What Walls Are For

"Good fences make good neighbors" as Robert Frost said in his famous poem "Mending Wall."

A year or so ago, we and our neighbors had to rebuild the fence between our yards, because their dogs, who were knocking down loose boards and finding their way into our yard, weren't very good neighbors. They even barked at us for daring to come out our back door and "invade" our own backyard. The new, stronger fence means dog disputes are over.

The Great Wall of China was built as a series of fortifications, eventually linked together, to ward off invaders. It didn’t always work, but it made invasion much harder.

Mr. Spherical Model took this photo
of the Great Wall of China in 2013

Jerusalem's ancient city walls are still standing. 

Old City Wall, Jerusalem
image from here

A friend took a trip to Carcassonne, France, last year and put photos online. It turns out the place looks just like the game, where you build roads and city walls to get points. 

Carcassonne, France (a friend's photo)

Why are those walls there? To safeguard the people and things inside.

There are ancient cities in the American Midwest, built by people sometimes referred to as mound builders. If I understand their strategy, they built walled cities, using earth to heighten the wall. There would be access from the inside, and lookouts. The entrance would be a narrow maze-like opening, so any invaders could be easily picked off from above, making it very difficult to get an invading army inside.

Something similar is described in the Book of Mormon, during times of ongoing war. They built up fortifications around their cities, digging ditches and mounding up the earth. And then adding timbers with sharp pickets above. And they built towers from which they could shoot arrows or throw rocks. And they had a single, heavily guarded entrance. (See Alma 49-50.) These fortifications were highly discouraging to invaders.

Moroni's fortified city
illustration from here

Early frontier forts, built entirely from wood and timbers, would have looked similar and accomplished some of the same purpose.

Think of every castle you’ve seen a photo of or drawing of one invented for a book. Walls used for fortification—to protect people and property—are so common that fictional world builders would hardly consider an ancient place without them.

model of city wall from Lord of the Rings, image from here

There’s a Jordan Peterson lecture clip, recently posted, although I’m pretty sure the lecture was given several years ago, in which he talks about why we have walls. The fundamental problem we’re trying to solve is chaos. The world is too complex for us to handle all of it at the same time. So we build walls to make our world smaller—to make it so that we are only dealing with a particular part of the world at a time. Something manageable. That's why walls were built around ancient cities:

If you didn’t put walls around them, then other people would come in and steal everything and kill you. And so, having some walls was a good idea—the same as having walls in your house is a good idea. Walls between your rooms are a good idea. Borders between categories are a good idea.

So, part of the way you simplify the world is by building walls around your space, because then a whole bunch of things can’t come in, so you don’t even have to think about them. It’s not conceptual; it’s practical.

We have walls around cities. We have walls to keep people out of our homes. We have walls within our homes, to deal with only part of the purposes of a home at a time, or to deal with only the people we want to at a time.

And when we are ready to handle more of the outside, we invite people in—temporarily, as visitors. This brings us new information from the outside, in doses sized for us to handle.

At a national level, we have borders—sometimes in the form of walls or fences, with guarded openings to screen who is allowed to enter. This makes it so that the whole world doesn’t enter at once, causing our nation to be indistinguishable from, say, the open ocean, or the world at large.

Do we, as a country, have the right to decide who comes in? Yes, if the country is a thing, and we are the people governing that thing.

Then, what is a country, or a nation? Historically, nations have been the more or less natural boundaries within which the people share a language, culture, and ethnicity. The first nation to be formed based on something other than these things is the United States of America, which was founded on an the idea that all people are created by God as equal—as opposed to some born with the right to rule and some born with the obligation to serve the high born. And we have a written constitution to limit government to its role of the protecting life, liberty, and property of the citizens of the nation.

That means that nationalism is different in America than in other countries. It doesn’t mean anything ethnocentric. It doesn’t mean anything related to a genealogical tree. National pride in America is about pride in the idea. 

Nationalism in Germany during WWII, by comparison, was about pride in nation, but only insofar as that meant people of a particular genetics and culture. Others, even though citizens of that nation, were excluded from the benefits of nationhood.

In America, we have pride of place, and pride in our various regional cultures as well as pride in our national culture. But it’s not an ethnic thing; it’s all connected to the idea of America.

And while we have reason to be proud of that idea we’re based on, we don’t exclude other nations from adopting the same idea. In fact, the world is a better place today, with more peace and prosperity, because America has shared the idea of self-government tied to principles of limited government.

Dr. Peterson talks briefly about the connection between temperamental traits and political leanings. There are the five main personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness. Those on the “liberal” side (which requires some definition, because I don’t think we can any longer use the word to mean Democrat, for example, when socialist is a better descriptor), which tends to be high in openness and low in conscientiousness. Meanwhile, conservatives (again, maybe needing some definition, because it may depend on what’s being conserved) tend to be low in openness but high in conscientiousness.

I’m determined to take his online test someday, because I’m curious to understand myself better. But my guess is that I’m very high in conscientiousness, but also moderately high in openness. I’m very conservative politically, but I don’t use words that box me in where I don’t fit. Thus, the Spherical Model.

Anyway, we need both openness and walls. America is great because it has both. But we can’t keep both if some of us tear down the figurative and physical walls and “fundamentally transform” it into something that does not have that important idea that has been our sure foundation. As Dennis Prager says, “You can’t love something that you want to fundamentally transform.”

Those who want to transform America are attempting to do it by tearing down walls—both the idea walls of the Constitution, and the physical barriers of an orderly border that allows us to let in only those who honor our Constitutional liberties—people we have always gladly welcomed.

You wouldn’t let someone into your house who didn’t value you or your property. If such a person grows up in your home, then, beyond your obligations to take care of such a person up to adulthood, you wouldn’t tolerate them creating chaos in your home. You would set up boundaries. Walls, if you will. To safeguard the people and things in your home.

We need to be intentional about doing that at a national level as well. To safeguard the people and things inside.

Suppression of the Opposition

Do we know what fascism looks like? Because we're seeing it.

We have some educating to do.

You’ve probably seen some of those interviews where a guy with a microphone and a camera goes on a college campus, or on the street, and asks basic questions, and hardly anyone knows the answer. Like this one on free speech. And this one on “How Well Do Americans Know Their Presidents?”

The Berlin Wall fell in 1991, marking essentially the end of the Cold War with its existential threat. Everyone born that year turns 28 this year. Let’s add five years to that and say anyone 33 or younger was born too late to be personally aware of the existence of the Iron Curtain.

I remember the first time I saw the movie Gandhi, in 1982. I was out of college, recently married (we saw it together). And I was stunned that I’d never heard his story before. What was wrong with my history courses? It’s because world history always started way way back in time, and worked its way forward. And the closer to the present day, the more likely the school year would end before we got to the material. We were lucky to get as far as World War II.

I was interested in history, and good at remembering things, but I knew nothing about some major world events. So I had to educate myself as an adult. (Homeschooling helped.) But for students who aren’t interested, and also happen to have schools fail to provide the material, are in a state of ignorance we shouldn’t be surprised at.

So, for the sake of education, today we’ll cover some -isms.

According to my favorite nearly 40-year-old dictionary, totalitarian has two definitions:

1.    Designating, of, or characteristic of a government or state in which one political party or group maintains complete control under a dictatorship and bans all others.

2.    Completely authoritarian, autocratic, dictatorial, etc.

As a noun, it’s a person who favors such a government or state. And totalitarianism is the noun form, or name for such a government.

In the same dictionary, fascism has three definitions:

1.    The doctrines, methods, or movement of the Fascisti [elsewhere defined as an Italian political organization under Mussolini from 1922-1943].

2.    A system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism, etc.; first instituted in Italy in 1922.

3.    A political movement based on such policies, or fascist behavior. See also Nazi.

To be thorough, the definition of Nazi is “designating, of, or characteristic of the German fascist political party (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), founded in 1919 and abolished in 1945; under Hitler it seized control of Germany in 1933, systematically eliminated opposition, and put into effect its program of nationalism, racism, rearmament, aggression, etc.” A Nazi can also be a support of this or any similar party; fascist.

Will Witt (right), screenshot from here

One of those on-the-street videos by Will Witt’s asks the question, “What does holocaust mean?” And a surprising number didn’t have a clue. There are holocaust museums (a very good one here in Houston, another in Washington, DC). It’s a word synonymous with genocide. And even though more individuals were killed under Soviet communism and other socialist regimes, we as a world are pretty aware of the six million Jews killed in fascist Germany’s holocaust during WWII.

The world has said “Never again!” But if young people don’t know what this is, then they’re susceptible to the same forces that allowed it to happen before.

I’d like to focus on the behaviors of totalitarianism, and its synonym fascism, rather than on the “government” aspect of the definition, which is certainly related—but we know that politics is downstream from culture.

So I’d like to look at the “forcible suppression of opposition,” which leads to “authoritarian, autocratic, dictatorial”—essentially tyrannical governments.

A person who is in favor of—or actively pursues—forcible suppression of opposition is fascist.

A person who seeks to control the behavioral freedoms, the economic freedoms, and even the social thoughts of others, to stamp out opposing viewpoints it totalitarian. Such people, in power, seek to destroy opposition, doing away with a second party, or even a second choice. Elections in such regimes are a joke: “Do you vote for the supreme leader? Yes or No? Only Yes votes are counted.”

It’s possible that people who have grown up in a milieu of freedom might not realize what their forcible suppression of opposition inevitably leads to. So maybe we’ll hold off calling them totalitarian until they have some statist power. But they are nevertheless fascist.

It’s time for some examples, in no particular order (unless I go back and edit).

Strange Planet

Strange Planet birthday

There’s a four-panel cartoon, called Strange Planet, of aliens doing normal human things and describing them in absolutely literal ways, which turns out to be pretty hilarious. These have been showing up on my Facebook feed often, and I enjoy them a lot. Many young people have been enjoying them, but, as they say, #canceled. The online magazine Nylon, which I had never heard of, let out the news that, Nathan Pyle, the writer of this funny and non-controversial comic, is pro-life—and therefore no one should ever share or even look at his funny comics again! 

For those of us conservatives who have tolerated Hollywood for all these decades of ridicule, we think never enjoying a comic strip again because the creator has gone so far as to support his girlfriend for attending a pro-life rally (but hasn’t publicly ever even talked about pro-life issues) is narcissistically intolerant. And any person who not only boycotts based on such a small disagreement but insists on spreading the word so that all others within their influence will also boycott—that is fascist.

Chick-fil-A

As I mentioned recently, the San Antonio city council refused to allow Chick-fil-A to have a concession in the airport, supposedly because of the bigoted homophobic beliefs of the company owners. Added to that, Buffalo, NY,airport was about to get a Chick-fil-A, but after complaints from a city councilman, reversed their permission.   

Have those owners, or the company, spoken out against homosexuals or refused to serve them delicious chicken sandwiches and amazing lemonade? No. They are avowed Christians—like 70% of the US population—and therefore one can extract from this information that they believe marriage is between a man and a woman (as has been the belief of all humanity for all the millennia of history up until about five minutes ago). And therefore they should not be allowed to do business? That’s fascist.

Attacks on Chick-fil-A have been going on for quite a while. Fortunately they produce a very good product at a better-than-practically-anyone efficiency, and non-fascists tend to appreciate that and support them even more.

Oculus

Blake J. Harris, author of History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality, was on Glenn Beck radio recently. He told the story of Palmer Luckey, the teenager who started a virtual reality company, which was acquired by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. It looked like things were going great for the young man when word got out somehow, shortly before the 2016 election, that he was a Trump supporter. Zuckerberg stepped in personally and insisted that Luckey sign a declaration that he was not a Trump supporter, but was instead voting for the Libertarian candidate, which was not true. Despite giving in and signing, he was then put on leave for six weeks—with people being told he had asked for this personal time. Then he learned, during a conference call at the end of that imposed vacation, that he had asked for another six weeks off—which of course he hadn’t even considered. Shortly after that he was let go, severed from his creation. Because he liked Trump’s free-market ideas.

Author, Harris, was a fan of Facebook and Zuckerberg going in, which is probably why he had such great access to all the players, and watched what happened first hand. The book is about more than the maltreatment of Luckey; it’s about the rise of virtual reality. But that episode is part of the tech world. And it’s definitely fascistic.

I’m a Facebook user, although rarely political online. But most weeks I have political friends who announce that they’re back on after being put in Facebook jail for a day or a week, or have had materials deleted. As far as I can verify, none of these has been for profanity, lewd conduct or language, inciting violence, or anything you might want Facebook to protect you from; they have been for political content that Facebook deems unacceptable.

Meanwhile, Facebook friends who have Zuckerberg’s political leanings spew uncalculable amounts of lying trash (my words, but I think this is a somewhat expert opinion) without so much as a warning.

“Forcible suppression of opposition” is what’s going on. That’s the definition of fascist.

Human Rights Tribunal in Canada

This headline is from Vancouver, British Columbia: “Court orders Christian to pay $55,000 to trans politician for calling him ‘biological male.’” 

The Human Rights Tribunal ruled that it’s unlawful discrimination not to accept transgender people as the gender they claim to be. Also, “there’s no room for any public debate in the matter.”

Bill Whatcott had dispersed flyers that referred to NDP candidate Ronan “Morgane” Oger as a biological male. His defense, which was not allowed to be presented, was proof of Oger’s biology, but the judge ruled “the ‘truth’ of the statements in the flyer is not a defense.”

The flyer compared Oger to another man, Walt Heyer, who had gender dysphoria, had undergone hormone and surgical transformation to “become” a woman, but eventually realized that was a lie and transitioned back, now again identifying as a man. Making this comparison cost Whatcott $35,000 for injury to the “dignity, feelings and self-respect” of the man presenting himself as a woman, and also $20,000 for alleged improper conduct (not sure from the story what this entailed).

Truth is not a defense? There is no room for public debate? I’d call that forcible suppression of opposition: fascism.

Artificial Intelligence Ethics Council

Here’s another from this week: “Google Cancels AI Ethics Council after Employees Demand Removal of Conservative Heritage President Kay Coles James.” It’s worth noting that, in the group identity politics of the opposition, James checks a lot of boxes; she’s a black woman of a certain age. But being conservative—which is about beliefs and ideas rather than surface details—is unacceptable at Google. She opposes transgender activism—not people with gender dysphoria, but the imposition of the transgender agenda on society. That means the controllers of the largest and most used search engine, controlling our access to information, is about the forcible suppression of opposition; Google is fascist. 

Yale Law School Blacklists Christian Firms

Yale Law School has decided not to do business with any Christian law firms. Also, Senator Ted Cruz has announced an investigation into discrimination at the Yale Law School, which receives federal funding and is therefore prohibited from this sort of discrimination. According to Cruz, “Public news reports indicate that Yale Law School has recently adopted a transparently discriminatory policy: namely, that Yale will no longer provide any stipends or loan repayments for students serving in organizations professing traditional Christian views or adhering to traditional sexual ethics."

Not long ago, there was loud protest about VP Pence’s wife getting a part-time art teacher position at a Christian school, purportedly because this school went out of its way to exclude gays or transgenders. In actuality, the school simply asked for an affirmation of belief in the millennia-old definition of marriage and that sex should only be between married husband and wife. That was considered radically offensive?

If all Christians are to be ousted from the public square, and refused employment, or education, or any of the normal opportunities of society, that leaves far above half the population in unemployed status, dependent on government, meaning the non-Christian (or possibly non-religious) remainder would be required to support those they have disenfranchised. You can see why the labeling of such outcasts as subhuman for the sake of taking their lives with impunity has been the path taken by fascist dictators historically.

The stories of fascist suppression of the opposition are ubiquitous. And they are one-sided. Let’s look at the Spherical Model to see why.

Freedom of people, markets, and ideas is a northern hemisphere (on the model) characteristic. Control of people, markets, and ideas is a southern hemisphere (on the model) characteristic. You don’t find people who strive for freedom, prosperity, and civilization—the northern hemisphere—trying to suppress ideas, because you can’t be northern hemisphere and do that. So all the suppression is done by those who favor control over others, or tyranny.

If you think you have an example of conservative suppression of discourse, you’re wrong. Freedom of speech is an element of the north. If a religious person is suppressing truth—or the legitimate expression of what one thinks is truth—that so-called religious person is acting in a controlling manner, using coercion rather than persuasion. It’s not possible to conserve civilization with coercion. They are incompatible.

So you’re not seeing any religion stuffed down anyone’s throats unless it’s done by people trying to wield power over others. Tyrants. Or fascists. By the way, secularism is a religion, and it is being stuffed down the throats of non-secularists by fascists.

Let’s be clear about definitions, so we can identify exactly why fascist suppression of opposition is so wrong. Then we can see clearly why we need to stand up against it. Now, on our watch.

Would I Use a Gun? More on the Proper Role of Government

This is yet another piece on the proper role of government. We’re using a way of looking at it provided by Penn Gillette, in a speech at the libertarian CATO Institute. I came across it in a Mr. Reagan podcast compilation of various people's Red Pill moments—the change in direction of people from progressive/leftist/socialist to freedom-loving Constitutional conservative. Penn’s is from 11:20 to 13:50 on the video. 

Penn Gillette, speaking at the CATO Institute
screenshot from this video

I met Teller when I was 18, and we started putting together our magic show, and I guess we were kind of fast tracked to be Hollywood liberals. I met a man named Tim Jennison. I was then just your standard liberal, there in the end of the 80s, and Tim was libertarian. And Tim was also a peacenik.

I started giving all the arguments for why the government needed to be more powerful and do all these things. And Tim said a really simple sentence to me: “Do you think it’s OK to punish people who’ve done nothing wrong?” And I said, “No.” And then he said, “Then why is it OK to reward people who’ve done nothing right? Can’t you see that you can’t reward without punishing? They are the same thing.”

And then Tim started saying, “You know, you’re so against force. You’ve never hit anybody in your life. You are insanely peacenik in terms of the way you see war and what you think the countries should do. Why do you think it’s so OK for the government to use force to get things done that you think are good ideas?” He said, “You’re wrong. You’re an a—hole! Think about this.”

Turns out, to me, that’s the way you argue with me. Because that’s the way you show respect. You’re saying, “I’m really telling you what I really think. I’m not gonna try to trick you or try to be nice or suck you in. I’m just telling you what I think.”

And it started me thinking, one really good definition of government—that the government are the guys with the guns. And we are the people that tell the government what they can do. So, in my morality, I shouldn’t be able to tell anyone to do something with a gun that I wouldn’t do myself.

If you asked me, would I use a gun to stop a murder? Yeah. Would I use a gun to stop a rape? Yeah. Stop robbery? Yeah. To protect our country and our way of life? Yeah.

Would I use a gun to build a library? [pause] No! Do I think libraries are really important? Wicked important! So, will I give my money to help someone build a library? Yeah. Will I ask other people to give their money to help build a library? Yeah. Will I beg? Yeah. Will I lie? A little bit. Will I use a gun to get someone to build a library? No.

And that is, in a nutshell, my entire view of politics.

Penn is an atheist, a libertarian, and often profane; we don't agree on everything, but because he's clear on what he believes and why, there's a lot we can agree on. I'm interested particularly in his definition of government, along with his "would I use a gun" question.

I think this might make a useful game. We’ll use the question “Would I use a gun to…” and then fill in the blank. This will only work with a civilized people, who believe they shouldn’t go around killing people. That’s why it worked with Penn Gillette. So we’ll start with that premise.

image found here

Would I use a gun to…

·         Take money from someone who earned it to give to someone who didn’t earn it?

·         Force a business owner to pay all workers, regardless of ability or contribution to revenue, a minimum wage of, say, $15?

·         Build a school?

Let’s take that last one, because it’s similar to Penn’s library example. Is it important? Yes (“wicked important,” he would say). Would you give your money to help build one? Possibly, depending on the particular school, but yes. Would you ask your neighbors and friends to give their money to build the school? Yes. Would you even go to businesses and ask them to contribute to building the school? Yes. (Penn adds, would you lie? but mostly for humor, so we’ll skip that.)

But would you go to your neighbors, or the neighborhood businesses, and pull on gun on them to force them to cough up a “generous donation” for this school? And then you’d feel comfortable living among these people afterward? I’d say no. I’m assuming you’d say no too.

Let’s get a little more specific. Would I use a gun to…

·         Force neighbors and friends to pay for LGBT-agenda sex ed to be taught to elementary school children?[i]

·         Force neighbors to submit their children to such sex ed?

·         Force neighbors and friends to pay for children to be indoctrinated with the “rightness” of doing away with religious freedom, the right to self-defense, the electoral college, or other limits to government spelled out in the US Constitution?

How about this. Would I use a gun to…

·         Enforce favorable treatment to a certain race?

·         Enforce favorable treatment to a certain sex?

·         Force people to pay for others to kill unborn babies?

·         Force people to pay for other people’s health insurance?

·         Force people to favor people from other countries entering our country illegally over people who follow our laws for entering our country?

If you’re willing to do these things, you pretty much just look like a thug. You look evil. And it’s pretty clear, when we put it this way, that you would be doing something evil if you took a gun to force your neighbors to behave a certain way or do certain things.

This “use a gun” description really is the way it is. It just looks sanitized if a government does it for you, and you don’t ever see the guns. But it is in fact coercion at the bottom of it.

How about this one: Would I use a gun to…

·         Force a person to use pronouns that are both inaccurate and not part of the language’s natural usage?

Jordan Peterson speaks on transgender pronoun law
screenshot from here

That’s the actual situation in Canada regarding gender pronouns, which Jordan Peterson gained fame for standing up against. He didn’t actually offend any transgendered person in his presence. He didn’t even refuse to use such a person’s preferred pronoun when respectfully requested—depending on circumstances. He just said that government’s assertion of power to control his speech—not even to prevent certain words, but to require certain unnatural words—was a bridge too far. He would not submit. And he has pointed out that would mean the government would then be required to fine him. He wouldn’t pay. And if they imprisoned him, he would go on a hunger strike. He would not submit to this government coercion. And he understood fully what his refusal meant.

What his standing up has done is point out that government is, in essence, force. Which we’ve symbolized in today’s piece as a gun. If a transgendered person is so offended that people don’t use the pronouns they require (and they don’t all require the same ones, so it’s anyone’s guess what such a person might want) that they feel justified in pulling out a gun and threatening death if their choice of pronoun is not used—then that person is too uncivilized to be among us. That person needs mental health therapy, possibly even institutionalization.

Yet we have governments using their guns, their force, for these things that we clearly wouldn’t use a gun for ourselves.

As Penn Gillette pointed out, “We, the People,”[ii] do not have power to delegate anything to the government that we don’t have the natural right to do ourselves. We have the right to our life, liberty, and property. We have the right to protect those things for ourselves and our families and neighbors. So we have the right to hire government to protect those limited things for us.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force him to call you by a particular pronoun—because that would be crazy—then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force a “charitable donation” to yourself or another neighbor, then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force her to frog-march her children to the local school for LGBT indoctrination, then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

If you wouldn’t pull a gun on your neighbor to force him to never speak opinions that you disagree with, then you don’t have that power to delegate to government.

Governments have been usurping powers that we have not delegated—because we cannot delegate powers we don’t have.

We can’t vote to delegate a power to government that we don’t have. That would just make it a democratic tyranny, but a tyranny nevertheless—which is why we don’t have a democracy. We have a constitutional republic. If, as Benjamin Franklin noted, we can keep it.

---

[i] This is happening in California now, as in this story by Rebecca Friedrichs. I wrote about Friedrichs and this issue here, and pertaining to other states, in two parts starting here.

[ii] Not quoting Gillette here, of course, but the Declaration of Independence.

Religious Bigotry with a Side of Coercion

There’s a commentary piece in Wednesday’s Business section of the Houston Chronicle, by Chris Tomlinson, titled “Bigot legislation would damage Lone Star State’s economy.” I’m going to use it to demonstrate how the claim of being against bigotry is being used as bigotry.

Let’s start with what we agree on.

“Every American school child knows that your liberty extends only so far as another person’s civil rights.”

Actually, I’m not sure every school child knows this, because I don’t think schools are particularly good at teaching these things. Still, we agree that one person’s liberty must not supersede another’s.

That’s why I disagree with so much else in this piece.

Tomlinson’s particular concern is a bill in the Texas legislature, SB 17, which intends to guarantee licensed professionals the right to turn down business that goes against their religious beliefs.

This is from the bill analysis:

In 2016, four counselors across the country were expelled or terminated from counseling programs after referring same-sex clients to a willing counselor, colleague, or alternate program. The counselors referred these clients because of a sincerely held religious belief regarding marriage between one man and one woman.

There are 65 professions in Texas that require occupational licenses. These include not just mental health counselors, but attorneys, physicians, and others.

Suppose a person does not want to counsel a person to pursue transgender affirmation, or does not feel qualified to offer homosexual couple marriage counseling, because those clients believe things—and want counseling that affirms things—that are at odds with the person’s religious beliefs. This law does not prevent the client from getting the counseling they seek; it simply prevents forcing the counselor from being the person to provide that service.

So, let’s look again at that civil rights point, about it ending where another person’s rights begin. The religious person is not depriving anyone of a right. Those services are readily available elsewhere, from other service providers.

Should the LGBT person’s rights supersede the religious person’s right to live their religion? Why should that be so?

Tomlinson’s commentary piece begins with this belief statement:

Legalized discrimination in the name of religious belief is an ancient license for bigotry that has led to horrible wars and human rights abuses.

This is a common claim in this LGBT war. It strikes an emotional chord. But what is the basis? During the anti-slavery movement—which was a Christian, religious-based moral movement, make no mistake—some people tried to use the Bible to justify owning slaves. Does the Bible, particularly Christianity, really justify that? No. God is no respecter of persons—in other words, no person is born inferior in God’s eyes to any other human.[i] So the Bible was misused as a justification for slavery. But that mistake was never the cause of slavery; slavery is a millennia old practice, justified by anyone who wants power over others. It took religious people to convince the world it was unacceptable.

Tomlinson refers to any religious person who believes that marriage is defined as a permanent commitment between a man and a woman for the purpose of forming family in which children can be raised by their own parents—the definition used in civilized societies for all the millennia of history—as “fundamentalists” who will “ruin lives” and “severely damage the state’s economy.”

He redefines discrimination as anything that doesn’t comply with the LGBT agenda. He says SB 17 would only require emergency medical personnel and law enforcement officers to respect Texans’ civil rights. This is not connected to reality. Does a person have a civil right to force a person to violate their religion? Particularly when that violation is unnecessary to provide a product or service to the LGBT (or other category) person?

That emergency thing indicates something that doesn’t happen—that emergency personnel would refuse to serve a person in crisis if they are homosexual or transgender. No only does that not happen, but it would not be affected by SB 17, which is about licensing, not emergency personnel. The bill isn’t about preventing LGBT or anyone from seeking a product or service; it is about preventing coercion of a particular person to provide it.

Those religious people—the mainstream that make up about 70% of the US population, but is derisively and disingenuously marginalized as “fundamentalist” by Tomlinson, are not trying to remove someone else’s rights; they are simply asserting their right to live their own lives according to their beliefs. Coercion only cuts one way in this discussion; the LGBT agenda against the religious.

No part of the discussion derides an LGBT or other person or attempts to deprive them of their equal rights as citizens. So all this talk about bigotry is coming from those who are wielding that label against their enemies, the religious believers.

There’s a PragerU video by Dave Rubin, who used to call himself progressive, and liberal, and is a gay “married” man, who describes what this agenda is actually doing. I’m still not going to agree with him on everything, but I do appreciate his understanding of how to disagree without being disagreeable. And especially without being coercive. As he says,

A government that can force Christians to violate their conscience can force me to violate mine. If a baker won’t bake you a cake, find another baker. Don’t demand that the state tell him what to do with his private business.

I’m pro-choice, but a government that can force a group of Catholic nuns literally called the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their faith and pay for abortion-inducing birth control can force anyone to do anything.

There are a number of SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) bills we’re watching in the Texas State Legislature this session. Among the bad ones are requirements for housing, which sound good, but would require mixed-sex dorms and crisis centers, even for women who would not feel safe in those living conditions.

There’s a requirement to remove gender-specific terms, such as husband and wife, from marriage and birth certificates.[ii]

There’s a prohibition of discrimination in hiring based on sexual orientation or gender identity,[iii] which would mean, for example, a Christian-owned daycare owner could be sued for not wanting an obvious male dressed as a woman to care for small children. Or a Christian-owned private school could be forced to hire someone in a homosexual relationship that goes contrary to that church’s beliefs and teachings that parents pay to be taught to their children.

There are attempts to force counselors to affirm gender-dysphoria and prohibit them from even suggesting that some other therapy might be helpful—even if the client wants that alternative therapy.[iv]

These are a preview of what would be inflicted on us if the Texas legislature were ever to slip back over to a Democrat majority.

On the protection of rights side, besides SB 17 (which passed in the state Senate 19-12 on Wednesday and moves on to the House), there are bills to allow officials the right of recusal from performing same-sex weddings (not to prevent such events from happening, but simply referring the duty to someone willing to perform it).[v] There’s are bills protecting conscientious refusal for counselors and healthcare providers.[vi]

There’s a general bill, referred to as  the Free to Believe Act, intended to cover the full range of these freedom of religion issues.[vii]

Outside the SOGI agenda, but related to religious freedom, there’s a bill that will prevent an insurance provider from insisting on abortion in cases of possible fetal anomalies.[viii] And another the allows the right of refusal to perform an abortion.[ix]

There are bills to prevent government discrimination based on religious belief[x] (because, apparently, the First Amendment to the US Constitution isn’t clear enough). If you think this isn’t necessary, note that the San Antonio airport recently refused to allow Chick-fil-A to open a concession there—not because the company has ever discriminated against anyone, but because the Christian owners believe in traditional marriage and are therefore so “fundamentalist” that they should not be allowed to sell chicken sandwiches. Or make a living anywhere in any way. Or exist.

Thank you, Babylon Bee, for putting this into perspective.

From Babylon Bee parody story, "Man Arrested While Attempting
To Smuggle Chick-Fil-A Sandwich Into San Antonio Airport"

The bad bills are all about coercing behavior against conscience. The good bills are all anti-coercion bills. Tomlinson represents those who want to coerce without tolerance while falsely claiming it’s OK because those being discriminated against are just hateful bigots. Hmm.

If businesses don’t want to come to Texas because it’s too savage, they ought to re-evaluate what is civilization and what is savagery. Coercion brings savagery. Freedom of religion brings civilization. Those of us who want to keep Texas free will keep doing what it takes, no matter what you call us.

---

[i] See Acts 10:34, Romans 2:11, Galatians 2:6; for Latter-day Saints, add 2 Nephi 26:33, Moroni 8:12, Doctrine & Covenants 1:35, 38:16.

[ii] All bills can be looked up at the Texas Legislature Online site. SB 153 and companion bill HB 978.

[iii] SB 1250 and companion bill HB 850.

[iv] HB 517, HB 1190, SB 2351, SB 1251.

[v] HB 2109, SB 1009, HB 4512

[vi] SB 85, SB 1107, HB 2892, HB 4357

[vii] HB 1035.

[viii] HB 2447, HB 4523.

[ix] HB 3107.

[x] HB 3172 and companion SB 1978, and HB 4497.

Plan to See Unplanned

We were among the surprisingly large number who went to see the movie Unplanned this past weekend.

I tend to be skeptical of movies with a message. But I’d heard enough about this movie to be open to it, because it's more about story than message.

Abby Johnson, now a pro-life speaker, whose story
is told in the movie Unplanned,
screenshot from here

I had heard the book author, Abby Johnson, who is the main character portrayed in the movie, being interviewed a number of times. She has a compelling story. So, it was a matter of whether this would be well told or not.

I don’t see R-rated movies—if the movie is rated for R based on sex, language, or violence, as you’d expect. I skip a lot of PG-13 movies for those very reasons. This movie has none of that. But there is some intensity. And there is some realistic blood.

Last week Glenn Beck talked about the movie quite a bit. He traveled to Utah for the opening—to encourage people who don’t usually attend an R-rated movie to make this one an exception. Reports are that attendance there was double the per screen rate of the rest of the country. In the country overall, the movie got a very good first weekend reception on about 1000 screens. I saw one report that it was a higher per screen rate than Captain Marvel, maybe because this is about real life female power against evil.

Glenn Beck had suggested that telling this story could end abortion in our lifetime. That might be an exaggeration. But it is powerful. It may be that telling this story truthfully to young people will reveal something about abortion—and about Planned Parenthood in particular—that will change the culture. The challenge, then, will be getting young people to see it.

It’s odd how the motion picture rating system works. Something can be truly vile and immoral, and shocking, and still get a PG-13 rating, meaning parents are cautioned, but no one asks any questions of teenagers going to see such a movie. But an R-rating means that a minor must be accompanied by an adult, because the material is so inappropriate that only a parent can override that decision.

Some of the promotional material has pointed out that a 13-year-old can get an actual abortion without parental consent, but can’t see this movie depicting what will happen during that abortion without parental consent.

The movie was closer to home than I had been aware. We were talking to our son on the way to the theater, and he says, “Oh, the one about the woman from Rockdale?” That’s a town a short distance from where they live; they drive there to their church building. I hadn’t known Abby Johnson was that local. I hadn’t been aware that the abortion clinic where she had worked was in Texas—Bryan, Texas, a suburb of the town where Texas A&M University is located. And there’s a portion of the story related to the Houston Planned Parenthood building, which I’ve seen so many times from the freeway on the way into downtown.

Here's the trailer:

The movie does a couple of things really well. It describes what is going on in the minds of many of the pro-abortion (pro-choice) people. And it depicts the experience at the clinic.

One point Abby Johnson makes well is that scaring someone and yelling at them that they’re going to hell, when they’re facing a traumatic crisis in their life, is not likely to persuade them. Actually, the pro-life people who most frequently talk with her through the fence agree with that. They’re much more about loving-kindness and caring than you might expect, and that’s probably crucial to the story.

Most of us pro-life people have never seen the inside of an abortion clinic, let alone seen the actual procedure. This movie, by all reports, worked hard to be accurate. Even the doctors playing the role had been former abortion doctors.

You may have heard that the “violent” scene that garnered the R-rating depicts an actual abortion—CGI version (no babies were harmed in the making of this film). It shows a baby on ultrasound, dodging the suction tube, avoiding its own destruction, before being caught and sucked down a tube that suddenly becomes bloody.

This is actually the life-changing moment from Abby Johnson’s life. She was a career abortion provider, confessing that she was complicit in some 22,000 abortions over eight years with Planned Parenthood. But she had been able to convince herself that it was about helping young women in crisis, and working to make abortion rare—by offering birth control that would prevent the crisis pregnancy.

She was from a pro-life Christian family, with parents who continued to pray for her and love her anyway. And her husband—her second husband—was pro-life all along. It’s mystifying that he loved her when her job was so against his moral beliefs, but that is also probably key to her eventual epiphany.

She had gone through two abortions herself. The first was during her first year of college. First time away from home, and she let herself become a party girl right away. She had a relationship with a man ten years older. When she became pregnant, he insisted on the abortion. She was a freshman, afraid to tell her parents what she had become. And she knew she was not ready for parenthood. Pressured by the guy, she lets him take her to the Houston Planned Parenthood clinic. The guy doesn’t pay for it; she has to get a credit card on her own, and work her way out of the debt, to avoid telling her parents.

She marries that guy, to the dismay of her parents. He’s a bum. A year later, she finds out he’s unfaithful and immediately gets a divorce. And then finds out she’s pregnant again. At this point, the very idea of having a child that will connect her to that man is horrifying. So, again, abortion seems like the answer.

This time she goes to the local clinic in Bryan, TX, the one where she eventually works. Because it’s so early in the pregnancy, she is persuaded to do a chemically induced abortion—the RU-486 pill. She is told that she will have some mild cramping, and then her body will gently eliminate the pregnancy. She gets ready at home, takes the prescribed pills. And then suffers intense cramping, bleeding, clumps, more bleeding, more cramping—so that she fears this is how she will die. For 48 hours. Followed by twelve weeks of continued bleeding, passing clumps, and cramping.

This was the most affecting part of the movie for me. And possibly the most graphic. TMI, but my own pregnancy that ended prematurely was followed by very painful afterbirth, as if I were being ripped inside, more painful after birth than my full-term babies, and then about ten weeks of bleeding. But, as traumatic as it was, I wasn’t alone and uncared for or stricken by shame.

Abby angrily contacts the Planned Parenthood clinic. They tell her this is normal. And she demands to know why they didn’t warn her. How could this be normal and they not let her know ahead of time? They dismiss her and hang up.

It’s another year or two later, when she’s recruited to volunteer. By then she’s forgotten her anger toward Planned Parenthood, and has replaced it with self-loathing. Looking for a way to volunteer and do something better with her life, she at first resists the girl in the pink hat at the recruiting table. But pink girl insists to her that they’re about making abortion rare; that’s why they’re about birth control and women’s health. And to that she says, “Sign me up.”

For a person who wants to think of herself as doing good, she finds it surprisingly easy to lie. There’s a father that she knows who brings in his daughter, whom he clearly cares about. Abby Johnson assures them it’s a simple, safe procedure. She’ll be done shortly, and then following a short recovery time, they can go on their way. It doesn’t quite turn out that simple. The doctor perforates the uterine wall, something that can happen quite easily when no ultrasound is used during the procedure.

They did ultrasounds before the procedure—which they did not show to the client; they used it only for the purpose of determining size of the fetus, which then determined difference in cost. But they didn’t generally use ultrasounds during the procedure, despite increased safety for the mother, because it would require an extra several minutes to set up (added cost) plus the use of another worker (added cost).

Anyway, when this procedure goes badly, Abby is very upset. She had promised this girl and her father that all would be well. And now there was the possibility the girl could die. Abby’s quick work and that of the rest of the staff eventually saves the girl, who is unconscious throughout, so they do not even tell her there was a problem. Abby wanted to call 911, but her supervisor absolutely forbade her; it would look bad with all the protesters outside to see an ambulance come. They couldn’t afford the bad image. And then she chastised Abby for getting upset about a little blood. (It wasn’t a little.)

The supervisor orders her to go explain the delay to the father in the waiting room. She does, with a lie. She says there was an allergic reaction with another patient they were dealing with that took some extra time, but that his daughter was fine, and after a short time in recovery she’d be brought out to him.

There’s a day before Hurricane Ike (2008) that she reschedules all the Saturday clients to Friday to get them done ahead of the storm. She and her staff think of it as heroic work. She comes home exhausted and wet from the rain. Her little girl questions her about the blood on her shoes. She casually lies that a person at the clinic got a nosebleed.

Lying is too easy for her. That must come from shame.

The day of her change of heart, Abby was called in to help during a procedure, because the doctor who had been called in that day refused to do the procedure without the ultrasound help. She hadn’t, in all her years of working there and even running the clinic, been witness to the baby on ultrasound during the procedure.

There were a couple of other details leading to her being ready to recognize the truth that day. I’ll avoid any more spoilers. But there’s a lot of reality here.

Once she has left the clinic, and has begun her redemption journey, she talks through the fence to a girl arriving for an abortion, and she gets her to listen to the basics of what is going to happen inside that clinic. They aren’t going to offer her options; they are going to push her to have an abortion. She knows this, because she used to be really good at it. This was maybe one of the less natural moments in the film, but it is an effective speech—because by this time we’ve seen the truth. An abortion doesn’t make the problem go away. You can’t go through those clinic doors and come back out to the way things used to be; things are never the same.

Planned Parenthood is an ironic name. It’s not about planning to be a parent; it’s about avoiding being a parent. At all costs. It’s a political organization. And it’s a money-making “non-profit”; and money is made by doing more and more abortions.

There ought to be some truth in advertising. They wouldn’t have made such inroads into the culture if they’d honestly called themselves “Baby Killing and Disposal for Profit.” But that is their true name.

For those of you, like me, Christians, maybe even Latter-day Saints, who avoid R-rated movies, there’s one thing this movie depicts rather well. When we say Christ descended below all things, that He has atoned for all our sins—He really means it. Redemption is possible even for a woman who was complicit in the deaths of two of her own babies and tens of thousands of others. That’s a message of hope for our troubled, wicked world.

Abby Johnson speaks out against abortion. She also started a nonprofit (And Then There Were None) to help abortion workers leave what in some ways resembles a cult. In six years or so she has helped over 500 leave, including several actual abortion doctors. As she says, the goal isn’t to shut down clinics; the goal is to change the hearts of people so our culture says abortion is an unacceptable practice for civilized people.