Texas Education II: Knowledge needed to be “an effective American Citizen in a global economy”

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

During the initial installment of this conversation about the future of Texas public education, I focused on the “general diffusion of knowledge” that is the constitutional purpose of our “system of public free schools,” under Article 7, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution. Consistent with that constitutional purpose, I proposed a 21st Century mission for our public schools to provide Texas students with:

… the incremental foundation of truths, facts, and principles they will need as adults to function as effective American citizens in a global economy, together with the experiences and tools to use such knowledge effectively and wisely.

In this second post I want to delve into the meaning of this proposed mission in more depth before we try to take the step next in our discussion—a conversation about the curriculum that will be needed to pursue this mission.

It is fair to admit that none of us mortals know what the future will be. The sky could actually fall—a Meteor could hit the Earth, the climate could change one way or the other in some drastic way, our world could be attacked by aliens from outer space, or the worst of our fears of an Armageddon could unfold—causing life to end on this planet as we have come to know it. But most humans have learned from experience not to plan their lives based on the worst of their fears, or even the best of their dreams, but from the foundation of their experiences. Applying this time-tested approach, I am looking toward the future from the vantage point of being a “young” member of the Baby Boom Generation in mid-2012. From this perspective, I believe that the experiences of the past few decades point to some specific challenges that the next two or three generations of Americans will face during this century. Our educational system should provide these next generations with the knowledge and tools they will need to meet these challenges.

The first of these challenges is of our own making—the rebuilding of society in America. From its beginnings, America has been an experiment based on ideas and ideals forged by a Western Civilization whose defining moment occurred on a hill called Calvary almost 2,000 years ago. This experiment has evolved since the early 1600s through trials and errors and triumphs, but the ideas and ideals always guided the experiment, and created the basis for a society of free people to exist and flourish. However, over the last half-century, my generation has not only continued to test this system, but has so fundamentally altered the experiment that we have separated and isolated each other in ways that actually threaten the continuation of the experiment and the society it created.

If our children are to inherit the American experiment that we were taught was so exceptional, we must give them the knowledge of the ideas and ideals that formed it, and the tools with which to rebuild a 21st Century society based on the foundation of those ideas and ideals. The re-construction must still allow for the spirit of innovation that has been a hallmark of our experiment, but our children must be given the knowledge to discern between innovations that strengthen and expand the original experiment, and change that destroys the experiment. They must realize that as we prize the gift of liberty we have learned through the ages that “no man is an island,” and citizens can not thrive without a home, a neighborhood, and a country to call their own.

This first challenge is related to the second challenge, because a new, and as yet undefined, global economic “civilization” is emerging in the likeness of the American experiment, and if we don’t understand the foundation of our own society, we will miss opportunities in this new economy. To say that there is a new economic civilization emerging is not to say that there will be “One World” of which we will pledge fidelity as new citizens. Instead, what is emerging is a culture based on economic interaction among diverse people, which will co-exist with older regional political and cultural civilizations, and with nations and societies that comprise those older civilizations.

The second challenge the next few generations will face is how to work and thrive within this new economic civilization, and how to shape its formation for the better, while retaining an allegiance to family, neighborhood and country. To meet this challenge our children and grandchildren will need knowledge of the American experiment and its Western Civilizational roots, of how our experiment impacted the emergence and shape of this new civilization, and of the foundations of the other civilizations, nations and societies whose members are participating in this new civilization. In addition to this philosophical, historical, and spiritual knowledge (and to the exposure to the social science disciplines that inform such knowledge), they must be provided with the knowledge of math and science sufficient to understand what comprises our physical world, and how the physical world works, and how the physical can be harnessed and manipulated to improve the human condition without destroying its essence. They also will need to master more than one language in order to effectively communicate in, and understand the world in which they live. Then, they will need the tools to effectively and respectfully use this knowledge as they engage in the new emerging civilization.

This second challenge is intertwined with the third and final challenge our posterity will face over the next 9 decades: avoiding an Armageddon of our own making. Avoiding war has never been an easy task. History teaches us that, regardless of our best intentions, the more we interact with people of different cultures, the more these interactions will inevitably lead to frictions—and frictions lead to political, economic and cultural conflicts. The challenge to the future is not just to keep these conflicts from leading to war, but from keeping conflicts and wars from leading to human destruction. This challenge requires knowledge of those disciplines that used to be called, the “Liberal Arts”—the study of man and man’s nature—and the tools necessary to use those arts to effectively keep frictions from becoming catastrophic conflicts.

Now, will most of our children need all of the knowledge needed to address every challenge I have listed? The answer to that question is clearly, “no”. It will probably be true for our great-grandchildren as it is for us, that most of them will still spend their entire lives quietly raising families in local communities. To the extent they ever become engaged directly in the wider world it will be through broader communications and entertainments, local interactions with people from different parts of the world, or the trips they will take outside of the United States. But they all will share their citizenship as free people in a country that will remain crucial to the future of mankind—they will live the American experiment and be part of the foundation of the global economic civilization: they will raise the children of the future; they will make the American products, provide the American services, or do the American research that will be traded within the global economic civilization; they will maintain the neighborhoods that keep this country prosperous and free, and they will choose the leaders who will make decisions and use the powers delegated to them to affect the future. Therefore, regardless of their stations in life as adults, our posterity will need a foundational knowledge in how to be an American citizen, and how and why the global economic civilization is emerging and working.

The new mission I have been describing in these first two posts will require what is sometimes referred to as a “knowledge-based education,” rather than a “method-based education,” for its effective implementation. The ongoing debate between a “knowledge-based education” and a “method-based education” is at the heart of the next topic we will discuss: the proper curriculum needed to pursue a new, focused mission for public education. But I want to end this post with a brief comment about a recent controversy related to this debate.

The Republican Party of Texas was criticized recently for its adoption of a platform plank entitled “Knowledge-based Education” during the June, 2012 State Convention. The plank included the words “critical thinking” in a context that was interpreted by some critics as meaning that Republicans in Texas don’t want to people to think critically. Although I would have worded the plank differently, this whole argument is beside the point—everyone wants an educational system that produces individuals who are able to critically think about the world in which they live; “critical thinking” is one of those tools our children will need as adults in order to use the knowledge they are taught effectively and wisely. The real question for us to answer is, what is the best approach to education that will create effective critical thinkers?

As we will discuss in the next post, the consensus of cognitive scientists is that the attribute of “critical thinking” is difficult (if not impossible) to teach as a skill separate and apart from the core knowledge of a subject to which the critical thought is to be applied. What such scientists are telling us is that we need a “knowledge-based” curriculum in order to develop critical thinkers. Ironically, cognitive scientists are acknowledging what the drafters of the Texas Constitution originally advocated (and what the Texas Republican Platform is really advocating)—an education focused on a “general diffusion of knowledge.” How we can apply cognitive science to effectuate the requirement of Texas Constitution, as well as the modern mission I’ve proposed, is what I will address next.

Texas Education: Revisiting our Foundation

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Back in mid-June after the RPT convention in Fort Worth, I wrote a post in which I stated that one of my long-term plans was to help

… find a comprehensive answer to the structural and financial problems facing our educational system in our communities and across this state.

I want to start this discussion now, because this issue affects virtually every aspect of state and local government in Texas, and its resolution will determine the future prosperity and happiness of the citizens of our state.

The modern Republican Party believes in the principles of federalism and limited government, which commits us to govern only to the extent necessary to preserve liberty and order, and to do so as locally as possible. There is only one local institution in American life that has involved, at some time and in some way, every individual, every family, and every neighborhood: school. And the ripple effects of a school—both good and bad—have consequences for individuals, families and communities, which last a lifetime. We have to commit as a party to get this policy issue right.

To get it right, we first must realize that the problem with our public education system actually consists of a complex web of issues that impact about 50% of our state government’s budget on top of the property taxes and bond debt incurred at the local level. Lurking beneath the economics of our school system is a labyrinth of issues that must be addressed before we can get control of the economic issues effectively. In essence, we must start from the foundation and work our way up to fix this edifice. We have to start in the classroom and determine what education our children need to become effective citizens in the 21st Century, and how to provide that education to them. Then, we need to figure out the facilities, teachers, and parental/community involvement we will need to provide that education while working to minimize the drop-out rate. After we have a plan for education at the school and community level, we next will need to determine the optimal organizational structure for districts across the state to implement that plan, which should include a discussion of whether and how to inject competition into the system. Finally, we can then budget the cost of transitioning to, and implementing, that plan and re-organization, and determine how to effectively raise the revenue needed to fund the budget with the lowest and fairest tax burden possible—and with no income tax.

Yes, I am talking about a complete review and re-organization of the present system, because I think the past 30 years of public debate and stalemate has shown that without such a comprehensive approach, no marginal change or testing process will create the educated citizenry that we need. And we each need to be part of the discussion in order to give our legislators and school boards guidance as to how we want them to address and implement the changes that are needed.

So, I want to start this conversation with this post, and to start it at the foundation of the problem—understanding the purpose of our public education system and state government’s duty to fulfill that purpose. As with most fundamental public issues, the foundation starts with our constitution. Article 7, Section 1 of the Texas Constitution provides both the purpose and the duty:

Support and Maintenance of System of Public Free Schools. A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.

This current constitutional provision pertaining to education was adopted in 1876, but by that time Texans had long committed themselves to providing for public education. The Texas Declaration of Independence of 1836 listed the failure of the Mexican government “to establish any public system of education…” as one of the reasons for declaring independence from Mexico. Then, the first public school law in the Republic of Texas was enacted in 1840, which provided for setting aside over 17,000 acres of land in each county to support public education. Later upon statehood, the Texas Constitution of 1845 provided that 10% of the annual state tax revenue be set aside as a perpetual fund to support free public schools. This early commitment to public education needs to be remembered as we try to understand the language of the current constitution.

And, as we continue our discussion about public education over several posts, we will come back to Article 7, Section 1 often. But for this post I want to focus just on the purpose of the “system of public free schools” expressed in this provision. Notice that the framers of the Texas Constitution very specifically identified the purpose of the public school system as “a general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people”. Before we can reform how the State meets its duty to provide “an efficient system of public free schools,” we must better understand the express constitutional purpose for that system.

What did the framers mean by “a general diffusion of knowledge,” and specifically, what did they mean by “knowledge”? If you separate the descriptions of the process of obtaining knowledge from the various dictionary definitions of the term “knowledge,” the picture becomes clearer. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary includes this definition of “knowledge”: “[i]n general sense: … acquaintance with ascertained truths, facts, or principles;” while the American Heritage dictionary includes this definition: “… [t]he sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or learned.” Distilling these two definitions and placing it in the context of the words of the Texas Constitution, I believe the framers meant that the purpose of the public school system was to provide “a general diffusion of the truth, facts, or principles that have been perceived, discovered or learned’ by man, which have been found over the course of human history to be “essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people.”

This reading of the constitutional purpose is consistent with the once-dominant view of the purpose of American education. From the 1930s through the 1950s a great debate raged within academia over whether there should be a unifying purpose and idea underlying curriculum in this country. At the forefront of the argument that there should be such unity, was the President of Harvard University, John B. Conant, who outlined his principles in 1945 in General Education in a Free Society. In that book, Conant described the predicament of the then current state of, and debate over education, and what he believed should be its focus:

A supreme need of American education is for a unifying purpose and idea. As recently as a century ago, no doubt existed about such a purpose: it was to train the Christian citizen. Nor was there doubt how this training was to be accomplished. The student’s logical powers were to be formed by mathematics, his taste by Greek and Latin classics, his speech by rhetoric, and his ideals by Christian ethics…this enviable certainty both of goals and means has largely disappeared…. For some decades the mere excitement of enlarging the curriculum and making place for new subjects, new methods, and masses of new students seems quite pardonable to have absorbed the energies of schools and colleges…. In recent times, however, the question of unity has become insistent. We are faced with a diversity of education which, if it has many virtues, nevertheless works against the good of society by helping to destroy the common ground of training and outlook on which any society depends. 

…there are truths which none can be free to ignore, if one is to have that wisdom through which life can become useful. These are the truths concerning the structure of the good life and concerning the factual conditions by which it may be achieved, truths comprising the goals of the free society.

As Conant states, there was a time when Americans knew what was meant by “truth, facts, or principles” that comprised “knowledge”. But we haven’t followed Conants’ approach over the last half century, and so our “system of public free schools” in Texas (and across the country) has lost focus, has tried to do too much with less and less efficiency, and, in the process, has accomplished far less than we hoped.

We must change this dynamic, and all of its complex consequences on our State and communities, by first addressing the core problem—we must conform the constitutional purpose of Texas education to the 21^st Century challenges that will face our children and grandchildren. To do that, we need to refocus the activity in our classrooms from pre-Kindergarten through 12^th grade toward providing Texas students with the incremental foundation of truths, facts, and principles they will need as adults to function as effective American citizens in a global economy, together with the experiences and tools to use such knowledge effectively and wisely. This means that our classrooms need to produce an educated citizenry, each of whom is capable of functioning at some appropriate level in our American society regardless of when they leave school, e.g., 9th grade, 12th grade, or later; and each of whom has the foundational tools with which they can engage with people from other societies and nations respectfully and productively throughout their lives.

What I just stated may appear to be self-evident—but it isn’t. Attend any graduation ceremony today and you’ll hear speaker after speaker glorify the purpose of education as creating critical and creative people who will be ready to be citizens of the world. This is lunacy. First, to become critical and creative thinkers, you first must absorb core knowledge with which you can learn to be critical and creative—critical or creative thinking alone is nothing more than educated idiocy. Second, there is not now, nor will there be in the lifetimes of anyone now living, a “world” to be a citizen of. We will remain citizens of a nation or state, who will be engaged in the wider world comprised of other nations and states. We need to know, appreciate and pledge allegiance to our own society and culture before we can ever truly understand and respect the diversity that exists among all societies and cultures. Without being grounded in a society and culture, we will create intellectual and economic nomads, rather than an educated citizenry capable of succeeding in the world our children and grandchildren will inherit.

As part of this refocus toward the constitutional purpose of our educational system, the curriculum throughout all the departments of our public schools, during each grade level, should be tailored to meet this purpose. Any other information or process that does not contribute to diffusing this foundational knowledge should be re-directed at age-appropriate levels to vocational schools, community and junior colleges, and our system of private and public colleges and universities—and to parents and churches.

If we don’t re-start the discussion over the future of education from some foundation like the one I have just proposed, we will never fix the myriad of associated problems, including

• facilities,
• staffing,
• budgets,
• taxes,
• textbooks,
• testing,
• student and teacher performance,
• tenure and pensions,
• educating the children of illegal immigrants and children with special needs,
• drop-out rates, and
• organizational inefficiencies,

which plague the affordable delivery of effective education in this State, because we will not have a frame of reference from which to address these other issues.

I know what I have said here, though basic, is a lot to digest, and some of what I have written will be controversial. So, before I build on these ideas, I’ll stop here for now and give you some time to digest and reflect.

Over the next few months, we will use Big Jolly Politics as a forum for presenting a continuing conversation about the future of education in this state from a conservative perspective, and we will invite other Republicans from our area with experience with these issues to participate as guest writers and participants in video forums to be posted on this blog. We hope this conversation will be lively and lead to effective change.

What can we learn from the Aurora, Colorado tragedy?

This post originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a year-end post about Baseball, in which I discussed the passing of a wonderful former star for the Chicago Cubs during my youth—Ron Santo.  I would like to spend this mid-summer post gloating about his recent induction into the Hall of Fame (and I will touch on that briefly at the end of this post), but life got in the way.  Unfortunately, like so many Americans this past weekend, I was reminded of the arbitrariness of life and of the randomness with which violence can destroy lives.

Yes, I am talking about the shootings in Aurora, Colorado—and yes, I know, everybody and their cousin’s uncle has commented on this tragedy.  But, for a moment, I want to focus on the relevance to this tragedy of some things I’ve been writing about for a long time.

While so many people at times like this wring their hands about the easy availability of guns, or the lack of long-term care available for the mentally ill, and try to urge quick legislative fixes to the these senseless tragedies—they simply assuage their own guilt while missing the point completely.  Those factors are nothing more than enablers of what is going on—neither causes, nor even symptoms, of what is wrong.  I think what is wrong is deeper than either of those issues, and is larger than anything petty politics or simple legislation can address—the core of this problem really goes to the soul of a generation in this country (my generation, the “Baby Boomers”).  To let me explain, please indulge me for a moment with a few digressions.  But, before I digress, I want you to keep in mind the first definition of society in the American Heritage Dictionary:  “the totality of social relationships among humans.” [emphasis added]

Probably the greatest speech Ronald Reagan ever gave was made during the fall of his first year as Governor of California.  In September, 1967, Reagan returned to his alma mater, Eureka College, to give an address to dedicate the opening of a new  library on campus (The Value of Understanding the Past). During that speech Reagan made the following prophetic statements on the eve of all the turmoil that would rock this country during 1968:

We have to re-examine our individual goals and aims.  What do we want for ourselves and our children? Is it enough to have material things? Aren’t liberty and morality and integrity and high principles and a sense of responsibility more important?  The world’s truly great thinkers have not pointed us toward materialism; they have dealt with the great truths and with the high questions of right and wrong, of morality and of integrity.  They have dealt with the question of man, not the acquisition of things. And when civilizations have disregarded their findings, when they have turned to the things of the flesh, they have disappeared….

… But we must learn from yesterday to have a better tomorrow.  We are beset by problems in a complex world; we are confused by those who tell us only new and untried ways offer hope. The answers to all the problems of mankind will be found in this building by those who have the desire to find them and perception enough to recognize them….One of mankind’s problems is that we keep repeating the same errors. For every generation some place, two plus two has added up to three, or in another place, five – four seems to elude some of us. This has happened in my generation and I predict, without smugness, it will happen to yours….

A few of those dusty books with those “answers to all the problems of mankind,” still sit in a library somewhere.  They include, but are not limited to, the New Testament, the poetry of the 17th Century Anglican priest, John Donne, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and President Washington’s Farewell Address, which state (in order):

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us….  … For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this:  ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’  But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another! (St. Paul (Saul of Tarsus), The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, around 54 or 55 A.D. (the New King James Version).

…all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language…God’s hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another….  No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main….  Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” (John Donne, Devotions, Meditation XVII:  Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die (1624)).

…no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles…;…and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other. (Virginia Declaration of Rights, paragraphs 15 and 16, June, 1776).

Cultivate peace and harmony with all.  Religion and morality enjoin this conduct. … It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.  (President Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17, 1796).

All of these old quotes point to a lesson and a challenge—yes, we’ve been given freedom, but we’ve also been challenged to use that freedom to create relationships with our neighbors, and to care for those neighbors to build communities and a society, and, in the end, to protect our freedom.  In essence, that liberty we were given may have provided us with independence from governments or dictators or Pharisees; but to sustain that gift, we were challenged to develop an enduring interdependence of family and neighborhood—a fundamental interdependence to sustain relationships of free people, and, therefore, to sustain a society designed to preserve and protect the gifts of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  It was an interdependence based on the commitment to each other of “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”  It was that challenge that our Settlers and Founders accepted, and it was that challenge that prompted us to improve ourselves throughout our history.

Somewhere, though, in all the turmoil and search for “truth” that engulfed the Baby Boom generation as we came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, we began to abandon the quest for interdependence and to substitute it with the embrace of autonomy—and then we called this new autonomy “liberty” and passed this fundamental misunderstanding of our society to our children.  We coveted our freedom to come, go and do as we pleased, while we came to abhor our neighborhoods as “Peyton Place.”  Privacy became the watchword, and fences became our shield from participating in something larger than ourselves.

As the decades have come and gone, and our hair has thinned and grayed, this new approach to freedom has allowed many of us who were raised with strong self-esteem to prosper alone—as islands onto ourselves.  But, as the Wall Street Journal noted almost two decades ago, this approach left many of our neighbors without the relationships and guardrails they needed to succeed in life (No Guardrails: August 1968 and the death of self-restraint).

And the loss of these guardrails has had deadly consequences for society.  We’ve left people alone over the decades who needed friendship and neighbors.  In the process, we’ve gotten people whose torments and troubles become magnified in their loneliness and autonomy, and who then lash out in violence—at a doctor in Florida, at fellow students in Colorado and Virginia, at citizens meeting with their Congresswoman in Tucson, in a movie theater in Colorado, and on and on.  What has happened is the antithesis of what is supposed to happen in the context of a caring, neighborly love; of what is supposed to happen in the context of an interdependence that our forefathers believed was essential to maintain a society of free people.  That interdependence can not be substituted by a government program or bureaucrat.  It is an individual responsibility—neighbor to neighbor.  Without it, people fester alone in their own indulgences—and when coupled with an absence of self-discipline, the consequences are often violent and destructive.

In the meantime, have those of us who “prospered alone” really succeeded?  Look at the headlines of the weeks preceding the shootings in Colorado, and you’ll see breaches of trust by those who supposedly were the success stories:  the CEO of a commodities trading firm who misused his clients’ accounts for 20 years in order to avoid personal failure; an entire city council of a town in California that caused the town to declare bankruptcy, in part, because those leaders improperly accounted for public funds for more than a decade; and a revered football coach and officers of a public university who cared more about their image than the safety of children in their community.

What the editors of the Wall Street Journal tried to articulate almost two decades ago is still true.  In every age and in every society, people erected “guardrails”, or traditions or customs to live by.  The best of those customs tend to discipline–or teach–members of the society about right and wrong behavior and keep such behavior within an accepted civil norm so that society can function.  A society that recognizes no norms for civility, and no difference between right and wrong behaviors, quickly devolves into chaos.  Moreover, a society that won’t instill those customs and traditions through caring interaction between neighbors soon becomes dysfunctional.  Just as you can’t remodel a house merely by tearing the walls to the studs without replacing them, you can’t simply change the traditions and customs for a society by erasing or ignoring them–you need to replace them with traditions or customs that fit the framework of the original structure, and then work to instill those customs and traditions, or you loosen the bonds of civility and society.

Those traditions and customs must be grounded on principles and virtues consistent with maintaining an interdependent society of free people:  traditions and customs that promote “justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and … forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.”  This can’t be done by delegating our obligations as free people to someone else or government—government doesn’t love your neighbor, people do.  Nor can it be accomplished by adopting new “first principles” that are foreign to our civilization, our beliefs, and our history.  Maybe, if we rekindle these “first principles” hiding in all those dusty old books with proper customs and traditions, we will reduce the future risk of events like the Colorado shootings, and we will re-establish the commitment to honor and self-discipline that keeps us from giving in to avarice.  Isn’t it worth a try?

All of this gets me back to Ron Santo.  Santo was a “hero” from my youth.  He arguably was the best third-baseman in the National League during the 1960s and early 1970s.  He played on the great Cub infield of the late 1960s, which, in 1969, placed all four infielders (Ernie Banks, Glen Beckert, Don Kessinger, and Santo), and the catcher (Randy Hundley), on the National League All-Star squad, with Santo starting at Third.  He was an All-Star 9 of his 14 National League Seasons.  For a generation of kids who grew up in the Chicago area, he was the heart-and-soul of a team that included Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ferguson Jenkins, and Leo Durocher.

But, most importantly, he continued to give to the community for the remainder of his life.  Santo stayed in Chicago after retirement and became the radio voice for the Cubs for two decades before his death.  While he fought the ravages of diabetes and lost both legs to the disease, he kept his charm and his sense of humor, and he worked with young boys in the community to teach them to be men.  He didn’t wallow in his troubles and lash out at society; nor did he prey on the young boys who worked with him.  Instead, he became an inspiration to a whole new generation of young boys—as a well as a continued inspiration to us older boys.

What we need in order to avoid the isolation that creates events like the Colorado shootings—and all of the avarice that pervades the halls of private and public power—is not more laws.  We need a lot more Ron Santos—in our families, our neighborhoods, and our private and public institutions.  And we need to do the hard work of rebuilding traditions and customs that produce and sustain the Ron Santos among us.

It’s just that simple—and that hard.

But, again … isn’t it worth a try?

We Can Not Allow Class Warfare To Work Again!

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Thomas Sowell notes in this article, Trashing Achievements, a very corrosive form of class warfare has emerged in this campaign from desperate Democratic candidates from the courthouse to the White House. For instance, Sowell recounts this recent statement from the Democratic Senate candidate in Massachusetts,

To cheering audiences, Professor Warren says, “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You build a factory out there, good for you, but I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate.”

This argument is wrong for many reasons, including:

• It assumes that your successful neighbors don’t pay taxes—but they do. And, what’s more, no matter where you slice it—the top 1%, 2%, 5% or 10%—the earners at these levels pay most of the taxes collected at every level of government in this country.

• It assumes that the group Professor Warren calls “the rest of us” pays all the taxes that pay for the schools and the infrastructure in this country—but they don’t. While virtually everyone who has a job pays into Social Security and Medicare, those programs don’t pay for the education and the infrastructure that Professor Warren is talking about. As for the federal income taxes that do contribute to pay for those programs, almost one half of the country’s population is exempted from paying those taxes.

• It assumes that the problem with government budgets is that we aren’t raising enough revenue to pay for education and infrastructure, but those programs are not driving the increase in the public debt. What is driving the widening gap between tax revenue and public spending are the growing costs of social entitlements, public-sector pensions, layers of unnecessary bureaucrats, mounds of new regulations, and fraud and waste in the procurement process.

• Finally, and most importantly, it assumes that government in our society always came first, and that all we have accomplished is a result of government giving us benefits. But any “benefit” bestowed by government had to come from taxes, and those taxes had to come from citizens or their businesses, and those citizens and businesses had to accumulate property and income to pay for those taxes. In the end, it is the source of private property and income—jobs and business, from the farm to the town square to the factory—that came first to pay for government.

In fact, Professor Warren’s argument turns the history of this country on its head. The national government did not even appear in the United States until the colonists were here for almost 150 years—living and working on farms and in small communities. In fact, from the 1630s to the 1750s, the European governments with colonies here largely left the colonists to govern themselves. It is the productive farmers and businessmen who owned property who paid the first taxes from their earnings to pay for the schools and the canals and the roads. They continued to pay the taxes to enlarge the infrastructure during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, and they were the ones who shouldered the burden of 70%-90% marginal tax rates for decades after the New Deal programs were enacted. And it still takes the production of private income from the efforts of the private job creators to pay for all those schools and roads that Professor Warren talks about.

Government didn’t come first in America. Productive, entrepreneurial citizens always have come first in this country.

The left’s class warfare rhetoric shows what is at stake in this election. If the Democrats don’t understand our country’s history, and don’t understand the consequences of the tax and spending policies they have enacted, they can’t be trusted to fix the problems that face this country. If they do understand our history and these consequences, then they are lying to the American people to stay in office—and we must not allow them to succeed.

Not this time, and not ever again.

It is time to move beyond this corrosive class rhetoric if we are ever going to stabilize and modernize our country to meet the challenges of the 21^st Century in a way that preserves and strengthens the inalienable rights we’ve been given.

It is time for a change in White House and the U.S. Senate.

It is time for all good citizens “to come to the aid of their countrymen” and make this change in the November Election.

So, we now know it’s a tax—its time to abolish it!

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Over the last few weeks (most of which I spent on a family vacation outside the country), I read the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions from the 2011-12 term and tried to write this post several times. However, none of the drafts seemed to convey what I felt needed to be said. I think with the passage of time and more thought, I can now say what I’ve wanted to say.

I was very disappointed by the ruling upholding “Obamacare”. However, as we conservatives near the end of our primaries and begin to approach the last lap of the campaign toward the November finish line, I believe the U.S. Supreme Court gave us a great gift this term—though, admittedly not the one we wanted—if we will now seize that gift, and then use it to defeat Obama and send Romney and the Republicans to Washington.

The Court reminded everyone in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius and Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC that there are real limits to the delegated powers of the federal government contained both in the body of the original text of the Constitution, and in the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment. In fact, Justices Roberts’ and Kennedys’ opinions in Sebelius, in which the limits of the Commerce Clause and Spending Clause powers were clarified by a majority of the Justices, contain some of the strongest re-iterations of, and re-commitments to the Founders’ original design of Federalism to be found in any opinions from the Court in the last 100 years. Amazingly, even two of the Court’s most liberal justices (Breyer and Kagan) agreed with the limitations of the Spending Clause, and that those limitations had been violated by Congress. Moreover, the Court struck a strong balance in Arizona v. United States between the delegated powers over foreign affairs and naturalization held by the federal government and the general sovereign powers retained by the states.
Even the bizarre ruling by Justice Roberts and the four liberal justices to uphold the individual mandate (and, therefore, most of the law) was, in an odd way, a gift—maybe the most important gift of all. As he found the mandate to really be a tax, Justice Roberts had to acknowledge (expressly and implicitly) truths that Americans should know deep in their DNA, but we sometimes forget:

• when we create any government, that government has to be funded by taxes so the power to tax is given to government;
• the power to tax is the most coercive, and potentially despotic power that government holds;
• the power to tax delegated to the federal government has expanded since 1789 by constitutional amendment to include direct taxes on individuals, and it has been used to implement many coercive policies over the last 100 years; and
• the only real constraint on the exercise of the power to tax is political, not legal—that is the only effective constraint is the one exercised by the people through their right to vote and to petition their government.

In the end it is that last power—the rights of the people to alter or abolish their government through their votes and through their direct petitions to their elected officials—retained by individual citizens, which we always have exercised to control taxation. All Justice Roberts’ opinion did was to remove the final decision as to the Democrat’s abuse of the taxation power from the courts and return it where it belongs—to the people to punish and change. In doing so, he pitched that ball right into our wheelhouse; all we have to do now is control the swing of our bat and make contact.

From the original Boston Tea Party, to the Coolidge and Kennedy tax reductions, to Howard Jarvis’ Proposition 13, to Kemp-Roth and the Reagan Revolution, and now to the Tea Party Movement, we have met the challenge of excessive taxation and defeated it. We must be vigilant and do so again with our votes this fall. In the meantime, we must support those state politicians, including Governor Perry of Texas and Governor Scott of Florida, who are using the clarification of the limits of the Spending Clause to fight the expansion of the federal strings of Medicaid into their states; and petition other state governments to do the same.

So, we now know our mission for the fall election (if any of us out there still were confused)—to abolish Democrats’ abuses of the tax and spending authority by abolishing both the Obama administration the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate. As we’ve now been reminded, we still have the power to correct these abuses, let’s exercise it.

The Fist of the Obama Administration Must Not be Re-Elected

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

My father liked to tinker with writing simple poetry—the type of “greeting card” poetry that can be very touching or funny, or simply lame.  I recently have been reminded of the following part of a funny poem he wrote for me when I graduated from law school, which he entitled “Lawyer to Client”:

You say you hit the other guy,
Broke his nose and blackened his eye,
Split his lip and damaged his face.
I think you’ve got an excellent case.

The man is daft and obviously
Was in a place he never should be.
With devious means and grievous twist
He put his face in front of your fist. …

As I’ve followed the debate over the “Obama mandate” for insurance coverage that narrows the conscience exception that had protected religious institutions for many years, I feel as though we conservatives have once again put our face in front of the left’s fist on this issue.  Normally, I would advocate just licking our wounds and changing the subject back to the economic issues facing the country.  But, the problem is that what underlies the thinking of the left on this issue is what also is strangling the long-term neck of our economy.

Before we go further with that point, we first need to understand how our face found its way into the left’s fist. Back in January (it seems like years ago), during one of the many GOP debates over the last few months, George Stephanopoulos asked the candidates about their view of a half-century old Supreme Court ruling that constitutionally prohibited states from banning the sale or use of contraceptives.  Virtually everyone on the stage, and in the auditorium, was shocked by the question because it seemed to come out of left field.  The candidates all answered in one way or another that the issue was irrelevant and no one is advocating banning contraceptives, and Stephanopoulos looked really silly and petty as he continued to press for an answer from the candidates—but the key is that he continued to press for an answer.  Why?  It made no sense—at the time.

Then, not long after that debate, Secretary Sebelius announced that the Obama Administration would mandate that all employers would have to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their insurance plans, including religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools, and charities.  The “conscience exception” that had previously exempted such institutions from such mandates was to be narrowed to just the direct employees of the houses of worship of such religious institutions.

The negative reaction was stunning and swift, but it was not about women’s health or access to contraceptives—which must have further surprised the likes of Stephanopoulos and Sebelius.  Instead, it was about the use of the governmental fist in violation of the First Amendment to force churches to act at variance with their beliefs, or get fined—the type of direct assault on religious liberty that the U.S. Supreme Court had just told the Obama Administration it could not do as the court struck down another attempted regulatory invasion into the operation of a religious school. Hoping to find a compromise, people of goodwill from all over the political spectrum called on the Obama Administration to reconsider and re-embrace the full conscience exception that both political parties previously had honored, and that had provided a federal safe-harbor from mandates at the state level, while exploring other constitutional ways to maximize women’s access to medical treatments and prescriptions.  Instead of such a compromise, Obama announced a unilateral “compromise” with himself, which—of course—was no compromise at all.  It, instead, was a new fiat that was even more extraordinary for its hubris—mandating that insurers pay for, but not charge for, providing contraceptives to employees of religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools and charities.  Incredible!

Why was the second fiat incredible?  Let’s look closer at Obama’s magnanimous act of self-compromise for a moment:

• it ignores the fact that, in order to take advantage of the historical safe-harbor provided by the federal conscience exception, many religious institutions became self-insured, and those plans cover both the employees of the churches as well as the affiliated entities;

• it ignores one of the most basic facts of economics—there is no free lunch.  Regardless as to whether we are talking about free-market or government-planned economies, goods and services (including contraceptives, and the doctor visit and prescription needed to obtain the contraceptives) cost money; and, in this instance, those costs will be paid either directly by the employer or self-insurer, by all the insureds of the insurance company (including the religious institutions and their employees) through higher premiums, or by taxpayers through higher taxes or more public debt;

• it continues to ignore that these religiously-affiliated institutions only exist in order to fulfill the mission of the church in the community, so that they are an important part of the practice of religious faith  by the ministry of the church, regardless of whether the church employs or serves persons of other faiths (or of no faith) in the performance of such practices; and

• in making all these mistakes, it shows that Obama refuses to acknowledge and abide by the limitations on governmental power, and the exercise of that power, that our Founder’s enshrined in our Constitution, including the preservation of a separate church and the importance of its separate institutional role in our society.

So, the Obama fist came in a second swing toward the face of those of us who still believe in those limitations on government power, and in religious liberty.  But this time, like on so many other occasions over the last two generations, it is our face that was now alleged to be the aggressor, rather than the victim.  Those on the left who initially had called for Obama to re-consider his decision miraculously found this new fiat to be a welcome compromise, and then fell back in line as the lemmings that they are.  And, of course, their fellow travelers in the media lauded the magnanimity and wisdom of Obama’s act of self-compromise, and fell in line, too.  Then, returning full circle to the Stephanopoulos question, they found further criticism of the second swing of Obama’s fist to be a new assault on women’s health by the face of conservatives—an assault so grave that it could not be tolerated.  Unfortunately, some of our candidates and pundits played into this narrative, by allowing themselves to be drawn into debates about specific religious views of contraception, rather than keeping their focus on the fundamental flaws with Obama’s aggressive mandate.  As a result, in the latest twist in this story, the U.S. Senate could not muster the votes to return federal policy to the full conscience exception, and the left walked away from the debate claiming their fist had been assaulted by our face.

I want to be clear about some things.  I am not a Catholic, though I have great respect for the Catholic Church. I am a father of three girls, and I’m a grandfather.  I care very much about the health of my wife and daughters, and their access to the care they believe they need.  Finally, I see no societal, economic or political benefit to, or wisdom in, re-visiting the legal issue of medical privacy related to the sale and use of contraceptives, which was decided a half-century ago.  Contraception should not be, and really never was the issue in this political debate—we must remember that point as we move forward from here.

Now, back to my the point I started to make.  The shear arrogance of a political leader of this nation who would so cavalierly ignore basic economic principles, ignore basic constitutional rights, and ignore the basic limitations of governmental power that allow us to practice our constitutional rights, in order to advance an agenda to regulate by fiat an industry that represents at least 17% of our economy, and, in the process, create a new entitlement scheme, has not earned our trust and must not be re-elected.  We will never recover our economic vitality as a nation, let alone our full individual freedoms and responsibilities, if we re-elect this arrogance and give it four more years at the helm of our country.

To those of you who are involved in GOP campaigns this year, I remind you of the seriousness of the mission we have this fall, and ask you to keep your focus on that mission and what the real issues are.  Don’t get sidetracked into the left’s narrative—don’t stick your face into the left’s fist.  Simply fight back based on our narrative of liberty, personal responsibility, limited government and economic opportunity.  As Reagan once told us a generation ago, “there is no substitute for victory.”

Our Health Care Dilemma

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

In today’s Wall Street Journal, columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., provides this interesting analysis (Conservatives and the Mandate) of the root problem with our health care system. Distilled to its essence, the problem with Obamacare (and Romneycare, and Schwarzeneggercare), it that they perpetuate and worsen an already existing distortion of the market for health care. Ladies and Gentlemen, I hate to tell you this, but there has been no free market for health care in a very long time, and we will have to accept a lot more personal responsibility in our lives if we want to re-establish a free market in that industry.

Since the end of World War II, when unions negotiated for insurance coverage in lieu of wage increases, the provision of health care in this country increasingly has come to be managed by middlemen: private for-profit insurance companies; private non-profit insurance companies; federal and state government agencies; and local public hospital systems. Moreover, most privately-employed full time workers have another middleman, their employer, involved in the process of selecting the insurance coverage, negotiating its price, and collecting and paying the premiums. Most doctor-patient relationships, including the cost and scope of care, are initiated and managed, directly or indirectly, by one of these middlemen. Relatively few individuals (if any) today “choose” their doctors and can negotiate the cost and scope of their care.

In the meantime, the premiums paid by employers and employees are no longer dictated by the actuarial pricing of the risk of illness, disease or injury, because coverage is so broad that it covers basic medical services for which there is no fortuitous risk involved. This means that increasingly the cost we pay for coverage has little or no relation to the individual needs of each person, but rather is based on the cost of sustaining the insurance coverage for everyone enrolled in a specific plan, or for everyone covered by a carrier or government program.

In turn, the decisions of the middlemen dictate how much health care is provided, to whom it is provided, when it is provided and where it is provided. These decisions affect the decisions of doctors in the treatment of patients, and distort the allocation of medical resources in every community.

The only major benefit of the private insurance market to the overall free-market economy is that the premium funds are re-invested in the private economy. But, if you think you are paying premiums to buy a free-market relationship with your doctor, you’re simply wrong.

What Obamacare and its state counterparts do is not a fix to these problems, so that the same quality and amount of medical care is accessible to everyone, and that you regain control of your doctor-patient relationship. Instead, these programs further institutionalize the role and power of middlemen, and raise their decisions from contractual dictates to legal mandates. Meanwhile, the program is designed, over time, to reduce the incentive to purchase private insurance, which eventually will reduce the primary economic benefit of such a product—the re-investment of premiums into the private economy. Eventually, Obamacare will lead to a pure transfer payment entitlement funded with tax dollars and public debt.

The only way to fix this mess in the long term is to restructure the health care industry into a free-market system where most of the economic and medical decisions are kept at the level of the doctor-patient relationship, and the middlemen’s role is greatly reduced. This can be done by creating three delivery systems:

• A private insurance system that only provides coverage for major medical issues—major illnesses, diseases or injuries—and that requires high deductibles or health savings accounts, and personal responsibility, for the payment of all other health care;
• Local hospital and clinic systems paid for with local tax dollars, and administered by local governments, for the indigent (and the continuation of a similar federal program for veterans); and
• A means-tested voucher system to fund the payment of private insurance premiums for insurance coverage for the elderly, paid for from the Medicare tax.

Although these changes sound like common-sense, conservative approaches to fixing the system, I have been amazed by the reaction of many conservatives to these ideas when you discuss them privately. Over the years, as I’ve tried to discuss our current predicament and these types of policy changes with people around the dinner table or in relaxed conversations, their eyes glaze over. More importantly, I have discovered another phenomenon during such discussions: many spouses and single parents, who control family finances and handle the doctor appointments (and, in my anecdotal experience from these conversations, these spouses and single parents are women, regardless of whether both spouses in a marriage work outside the home), hate the idea of losing the simplicity derived from the involvement of middlemen, and they especially hate the idea of losing the convenience of co-pays. They may complain about a specific bad experience with an insurance company over a coverage issue; but the idea of a return of more control over medical decisions and payments to families, and the resulting increase in personal responsibility over such transactions, is simply an anathema to many of these spouses.

Now add to this pre-disposition against assuming more responsibility over the doctor-patient relationship, the recent flap over Obama’s mandate for church-related hospital and charities to provide services and prescriptions, or insurance coverage for such services and prescriptions, which violate the tenets of the religious institutions that manage such hospitals and charities, and you see that this issue is more politically volatile and complex than we conservatives often think. Yes, conservatives and many independents viscerally recoil at the notion of government having and exercising the power to mandate us to do anything, and especially when such power is used to interfere with the decisions and doctrines of a church (and most believe that such government action is unconstitutional). On the other hand, even many conservatives are much more ambivalent about middlemen in their medical decisions, including government, when they are forced to consider the alternative. So, when these people hear that access to contraceptives could be denied to some women, and that the alternative to mandates that are designed to require such access is responsibility they don’t want, their reaction to the issue is not predictably supportive of the religious liberty of the church.

Where does all of this lead to? As I’ve said so often that I’m beginning to feel like a broken record, it leads to the hardest question we Americans have to face this fall, and for many years to come: are we willing to take back the personal responsibilities that the maintenance of liberty and a society of free people requires? If not, then electing Republicans to Washington this fall will not matter in the long-run, because the trajectory of public policy will continue in a leftward direction toward a European system with the trade-offs between social programs and national defense that Europeans have made, and with the acceptance of increasing public and private debts to finance such a system—until it inevitably collapses, internally or externally.

If electing Republicans this fall is to mean real change, we will have to look in the mirror and accept the personal responsibilities such changes will demand of us.