Love Is an Action Verb

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, I’ve spent a lot of time defending the natural family, so there’s been little time to talk about how to enjoy better family success. Today is related.  I have a long list of posts on defending marriage, the institution itself. I’ve done a lot less on how to enjoy better marriage success. But I’m thinking about Valentine’s Day, coming up tomorrow, so here are a few collected thoughts.

In Stephen Covey’s classic book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he tells this story:

At one seminar where I was speaking on the concept of proactivity, a man came up and said, “Stephen, I like what you’re saying. But every situation is so different. Look at my marriage. I’m really worried. My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don’t love her anymore and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?”

            “The feeling isn’t there anymore?” I asked.

            “That’s right,” he reaffirmed. “And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?”

            “Love her,” I replied.

            “I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore.”

            “Love her.”

            “You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there.”

            “The love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.”

            “But how do you love when you don’t love?”

            “My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?”

            In the great literature of all progressive societies [i.e., civilized societies, not socialist societies as the word progressive now connotes], love is a verb. Reactive people make it a feeling. They’re driven by feelings. Hollywood has generally scripted us to believe that we are not responsible, that we are a product of our feelings. But the Hollywood script does not describe the reality. If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.

            Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother brining newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured (pp. 79-80).

 

image found on Pinterest

Some people think raising daughters is tougher than raising sons. Certainly it’s different. But youth leader Elaine Dalton (author of A Return to Virtue) once said something that stuck with me as key:

“The greatest thing a father can do for his daughter is to love her mother.”

She’ll know how to value herself as a woman, and expect and accept the kind of love you want for her, if she sees her father setting the example of love with her mother.

Covey and Dalton are both Mormons, and while Mormons emphasize family strength and forever marriage, many others also have insights into how to do it.

We were given a useful book a few years ago: Love and Respect, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, with the subtitle The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs. The premise is that, among the differences between men and women are these basic needs. A woman needs to be cherished—to be loved unconditionally. A man needs to be respected—maybe even in order to grow in respectability.

So, if you are a wife who wants to be loved, start with respecting your husband—not waiting until you think he meets some standard you have set for being worthy of respect, but starting with the understanding that he comes worthy of respect, and your showing that makes it more true. And, as a husband, while doing the respectable job/money-related work might help make you more respectable, you’ll get more by showing your love for her. These things are interrelated. Love from a respectable man is more valuable than from a dirtbag, so a woman is happier being loved by a man she respects. And a man might value respect from strangers or acquintances, but it means so much more to him to be respected by the woman dearest to his heart.

Part Two of the book, called “The Energizing Cycle” (p. 115), shows a circular graphic in which his love motivates her respect, and her respect motivates his love. It’s one of those simple but not easy things about a happy life.

I’ve been following the Matt Walsh blog for a while now, and the more I read, the bigger fan I become. He wrote a piece recently titled, “I Wasn’t Ready for Marriage.” The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some highlights:

If there’s one thing about life that I wish everyone would consider — particularly my peers, and those younger than me — it’s that you’ll never do the big things if you’re waiting until you’re ready to do them.

You’ll never be ready.

You. Will. Never. Be. Ready.

You can’t possibly understand the reality of marriage — the joy, the commitment, the love, the anger, the pain, the hope, the fulfillment, the excitements, the banalities, the journey, the sacrifices, the rewards, the journey—until you’re in it. Same can be said for parenthood, only more so….

We commonly view living together as a logical step before marriage, but it isn’t. It’s something some people do, but it isn’t a step to marriage. Your marriage is defined by the commitment you make to the other person—not by the bathroom or mortgage you share. Living with someone is not a “warm up” for marriage or a “try out” period, precisely because it lacks the essential, definitive characteristic of that permanent commitment. You can’t comfortably transition into an eternal vow. You make it, and then it’s made.

Period…

In fact there is, as far as I can tell, only one form of “not ready” that should possibly stop you from walking down that aisle: immaturity. If you are prepared to dump someone you profess to “love” because they chew with their mouth open or leave wet towels on the floor, you have a maturity issue. And remember, it’s YOUR issue….

The real checklist ought to have only four items.

Do I love this person? Can I trust this person? Can they trust me? Do I have the maturity and strength to give myself to this person, and to serve this person, every day for the rest of my life?

I can’t tell you how you’ll answer those questions, but I can tell you what my answers were before I said “I do” to Alissa:

Yes, I love her, but I don’t really understand love or what it means. Yes, I trust her, but I don’t understand trust or what it means. Yes, she can trust me, but I will still come up short in ways I cannot yet predict. Yes, I have the maturity, but I still have a lot of growing to do.

And then we clasped hands and walked into that wild unknown.

Matt and his wife have only been married a few years, and fell into the wild unknown of parenthood as well, by having twins about a year ago. God bless them with long and happy lives!

If you’d like some short but valuable advice on getting the message of love through to your beloved, you could try The 5 Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. Knowing your own “love language,” as well as your spouse (there are also helps for understanding and loving your children and teens) will help you both give and receive more abundantly. The five languages are,

1.      Words of Affirmation

2.      Quality Time

3.      Receiving Gifts

4.      Acts of Service

5.      Physical Touch

One thing to remember is that you’re better off expecting to do the translating both directions. Even when the other person also believes he is doing the translating for both giving and receiving, it will still seem like you’re the one needing to do it all. Oh well. Just do what you can and accept what you can get.

Even deeper is a book called Bonds That Make Us Free, by C. Terry Warner (yet another Mormon), of The Arbinger Institute. The subtitle is Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves. It’s about more than spousal love. It’s a very disciplined approach to philosophical introspection. Wow! But it hurts the brain. You can get a daily (or so) thought by liking The Arbinger Institute on Facebook.

One last thought:

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

—“Nature Boy,” a song performed by Nat King Cole, 1948,

written by Eden Ahbez, 1947

 

Roots

Here at the Spherical Model, we frequently repeat the truth that children thrive best in a family with their own married mother and father. Twenty years ago that was so well known and basic that it hardly bore mentioning. But this ideal family definition is so attacked today that we have to pull out the volumes of social science evidence proving what civilizations have known for millennia.

If the root—the basic best family form—gets decayed or destroyed, then there’s nothing supporting the growth of the civilization tree.

I’ve been mostly root supporting. That means there hasn’t been a lot of time here on how to succeed as a parent in a two-parent traditional family. There are many resources for that, and I am no expert. But I’m very aware that just getting society converted to supporting the natural family is still just a first step: then comes the job of training parents how to do it, since kids don’t come with their own instruction manuals.

Government isn’t the entity we should turn to for guidance. Churches can help a lot. And, for those who have a heritage of strong families, help can come from family history—from the loving parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who feel a natural pull of love, wanting those kids to grow up happy, healthy, and contributing.

RootsTech Conference

This past weekend was a family history (genealogy) conference called RootsTech, held in Salt Lake City, and sponsored, as I understand it, by FamilySearch, the free-access-for-everyone family history website provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which runs the world’s largest family history library, open to the public, in downtown SLC. I had friends attend this conference, and noticed a lot of links coming up on Facebook and elsewhere. You can still “attend” the conference by online video, if you’re interested. It included fun lectures—one was The Pioneer Woman blogger Ree Drummond talking about recording with photography; she is an extraordinary photographer, but started with just a point and shoot camera and worked to improve skills over time. So, don’t wait until you’re skills are better, was the message there.

One thing, peripherally related, that I came across was a Washington Post piece about the connection between teen social/emotional health and family history. A study showed how family storytelling helps build family ties and family health. All those hours we’ve sat around talking at family get-togethers were for the benefit of our kids. Who knew?

The study used what they called a “Do You Know” scale, with twenty questions (below). Try asking these of yourself. Then, if you have kids old enough, let them do it. And follow up with answers and stories afterward. And follow up with your own parents, aunts, and uncles where you’re missing answers.

I had a great opportunity, four years ago. My dad had died (at age 91) right after Christmas, and I went and stayed with my mother for close to a month, to help with the many details and adjustments that come up at such a time. Two of her sisters came to visit one afternoon while I was there. My mom comes from a family of six girls and two boys: the three 80-something girls, plus a sister in her 90s, who hadn’t make this trip, and a younger brother are still around. Anyway, here were these three sisters, sitting and chatting, and telling stories for several hours.

At one point, while we were starting to mill around in the kitchen for food, I said, “I hadn’t ever heard some of those stories. I wish I’d recorded that.” And my Aunt Mary laughed and said, “No, you wouldn’t want that. Most of that wasn’t true.”

Later she and my mom explained that some of it was a difference in point of view. Their older sister was a little wild, and headstrong, and maybe didn’t remember things the way everyone else saw them. Still, as a feisty octogenarian, she was hilarious. And all of these women were clearly very strong, in their different ways.

I used to hear a lot of my dad’s stories. And I was the one who got to type up his life story. He hand wrote about fifty pages worth—but only up to about 1960. I was born by then, but my sister wasn’t. He had a timeline list for some later events, but depending on my memory was less reliable than his written story. I’m glad I got what I did, though. While it was sad to lose my dad, there was a completeness about the loss—we’d gotten so many good years, and memories, and heritage. We miss him, but there’s not a big missing hole.

Anyway, for your pleasure and emotional health, here are the twenty questions. (A note after the last one relates to the possibility that some family stories aren’t technically true.):

The Do You Know Scale

1.      Do you know how your parents met?

2.      Do you know where your mother grew up?

3.      Do you know where your father grew up?

4.      Do you know where some of your grandparents grew up?

5.      Do you know where some of your grandparents met?

6.      Do you know where your parents were married?

7.      Do you know what went on when you were being born?

8.      Do you know the source of your name?

9.      Do you know some things about what happened when your brothers or sisters were being born?

10.  Do you know which person in your family you look most like?

11.  Do you know which person in the family you act most like?

12.  Do you know some of the illnesses and injuries that your parents experienced when they were younger?

13.  Do you know some of the lessons that your parents learned from good or bad experiences?

14.  Do you know some things that happened to your mom or dad when they were in school?

15.  Do you know the national background of your family (such as English, German, Russian, etc)?

16.  Do you know some of the jobs that your parents had when they were young?

17.  Do you know some awards that your parents received when they were young?

18.  Do you know the names of the schools that your mom went to?

19.  Do you know the names of the schools that your dad went to?

20.  Do you know about a relative whose face “froze” in a grumpy position because he or she did not smile enough?

Score: Total number answered “Yes”

Essential Religious Freedom

“Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the creator of the universe.

That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped.”
—Benjamin Franklin

 

One of the basic principles of civilization in the Civilization Sphere of the Spherical Model, is that “every civilization is a religious civilization. This absolutely does not mean state-sponsored religion or lack of religious freedom; in fact, the opposite is true. Freedom of religion is essential, and the flourishing of religion in general must be encouraged.”

I came across a brief video, from People of Faith; Clay Christensen, professor at Harvard Business School, tells the story of a conversation with a Chinese Marxist student. Here’s how he relates the conversation:

Some time ago I had a conversation with a Marxist economist from China. He was coming to the end of a Fulbright fellowship here in Boston. And I asked him if he had learned anything that was surprising or unexpected. And without any hesitation, he said, “Yea. I had no idea how critical religion is to the functioning of democracy."

“The reason why democracy works,” he said, “is not because the government was designed to oversee what everybody does, but, rather, democracy works because most people, most of the time, voluntarily choose to obey the law. And in your past, most Americans attended a church or synagogue every week, and they were taught there by people who they respected.”

My friend went on to say that Americans follow these rules because they had come to believe that they weren’t just accountable to society; they were accountable to God.

My Chinese friend heightened a vague but nagging concern I’ve harbored inside that, as religion loses its influence over the lives of Americans, what will happen to our democracy? Where are the institutions that are going to teach the next generation of Americans that they too need to voluntarily choose to obey the laws? Because, if you take away religion, you can’t hire enough police.

Here’s the short video, if you’d like to see it, rather than just read:

 

In The 5000-Year Leap, by Cleon Skousen, the requirements of a civilizing religion (from Benjamin Franklin’s description) are summarized:

1.      There is a Creator who made all things, and mankind should recognize and worship Him. [first 4 of the 10 Commandments]

2.      The Creator has revealed a moral code of behavior for happy living which distinguishes right from wrong. [the rest of the 10 commandments]

3.      The Creator holds mankind responsible for the way they treat each other.

4.      All mankind live beyond this life.

5.      In the next life mankind are judged for their conduct in this one.

Beliefs can’t be imposed; they have to be real, and chosen. Our founders knew this when they made freedom of religion the first of the basic God-given rights included in the Bill of Rights.

When the original Constitution was written, it didn’t have those first ten amendments. It was assumed that these were so basic to everyone’s understanding that they were a given. But some of the founders (Edmund Randolph, Governor of Virginia, among them, who had been instrumental in forming several parts of the Constitution) decided they couldn’t ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was included—because there could come a day when the minds of the people didn’t keep alive these beliefs.

And they were right. Here we are in a day when, even with the clearly written Bill of Rights, our government tries to parse and peel apart those God-given rights to usurp authority the people have not granted.

One case to watch is the Hobby Lobby case, coming up in March. In short, Hobby Lobby—a family-owned corporation of Christian people, always run with Christian principles, even closing on Sundays—is being forced to act against their conscience to pay for employee insurance that includes birth control, including abortifacients. (I wrote about this in more detail here.)

The dictatorial administration fought giving exemption to churches, and failed. And it is trying to avoid giving exemption to corporations that aren’t actually churches (such as parochial schools, or, a current case of Little Sisters of the Poor, which provides care to the elderly) but are incorporated separately from a church. The administration is likely to lose that battle as well; you have to admit it looks bad to force nuns to pay for someone's abortifacients.

But the Hobby Lobby case claims that anyone who forms a corporation for commerce purposes has no religious rights—because a corporation is a fictional entity without the ability to have moral beliefs. Unless the corporation is a religious entity. Or unless the corporation is formed to accomplish primarily religious-related purposes, perhaps. [There’s a good discussion of both sides, from Hugh Hewitt’s show February 5^th, with John Eastman and Erwin Chemerinsky.]

And, of course, a corporation is required to behave according to any moral purpose the government decides is required—such as eliminating racism, or avoiding harm to any species the government deems significant, or abiding by any of hundreds of thousands of regulations the government defines as morality simply by making them law. In other words, what this government is trying to do is force upon every American who engages in commerce the “moral values” of the government.

We are at the precarious position of being at the mercy of the judiciary again. It will always be wrong for government to force Americans to pay for something against their own conscience, regardless of what the Supreme Court rules. While Hobby Lobby (my personal favorite “toy” store), is continuing to do business as if it will win the case, if the SCOTUS rules against them, they would rather cease to do business than comply.

What Obama deems a necessary moral practice—third-party payers to accommodate women having sex to avoid pregnancy—is irrelevant to Hobby Lobby’s human board members, even if a court decides there is an overriding government interest that nullifies their religious freedom. (Such overriding interests do exist. For example, human sacrifice in the name of religion would be proscribed, and there are limits to the use of psychotropic drugs in certain Native American religions.) But it’s hard to wrap a reasonable mind around the Court’s reading the First Amendment with Obama’s skewed view.

Nevertheless, the very fact that we have a tyrannical chief executive trying to assert that his preference overrides the beliefs of people of faith is a dangerous position to find ourselves in. It is time to pray—and trust that the Lord will show us the way out of this savage tyranny and back up into freedom and civilization.

In honor of Ronald Reagan’s birthday today, we’ll close with some of his words:

“What America needs is spiritual renewal and reconciliation—first, man with God,

and then man with man.” (Campaign stump speech, 1976)

 

Going around this country, I have found a great hunger in America for a spiritual revival; for a belief that law must be based on a higher law; for a return to traditions and values that we once had. Our government, in its most sacred documents---the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and all—speak of man being created, of a Creator; that we’re a nation under God. (Reagan-Anderson presidential debate, September 21, 1980)

Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under. (Speech at the Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast, Republican National Convention, Dallas, TX, August 23, 1984)

What Might Have Been

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.”—John Greenleaf Whittier

We don’t get to live parallel lives, to see what would have happened if other choices had been made. So I don’t intend to spend a lot of time in regrets. But maybe it’s instructive once in a while to re-examine circumstances and choices.

Last week I heard radio host Hugh Hewitt interviewing Mitt Romney about the documentary, Mitt, just released on Netflix. [The transcript of the interview is here.] Which got me to go home and watch it.

What you see in the movie is a man who is perfectly suited, in temperament, in integrity, in ability, to address the specific problems our nation has been facing. He offered to help; he would have been glad to tackle the problems. But he was personally fine with not being required to do it. The heartbreak is for the nation, not for himself.

For me, there were no surprises in the documentary. I watched many short pieces on Romney during the two races, and I’ve followed him for a long time. I knew who he was, what he was like. I don’t know when I’ve known any candidate so well. [During the campaign, I wrote about him, a seven-part series starting here, as well as here, here, here, and here.]

But in my own local Tea Party, where people often listen to me respectfully, most people called him too liberal, too much of an insider, and too disconnected from regular people. Absolutely wrong on all accounts. In 2007-2008, the party insiders saw to it that the “progressive” McCain got the nomination. Romney was not a Washington insider, but he was the most conservative in that primary field, which was represented as a flaw.

His positions remained constant. He responded by helping wherever he felt he could be useful. He would have been content doing just that. His wife, Ann, who believed after the first defeat that they never wanted to do that again, was the one who pushed him to run the second time—because the country needed him.

Obama was even worse than many anticipated, and that got a lot of people to wake up, start re-reading the Constitution, and start getting involved. That’s how the Tea Party was born—individuals waking up and asking, “What can I do to make things right?”

Coinciding with the rise of awareness of conservative principles was also a matching distrust of anyone who contributed to getting us into this mess. So a lot of people new to politics were disposed to distrust anything that comes through traditional channels. Sometimes they’re right about that, but sometimes this predisposition causes them to dismiss the long years of effort for the conservative cause that many people have offered.

So coming in as an experienced “outsider” meant Romney had to pay his dues in the national GOP. Fine. He was always a willing helper. But doing exactly what would be required suddenly turned him into an “insider” who must therefore be distrusted.

Nothing bothered me more during the last campaign than fellow conservatives complaining that Romney was a bad candidate.

In the Hugh Hewitt interview, there’s this exchange:

Hugh Hewitt: There was a segment of Mitt where you’re talking in 2008 about being branded as the ‘flippin’ Mormon.’ And you say I won’t fix the Mormon part. You’re proud of your faith. And I can’t fix the flip-flopper thing. They’ve got to stop buying, I think this is a direct quote, the dog food that’s been shipped to you by McCain. That is a problem of all American media. I mean, Governor Christie right now is getting branded, and I don’t know what he does about it. What’s your advice to Governor Christie to avoid getting branded as you did in ’08 and ’12?

Mitt Romney: Well, you’re right, Hugh, and I look back at someone like, and I said on the film as well, I was talking about Dan Quayle, and said you know, they branded him as someone who wasn’t bright. And actually, he’s a very bright person, a very capable investor and manager of a large investment firm. They used to joke about Jerry Ford, you know, a stumblebum, uncoordinated. Actually, he’s the only American president who’s an All-American. I mean, they completely can get these things wrong, but they brand people. The opposition party obviously wants to do that, and sometimes, the media wants to play along with it, I’m afraid. And when that happens, you’ve got to say okay, what can we do to try and correct that? And it’s hard to do.

 

The result of this media branding showed up yet again at our last local Tea Party meeting. There’s someone challenging our county party chair, an unpaid position. I’m open to arguments about that. I think in general our party chair has done a decent job, except for recruiting enough precinct chairs. But there are always things I don’t know. And a friend who often knows more than I do recommended this challenger. So I listened. First, he didn’t convince me that change was needed for any reason other than the “throwing out the insiders” argument. And second, he complained, “Mitt Romney wasn’t the best candidate to talk about conservatism.”

Actually, Romney was the best to talk about it. He had tackled the liberal mess that was Massachusetts, worked with an 87% democrat legislature, and moved the state from drowning in debt to in the black. He worked miracles—using conservative principles, talking about them using data that persuaded even democrats to do the right thing. No one else in the race had such a record, or even much executive experience.

So this candidate for our county GOP chair was unaware of Romney’s record, apparently hadn’t heard or read his speeches—and noticed their conservative consistency over time—and taken a look at the long line of people who have worked with him or known him and consistently attest to his connection with normal people and dedication to living a civilized life. This candidate was instead willing to go with the unfortunate combination of lies put out by mainstream media, spin put out by his primary opponents, and jaded dismissal by zealous but not fully informed newcomers. Instead of finding the truth. This is a common error on our side that ought to be corrected.

One caller to Hugh Hewitt’s show, Joe from Houston, added this data:

I just wanted to say that I think the rejection of Mitt Romney by the American people will go down in history as probably the greatest political mistake we’ve ever made. And one of the criticisms I hear from people that don’t know any better is that Romney wasn’t a conservative, wasn’t conservative enough. In the 2012 election 35-38 % of the voters identified themselves as conservatives—the most in any election in political history. And Romney got over 82% of the vote of those people who voted for him. He got more self-identified conservatives to vote for him than anyone, including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. So that’s a canard that needs to be put to bed.

 

Another Hugh Hewitt caller, Tammy J of Portland, said this:

I just started watching the show, and then I had to stop, because I had to listen to your interview of Mitt, and all I can say is, I am just sick to my stomach when I think of the direction our country could have been in had he been elected. And I think, going forward, the lesson we need to take from this is, we cannot take for granted that the media will do us any favors. We have to use new media. We have to use digital media—everything we can to end run mainstream media. They control the debate; they control the narrative.

 

She’s right; we need to go into the next round with the expectation that alternative sources are the way to go.

Ann Romney was interviewed on Fox News, about the documentary, and said this:

I truly believe this, that truly the country lost by not having Mitt as president…..

I always believed he was going to be the President of the United States. In my heart I just knew the country needed him, and I believed he was going to be there. I knew he was going to make a huge difference for Americans’ lives.

We spent so much time on the road, we felt the hurt of so many people who were suffering without jobs. And I really believed Mitt was going to be there, to help the country—to help the country get back on its feet.

I was with Ann; I knew what he was capable of, and I knew how much the country needed him. I also felt calm about it being in the Lord’s hands. At the time I interpreted that to mean he would win, because that was what we so needed. So I had to combine the surety that it was in the Lord’s hands with the certainly that things would get worse for the country—the reality we have seen and continue to see. For some larger purpose, to bring His people back to Him, that I can't fully see yet.

In the last presidential election I thought we had the starkest contrast possible, between “liberal” failure and conservative solutions, between social decay and civilization. Yet the message didn’t get through.

I have my doubts that we’ll ever see a candidate so suited for the job of president, and such a fine human being besides. But we will have someone who contrasts with the current failure. Whatever that person’s story is, I hope we can help make it known, so the contrast will be obvious even to those who were fooled last time.

 

Personality Divide, Part II

In Monday’s post, we talked about the philosophical differences between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine, and how their worldviews translate to a today’s political dichotomy.

Burke is about being thankful for whatever works, and conserving that in any effort toward improvement. Paine is about being outraged by whatever isn’t perfect, because scientific progress gives us no excuse for whatever doesn’t meet expectations.

It’s good to understand how different minds work, so we can find common ground and work together. But it might be true that one way of thinking leads to better outcomes (the one in which thinking and evidence are more valued than emotion and intention). So, in defense of the more-or-less Burkeian conservative mind, here is Part II.

There’s a tendency to think of “conservative” as boring, staid, unadventurous, and to think of “progressive”/liberal as trendy, “with it,” and up for revolution. Yet if you look at the ideas behind the American Revolution, what you see is the man-of-action effort to maintain the individual freedom Englishmen were supposed to have been guaranteed (see the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence), rather than lose them to the whim of a dictatorial monarch. They worked through all the institutional pathways first, but then they risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to separate from the Mother Country and live by the known principles of freedom in the New World.

You can see a similar sense of “revolution” in today’s public school debate. It might seem to go against expectation, but conservatives are much more open to alternatives to public school institutions. Maybe it’s because public schooling is a relatively new and not demonstrably successful (in fact often demonstrably less successful) system of educating the next generation. So you have people concerned about education, and finding better and best practices, open for experimentation—among “conservatives.”

And among conservatives you find both “conservative” and “fast action” personalities. There are those who patiently work for incremental changes—more local control, more school choice, vouchers for private school tuition. And you also find those with no faith in public schooling, who are willing to see radical reform—abolishment of public schooling, turning to all private schooling, homeschooling, combinations of classroom and online learning, and whatever a parent decides will work for their children. That “conservative” side, the “northern” hemisphere, accommodates both types of thinkers. (By personality, I’m typically more conservative, yet I was radically willing to pull my kids out of school and educate them myself for a decade, because kids only grow up once, and you can’t mess around and lose the opportunity.)

But in the public school debate, what we see is democrat/liberal/progressives absolutely bound to protect the status quo. Odd.

So the “progressive” experiment, which threw out the parent-run education system that had led to the great thinkers of our founding (and pretty much throughout the millennia), and replaced it with a “new” factory-style model with centralized one-size-fits-all control, hasn’t actually been an improvement. Yet there are “bitter clingers” who refuse to let go so the system can be improved. And those change resistors are the self-proclaimed “progressives.” Hmm.

There’s something about faith in science/knowledge and politics about the Spherical Model south (maybe a prideful refusal to acknowledge God’s hand in our lives), and sometimes Paine-type thinkers are led there. We know, from evidence, principle, and scripture, that tyranny, lower prosperity, and social decay lie in that southern hemisphere.

While I was exploring this idea of two types of minds, I reread the December Imprimis article, “A Rebirth of Liberty and Learning” by Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn. He begins with the assertion, “There is a proper way to educate and there is a proper way to govern, and they are both known.” His piece is about where we’ve gone wrong in governing and educating, and how to get redirected.

Dr. Larry Arnn, President of Hillsdale College
photo from Imprimis

What classical education seeks is ultimate good—and identifying how to live as a good person. There is an assumption that ultimate truth exists, and we should seek it. We are aided in this quest by building upon a core set of knowledge passed down through the ages, recognizable by its beauty—it’s ultimate goodness.

The “progressive” new way is to throw out the idea of educating for the purpose of building better human lives, and instead educating for career preparation—“students chiefly as factors of production.”

Dr. Arnn makes the comparison for us:

Although we all wish productive jobs for our children, as parents we know that they are not chiefly job seekers or factors of production. After all, how many of us, if we were given the choice of our children earning a lot of money and being bad, or struggling economically and being good, would choose the former?

Then he spends half a page quoting from a modern teachers guide for AP English, which says some nonsense about helping students “construct their own realities” that will somehow “help them live in a mad, mad world.”

Dr. Arnn summarizes:

Could the difference be more stark between the older and newer ways of education? Between leading students toward an understanding of the right way to live in a comprehensible world, and telling them they must shape their own values and make their own reality in a world gone mad? And by the way, think of the definition of “reality”; then think of making one’s own reality. Do you see that it destroys the meaning of the word to use it that way?

Then he show similar contrasts in ways of governing:

One way to see the difference is to see that laws in America used to be simple and beautiful. They were written with care, and citizens could read them quickly and understand their meaning. Of the four organic laws that founded America—the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Northwest Ordinance, and the Constitution of the United States—none of them was more than 4,500 words long.

Clear, understandable by those affected, based on long-held principles—those are the ways that tie in with ultimate good, truth, and beauty. That is the older way, yet it seems fresh and clear and connected to human dignity even centuries later. Then there’s the new, bureaucratic, central control way preferred by the “it’s old so let’s throw it out and do our own thing” seekers of progress. For instance,

…the Affordable Care Act, which when it was passed in 2010—and this does not include the countless rules and regulations it has generated over the past three years—ran to 363,086 words. This law—and in the true sense of the word it wasn’t a law at all, but something different—was not readable or comprehensible to any member of Congress who voted for it or to the citizens whose lives it was aimed at manipulating in a detailed and intrusive way. Could anything be uglier? And is it surprising, being governed in this way, that the richest nation in human history is going broke?

James Madison clearly declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and then simply listed the God-given unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and he declares government’s purpose to defend these rights, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

In Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, he misconstrues that clarity this way:

Implicit in [the Constitution’s] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course.

You can’t get from that point A to that point B; there is no such path. As Dr. Arnn put it, “How did Barack Obama come to believe something so foreign to America’s heritage as the idea that in the name of liberty we must reject absolute truths—which necessarily includes rejecting those truths I just quoted from the Declaration?”

Here’s what I think. There are known ways of living together as human beings that lead to the best (though still imperfect) outcomes. We can have freedom, prosperity, and civilization by living according to these known core principles. But we’d better teach these core principles far and wide, because, as truth and freedom seeker Ronald Reagan used to say,

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Personality Divide

I’m not an expert on either Edmund Burke or Thomas Paine, but I heard a lecture online of author Yuval Levin, speaking at the Heritage Society, related to his book The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. [The lecture is only a half hour, but there's another half hour of Q&A. And yes, I'm aware that the way I spend my spare time is a little odd; thank you for pointing that out yet again.] Understanding something of these two contemporaries of our nation’s founding might give us insight into an ongoing differences today.

Yuval Levin proposes that the ideas of right and left, which affect our politics and policies, “seem to represent genuinely distinct points of view, and our national life seems almost by design to bring to the surface the sorts of questions that divide them.”  And, “There are no perfect representatives of the two side of the debate, but there may be no better representatives than Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine.”

Burke is essentially conservative, what is referred to as “right.” And Paine is essentially progressive, or what is referred to as “left” today. That said, they both debated during the American Revolution, both in favor of it, both in favor of basic human rights, and both from within traditions and elements of society that worked. So there's nothing here as simple as right and wrong. 

Here at the Spherical Model, I don’t use right and left, but rather north for freedom, south for tyranny, with an east/west position depending on the level of society whose interests are at stake. I’m not suggesting that Burke is purely “north” and Paine is purely “south.” But I’m hoping the debate they had can enlighten us as we identify where on the sphere certain ideas and policies lie. And, maybe more important, I’m hoping we can identify ways of thinking, so that we can persuade those who think differently to live in the northern hemisphere with us, instead of dragging us ever southward.

Yuval says, of Burke and Paine,

Their disagreement, though it was always directed to real events and practical questions, took place on the plain of philosophical argument. They argued about the meaning of nature and history and politics, what sort of standards of justice should govern political life. They argued about the tension between rights and duties in society, between choice and obligation. They argued about whether politics could answer to stark and universal principles that we could learn through reason, or whether it had also to answer to the traditions and forms and inherited practices of each society.

It seems to me, even today, if we can debate on these terms, instead of accusations of hatred toward opposing views, we might at least get some mutual understanding.

At about 15 minutes in, Levin outlines three areas of differences between Burke and Paine, and how each relates to certain issue areas today. This struck me as approximately the three spheres: political, economic, and social:

·        Their basic dispositions toward society and politics.

o   What gets the left and the right energized or angry.

·        Their sense of what kind of knowledge is available to us in solving social and political problems.

o   How conservatives and liberals think about a lot of economic issues.

·        Their views of how the past and the present relate to one another in politics, and in human life more generally—the question that gets to what may be the deepest differences between the left and the right.

o   How we think about a lot of the social issues.

If there are philosophical truths from each, both worth considering, then Burke and Paine are not simply north and south. Still, one path of thought may get to usable truth better than the other. Levin said,

Edmund Burke, like many of the conservatives who have followed him, approached that world by first and foremost being impressed with and grateful for what works about it—so trying to build on what is good to address what is not.

Thomas Paine, like many progressives and radicals since, approached that world first and foremost by being struck and outraged by what was failing about it—so trying to root out the bad in order to make room for good things to take its place.

Burke begins in gratitude; Paine begins in outrage.

Because people think differently, we are always going to have this divide. There’s a difference in the way the two consider human beings, to begin with. Levin continues with this description:

Burke begins with a sense of man as a fallen creature, as highly imperfect, prone to self-destructive passions and excesses, in need of correction and balance. And that means that Burke is basically simply surprised that anything works at all in society. He thinks it’s much easier for human communities to fall into chaos and disorder than to achieve order and happiness. And any human institutions that do manage to work, to make something worthwhile of this imperfect raw material, deserve to be revered and treasured and protected. He’s grateful for those institutions, grateful for the people who created and sustained them, because he thinks they’re very far from guaranteed.

Paine, on the contrary, begins from much higher expectations of human reason and human power and knowledge. And so he thinks that achieving social order and tranquility and happiness is a matter of applying the right principles—principles that he thought were becoming well known in his day, thanks to a new enlightenment science of politics. And so there was really no excuse for persisting in failure. Social order and prosperity and happiness should be the default condition of the human race, and any deviations from them are a reason to be outraged.

His expectations are almost utopian, where Burke’s are far lower and more modest. And so Paine is inclined to tear down what isn’t working and is confident that it can be replaced with something better, while Burke is cautious to protect all standing institutions. He thinks they were built over generations of trial and error by countless people working together to address enduring human problems. And so he wants to preserve those institutions, and to fix their problems in targeted and modest ways, because he’s not at all sure that we can build new or better ones from scratch on our own.

Here we find, I think, a basic difference of disposition that is still, in a lot of ways, evident in our own politics now: one approach that begins in gratitude for the good in the world; another that begins in outrage at the bad. The first seeks gradual reform to sustain a working system; the second seeks wholesale transformation to move beyond a failed system and create a working one. So one is conservative, the other progressive. One is outraged at seeing valuable possessions lost; the other is outraged at the sheer injustice of the status quo.

So, if you were to categorize, people are likely to fall into one of the two types: “conservative” or “progressive.” I more often fall on the Burke side (so does Yuval Levin). But it is possible to respect the Paine side. Then the debate can be about what works to get what we agree are better ends, or better policies.

However, it may be that Burke’s point of view is more provable in evidence, whereas the supposed possible “better” world progressives envision is not going to be reached using the non-angelic people, incomplete knowledge, and limited resources available.

I propose that there are things we know—about what is good, what is right, what is best for human prosperity and happiness. I think it would be worth spending another post discussing what we know, and why we ought to be choosing those things, instead of what we’ve been choosing.

Nice Problem to Have, Part II

This is part II of looking at the nice problem to have: four good candidates for Texas Lieutenant Governor. I gave fair coverage to incumbent David Dewhurst in part I. Today I’ll cover more of what was said in Monday’s debate, and end with my recommendation.

The debate was set up with every question going to all four candidates, alternating who went first. Each answer got one minute. Then, in reverse order, each candidate got 20 seconds to rebut anything else that was said (or jut to add 20 more seconds of comments). And then, if something was said against a candidate during rebuttal, they would get an additional 20 seconds to respond.

David Dewhurst at Cypress Tea Party 11-2-2013
(photo by David Wilson)

A minute to answer any question is a recipe for sound bites. This was a particular disadvantage to Dewhurst, who likes to set up an answer with a story, and eventually get around to answering in full and in context. More than once his time ran out during the set up. He responded to a question about the use of the Rainy Day Fund in a way that caused the moderators to interrupt and repeat.

This past legislative session, $2 Billion was borrowed from the Rainy Day Fund for water projects throughout the state. This was a questionable use of the fund, because water needs are ongoing. But we’re in a long drought cycle, and getting a biennial legislature to budget for long-term, expensive water projects has proved undoable. So it was set up so the fund would be used, with a board overseeing projects, and with careful repayment to replenish the funds. So there were honest and sincere people on both sides. On this panel, if I understood right, only Todd Staples had been against using the fund (and that had been my preference as well), but that doesn’t mean the others are careless about using the fund.

Anyway, Dewhurst started answering the question saying, it’s rainy now, and he hopes it just keeps on raining. I think he was referring to the drought, not the title of the fund (except in an ironic sort of way), but the moderator assumed he had misunderstood. In an additional few minutes, I think he’d have gotten to the right point, but instead the interruption was unfairly embarrassing to him. The other answers concerned accountability, with plenty of oversight of the Texas Water Development Board, which the Lt. Gov. could appoint and watch.

The weirdest question of the night was whether these candidates for Texas Lieutenant Governor favored repeal of the 17^th Amendment to the US Constitution. That amendment, 1913, changed US Senators from being appointed by state legislatures to represent the state’s interests, to direct popular election. It had apparently come up in a previous debate in Clear Lake (south of Houston, near NASA). It’s an academic argument, not a serious or relevant one for a lieutenant governor. Personally, I’m for strong states’ rights, and I think weakening that a hundred years ago was the wrong direction. But I have a hard time picturing how going back would regain what was lost. I’m wary of state legislatures, which have also developed “progressive” mindsets over this century.

Todd Staples and Jerry Patterson were outspoken against any such scheme; they trust the people more than the legislators. Fine. But that also reveals that they don’t really understand the historical content of the question. Dan Patrick said he thought he understood where the misunderstanding came from—that discussion in a previous debate. He had said that the 17^th Amendment changed the way government worked. Power of the states was curtailed, and the federal government was empowered. It’s a historical view, but he’s not in favor of repeal. (In other words, pretty much what I think about the issue.)

Remember, Dan Patrick is a talk show host. He knows a broad variety of topics, including history, particularly in relation to government. This was an academic discussion question, irrelevant to the job these men are running for. But at this point Patterson stepped in and accused Patrick of changing his views according to the audience. Really? If Patterson had been my preferred candidate, I’d have cringed at that feeble attempt to use this as the old flip-flopping accusation. Instead, while I like Patterson a lot, I thought this attack made him seem desperate and petty.

Dan Patrick at Cypress Tea Party 1-4-2014
(photo by David Wilson)

Patterson did have a good answer to an outreach question. I think that’s been a good topic for him. He uses the word Tejano instead of Hispanic. Tejano is the historic word for the native Mexicans who became Texans along with the immigrated whites in the Mexican state of Tejas, the Texians; the Tejanos were part of the revolution for Texas Independence. There were nine Tejanos that died with Davey Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Travis at the Alamo. They aren’t a separate people; they are Texan-Americans.

Patterson emphasizes that, when we state our conservative message clearly, Tejanos recognize what we have in common: they’re pro-family, pro-life. He does, however, take on the risky discussion about worker permits more loudly than border security. He suggests going to Tejanos for Patterson (which I found at votepatterson.com/tejanos)

I do agree with Patterson that outreach with a clear, conservative message will attract voters who have been told by media to be wary. That seemed to be what the other candidates wanted to say as well; we know conservative principles are the values of the majority of Americans. Patrick’s message went beyond Hispanics. He emphasized school choice, and mentioned a case where an African-American grandfather said he was offended to be told he has to ask permission where to send his grandson to school.  

Patrick had an additional argument when it comes to border control, which he has been hammering in his speeches lately as well. The problem isn’t people who come here for jobs; it’s violent criminals. There are 141,000 illegal violent criminals in our jails, put there over the past four years, charged with 447,000 crimes including 2,000 murders and 5,000 rapes. If you’re a law-abiding person, it doesn’t matter what you believe about immigration; you’re going to want to keep these violent offenders out.

Patrick was also strong in his plans for doing a better job as Lieutenant Governor. As Patrick said, “98% of what the Lieutenant Governor wants happens. As chairman of Education I decided what happened. Six democrats were chairmen of committees.”  He added that all the democrats were in favor of the recent big budget—a sign that it’s not what we want. He would remove the two democrats from the powerful Legislative Budget Board and make sure the Board was made up of conservatives, who could reliably come up with a budget we want.

There has been a sense that tantrums from the minority have affected leadership. (Remember the democrats who shirked their duty and ran over the border into Ardmore, Oklahoma, back around 2003, to avoid a debate and vote over redistricting?) It’s not the job of the majority to mollify the minority; it’s their job to get the people’s work done. And when the people continue to ask for the conservative principles that work, mollifying the minority does nothing but hinder us in that goal. Patrick pointed out that, when democrats were in power for over a century, they weren’t appointing republicans to chairmanships. Dewhurst failed in any attempt to rebut that argument, and Patrick delivered it at least three times Monday evening.

Staples pointed out that there are 31 members of the state senate, and there are 18 standing committees. With those numbers, it’s hard to avoid democrat chairs here and there. So he suggests fewer committees—streamlining, combining. Staples was very much about basics: low taxes, free-markets, strong values. He offers a “Contract with Texas” on his website covering ten major issues.

Concerning the influence of lieutenant governor, Patterson added that sometimes you have to play hardball, and if a bill isn’t moving, re-refer it to a committee that will get it through.

Dewhurst pointed out that the legislature is designed to have bills fail; it takes several sessions sometimes to move a bill through. Not complaining, just how it is. (Thousands of bills are filed per session, and only a relative handful pass. The budget is the only required item.) He did accurately point out that Texas is one of the three most frugal states, the best business environment, and in the past decade we’ve eliminated 51 state agencies. That’s not a bad record to rest on.

But with so many conservatives ready to step up and serve, Dewhurst’s record might not be enough.

Gonzalez flag from Texas War for Independence
photo from Wikipedia

I like Dan Patrick’s assertiveness. I like his insistence on getting the conservative work done—which the people want and expect—without letting moderates or minority democrats get away with calling you mean if you don’t play their way. We’re up against an unprecedented amount of federal government intrusion. Filing lawsuits is a necessary step, but I want someone who will just say no, will act on principle, and say to the federal government, as the Texas revolutionaries said to tyrants in their day, “Come and take it.”

Dan Patrick has strong support around here, his home turf, as you’d expect. We keep in touch with him and see what he accomplishes as he keeps his word. I don’t have a perspective of how well he’s doing across the state, but I hope he’s doing well, because I really do believe he’s the best candidate for the job. And finally I’m ready to say, I’m endorsing Dan Patrick for Lieutenant Governor.