My Choice for Lieutenant Governor - Jerry Patterson

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Even as we start voting in important local and constitutional elections, the 2014 primaries are barreling toward us. This is especially true of the race for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor. Because the train of this race has left the station and already seems at times to be on a course that could derail the entire Republican ticket next fall, people who care deeply about the future of our party and this State must start to express their preferences in order to try to avoid such a derailment.

It is in this spirit that I have decided to make my endorsement for Lieutenant Governor now, and to explain the basis for it.

Before I do so, though, I want to make a few preliminary points:

1. All four men running for the GOP nomination are competent to run the Texas Senate based on their experiences of serving in, or running the Senate. Moreover, at least three of these men have the temperament required to manage the Senate. If any of the three men who have both the competence and temperament to be Lieutenant Governor win the primary, I promise to actively support that candidate next fall; if the fourth candidate wins the primary, I will support the Republican ticket, but I will take no active role in support of that candidate.

2. My normal rule for primary races involving an incumbent is that the challenger bears the burden to prove to voters that he or she is not only competent to serve in the office, but also that the incumbent does not deserve re-election and the challenger would be the better choice. I held myself to that standard when I ran for office, and I expect other challengers to meet this burden as well. However, I cannot apply this rule to this race. To do so would require an endorsement of the status quo in Austin for four more years, because, as my friend David Jennings continually reminds me, David Dewhurst has been a good Lieutenant Governor. But this election gives voters the first opportunity in almost 12 years to bring new thinking and approaches to applying our conservative principles to Texas government, so I cannot just blindly embrace the status quo and forgo this opportunity. Therefore, in reaching my decision I have treated this office as if it were open with no incumbent running, so as to review each candidate on a level field to determine which one would make the best Lieutenant Governor going forward.

3. Consistent with what I wrote in my last post, this endorsement is personal and does not reflect the thinking of any organization of which I am a member, officer, or board member. By making this endorsement, I am choosing to recuse myself from the evaluation and endorsement process for this race conducted by United Republicans of Harris County. This decision was not easy to make, and I doubt that I will make another such statewide endorsement before United Republicans completes and publishes its endorsements; but I believe this race is important enough to make this exception.

With these points in mind, I am making my endorsement based on a saying attributed to Andrew Jackson:

One man with courage makes a majority.

Specifically, I am looking for a candidate who has the knowledge and experience to understand the current and long-term issues facing Texas, the courage to address these issues, and the humility and wisdom to build a majority of Texans and Texas Senators in support of effective solutions based on conservative principles. I believe the one candidate who has shown that he has these necessary qualities is Jerry Patterson. A retired Marine officer and aviator who served his country in war and peace, Jerry has at least twice shown me that he has the courage I am looking for in the next Lieutenant Governor.

In the mid-1990s, when many Texas neighborhoods and businesses were suffering from an explosion of violent crime and many people here and across the country were clamoring for more gun control, Jerry stepped forward and instead called for Texans to be able to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms in response to these developments by advocating for a concealed-carry law. At the time, the chattering class (including many Republicans) was skeptical of Jerry’s idea, and he faced a daunting task to pass such legislation while serving in the minority party in the both houses of the Legislature. But, he had the courage to build support for this landmark legislation with the public and among legislators from both parties. With the passage of Texas’ law, a movement for such laws spread across the country together with a movement for clarifying and strengthening the Second Amendment right to bear arms. In the almost twenty years that have passed since Jerry took his stand, the Supreme Court has twice ruled that the right to bear arms is an individual right, and many locales and states have passed concealed-carry laws. As further vindication of Jerry’s pioneering efforts, credible studies show that locales and states where such laws have been implemented have experienced a statistically significant greater drop in violent crime than locales and states that have retained or increased restrictive gun control laws.

Then, in 2012, Jerry—alone among our statewide elected officials—not only recognized the need to change our party’s rhetoric and approach to immigration reform, he exhibited the courage to act on this need in a wise and measured way. When he stood and addressed the delegates of the 2012 convention of the Republican Party of Texas to support the “Texas Solution” contained in the new proposed platform plank, he showed immense political courage—courage that helped forge an overwhelming majority vote in favor of the new plank—when he knew that many of those delegates had entered the convention hall pre-disposed to oppose the new plank. In the end, Jerry helped create a majority of delegates willing to direct our party to take a new and better approach to immigration reform, and to lead a new national discussion on this important issue.

Go to Jerry’s website, http://votepatterson.com, and browse the “Issues” he has analyzed and addressed in detail, and I believe you will see evidence of a serious mind with the courage to address the issues we are facing with a fresh approach based on conservative principles. Whether it is education, water, transportation, immigration and border security, or state finances, Jerry is showing the courage needed to build a conservative majority to address these issues with long-term solutions, rather than by broadcasting or preaching to a vocal faction of the base of the party with worn-out slogans. It is clear that Jerry is ready to help govern Texas into the future, rather than keep us mired in the tired dogmas of the past, which too often have impaired our ability to apply real, timeless conservative principles to the problems facing Texas.

I know that I will not always agree with Jerry. But, I trust that he always will show the courage to present and debate his ideas candidly, and will use humility and wisdom to listen to others as he works to build a majority around conservative solutions.

This type of courage was once the hallmark of our greatest Republican leaders, including Lincoln and Reagan. And those leaders also shared another gift that Jerry possesses: the gift to be able to communicate his arguments clearly and with humor—humor that helps to engage and persuade. Use of such humor is not—as one of his opponents alleges—a personality flaw or a sign of a lack of seriousness. Instead, it is a gift that our leaders desperately need as we work to persuade a new and diverse generation of Texans to support and implement conservative public policies. Show me a man who disparages the use of humor in the public square, and I’ll show you a man who takes himself and his “cause” too seriously to be trusted with the power of elected office in a democracy.

It is because I trust Jerry Patterson to be a courageous conservative reformer, that I whole-heartedly endorse his candidacy to be the next Lieutenant Governor of Texas. I hope you will support him, too.

As Autumn Approaches, It’s Time To Govern

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:


The last few months have been a time of reflection and rejuvenation for me, as I attended to personal and professional matters, and stepped away—as much as possible—from political matters. But Labor Day has now past, and the traditional summer “vacation” has ended, so now it is time for me to return to the political issues and races of 2014, which are just now starting to heat-up.

During my hiatus, I accumulated a fairly long list of issues that I could write about when I returned. While I will write about many of these issues over the next few months (and I will return to the issue of Education reform once we get a written opinion from the trial judge in Austin in the school-finance litigation), I want to start with what I perceive as the common thread that runs through so many of these issues: the need for the Republican Party to govern.

The need to govern on first principles

Now those of you who are awake and living in Texas will immediately respond by saying something like, “Ed, isn’t that what we’ve been doing for the last two decades?” And the answer I would give them is, frankly, “no”—at least, not the way I mean it.

To govern, a party must have first principles that it seeks to enshrine in public policy; to do so, the party must work to elect officeholders who will infuse its principles into law and then administer those laws effectively and creatively to achieve ends that are consistent with the first principles. Principles are just that—they are principles, not ideology. The process of enshrining principles into law, requires positive commitment and persuasion, and—yes—the ability to compromise by making wise and timely trade-offs and choices. Then, governing requires competence to administer the laws effectively and creatively, so that the civil society that is realized closely approximates the civil society we had hoped to create and maintain.

We once had leaders in both parties who understood this process. As recently as the Nixon and Reagan Presidencies, we had leaders who understood the guiding principles of American foreign policy (first survival with, and then victory over Communism). Then, with Reagan, came a man who understood the deepest first principles of our country and our party, and who knew how to enshrine those principles in public policy through commitment, persuasion, and compromise. Together, Nixon and Reagan spawned a generation of competent men and women capable of effectively and creatively administer government.

The move from first principles to ideology

Unfortunately, as the Clinton years turned into the Bush 43 years, and then into the Obama years, both parties slowly moved away from competing over principles to fighting over ideology; and worse, the GOP has waged an internal battle over ideology—masked as the perennial fight over whom among us is the most “conservative”—that has left our shared principles flailing to survive. The effects of these battles between the parties and with the GOP can be seen in the sordid responses to so many of the issues that have percolated to the surface this summer, including the pathetic handwringing going on all over Washington about whether and how to address the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime—which, hour-by-hour, day-by-day is slowly ceding the balance of global power and responsibility held by Washington and Europe since 1945 to Moscow, Beijing and Tehran, regardless of the ultimate decision and action that will be taken. Any American over the age of 45 should be very concerned about this drift in global influence.

In the meantime, the Obama years’ shift to an “all butter, no guns” ideology of government is creating a federal government that will be too large and irresponsible to ever govern at home, or maintain the peace abroad, effectively. On the other hand, at state and local levels where the GOP maintains the majority of political power in this country, conservatism has the greatest opportunity it has had in a generation to show that it is an effective governing philosophy. All the GOP needs is a return to the principles that unite us, and an end to the civil war that has divided us; and a commitment to the future, rather than a rigid adherence to the past.

Texas and Harris County as leaders

For Republicans in Texas and Harris County, this process is important not just for the county and the state, but also to the nation. We Republicans in Texas often lose perspective of the fact that we are to American Conservatism what California and New York are to American Liberalism—the outlier state at the farthest end of the political spectrum. Yes, this does mean that we are, more often than not, trend setters for other conservatives, and we get frustrated by the more moderate Republicans in our midst and in other parts of the country. But it also means that most of the rest of our fellow countrymen, including our fellow Republicans see us both as trend setters and as kooks—much like the clothes buyers who have to evaluate the fashion designers who exhibit their new designs in New York, Paris and Milan every year. And, just like the designers at the cutting-edge of the fashion world who value the purity of their creativity over the value of their designs to the general public, we too often value the purity of our “conservatism” over the effectiveness of our ability to enshrine our principles into the real-world policies that our countrymen live with every day of their lives. If we in Texas and Harris County want to be the leaders of a new era of American Conservatism, we need to help design and promote policies that will allow our elected officials to use our principles to address real problems, rather than enshrine the latest ideological fad into bad (and ultimately irrelevant) law.

Defining and deploying first principles

Virtually every Republican I have ever met believes in a constitutionally limited federal government, where the power and responsibility over most daily issues are handled locally and privately by individuals, families, businesses, and civic or religious organizations, or locally and publicly by state and local governments. We believe in the prosperity created by free markets and free trade, which creates a tide that lifts all boats. We believe in a national defense that protects not just our borders and our citizens from immediate danger, but that preserves the balance of power that has allowed for the greatest era of economic growth and prosperity the world has ever known. And we believe in the development of personal character and virtue, which leads us to live a life in which we make more right choices than wrong as we develop relationships, create families and build neighborhoods.

If we believe in these principles, then let’s stop fighting with each other and start building a party that will elect men and women who will enshrine these principles into policy: who will cost-effectively build the infrastructure we need to maintain our communities, reform the schools we will need to educate our children, and promote health through preserving the local doctor-patient relationship; who creatively will bring the message and the policies of our principles into the communities in our region in which too many of our neighbors are under-educated, under-employed and over-incarcerated; and who will promote the right choices in life that slowly, steadily and wisely develop character and virtue, over the constant condemnation of what we perceive as wrong choices that simply separate us and our principles from our neighbors.

An older era has been slipping away this summer. If we conservatives want an effective voice in shaping the new, emerging era in a way that preserves what is best about our society, we need to stop fighting over ideology and start promoting our shared principles.

********

The passing of District Attorney Mike Anderson

On a last point, I want briefly to address the passing of Mike Anderson.

I first met Mike, and his wife, Devon, while I was running as a judicial candidate in 2007-08 and Devon was running for re-election. I grew to like both Mike and Devon personally, and to respect the work they had been doing as prosecutors and district-court judges. The news of Mike’s passing on Saturday was so sad.

To Devon, I think I am expressing the feeling of most members of the Republican family in Harris County when I say that you and your children—and Mike—are in our thoughts and prayers; and we are here for you, just as you and Mike were here for us, if and when you need a helping hand over the months and years ahead.

To the rest of us, we have some soul-searching to do. We have been embroiled in two difficult primaries over the office of District Attorney since December, 2007, when the scandals that brought down Chuck Rosenthal became public, and we now are facing two election cycles in a row when this office will again be on the ballot. As for the last cycle, though Mike won the primary handily, the contest was very bitter among our party activists. Because I also respected Judge Lykos and some of the reforms she had proposed and started to implement, I found the last primary cycle so difficult—two good, conservative public servants, with somewhat different approaches, were fighting over the future of the criminal justice system. We cannot repeat the bitterness of the last primary and hope to keep this office in Republican hands—and the fate of the criminal justice system in this county hangs in the balance.

Soon Governor Perry will appoint someone to succeed Mike, and there will be a contested primary. The names I am hearing so far, for either the appointment or the primary race, are all good and qualified Republicans. Let’s keep that in mind as the race unfolds and make our choice on merit, rather than on one of the many issues that seem to always divide us. That approach would be the greatest legacy we could give to Mike’s memory and tenure in public office.

A Reminder of What We Should Strive to Be

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

In my last post I tried to start a discussion about the role of morality in our society and politics, knowing that it is one of the areas of profound misunderstanding and disagreement between the political camps, and has been a constant source of agitation and division within the conservative political camp, since at least the 1960s. I was not going to return to this topic now, but was going to move ahead with a post about our party’s future, and then return to the series on Education—but then the growing story about General Petraeus dovetailed with Veteran’s Day weekend. So, I want to share some additional thoughts with you as this story unfolds. To do so, though, I need to digress for a moment.

A few years ago, while my oldest daughter was still in college, she called me one morning in tears. She had just come from a freshman political science course about U.S. Government. The class discussion had turned to political/social issues, and then to the politics of abortion. The professor apparently ridiculed the conservative position on this issue, and in the process, ridiculed the intelligence of conservatives generally. When my daughter tried to defend conservatives, she was personally ridiculed and laughed at by the professor, and by the students in the class. As she recounted this story, I tried to console her, but in my mind I was saying to myself, “welcome to my world.”

Now, let’s fast forward to just a few weeks ago. I was working one afternoon on a legal brief in my office in my home, when my oldest daughter came into my office and started to chat. After college she had lived and worked for a couple of years in Los Angeles, and then moved back to Houston at the end of 2011. I had thought for a long time that the experience in LA had changed her perspective on a lot of things, but as she started this conversation, some of my worst fears were confirmed. She sat down and said to me, “Dad, did you know that a lot of the people I know think you and your Republican friends are fascists? Are you a fascist?” Of course my first, silent reaction was, “as if I hadn’t heard this unoriginal and superficial accusation before;” but, then I realized that this was coming from my own daughter, and I needed to address it seriously.

I first asked her to define what she understood the word “fascist” to mean, and then to explain to me the reasoning her friends were giving to describe Republicans as being fascists. Then, as I had done as she was growing up, I pulled down a few dictionaries and reference books and explained to her what fascism really was, what Nazism really was, and why that label has no valid application to either political party in the United States. In the end, what her friends’ uneducated criticism boiled down to is that they believe Republicans are hateful for pressing their moral views on others.

I am now going to share with you, in a little more analytical detail and language, what I tried to explain to my daughter in response to this “revelation.”

The primary definition of “society” is the “totality of social relationships among humans.” Based on this definition, you can’t have “society” without having human relationships; and man, being a social being, has never long survived without being a part of a society (remember Donne’s admonition: “No man is an island”?). “Government” is a tool we create and use to protect and preserve the society we have created through human relationships. But without relationships, nothing else is possible.

Some societies arise geographically from relationships that are imposed on people by others through outside institutions—tribes, clans, families, and religions—and that are then fostered and maintained by governments that preserve the institutions, and the ordered relationships such institutions impose. Some of these societies, over time, replace the outside institutions all together with government. In fact, it is this model of imposed relationships, which has formed and maintained most societies throughout human history—and seems to be the model to which we humans continue to default over time.

But, a society of free people, who form relationships freely, and whose society organically grows from such free relationships, is a unique and exceptional model in human history—it is the model our settlers created as they came to North America, and it is the model our Founders tried to preserve and protect when they formed our federal structure of government after the American Revolution. As with any society, though, this model doesn’t work or last without those freely-formed and maintained human relationships.

As I started to explain in my last post, our Founders, and other later men and women like C.S. Lewis, understood that the rules of morality we inherited through our Judeo-Christian heritage provided the directions with which we could build and maintain these human relationships in a free society. American Conservatives believe that if you abandon these rules, the ultimate result will by a default to a society of imposed relationships run by government—like fascism, socialism, communism, Nazism, radical Islam, etc. So, rather than trying to foster and advance fascism, American Conservatives are devoted to averting a process that would lead to a future fascist regime in America.

For instance, when our Founders told us that “it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other,” they were talking about a rule for maintaining those “relations between man and man,” through “fair play and harmony between individuals” that Lewis described as the first “department” of morality.

When Mason, Madison and Henry then told us that “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,” they were reminding us of the central importance of individual morality and behavior to the maintenance of the “relations between man and man”—what Lewis said was the second “department” of morality. The importance of individual morality was central to maintaining our free society, because “[y]ou cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.”

Finally, when these Virginians told us that “the duty which we owe our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience,” they were describing what Lewis would later call the third, and possibly most controversial “department” of morality in our society: “relations between man and the power that made him.”

What liberals or progressives have refused to acknowledge over the last few decades is that the free relationships upon which our society of free people depends, cannot survive without adherence to these rules of morality; that perfect behavior “is a necessary ideal prescribed for all men by the very nature of the human machine,” and this ideal should not be discarded simply because actual perfection is unattainable; and that imposing rules through government to replace these moral rules is antithetical to the foundation of our society. What liberals or progressives most forget is that by seeking to maintain and apply the rules of morality, we conservatives are trying to preserve liberty by preserving the free relationships upon which our society is based; we are not trying to destroy liberty and impose a “fascist” state.

At the same time, we conservatives often forget that these rules of morality are voluntary; that, though these rules of morality have remained pretty constant throughout Western history, their application can, and sometimes must, change as the human condition changes (and understanding the difference between a moral rule and an application of that rule is a continuing source of tension among conservatives, and between conservatives and progressives); and that the promotion of these rules necessarily requires patience to endure the different choices, and the unintended consequences from those choices, that flow from adherence to voluntary rules—because, as C.S. Lewis correctly noted, no rules of morality or calling in life—not even the calling of “an officer and a gentleman”—can make us, or expect us, to be perfect human beings.

And, so this leads me to the sad shame of the growing story of General Petraeus and his wife of 38 years, Ms. Broadwell and her family, Ms. Kelly and her family, a shirtless FBI agent, General Allen, and who knows who else and what else. Some might throw up their hands and say that this story is proof that our society is too prudish, and we need to get over it; others would correctly point out the harm that may have been done to national security from the such conduct and impose punishments on those involved and new laws to try to stop such conduct in the future.

But an American Conservative knows that no matter what happened here, imperfect people made choices to not follow the rules of morality that are needed to maintain a society of free people, and there are always consequences—most never intended—that flow from such choices. Usually, those consequences are more isolated with smaller ripple effects into the larger community than is the case with this story; but, there are always consequences. It is that second department of morality—the morality inside each of us—that failed here. And it is the morality inside each of us that needs to be continually rekindled in order to maintain a free society.

No more appropriate words have been spoken in the English language over the last half century about what it takes to rekindle such inner morality, than those spoken by General MacArthur at West Point in 1962. Because those words are so relevant to the story that is unfolding in the news, I’ll leave you with that passage to think about:

Duty-Honor-Country. 

Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points; to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. … 

They build your basic character; they mold you for your future roles as custodians of the nation’s defense; they make you strong enough to know when you are weak, and brace enough to face yourself when you are afraid. They teach you to be proud and unbending in honest failure, but humble and gentle in success, not to substitute words for action, not to seek the path of comfort, but to face the stress and spur of difficulty and challenge; to learn to stand up in the storm but to have compassion on those who fail; to master yourself before you seek to master others; to have a heart that is clean, a goal that is high; to learn to laugh yet never forget how to weep; to reach into the future yet never neglect the past; to be serious yet never take yourself too seriously; to be modest so that you will remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. 

They give you a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a freshness of the deep springs of life, a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, and appetite for adventure and a love of ease. They create in your heart the sense of wonder, the unfailing hope of what next, and the joy and inspiration of life. 

They teach you in this way to be an officer and a gentleman.

In a society of free people, can we maintain the free relationships we need if we don’t each strive to be “an officer and a gentleman”?

Interview on The Mark McCaig Show 11-11-12

This past Sunday I was interviewed on The Mark McCaig Show. You can listen to the interview here, and I'm interested in your feedback.

Individualism v. Community: The false debate at the core of this election.

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

I’ll return to my series on Texas Education soon, but I want to share some thoughts after digesting the rhetoric from both national political conventions.

My first and over-riding thought was how baffled Adam Smith and William Jennings Bryan would be if they had somehow been able to return to this world for the last two weeks and had attended these conventions.  Neither would understand the split that has occurred in American politics over issues they studied and championed, and both would be shocked at how misunderstood and misapplied their ideas have become.  

Smith, the Scottish professor of Moral Philosophy, built his ideas about economics and government in his Wealth of Nations on the foundation of his description of the inherent moral nature of man in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.  For the last 250 years, both proponents and opponents of the system of capitalism and free markets that evolved from Smith’s writings based their viewpoints on an analysis of economic behavior that was independent of the morality so central to Smith’s theories.  Smith would not have understood either Marx or Rand.  To him, the individual pursuing his or her self-interest did so within a context of morality and responsibility.  Smith’s total view, in turn, was consistent with the type of system that developed during the 18^th and 19^th Centuries in the United States—the one de Tocqueville observed and explained in his Democracy In America.

But today, we are more the children of Marx and Rand, than of Smith.  So, we see the answers to our problems solely through the lens of rugged individualism, or social-justice collectivism, when both individualism and community are needed for a society of free people to thrive using capitalism and free markets.  In essence, our misreading of Smith has set up a false choice between individualism and community that de Tocqueville believed we had avoided. 

As a self-proclaimed answer to this false choice, William Jennings Bryan emerged as a political force of nature in the 1890s.  Arguably, as one of the early proponents of a form of Progressivism, he was the most influential politician from the 1890s to the 1920s who never became President—though he tried four times.  He set out to impose community on rugged individualists through his “applied Christianity,” which was derisively called “Bryanism.”   Bryanism called for the federal government to become the source of social justice through interventionist and redistributionist economic policies, and by enforcing a common standard for public and private moral behavior.  Between the 1930s and the 1960s, the Democratic Party abandoned the social conservatism of Bryanism, while fully embracing the economic portion of his social justice views.   

Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, the social-conservative heirs to the morality of Bryanism turned to the Republican Party to promote their agenda, and they joined economic conservatives to support Ronald Reagan’s “New Republican Party” plan to re-establish a modern society upon the Smith/de Tocqueville model of society.  In fact, what Reagan understood was that the real choice for sustaining and improving our free society is not between individualism and community, but between the role of individual morality and responsibility and government regulations and programs in creating and maintaining community among free people.  The Smith/de Tocqueville model that Reagan tried to reinvigorate provided the right answer for that real choice. 

But instead of disappearing into history, the remnants of Bryanism are alive and well.  They are divided into two warring camps still trying to resolve the false choice between individualism and community with wrong or incomplete answers that depend on the exercise of federal government action, and that create strange fissures within both Progressivism and Conservatism in this country.

President Obama’s acceptance speech doubled-down on the economic social-justice model of Bryanism.  He recognized that our society is built on both the freedom of the individual and the interdependence of communities, but he embraced the false choice between the two.  Then, he sought to answer the false choice by providing community artificially through more government interventions, while rejecting any role for private, individual, moral character and responsibility in shaping and preserving a community.  Such an approach provides a wrong answer to the false choice, which will worsen all of the social pathologies that have arisen over the last century, and further isolate neighbors as autonomous wards of one or more federal government programs. 

Where are the Republicans in this debate?  Unfortunately, we are still arguing between the social conservatism of Bryanism and the economic conservatism of traditional and libertarian Republicans, when Smith, de Tocqueville and Reagan would have told us the choice we are arguing about is false, too.  Both are needed for our model of government to work, and we need to stop fighting among ourselves over this fundamental point. 

Instead, we need to come together and seize the opportunity we’ve been given to change the debate in this election.  By shaping the debate around “community” and the social-justice model, Obama has handed us a rare opportunity to break out of the old paradigms and to reveal the false choice between individualism and community that we have been given over the last century.  As we reveal the false choice, we must argue for our Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model of a free society and government—an argument we have not made coherently for at least a generation because of our own internal arguments.  We need to take the “You did build that” theme, and expand on it with our ageless ideas of creating and maintaining “community” through individual, private, and local action; by showing that the individualism of moral people creates community among neighbors, and that such communities are protected and promoted by local private and public entities, rather than by a federal bureaucracy.

All of the groups we need to persuade to vote for our ticket need to hear the falsity of the choice and answer the Democrats have long promoted, and hear the real argument for the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model that made us exceptional:  Latinos and other new immigrant groups who have come to this country to build a better life; African-Americans who have been abandoned to under-education, under-employment and over-incarceration; and women and young people, whose prosperity depends on the economic growth and support that strong neighborhoods provide.   

Unless some whiz kid around Romney and Ryan figures out how to make this argument effectively, Obama’s argument will win by default because the false choice has become engrained in our national thinking, and the mood of the country is looking for answers.  They’ll embrace even wrong answers to false choices if we don’t show them the choice is false and the answer is wrong, and what is really the right path.  We won’t just win this election by doubling-down on social conservatism or rugged individualism, nor do I now think we can limp into the election just focusing on jobs, the budget and government reform.  Instead, we need to show why our answers to jobs, the budget and government reform will improve the condition of this country, and to do that we need to address the interrelationship between basic morality, individualism, and strong communities for the success of our model of society and economic growth—an interrelationship that our founders, Smith and de Tocqueville understood and promoted.  Then, we need to challenge our neighbors to rebuild this model of society with us.  

If Romney articulates the Smith/de Tocqueville/Reagan model effectively, shows why it is relevant to the problems we face, shows how it can work, shows how it will improve lives in the 21^st Century, and challenges us to embrace it, he’ll win in a landslide.  If not, the public may decide to let their money ride on the wrong bet they made four years ago.

The Election Choice—Can Romney make it simple? Can Romney be Romney?

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

Watching all of the pundits say that Romney has to make himself likable is beginning to drive me crazy. Of course no one wants to embrace a dour person (though Richard Nixon was on 4 of 5 winning national tickets, just proving that there are exceptions to every rule), but Romney is not dour, and the times require a serious, steady, positive message. I am going to say something I never thought I would say a few months ago—let’s let Romney be Romney.

What would that mean? It would mean that we should allow Romney to make the case to the American people about the choices we face, and how he is the best man at this time to help us make those choices because he has lived those choices all his life.

Romney knows the correct answer to the fundamental question of this election: Who builds this economy and this country, the federal government or private businesses and the individuals they employee?

And the answer is: private business and the individuals they employ. If you don’t understand that fundamental answer, you do not deserve the public’s trust to hold an office in our government. Period.

It is private business that generates the jobs that provide for families and that build neighborhoods. We spend more time every day with our co-workers than with our families, and the positive bonds formed through this activity ripple out in every direction. Employing people affects the lives of both the employer and the employee, from which both grow. The products or services generated by a business affect customers, and spur innovation by others through competition. But, most importantly, every paycheck signed sets aside a retirement fund, pays for health care, provides for the sustenance of a family, pays for a mortgage and a college education, pays for the charity from a church or non-profit organization, and creates the tax base for the infrastructure and protection of a community.

Government is nothing more than a service that we pay for with the taxes from our paychecks and profits. It is a service through which we have chosen to hire some of our neighbors to provide education to our children, create and maintain a physical infrastructure, provide for our defense and protection our communities and nation, and preserve a safety net for those unable through no fault of their own to help themselves (or find private charitable help), while we work and build the foundation of wealth and happiness for our families, our communities, and our country. In essence, government works for us, at our direction, and to the extent we feel we need it—we do not work for government. To increase government’s role in our society beyond providing these services effectively and efficiently, is to threaten the delicate balance among free people that this system has long maintained—and that makes our experiment in self-government so unique and exceptional.

President Obama and the modern Democratic Party do not believe in this delicate balance. Instead, they want to transform it so that Government indeed becomes the source of all wealth and happiness in our society—and as they do so, they are putting our delicate balance in mortal jeopardy. The Democrats have long wanted to change the fundamental relationships in our private sector, and between the private sector and government, by inserting government more and more into the private relationships that a private-sector paycheck has always supported. This process has reached a tipping point now.

Because no one knows which way our system will tip—how much further the federal government will interfere in the private market and private relationships, and how much taxes will be seized to pay for the massive public spending and debt incurred to fund that interference—a cloud of uncertainty now hangs over our country (and, by extension, over the world economy). And that uncertainty keeps business from hiring people, and that cuts the paychecks that support families and communities. That uncertainty, if allowed to continue, will tip the balance toward a new pervasive government and the nation the Democrats have long tried to create.

We must bring an end to this transformation that disguises itself as “hope and change,” and “moving forward.” This transformation does not promise progress, but, instead, a benign peonage for future generations. Is that what prior generations fought for?

Through his work in the private sector, in his church, and through the charities he has supported, Romney understands, and indeed embodies the best of the balanced system I have just described. He understands the challenge and threat the Democrats’ vision has created for the delicate balance of our unique society. He just needs to be honest with us; and then challenge us to help him stop this transformation, to make the necessary reforms to remove the uncertainty, and to restore the historic balance between the private sector and government, so that private business will write those paychecks again.

It’s that simple. Great speeches by Ann Romney, Chris Christie, Condi Rice, Susana Martinez, and Paul Ryan have all paved the way for him. Now, let’s hope Romney will be Romney.

Texas Education IV: A Case Study in the Failure of a Method-Based Curriculum

This column originally appeared at Big Jolly Politics:

I want to thank “Izzy,” who is a frequent commentator on the posts here on Big Jolly Politics, for his very creative comment to my last post, because it helped crystalize for me how I need to start this discussion about reforming our curriculum and our classrooms—very carefully.

You see, one reason reform efforts over the last generation have been so ineffective is that the classroom has become the “third rail” in the debate over education, which we mere mortals dare not discuss—especially if we are conservatives. When we “fools” have rushed in, we have been castigated by the “professionals” for not understanding the realities of teaching and the modern classroom, and our proposals have been dismissed as unenlightened attempts to find the answer to every issue in some bygone, Reaganesque “Golden Age” that never existed. Unfortunately, we conservatives sometimes play into this narrative by the rhetoric we use and the battles we choose to fight.

So, at the outset of this portion of our discussion, let me clarify a few things.

First, I believe teaching is one of the hardest jobs to do well in our society, and I have the utmost admiration for those who pursue teaching as a career. From the moment a teacher walks inside a school each morning to the moment he (or she) leaves at night, he is teaching—content, character, methods, and values—directly in the classroom and indirectly by observation and example. And, this process continues every day of each school year for decades. The reality is that the challenges teachers face have become more difficult over the last few decades as our student bodies have become larger and more culturally and intellectually diverse, as the mission of our public schools has become more opaque, and as the public’s willingness to underwrite the present system has been strained to the breaking point. A primary objective for starting this discussion is to establish a more intelligible system that will help teachers meet their challenges more effectively, and that will gain the public’s confidence and support.

Second, I enter this discussion with a little more than a pedestrian interest. I grew up in a family deeply devoted to education, in which my father served as member of a public school board, and worked on local education issues for many years. In college, I served on the Faculty Curriculum Committee that revised our college’s core curriculum and graduation requirements, and on the college’s Long-Range Planning Committee. Recently, I finished a four-year term as a member, officer, and Chair of the Board of Trustees of a local private school. These experiences, together with my own study over the years, have provided me with insights into the challenges faced by educators, the different missions of public and private schools, the proper boundaries between management of a school as an entity and administration of the operations and classrooms of the school, and the ongoing process of strategic planning for a school.

Third, because public schools are by their nature “public,” there is a political component to the strategic planning for our school system. Therefore, citizens, including old fools like me, have a responsibility to participate in that planning process. Given the state of our public education, and the demands on our public budgets, this strategic planning process is long overdue in Texas.

Finally, I do believe that the first step of any strategic planning process is to define the mission of the entity, and only then to determine how to fulfill that mission. My previous posts focused on offering a clarified mission, and with this post we will start to discuss how to fulfill it. I am sure that some people fear that my stated mission, and the proposals to implement it, will “turn the clock back” on education. To show that this view fundamentally misreads what I have said so far, I’ll briefly recap what I’ve said so far:

• I agree with John Stuart Mill, who defined “education” in his Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews in 1867, as “the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising the level of improvement which has been attained…;”
• I agree with educators, such as John B. Conant and Allan Bloom, who argued that to provide the education that Mill described, there must be a unity of purpose underlying the curriculum of the school system;
• I believe the unity of purpose for the public school system is provided in Article 7, Section 1, of the Texas Constitutions, which states: “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…;”
• I have proposed a modern mission for our public school system that applies “the constitutional purpose of Texas education to the 21^st Century challenges that will face our children and grandchildren.as a mission”: “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;” and
• The federal government should have little or no role in implementing this new mission, because the history of its involvement over the last few decades has been one of increased bureaucracy and inefficiency without any perceptible improvement in outcomes.

I am not trying to return to an age that never existed, but I am challenging the status quo of accepted practices within the current system that fails to prepare our children for the society they are entering.

Now, with these clarifications behind us, let us “fools” proceed to discuss the curriculum and the classrooms we will need to carry-out a unified mission in the 21^st Century.

To do so, let’s start with the fictional classroom that Izzy described in his comment to my last post. I am going to quote it at length (though I’ve done my best to fix the punctuation and paragraphs to enhance its readability) and then use it to discuss the problems illustrated by this story, which underlie the need for curricular reform. I will then use these problems as discussion points for my next posts.

In Izzy’s story, we are shown a class of diverse students—probably a science class of unknown grade level—to whom the teacher is trying to teach the “scientific method”:

… The room darkened. I picked up the remote control and pushed ‘play’. The overhead projector screen glowed blue then white, as the steps of the Scientific Method, listed in black letters became readable. Some students began writing in their journals. I walked back around my desk and stood before the darkened class and slightly shifted my expression.

“Ask a question,” I said, then paused.”

The first step in the Scientific method is….write this down young scientists,” then paused again. “Ask a question.”

The students wrote down step one of the Scientific Method.

“Let’s say that Antinio, has to go from his first period class All THE WAY to Biology without getting caught in ‘tardy sweep’.” I emphasized the words ALL THE WAY, because the students knew that English classes were just downstairs from our Biology classroom. I was being sarcastic. If students were tardy more than nine times, they would have to serve one day of in school suspension. Fifteen times and they would be suspended from school for a day. SWEEP was the term used by the administrators for rounding up tardy students between classes, from the halls and sending them to a common area with other tardy boys and girls.

“Ezweep ez boolcheet,” Antinio said out loud, in heavily Spanish accented english.

Christian, a Hispanic boy sitting on the other side of the classroom on the first row, half-laughed. “Hah,” he blurted out coyly, then, looked around the room for approval.

Raymond noisily wadded up a piece of paper and acted like he might try for a long shot at the garbage can. Carolina and Jasmina baited him, “chood eet, chood eet.”

“Raymond, don’t do that,” I said with a mocking pseudo plead. The projector screen glowed white with the steps of the scientific method. I stared at Raymond for one-half of a second then looked at Antonio and said, “Antinio, please don’t cuss.” Antonio stared at me and didn’t say anything. Juanito sat up and pulled the earbuds out of his ears.

I paused, just for a second, and looked above the class at a National Geographic poster of ‘A Wetland Ecosystem’ on the back wall, and said, “Ask a question.” The class was silent.

“How do I geet frong inglich tu Biologia widhow gettin’ caught by the ‘Meegra?” Antonio asked. Christian, Raymond, Desmond and several other students howled with laughter.

I paused and looked at Antonio. “RIGHT, ANTONIO,” I shouted! I said to the class, “How does Antinio get from English class to Biology without getting caught by the ‘Meegra?” The class laughed.

“Iz lak ezweep por our daddys?” Juanito asked, sincerely, yet softly.

“VERY GOOD YOUNG SCIENTIST,” I said loudly! That’s step one of the scientific method. “Let’s give THAT ‘young scientist’ two claps!” I, and most of the students clapped twice, clap, clap….

My guess is that many teachers face this same type of challenging situation many, many times a day in our public schools, and they each try to use a creative approach like the one this fictional teacher used to establish the point they are trying to teach. But, with all due respect to our fictional teacher, the point she thought she had made was probably lost on these students, regardless of their momentary applause—and that is the problem with teaching with a method-based curriculum.

I want to put my critique in context, so let’s start with a few of the relevant findings from A Nation at Risk, which I referenced in my last post:

• “Some 23 million American adults are functionally illiterate by the simplest tests of everyday reading, writing, and comprehension.”
• “About 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States can be considered functionally illiterate. Functional illiteracy among the minority youth may run as high as 40 percent.”
• “Many 17-year-olds do not do not possess the ‘higher order’ intellectual skill we should expect of them. Nearly 40 percent cannot draw inferences from written material; only one-fifth can write a persuasive essay; and only one-third can solve a mathematics problem requiring several steps.”
• “The teacher preparation curriculum is weighted heavily with courses in ‘educational methods’ at the expense of courses in subjects to be taught. A survey of 1,350 institutions training teachers indicated that 41 percent of the time of elementary school teacher candidates is spent in education courses, which reduces the amount of time available for subject matter courses.”

Based on these findings, here are some of the problems with this episode:

Both the purpose of the lesson—teaching the Scientific Method—and the result—application of the first step to an unrelated, non-scientific scenario, is a waste of educational resources.

Cognitive scientists tell us that teaching a method of thinking without reference to the basic knowledge to which the methodology is to be applied, is a waste of time. However, since A Nation at Risk was issued, much of the educational establishment in this country has re-doubled their efforts to teach such methodology with the hope that it would lead to an expansion of “‘higher order’ intellectual skill” among our children.

In 2007, in the journal American Educator, Donald T. Willingham presented an analysis of the relevant cognitive science studies in “Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?”. The upshot of the research that Willingham summarizes is that if critical thinking is taught as a methodology, e.g., the scientific method, the historical method, etc., without reference to the subject matter to which it applies and without repetition, it is not retained for future use by students. E.D. Hirsch, Jr., expands on and addresses similar findings in his recent book, The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools.

So, though our fictional teacher was justifiably gratified that there had been a momentary break-thru with the students, the break-thru promises to be just that—momentary. It is unlikely that anything of value from the lesson will be retained by our fictional students for future application.

The language used by the students shows their functional illiteracy, and their lack of readiness for the lesson that is being presented.

These fictional students show virtually no functional grasp of the English language; certainly not enough of a grasp of English to understand the meaning of either “scientific” or “method,” let alone to understand, retain or use anything else related to the teacher’s lesson. These students have not learned either of the necessary reading and listening skills: decoding; and comprehending. Without these skills, the long-term meaning of this lesson was lost on the students described in Izzy’s story.

The functional illiteracy displayed by these students displays a failure of the system to assimilate these students into the America they will inherit.

Why are our fictional students functionally illiterate in the language of our culture? Because our curriculum fails to require instruction in the basic knowledge these children need in order to assimilate into our society, or as Mill described in 1867: to become members of “the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be its successors, in order to qualify them for at least keeping up, and if possible for raising the level of improvement which has been attained….”

Hirsch makes this point persuasively in The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools:

… [E]ffective communication and intellectual competence require shared knowledge over a wide range of topics. … they connect with something less tangible: a sense of belonging to a wider community and a feeling of solidarity with other Americans. When we become full members of the American speech community, we belong to a wider group toward which we feel a sense of loyalty. …

Since language itself depends on shared knowledge and values as well as shared conventions, the aim of bringing children into the public speech community is a more than linguistic aim. All children need to be taught the general knowledge that is silently assumed in that language community. Our schools need to assimilate into the public sphere not just new immigrants but all of our children, regardless of family background. That is the fundamental aim of schooling in a democracy and one that we are not serving very effectively today.

Studies show that most parents want schools to assimilate our children (A lot to be thankful for), and the Texas Constitution requires us to provide them with the knowledge needed to assimilate.

Depending on the age of our fictional students, changing their current life trajectory will take a lot of remedial effort as we transition from the present system to a new knowledge-based curriculum, but we can’t afford to see the students in this class five or ten years from now caught in the same situation. So, in our next post, we’ll pick-up Izzy’s fictional class and discuss how to change these dynamics for future students.