Leeper Day

Leeper Day has nothing to do with Leap Year Day. It’s the day the Texas Supreme Court gave the final word declaring homeschools to be private schools, and therefore legal, in Texas. Which led to much of our homeschool freedom across the country.

Where to start the story? Let’s briefly go back to 1915. At that point, the state legislature enacted compulsory attendance laws, which included either public schools or private schools. At that time, a majority of Texas students were educated in small, unaccredited private schools or at home. Only 10% attended public schools.

Move ahead a few decades, and public schools have overtaken private schools as the common experience. But all along there continued to be people who educated their children at home.

The more public schools monopolized education—along with more one-size-must-fit-all rules and regulations—more parents looked for alternatives. There have always been parochial and private schools. But for families with multiple children—who are already paying ever increasing taxes for education—the tuition can be daunting.

And then there are these reasons: lack of religious and moral education in public schools, bad socialization in public schools, lack of individualized attention for different learners running the gamut from Down’s Syndrome, to learning disorders, through gifted students. Plus there are other reasons—families wanting to spend more time together, families wanting to travel together, families with students specializing in various talents and skills.

So, in the 1970s and 1980s, there were families who homeschooled—but they were seen as iconoclastic pioneers in an era of factory-modeled public schools. These pioneers were mainly dedicated, hardworking families who valued education and were willing to sacrifice to give their children what they thought was best. But public school officials saw them as a threat and began prosecuting them for truancy. Starting in 1981 the Texas Education Association (TEA) changed its language to declare that home educated students were not exempt from compulsory attendance at public schools.

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

The courts were mixed in their decisions: sometimes school districts won, sometimes homeschooling families.

Families started working together and learning how to lobby the legislature in hopes that writing clarifying laws, guaranteeing parental rights, might help. And they got better at that—but the legislative route, in a state that was at that time staunchly democrat with the big government that goes with that, was not making progress. [Homeschoolers are still among the best citizen lobbyists in Texas, forever working to restore and maintain parental rights. Because, as they say, “When the legislature is in session, no one’s freedoms are safe.”]

Shelby Sharpe, attorney in the
Leeper v. Arlington case
photo from THSC.org

Then, in March 1985, a lawyer named Shelby Sharpe decided to go about things in a different way. He filed a lawsuit on behalf of all home educators in Texas, at the request of a number of homeschool families and curriculum suppliers, against all the school districts in Texas. The Leeper family became the title of the case, against their school district, Arlington ISD (independent school district). The lawsuit asked for a declaratory judgment on whether or not the legislature had intended the term “private schools” to include homeschools, back in that 1915 statute on compulsory education.

This case turned things around, from defense to offense. Instead of individual families one-by-one defending their right to homeschool, homeschooling families together charged 1063 individual public school districts to prove that homeschoolers hadn’t been following the law all along.

Besides the lawyer, who was extraordinary during the years this case went through the courts, there were some other figures who stand out. One is expert witness Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, who knew Texas law, and testified in homeschooling cases across the country. The opposition couldn’t refute the facts he brought with him.

Additionally, there were the families that were represented in the case, the Leeper family and others. The opposition had tried to portray homeschooling families in various negative ways. They claimed they were bigoted, and they pulled their kids out of school after integration because they didn’t want to mix—but the families were a broad mix, including black and Hispanic families, who were as welcome in homeschool communities and anyone else.

The opposition claimed they were just using their older children to babysit younger children while they went to work—but they were never able to find even a single such family anywhere in the state.

The opposition claimed that they weren’t educated well enough to teach their own children. Even Teas Attorney General Jim Mattox publicly made this claim. Here the opposition seriously failed to do its homework. There was a particular family from near Houston, a black family. The mother had worked at NASA. The opposition attorneys probably thought she had been on the cleaning crew. But she was in fact an engineer—who had been offered the opportunity to be the first woman, and the first black, astronaut; she had turned down the opportunity for the sake of her family.

I re-watched a documentary on this homeschooling story—Taking a Stand in Texas: The Battle for Home School Freedom, produced in 2007 for Texas Home School Coalition. In the video, Shelby Sharpe tears up still, twenty years later, at the touching sacrifice of this woman. I believe he mentioned her name, but I missed it. He had known she was an engineer, but he hadn’t known she gave up being an astronaut; she had been private about that. But her testimony convinced the judge that, a) she was educated far beyond necessity for teaching her own children, b) the family cared deeply about the children, and c) clearly racism had nothing to do with it.

The video documentary by THSC,org
(no longer available)

In April 1987 Judge Charles J. Murray issued a decision in Tarrant County District Court, binding on all the state’s school districts, ruling that homeschools are private schools for the purpose of compulsory attendance, completely validating the rights of parents to educate their children at home anywhere in Texas.

While all the districts were involved, there were three main school districts representing them in the case: Arlington, Katy (near Houston), and another in, I believe, San Antonio. The superintendents in all three agreed with the ruling and were willing to abide by the decision—no longer prosecuting homeschoolers as truant. However, the State Board of Education (remember, this is back when Texas was still mainly democrat) insisted on appealing.

The appeal took from September 4, 1987, to November 27, 1991, going through the same testimony. And the same decision. The Second District Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s ruling—completely, and without changes.

The SBOE appealed again. Apparently believing that homeschooling was some sort of threat to them. But finally, on June 9, 1994, the Texas Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9-0) to confirm the lower court’s decision.

As Sharpe describes it afterward, “After the victory that God gave us in that case, the prosecutions [of homeschoolers] stopped in all the other forty-nine states.”

Homeschoolers were taking a risk with the case. If they hadn’t won, they had very little recourse.

But it is a God-given right for parents to see to the care and upbringing of their children. That means it is not a right granted by government when government sees fit; government interference is an attempt to usurp authority from the parents.

So we have these pioneer homeschooling heroes to thank. By the time our family started homeschooling in 2000, we were still a bit odd, but everybody knew some homeschoolers. We were able to join with other homeschoolers locally. We had resources at various levels to turn to. And curriculum alternatives—including online resources, many of which are free or low cost—were already growing exponentially.

The homeschooling victory shows us a pattern. Individuals who valued education had been seeing to the education of their children for centuries—millennia. Government, whose purpose is to secure our rights of life, liberty, and property, does the typical human thing and tries to usurp power, claiming it is for the good of all. They skew a basic interest such as, “An educated populace is necessary for a self-governing people,” into, “Government knows how best to educate, and all people must submit.”

It’s scary how successful that tyrannical line has been for well over a century so far. But people who say, “No, I have an inalienable right, and I don’t submit to your control,” can eventually break through. And then everyone benefits.

Not only are families free to homeschool if they choose, families are gaining more and more alternatives to the government institutional monopoly. Charter schools, private schools, education savings accounts, part-time private schools combined with homeschooling, private tutors, online programs, special needs programs, specialized lessons—the variety is growing. The free market is doing its inventive thing to meet the growing demand.

So, even though we face tyranny from so many directions around us—marriage laws, sexual-predator-accessible bathroom and locker room facilities, religious discrimination, speech discrimination, and threats to so many of our liberties—we have seen an example of success against tyranny.

Thank you, homeschooling pioneers, for teaching us that we can win back our freedom.

Dream Nation

If I were to found a nation from scratch, what would it be like? It would look a great deal like the US Constitution. It would base government on the underlying principle that rights come from God. People will try to take away those rights, and they must be prevented. Government serves that limited purpose. Government should be used to protect our lives, liberty, and property—and the free choice of work to acquire property.

This new nation would have to be a break-off or restart of something existing, since the world is pretty much fully named and occupied now. The words declaring this new nation might include something very much like

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

And then they would go on to describe why there should be this new government in place of the old:

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

There might follow a list of the grievances—the laws broken by the previous government. And after that list of government’s crimes against the people, the new nation would declare its independence. The signers would invoke their “Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence,” and they would “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

This is how it was done 240 years ago, at the birth of the United States of America. Appeals to the law that was supposed to guarantee their natural rights had been underway for decades. It appeared every avenue of making things right was exhausted. At the time of the Declaration, war was underway, and continued for several more years. Only Divine Providence could have led to the miraculous victory. Eventually the fledgling nation grew and prospered, and the mother country stopped trying to re-wrest control.

Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the Texas Declaration of
Independence was signed in 1836
photo from Wikipedia

Similarly, in 1836, a section of Mexico listed grievances, and after exhaustive efforts to redress wrongs by appealing to the constitutional law of the nation were attempted and rebuked by the illegitimate dictator, independence was declared. So the Republic of Texas declared independence. A war was already underway, and continued. But with miraculous help from Divine Providence, the dictator-president was defeated in a brief battle at San Jacinto, to the east of present-day Houston.

The fledgling nation struggled, and before many years asked to become one of the United States of America. And has prospered considerably since—far beyond anything imagined by the mother country. As a single state within the US, it is the twelfth largest economy in the world.

So, there’s a pattern. A constitution is in place, promising the people protection of their God-given rights. Then tyrants get power and ignore the law. The free people then try to assert their rights through legal appeals, through reason, through common sense. And their appeals are ignored. Then the people—enough of them—come to see that a complete break is necessary, so that they can form a new nation that doesn’t allow government tyranny.

The tyrant nation doesn’t want to let them go peacefully and attempts to force submission. But, God willing, the free people win their independence.

If the tyrant nation didn’t try get the people to submit through brutal force, the war part of becoming independent would be eliminated.

So, if I were to have what I wanted, it would be to jettison the tyrants from the government—and any portions of the country where the voice of the people prefers the tyrants—and return to the Constitutional laws.

If that is not possible—as it was not with either mother country England for the original thirteen colonies, nor with mother country Mexico for Texas—then there would need to be a declaration of independence.

I am speaking hypothetically only. I am in favor of abiding by the US Constitution, and I don’t think we have yet done everything possible to exhaust the possibility of restoring the Constitution and jettisoning the tyrants.

But, while the United States is considered “indivisible,” that is only while the government guarantees “liberty and justice for all.” Our list of grievances is already as long and serious as was the founders’.

I am where the US founders were between 1760 and 1776, while John Adams was stationed in England making appeals. And I am where Stephen F. Austin was in 1830-1835, before he came out of a dungeon where he was imprisoned for asking that the constitution be followed.

So, hypothetically speaking, since I live in Texas, let’s suppose all avenues of Constitutional restoration have been exhausted. And Texas declares independence from the post-Constitutional Socialist States of America. Let’s further suppose that, because of close proximity to the other states, and the long years of people moving in and out among states, that the Socialist States of America would hesitate to declare war on Texas, but would allow a peaceful secession.

Other states could join—maybe Oklahoma, which is adjacent, but maybe also Utah, which wouldn’t be contiguous, but might prefer joining Texas rather than asserting its independence while surrounded by the Socialist States. There may be others.

So, we have this new nation, formed the way other freedom seekers have formed nations (except peacefully). And now we need to set up the laws.

I think the abandoned US Constitution is an excellent starting point. We would need to form a Constitutional Republic: representative government, by the voice of the people, but with guarantees against majority—or minority—tyranny.

Let’s keep most of it, and then add what we need to clarify and to maintain. We keep power divided into three branches of government. But we would spell out that all national laws must be duly legislated by the bicameral legislative branch and none else. Let’s add that every piece of legislation must deal with a single issue, and that it must identify the power in the Constitution granting authority for that duty.

The executive branch would have no power to issue any such thing as an edict, nor any executive order other than to indicate to workers the procedures for executing the legislated laws. Executive regulatory agencies, which currently have lawmaking, judicial, and punishment self-appointed duties would be entirely eliminated.

As now, the third branch would be the judiciary, which deals with judging according to the law—and has the bonus obligation of identifying whether a duly legislated law is legal according to the ultimate law, the Constitution. But let’s add that a two-thirds majority of the legislative branch could overrule the judiciary. (I’ve heard that suggestion for an Article V Convention to amend the Constitution.) This would prevent the judiciary from asserting illicit lawmaking authority.

We should make it both easier and probable for the legislative branch to impeach (remove from office) the president or vice-president either for attempts at unconstitutional acts or for crimes and corruption. And we could add that the people could also call for impeachment or recall (in a way similar to an Article V convention), if they see that the legislative branch isn’t responding to their appeals.

In addition, the legislative branch—as well as the people—could impeach a justice for failure to abide by the Constitution, or for crimes and corruption.

All would have term limits. The president would have no more than two terms (eight years). Senators would have no more than two terms (twelve years). Representatives would have no more than six terms (twelve years). Justices would have no more than sixteen years. (Length of terms might be negotiable; but this is my daydream, so I get to say.)

We would keep the Bill of Rights—maybe clarifying where courts have tried to interfere with our God-given rights.

Religion would be encouraged, in public and private life. No specific religion or sect would be given preferential treatment by government. But government could do nothing to hinder the free expression—public and private—of religion and religious people. Public prayer would be common at civic gatherings. Such prayers can be done according to the religion of the one praying, and those of differing religions would be expected to be respectful—as others would be to them at other opportunities.

We would also be free to speak opinions—even unpopular opinions—without fear of prosecution. Limits would include defamation, libel, slander, provoking violence, pornography and lewdness. But would not include civil discourse. And, of course, there would be no laws preventing others from saying things a person or group disagrees with, thereby “offending” them.

People clearly have not given up the right to defend themselves, just because they have hired a police force to help protect them. Only criminals would be prevented from owning and using firearms for protection, hunting, sport, or whatever use they see fit.

Families must be protected as the basic unit of society. Marriage would be defined as it has for millennia, as a man and a woman. Other definition powers would be retained locally. Preference would be given to married husband and wife. Other family forms, while permitted, do not expect government or public approval. Parents have the right and responsibility to see to the care, education, and upbringing of their children. Only when parents drastically fail would the law step in to protect the child.

Any power not enumerated in the Constitution would not be granted to the federal government, but would be held by local jurisdictions or the individual people. The local jurisdictions (states, provinces, or whatever they are called in this new nation) would decide when to assert their rights—regardless of what a Supreme Court says. The final arbiter should be the people, not a national government-appointed judiciary, which clearly has a conflict of interest in such cases.

Government’s only economic powers would include standardizing weights and measures, standardizing money, maintaining federal infrastructure, and preventing monopolies. A flat tax of no more than 10% could be imposed more maintaining government purposes of border protection, sovereignty duties, and enumerated government purposes. With government limited to its enumerated powers, there should be little difficulty in maintaining a balanced budget and avoiding debt—but rather than trust on this, the laws should make it mandatory (with possible temporary exceptions, such as natural disasters and attacks on the nation’s soil).

The new nation would secure its borders, and have an orderly, fair, and consistent immigration and naturalization policy.

The national government would refrain from interfering where it is not granted powers, such as in education, charity, environmental regulation, and subsidizing particular industries or market sectors.

We need informed voters committed to maintaining the Constitution. While there should be no financial or racial test for voters, I’m willing to believe we could come up with a test that is part of voter registration—something that proves the voter understands the basic form of government, the limits of government, and who one’s current national elected officials are. And we could have candidates sign an oath showing their understanding of and dedication to the Constitution—with punishments including possibly prison and fines for breaking this oath.

What I dream about is a country well up into the northern hemisphere of the Spherical Model—where we have freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Our original founders did everything right—except prevent us from ignoring the law and slipping southward. But that is not a problem with their system; that is a problem with the people.

So let's start with civilizing people, so that they naturally want--and work for--freedom and prosperity. 

Resisting or Wielding Power

One of my earliest and most frequently read posts is Leaders vs. Power Mongers. A leader serves, with a love for the people and their united purpose. A power monger seeks power for its sake, for the personal desire for power, for the purpose of wielding it.

It’s a human dilemma that leadership is often granted to those who seek it. And often those who seek it do so to wield power rather than to serve.

I was thinking about this while reading some books recently. I’ve just finished the first two books in Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners series: Steelheart and Firefight. In this dystopian world, something appeared in the sky—a bright star?—that no one understands. They call it Calamity. Shortly afterward, a number of humans began to change. They became superhumans in a variety of physics-defying ways. Each one seems to have particular abilities and not-so-obvious weaknesses. They are called Epics.

They aren’t superheroes; they are overlords, villains, and often killers. And they have reigned in terror for more than a decade as the story gets underway.

In the first book, an Epic called Steelheart takes over Newcago (the former city of Chicago). He can turn anything nonliving into steel, which he does with abandon. He does, however, allow most humans to live—if you can call it that—in the remains of the city. And he provides (through another Epic) electricity, and communications—which he uses to monitor everyone.

Our protagonist, David Charleston, is a young man who saw his father killed by Steelheart some ten years earlier. And he has spent his life since then gathering information about Epics, and particularly Steelheart, in an effort for revenge. He joins up with a group of rebels, who have been assassinating minor Epics, to help save humans in their small way. They are called the Reckoners. David joins up with them, and shares with them the sizable stack of data he has accumulated. And he persuades them to go after the high Epics, like Steelheart, which is a difficult and scary goal.

Unlike many dystopian youth novels, the protagonist in this one is very funny, which allows the series to be more entertaining and lighthearted than the circumstances in the story ought to allow. One of his quirks (he has many) is that he tries to explain things with metaphors—and he’s really bad at it. This is an ongoing joke that comes up every few pages for two full books so far.

Example: David is attracted to one of the other Reckoners, an unusual, beautiful weapons expert named Megan, who sometimes finds him amusing and other times annoying. This is in the second book (p. 173):

I needed to say something. Something romantic! Something to sweep her off her feet.

“You’re like a potato!” I shouted after her. “In a minefield.”

She froze in place. Then she spun on me, her face lit by a half-grown fruit. [The fruit weirdly glowed in this city, and was a light source.] “A potato,” she said flatly. “That’s the best you can do? Seriously?”

“It makes sense,” I said. “Listen. You’re strolling through a minefield, worried about getting blown up. And then you step on something, and you think ‘I’m dead.’ But it’s just a potato. And you’re so relieved to find something so wonderful when you expected something so awful. That’s what you are. To me.”

“A potato.”

“Sure. French fries? Mashed potatoes? Who doesn’t like potatoes?”

“Plenty of people. Why can’t I be something sweet, like a cake?”

“Because cake wouldn’t grow in a minefield. Obviously.”

Anyway, his quirks make the series quite a lot of fun.

The main thing going on in the first book is revenge, but that isn’t the overarching theme. By the end of the first book, and throughout the second, the idea has much more to do with choosing whether to wield power or resist the urge to wield it.

It turns out that one of the Reckoners is actually an Epic, but he tries not to use his powers unless absolutely necessary. Because using power changes the Epics. They become irritable, surly, and careless of human life.

In the second book, there is a point where this Reckoner gives in and uses his powers to rescue several dozen people from a burning building. Afterward, he tells David he has to go away for a while to recover. As he explains it, “It’s going to take every bit of my willpower over the next few minutes not to murder these people for inconveniencing me.”

David becomes more and more convinced that, if they could persuade Epics not to use their powers, the Epics would return to their real personalities and become reasonable and decent—especially if that’s how they were before they were made Epics.

In the second book, they are in the water-filled city of Babilar, which used to be New York. A water-controlling Epic, calling herself Regalia, runs the place. She knows about the Reckoners. And she tries to recruit David to her side. She has him out on the water, and summons Calamity—the inexplicable light in the sky that is still mysterious—to turn David into an Epic:

Was I now an Epic?

Yes. I felt it was true. What had just happened between me and Calamity was no trick. But still, I had to test it. I had to know for absolute certain.

And then I would kill myself, quickly, before the desires consumed me.

I reached out to touch the water.

I felt something.

Well, I felt the water, of course. I mean something else. Something inside of me. A stirring….

Take it, a voice said in my head. A quiet, distant voice, but a real one. Take this power. It is yours.

I…

Take it!

“No.”

The tingling vanished.

I blinked at the waters. Calamity’s light had retreated, and everything looked normal again.

I stumbled to my feet and turned to face Regalia.

She smiled. “Ah, it takes hold!”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m a washing machine at a gun show.”

She blinked, looking totally befuddled. “…What did you just say?”

“Washing machine?” I said. “Gun show? You know. Washing machines don’t use guns, right? No fingers. So if they’re at a gun show, there’s nothing they’d want to buy. Anyway, I’m good here. Not interested.”

“Not…interested. It doesn’t matter if you’re interested or not! You don’t get a choice.”

“Made one anyway,” I said. “Thanks, though. Nice of you to think of me.”

Apparently there is a choice about whether to accept power and wield it.

Later in the story, the dilemma is heightened. I hate to give spoilers, but let’s just say that giving in to power out of fear leads to the evildoing, but when love is a stronger motivator than fear, the real person isn’t overtaken by the evil side of wielding power. The person can wield power without self-corruption, and do good.

I’m wondering if that is applicable in our world. If we could get the powerful to stop wielding their power—to stop irritably disregarding the lives of individual humans around them—and keep strictly within the bounds of the proper role of government, then they would stop corrupting themselves and come back to helping society.

And if we could—at every level—find those leaders who love the people, and love to serve, and take on power only for that purpose, then we could work our way back out of tyranny, poverty, and savagery, and recover freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

A Day for Reverence

The word “holiday” comes from “holy day.” Sometimes we forget the underlying sacred meanings of our special days, as they become an extra day off work or school. But I’m trying to honor the meaning of Memorial Day with this post.

Memorial Day is the day we remember and honor those who sacrificed their lives for our country’s freedom. Each one is a life cut short, but forever meaningful.

I love the way they are honored at Arlington Cemetery—every day. These photos were from our trip there in September 2014.

As with many other holidays, there are songs that remind us of the meaning. So I’m sharing a couple of those today. This first one came up on Facebook, and I like both the song and the visual tribute. The person who posted said the photos represented three separate funerals he attended—one was the son of a dear friend.

This next one I came across a few years ago, linked in a post about the true meaning of Memorial Day. The song is old, and more often used in the UK than here. But it was written to honor those sacrificed in war. Because of the sacredness of the words, it is by tradition, never practiced or performed publicly, but only performed at funerals for those lost in war. It’s hauntingly beautiful, and I go back to it on Memorial Days now.

Also mentioned in that same piece is an ongoing series called IGTNT (I Got the News Today), honoring the fallen ones, one at a time. Worth checking out.

Let Us Reason Together*

I heard a couple of opinions this past week that gave me pause. One was from a news program on a BBC station. The story was about a particular sect that performed exorcisms on children who were misbehaving. The practice looked very much like abuse—probably was, by every definition. There were interviews with young people who had suffered through such practices in their childhood. It was a particular story, a particular sect. Rare. Uncommon. Almost unheard of, which I guess is what made it interesting enough for a news story.

One of the news commentators at the end of the story said, “And that’s why religion is so dangerous.”

The other item was from an online seminar, generally about positive thinking. But it lost me when the interviewee said that, because some Muslims are violent terrorists, that is why organized religion is a bad thing.

People are entitled to their opinions. Even when they’re wrong. But they don’t get credit for being logical when they’re not.

Mistakes in a tiny portion of a particular, uncommon, obscure religion do not mean that all religions and religious people are in the wrong.

And evil among a small but scary portion of a worldwide religion (which is not even what you’d call “organized” in the sense we use it for religion) does not negate the good among all the other religions in the world.

Logic is math. So let’s set up the problem.

Let’s call the set of all religions R. And we’ll label the particular sect S. S is part of the set of R. S does not make up all of R, only a very small portion. S is always R. But R is rarely S. It is therefore inaccurate at best to say, if S is bad, then all R is bad.

For a non-math analogy, you might look at sorting apples. Every now and then you find a bad apple. You can cull it and toss it. Or you can say, “Because there’s a bad apple in the basket, all apples are bad, and we should throw out the whole basket.” If you choose the latter, then you never get to enjoy the basketful of good apples.

While we’re reasoning together, let’s ask the question, Do we need religion?

I believe we do—as an essential element in civilization. Civilization requires a critical mass of people who honor God, life, family, honesty, and property—those are the basic categories covered in the Ten Commandments, and are pretty easily agreed to by any civilized people.

Honoring God is essential for comprehending where our rights as human beings come from. If we do not have any inherent right to life, liberty, and property, which God has granted us, then we have only what the current tyranny—benevolent or, more likely, malevolent—deigns to grant us.

Without God, there are no rights. Government should be for the express purpose of protecting those rights, and leave everything else to the free people.

You can live a moral life among moral people even as a nonbeliever. Still, we need a critical mass purposely living lives dedicated to good, in order to have a thriving civilization.

I won’t solve the God versus reason debate here, in a blog post. But I do believe it is more reasonable to believe in God than not to.

Christianity and science are opposed… but only in the same sense as that which my thumb and forefinger are opposed—and between them I can grasp anything.—Sir William Bragg, Nobel Prize for Physics (1915)

I will claim that religion—the search for truth and the earnest striving toward goodness—is more likely to yield civilization than the random whims of self-dedicated individuals.

I got to take a look at civilization—and civilizations past—this past week. I was in London. My first trip there. I spent a lot of time doing tourist things: sight-seeing, going to museums. And I’m fascinated by the various appearances of beauty in art and architecture.

While the Spherical Model talks about Civilization, Freedom, and Prosperity—the northern hemisphere goal—as a destination, in actual life, we find pockets of the good often surrounded by the decay of tyranny, poverty, and savagery. But where we find beauty, historically it’s likely to connect to a time when people were thinking, reasoning, and seeking the Good.

I was in the British Museum, and the Rosetta Stone is one of the first exhibits to draw you in. Photos were difficult, because of the glass surround and the lights causing reflections. But that got me thinking about writing in general. I love seeing the various examples of ancient writing. Some of it was mundane, such as a receipt for goods. Others were more monumental, such as describing the life and battles of various royalty. It’s miraculous when it has survived. Writing is probably a necessity for civilization, for passing along information and thinking.

I was looking at ancient Assyrian and Egyptian works, and then there was a doorway into the Greek room. It was like walking into light, or enlightenment. The art was more realistic, less stiff, more for the purpose of beauty than other purposes, such as honoring or impressing through monument, although many were depictions of either eminent people or their gods and mythological beings.

Since we can also read the philosophy and thinking from this time period, it’s not surprising we keep looking back to this particular civilization.

I was interested in the dates, because some very accurate, detailed art happened very long ago, in various places.

When you study art from early Renaissance through the 19^th Century, you see a progression from stiff to more lifelike, better perspective, more natural movement and accurate nature. But, while it is a progression, it isn’t always continuous. There were times when art was lifelike, with the grace and movement we recognize as beauty, long before this latest millennium.

The Tower of London was one of my favorite sites. There’s so much contrast there. The artisanship and art that went into armor, weapons, and displays—like the carved horses in the Parade of Kings—are pretty amazing. And then you can visit the dungeon torture chamber. There’s a pub nearby called the Hung, Drawn, and Quartered, named after that practice. Beheadings were common—we saw the location—and heads were put on pikes along London Bridge. The savage seemed quite content next to the civilized and beautiful.

We toured the Globe Theater, which is a relatively new reproduction of Shakespeare’s theater. The original was built on “the wrong side of the river,” where plenty of uncivilized behavior took place. And boisterous crowds packed in, in Shakespeare’s day, to watch, and call out loudly and participate from the audience. Food and drinks were sold during the show, like we see today at baseball games. And yet the beauty of the plays themselves lets us know, people could write and think and understand long before internet and keyboards were available to help out.

We saw churches, but they tend to be old—very old, and picturesque. And some of them definitely worth exploring for their history and beauty. We toured St. Paul’s Cathedral—which is where the song “Feed the Birds” comes up in Mary Poppins. A church has stood on that site for 1300 years. That’s about a millennium longer than anything built in the US.

The final few days we stayed near Kensington Park, and walking the neighborhood there revealed a number of churches—all old. One was a synagogue, also old. Some churches had long since been turned into other uses. There seems to be a reverence for the past, and the history, even though maybe not so much for God in current daily lives.

There’s so much about the city that tells of longtime civilization. It’s not forgotten. 

There’s still some traditional special feeling about royalty, but in general the class system has moved toward the egalitarianism we have in America. I think that is our influence for good.

People there are from everywhere. I heard more languages than I could identify, just about everywhere we went. And a lot of African and Indian accents (and others) among the variations of British. I enjoy that variety. I noticed no racism—except in news stories that seemed to try to bring it up more than necessary. (I’ve seen that in our media as well.)

People in London seem to me generally good, friendly. Helpful when I was lost on the underground. It is goodness in people that is key. Even with decay around, a people whose hearts long for goodness, truth, and beauty, civilization hangs on. I’m glad it’s still there for visitors like me.

Civilization is always worth preserving—and restoring.

________________________

*Isaiah 1: “17 Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow./ 18 Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

The Texas Plan

The US Constitution has been amended 27 times. Each of these times, the method has been that Congress passes the amendment, and then three-fourths of the states must ratify the amendment. This is a slow and arduous process. On purpose.

There is another method available, according to the Constitution. Here’s the entirety of Article V of the Constitution, with the relevant option highlighted:

Article V

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

This method, called an Article V Convention, or sometimes a “Convention of States” to propose amendments, is not the same as a “Constitutional Convention.” The latter would be open to rewriting any and all of the Constitution. The Article V Convention would be a call for amending the Constitution in some specific way. It could handle more than one amendment, but only those that the states have called for and have authorized their representatives to discuss. It would be equivalent to Congress presenting a bill to amend the Constitution in one particular way at a time—and if the bill passed, then sending it to the states for the ratification process. Each amendment would require 34 of the 50 states to ratify it before it would take effect.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott
Uncommon Knowledge interview at
Texas Public Policy Foundation

Governor Greg Abbott, of Texas, recently did an Uncommon Knowledge interview, talking about his version, which he calls the Texas Plan. He answers questions about the need for it, the scope, and other concerns.

One concern has been that a convention could get out of hand. But Governor Abbot says that is easily handled by having the states agree beforehand on both the limitation of subject matter and the limitation of time for the ratification process. The states give no authority to deal with issues not previously authorized. And they would agree to a time limit, something like ten years, for the states to handle the ratification.

Governor Abbott explains, “The Texas Plan is not so much a vision to alter the Constitution as it is a call to restore the rule of our current one.” Near the end of the interview, he is quoted from the Texas Plan, saying, “The Constitution itself is not broken. What is broken is our nation’s willingness to obey the Constitution.” So the purpose of all this is to adjust course back to the Constitution.

Governor Abbott’s plan offers these specific possible amendments:

1.       Prohibit Congress from regulating activity that occurs wholly within one State.

2.       Require Congress to balance its budget.

3.       Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from creating federal law.

4.       Prohibit administrative agencies—and the unelected bureaucrats that staff them—from preempting state law.

5.       Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

6.       Require a seven-justice super-majority vote for U.S. Supreme Court decisions that invalidate a democratically enacted law.

7.       Restore the balance of power between the federal and state governments by limiting the former to the powers expressly delegated to it in the Constitution.

8.       Give state officials the power to sue in federal court when federal officials overstep their bounds.

9.       Allow a two-thirds majority of the States to override a federal law or regulation.

In the interview, likely amendments are summarized into three categories: Balanced Budget, Term Limits, and Limiting the Commerce Clause.

Another way to look at the list is addressing the deviations from the Constitution by all three branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial.

Dealing with the legislative problems (and the Commerce clause), Governor Abbott says this:

What percentage of laws you live under from the federal government are actually even voted on by Congress? The answer is about 6%. About 94% of all the laws, rules, and regulations governing your lives are never even voted on by the people you elect to represent you in Washington, DC. That goes back, and violates a rule that even predates the United States of America Congress. If you go back to John Locke, and maybe even before Locke, it talks about the compact between the people and those they elect to represent them. And the people you elect to represent you are accountable to you. You should be able to hire and fire them based upon what they do.

That’s not how our government works. The laws that we live under are passed by unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats who run the EPA, the IRS—all these alphabet soup federal government agencies. I think that’s wrong, and what I propose is that no agency rule has any binding effect unless and until it is voted on by the United States Congress.

The legislative branch has ceded its lawmaking authority to the executive branch. Governor Abbott says, about these executive branch bureaucracies,

They make the law; they adjudicate the law; and they enforce the law. That was defined by Madison as tyranny itself. Our federal government has transformed into the very definition of tyranny by Madison, by having all three branches of government consigned into one, and that one branch is unelectable and unaccountable.

The solution, he says, it to have every agency regulation null and void until it is passed by legislative vote.

Because Governor Abbott was a state supreme court justice, followed by more than a decade as Texas Attorney General, suing the federal government and standing up to the bullying, he is especially effective talking about the overreach of the US Supreme Court. Here’s part of the interview:

Peter Robinson: The Texas Plan and the Supreme Court. I’m going to quote you from that 92-page document…. “The Supreme Court was for the most part able to control its ambitions for the first 170 years of our nation’s history. But in modern America, the policy preferences of five robed unelected septuagenarians will trump even the most politically popular legislation on any topic—from voting rights to abortion to religion to speech to criminal procedure to guns to healthcare to the environment.” I read that, and I thought, that’s the angriest sentence in this document. It’s the Supreme Court that really gets you, doesn’t it?

Governor Abbott: If you think that’s angry, you need to read this book. [holds up Broken but Unbowed, a book he has just written] I’ve got a lot more in there, where I fully expose the Supreme Court for what it has become….

Let me ask a question:… How many votes does it take to amend the Constitution? The audience knows the answer here. Most people think, well, it’s two thirds of the House and then three-fourths of the states. The fact is, the Constitution is amended every single year by five votes, of five liberal judges, sitting on the United States Supreme Court. If Madison and Hamilton saw that happening, they would never have created the system that we have now.

If we can’t trust our representatives in Washington to do straighten out the mess, then this is a remedy worth trying. Governor Abbott noted that, while it hasn’t been used before to amend the Constitution, it has been tried—at least twice. Once, a century ago, related to the 17^th Amendment, which came within one state of calling for the convention when the House decided to put forth the amendment themselves, rather than be forced. And a similar situation happened during the Reagan administration.

As Governor Abbott says near the conclusion:

It’s never too late. It’s never too large. Never too impossible. That was the attitude that Hamilton and Madison and Franklin and George Washington had. This is America. This isn’t some other country. This is a country where we can do anything—once we realize the necessity of doing it.

He tells the story of one person, who was responsible for getting the 27^th Amendment passed. And, when asked about his own handicap, he used the story as a parallel. Who would have thought that someone could go from a hospital bed, following a freak accident that left him paralyzed, to eventually becoming governor of the twelfth largest economy in the world. He was broken, but unbowed.

In the last Texas legislative session, a bill to propose a convention of the states to amend the US Constitution made it out of the House but not the Senate. This year, since it is a priority of the governor, it is likely to pass. Many states have already passed similar bills, and other states are somewhere in the process.

I’ve been slowly learning about this issue. I recommend the Uncommon Knowledge interview [below] as a primer. And read The Texas Plan. Governor Abbott’s new book Broken but Unbowed: The Fight to Fix a Broken America is likely to be another great resource. And for the past several years, people have been turning to Mark Levin’s book The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic.

I suggest getting up to speed quickly, and then doing some citizen lobbying to get your state on board for an Article V convention of the states to amend the Constitution—while there’s still an American Constitution to restore.

A Parent's Job

So, you’re a parent of school-age children. Suppose you have a family situation where you can’t take a vacation during summer, because of the job of one of the parents. But there is a week you can take off during a week in April, say. You look at your children’s grades and attendance records, and you make the decision to go to take a well-earned trip to Disney World. The kids will miss a full week of classes. You meet with their teachers and arrange for work to be made up. And you go make some good family memories.

And then you get fined for failing to have your child attend school, a criminal offense.

That’s ridiculous, so you take it to court. And you win, because a court isn’t going to go all the way to the logical conclusion that letting your child do something other than school for even a single day is criminal parental behavior.

This was big news in Britain on Friday.

A couple of days later, on a British news show, there was another educational issue that came up. As I recall, it was about a parent’s choice to take a child out of a failing neighborhood school and go into a school of the parents’ choice. The newsperson thought this was fair and right. But when she was asked about the outcome of the vacationing father’s case, she thought that was wrong. It would encourage other parents to take their kids out of school for holidays. The news people agreed that there was a limit to what sensible people could allow parents to do, and compulsory education was for a good reason.

Meanwhile, back in the US, the president put forth an ultimatum regarding his latest social agenda item. He sent out a decree to all public school districts in the country, threatening to cut off federal funding for education to any that did not comply with the requirement to allow self-proclaimed transgender students to use the bathroom and showers of their choice.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott responded, “I announce today that Texas is fighting this. Obama can’t rewrite the Civil Rights Act. He’s not a king.”

So maybe it’s time to think about education.

Let’s start with a basic question: Who has the natural right to see to the care and upbringing of their children?

If you believe the parent has that responsibility, you’re in the freedom zone. If you believe the government has that responsibility, you’re in the tyranny zone.

If you’re thinking, “Yeah, but it’s in everybody’s interest if we educate the next generation. And we can’t expect all parents to take care of that—or be able to. So we’ve agreed together to do that,” then you’re partially right, but there’s more to it if you follow the thought through.

Yes, we all have an interest in an educated populace. But that doesn’t automatically give the responsibility to the government. And yes, there are some parents who will not or cannot provide for the education of their own children. But, as an alternative to government monopoly, wouldn’t it be better to help only those incapable of affording education, and taking responsibility away from only those parents who have proven to be negligent?

Let’s assume we’re in agreement that, a) education isn’t a government responsibility; it is a parental responsibility with societal help as needed; b) to the extent any government participates in education, it should be the most local level possible and should exclude the federal level.

Given that, the next question is, how do we get there from here?

The answer, as usual, is to limit government to its proper role and allow the free market to find innovative solutions.

So then the next question is how.

I’m not sure of the answer, but a week and a half ago I spent a day talking with Heritage Foundation visitors to Houston. They were here to listen—I got to talk education one-on-one for a couple of hours, before even hearing from their panel and then evening speaker, Jim DeMint. Part of their purpose was to introduce an idea that I’m beginning to consider.

Have you heard of ESAs? That’s Educational Savings Accounts (or other meanings for the letters, depending on where you are, but with that general idea). It’s similar to a medical savings account—money that follows the child, that can be used in various approved ways for the education of that child.

This is already being tried in five states. In Arizona, it started with special needs students. It took 90% of their state funding (leaving alone their local and federal money) and gave it to the parents. The parent could leave the child in the local public school program, but they had the option to take the allotted money and spend it one some combination of tuition, tutoring, therapy, classes, and educational equipment. This could include, maybe, a parochial school plus tutoring and equine therapy (which helps rewire the brain).

Educational Savings Account in use
photo found here

One example we were given showed the parents being allotted some $19,000 of the total $21,000 (the amount spent by the state on each special needs student in public schools), to use as best they could. They were able to provide very well, doing all they had intended—and had about $2000 left over for the year.

This leftover could be spent later in the year, or rollover to the next year, or accrue for the child to use for a college education.

Arizona expanded its program beyond special needs. As the money is made available to families to use as they choose, the market responds. And competition drives both innovation and lower prices.

Heritage was suggesting to Texas that we endeavor to persuade the legislature to initiate an ESA program, and that we set it up from the start to include all students who choose it, including homeschool and private school students, whose family’s currently pay taxes for their children’s educations, which they do not benefit from, and additionally have to pay out-of-pocket for their expenses.

I’m hoping to consider this in more detail in the future—with my notes in hand, and with some of the data and charts that Heritage showed us. But I was heartened to see that people have been thinking about marketplace solutions to free us from the government monopoly of education.

If we’re able to find ways to get better and cheaper ways to educate our children, that is good for everyone. If we’re able to return the responsibility and choice to parents, bypassing the federal government and its social engineering coercion—that’s priceless.