in the law, will meet their approval. They do not want a justice who reads the law and gives an unbiased ruling based on the law; they want someone who will contort the law, make it up, and word things in an obfuscating way, all to get a pre-determined partisan outcome.

I hope, for the sake of the future of our country, that at least some of these partisans can see reason, and do the honorable thing and support the Gorsuch nomination. I don’t prefer what is being called the “nuclear” option. But there is no way that a country willing to vote for Trump mainly for the purpose of getting judges who abide by the law will be cowed by anti-law Democrats throwing a tantrum. They would be wise to see reason in the coming weeks.

Escaping Spin Zones and Echo Chambers

“My rule of thumb is that the more emotional I feel about a headline/news article (either in agreement or the other way), the more carefully I should consider bias/source/etc.”

That’s a comment following a friend’s Facebook post. My friend—one of my favorite people in the world, but we pretty much never talk politics—had shared someone else’s post a couple of days earlier about the Trump budget cruelly cutting funding for Meals on Wheels, so the elderly will starve.

But my friend got additional info, and posted it. And suggested,

Anytime I post something that you suspect may be the product of either media spin or an echo chamber, please feel free to send me information on the other side of the story. I want people to be aware, but I want that awareness to be accurate.

Meals on Wheels image from IMGH

Slashing Meals on Wheels

The additional information my friend shared comes from Mother Jones, not exactly a conservative source, but the blogger, Kevin Jones, was looking at the accusation and saying, “They have too much animal shrewdness to do this even if they wanted to.” So he looked a little closer. And here’s how he describes what really happened:

1.       The Department of Housing and Urban Development runs a program called Community Development Block Grants. It's exactly what it sounds like. It provides funds to states that they can use for a variety of approved purposes. 

2.       Last year, the Obama administration recommended cutting its budget from $3 billion to $2.8 billion. 

3.       This year, [White House budget chief Mick] Mulvaney proposed that the program be eliminated entirely. Here's what the Trump budget has to say about it:

Eliminates funding for the Community Development Block Grant program, a savings of $3 billion from the 2017 annualized CR level. The Federal Government has spent over $150 billion on this block grant since its inception in 1974, but the program is not well-targeted to the poorest populations and has not demonstrated results. The Budget devolves community and economic development activities to the State and local level, and redirects Federal resources to other activities.

4.       Some bright bulb noticed that a few states use a small portion of their HUD CDBG money to fund Meals on Wheels. Actually, small isn't the right word. Microscopic is the right word. Elderly nutrition programs like Meals on Wheels receive about $700 million from other government sources—most of which aren't targeted one way or the other in the Trump budget—but hardly anything from CDBG grants….

That’s a long way of saying the Trump budget recommends cutting the CDBGs, because that program has failed after 40+ years of giving it the benefit of the doubt. In the unlikely event that any Meals on Wheels activity is affected anywhere, the state and local governments have other sources to use—and (he doesn’t mention) private donations. I know I get regularly reminded by Interfaith Ministries of Greater Houston of the need to donate to Meals on Wheels. I was unaware that any government money went to the Houston program—I’m not even sure whether it does here.

Logically, don’t you think if good people are made aware that elderly people are starving, they will step up to prevent that tragedy? Isn’t it the long way around to say we want the furthest-away level of government to tax us and divvy up our money, to pay lots of bureaucrats to then filter the money back to the states in the hopes some of it might go to help those who need it?

Ditching After-School Programs

Back to that challenge of getting the right information. Another inflammatory headline, from the Washington Post, read, “Trump budget casualty: After-school programs for 1.6 million kids. Most are poor.”  The piece begins with this hand-wringing:

Every weekday, 700 children from some of the poorest parts of the Atlanta area stay after school for three hours with Wings for Kids, a program that aims to bolster not only academic performance, but also social skills, relationships with caring adults and a sense of belonging at school.

The kids get a safe and enriching place to spend the afternoon and early evening, and their working parents get child care. But now, Wings for Kids and thousands of programs like it are on the chopping block, threatened by President Trump’s proposal to eliminate $1.2 billion in grants for after-school and summer programs.

It’s hard to argue with good intentions. But, as we know here at the Spherical Model,

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

So if you care about kids, a government program is least likely to help. As it turns out, there is evidence that the program wasn’t merely wasteful; it was harming kids. The Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal tells us the program has been failing since it was begun in 1998. But because no one wants to cut funding for helping at-risk kids, Congress has continued to fund it. The program, measured by comparing participating students to similar students not in the program,

·         Failed to impact homework, on 21 or 22 outcomes.

·         Had harmful impacts on academic achievement in reading and English, and no positive impact on other academic subjects.

·         Had harmful impacts on behavior, doing more harm than good on 6 of 12 outcomes.

Is there a better solution? Probably a non-governmental one. Definitely a non-federal-government one.

Killing Big Bird

While we’re looking at heart-wrenching headlines, here’s an infographic about cutting federal funding for PBS—which is sometimes spun as “killing Big Bird.” Notice that each of these items shows a high demand for a desired product. In a free market, you don’t need government to pay for something that people are willing to buy.

infographic found here

The claim is that PBS is “free” and “non-commercial.” But it isn’t actually commercial-free. There are ads at the top (and often bottom) of every hour, every program. Each time it says, “Funding for Public Broadcasting is provided by….” And there are pledge drives—which are “pay for our product” pitches long enough to make up for any non-ad time.

One argument has been that government funding makes PBS free to do things that aren’t appealing to the masses. Except that, their other argument is that they do appeal to the masses. And, I don’t know if they’ve noticed, but we’re not limited to three commercial stations plus PBS anymore; there are plenty of niche markets, doing documentaries and limited interest programming. The others all manage to do it without government funding.

So, if PBS is of value, it will survive a budget cut from the federal government. No one is killing Big Bird. No one is doing anything but suggesting PBS should compete in the marketplace like every other broadcast outlet.

So, if you see an emotional headline, chances are that’s not news; that’s spin designed to elicit the emotion, so that you will jump to a conclusion and not think. If you feel that gut-wrenching going on, go find some more accurate sources.