Liberty is Hard

It is extremely difficult to be your own person; your own family; your own community. Extremely difficult. This is why we have a lot of arguments around what small government is, what constitutional conservatism is, and what balance to strike between liberty and safety.

Liberty is a huge Responsibility. If we were to live under completely totalitarian rule, we would have everything determined and provided that we could have. We would have no choices and no responsibilities; all would be provided and determined by those who did the choosing. this of course would not work because, different people are different, it would be impossible to find happiness (or even pursue it) under such a regime.

If we were to live under complete freedom there would be a lack of protection for society’s most vulnerable and marginalized: elderly, infirm, mentally incapacitated. Without some set of rules, one evil person could harm others freely and it would be up to those others to protect themselves individually. Clearly, we need some kind of medium between extremes.

Our founders understood liberty and the balance a people can strike with their government to maintain both liberty and safety. The government would be of for and by the people. The government would be balanced between duly elected parts. The government would be given powers only that the people said it would be given and no other powers. the government would exist to secure the people’s rights as provided by Nature and Nature’s God. The government did not give rights to the people; it simply secured them. Simple.

This method of governance requires a great deal of personal responsibility and comes along with a great deal of liberty. In effect, we can do as we please as long as another is unharmed in so doing. If another is harmed in our doing, the people’s government redresses the situation. Simple.

Of course, there are people who would rather not take responsibility: People who are strong, healthy, and of sound mind who do not take responsibility for themselves, their own families, and their own communities. The universal basic income, ultra-high minimum wage, anti-capitalist bunch. rather than relentlessly dedicating themselves to personal betterment, they would (at the expense of their own liberties) have the government control everything, take from those who have, and redistribute to those who have not. This is what “tax the wealthy” means: the government ought to steal from workers and give it to the lazy. This, of course, only works absent a certain amount of liberty. Our property rights must be tossed aside to provide for those who would rather not earn things.

Absent liberty, responsibility disappears. It is hard to maintain a culture of liberation; destitution is always but one generation away.

The 2nd is Supreme

I have seen a great many so-called Conservatives supporting this Hunter Biden conviction. Poppycock.

The 2nd Amendment comes with no asterisks. It comes without error. It bears burden of neither interpretation nor hardship. It is clear. It shall not be infringed. The Hunter Biden conviction is an infringement.

The most devastating piece of this ruling is a simple clerical error on a form can cause Federal prosecution. A single mis-checked item is grounds for a Federal Prosecution. If the Department of Justice so decided, it could pull hundreds of millions of these forms and dig for errors. This is a clear case of the DoJ being granted the authority to shop for crimes rather than finding a crime and shopping for perpetrators. This is turning the system on its head. Hallie Biden stole and then illegally disposed of a firearm, where are her charges?

The authorities found a gun. It is unsafe to dispose of a gun by throwing it into the trash, this is unquestionable. Like dangerous chemicals, guns should be disposed of properly of course. How did the person who performed this act walk free? All Hunter did was buy a gun and keep it; why was he prosecuted while the person who unsafely discarded the gun was not? This is a clear attempt to create a precedent to go after legal gun holders for doing nothing. This is a power grab by the system and nothing less.

A true, Republican, Constitutional Conservative will denounce this prosecution, trial, and conviction. Full stop. We need to use this as one measure by which we judge our candidates. We need to vet our candidates wholly. Nothing less is acceptable.

Hiring the Convicted

There are so many posts going around stating if it is OK to hire a convicted felon for President, it is OK to hire a convicted felon for any position. This is true. If it took you the conviction of a privileged, high-status man to come to this realization, you are part of the problem.

I have worked with, worked for, supervised, and hired people with criminal records. In fact, if there are two resumes before me, one with a conviction and the other without, all other things being equal, I will pick the felon. In my experience, felons work harder. It is that simple to me. Which one of these people can I trust - without knowing them fully - to do the job better? The felon wins.

When I was a youth and without status or reputation, I took odd jobs to make ends meet. One of them was in a warehouse and brought me into contact with all manner of person: robbers, assailants, murderers, illegals. These people worked the hardest I have ever seen anyone work. They had lived inside the system (in a 20 sqft cell) and were determined to never become dependent upon that system again; it fueled them, and they were successful.

One of the hardest working people I know - one of the people I would entrust ANY task to because I know it would get done if accepted - was tried, convicted, and punished. I would trust this man with the keys to the kingdom because, I know he would do right by me. All of the snakes in the grass, all of the slimy sales types, all of the say-it-behind-my-back, all of the petty people I know have no criminal record outside parking and speeding tickets.

These are the facts of my life. Maybe other people have different experiences, but these are mine. Don’t judge a book by its cover, and don’t judge a person by his rap sheet.

Children with Guns

This is a good thing. I take my children to the range often. They learn rifle and handgun. They love to shoot especially on steel targets; the ding really gets them fired up!

We have children’s dirt bikes. We have children’s swimming. We have children’s beauty pageants. We have children’s crossbow. We have children’s anything and everything in America because, in America, a parent gets to direct and rule the life of a child. The Government does not rule, it merely governs as indicated by its name. The Government does not come into the family. The family is sovereign.

This is one of the salient points made by our founders. They set for us a Governmental system that made parents and families stronger than Government. This is why they located men who abandoned their families and put them to use in workhouses; a practice that we (in my opinion) should bring back. It is not just a parent’s right to raise his own family without interference, it is a parent’s duty to do so.

I shoot at the range; therefore, my children shoot at the range. It is part of our culture. It is part of our life. You handle your family as you see fit, I will handle mine. We read. We write. We shoot. There is nothing wrong with that.

Term Limits

One of the larger (ongoing) topics swirling around is the topic of term limits for elected officials. This is not likely to get done any time soon. An act of law limiting the power and influence of the lawmakers themselves is a hard sell for anyone. However, a de facto limit can be imposed within a political party.

At the Texas GOP Convention, much thought was put into this. We were pitched the idea of effectively using the Right of Association to impose term limits on our own candidates. If a person has held office for a certain number of terms, they are ineligible to secure a Republican nomination from the Republican Party of Texas. they would be welcome to run as a Democrat or as an Independent, just not on the Republican ticket.

We all know a person who ran, won, and worked as a Republican has little to no chance of securing a nomination on the Democrat ticket. We also know Independents secure 10% or less of the vote. This policy effectively drains the Texas GOP swamp.

This may not be a sweeping policy to fix the entire issue, but we can clean up our side of the street at the very least. Even the people who have no time to research candidates and vet policymakers should have some guidance from their party and their party’s delegates. This mechanism forces that to be the case.

Career & Technical Ed

I am a member of the expert elite class. I hold degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Women’s Studies. These degrees have served me well mainly because I am STEM-based and the world compensates STEM. Although I would not trade my degrees, this way, I understand, is not the only way.

Career and Technical Education has taken a back seat in recent memory. When I was in High School, CTE was extremely important. In fact, I was well-studied in computer network engineering in anticipation of going the CTE route after High School. This option was concrete, reachable, understandable, and approachable for a young high school student. Further, a CTE certification commands high compensation. Many of those who take CTE seriously can earn $60K or more without going $200,000 in debt to a university.

This is one (among many) reason I made my way to Ellis County, TX. CTE is well respected and well-supported in this area. When I was young, I had the option of CTE and I would not have done as well as I have in life absent that option. I want the same for my children.

The choice to get the training necessary to complete a certification and enter adulthood with a title is a great choice. The people I know who have certifications did far better than those without in the COVID lockdowns. When your set of skills builds and maintains the infrastructure relied upon by today’s society, you tend to weather storms well.

Here in Wacahachie, high school students have the express option of taking up a technical education path. They can leave high school certified and ready to work. The main differences between CTE and college are

• CTE starts you the day after high school graduation if you are successful in your certifications

• CTE incurs significantly less debt

• CTE is more hands-on and focused on the vocation whereas college is more general

Both CTE and college can be foregone in early life and taken up later if one would like making both a good option after a life event or for a change of pace.

The generality of college can give some pause to families. Not all colleges are created equal. Some colleges have been referred to as “indoctrination camps”. The breadth of agency a college is given in the shaping of our youth is a factor these institutions have been tuning for quite some time. Some colleges are more liberal and provide just about everything imaginable as a focus area, minor, or major so the student can choose the education they seek to receive. Other colleges have a more classical interpretation of their place in society and have tailored curricula that has been curated mercilessly to provide the precise education they seek to provide.

All of this fluff is left to an individual’s own reading and curiosity when taking the CTE route. As far as I can tell there are no gender studies or critical race theory CTE programs offered. CTEs provide a focused program to the very pursuit for which it has been written.

This is all to say there is a choice students can make. College is not the end all be all. For some careers (like software, data, and AI) college makes a great deal of sense. For other things, it may not make sense. I know a lot of people paying off student loans for programs they don’t use in jobs they could have gotten without the debt; I don’t know anyone certified in electrical or pipefitting who is in that same position.