Adam Brown had an interesting post about possible causes for low voter turnout in Utah. Adam suggests three possible causes for low voter turnout but essentially dismisses the relative youth of our state as being a cause not supported by the data (and he knows data analysis). That leaves us with two possibilities (according to his post):

Second, maybe it’s because general elections have become much less competitive over the years. … If people believe that their votes are less likely to sway the outcome (either way), then they might not bother to show up.

Third, maybe it’s because Utah strengthened its caucus-convention system in the 1990s, making it harder to force a primary and easier to win in convention.

I won’t pretend to have any insights into which of those two options might be a driving factor. What I thought was interesting was that in suggesting potential solutions to the three possible causes he listed non-partisan runoffs as a potential way to address each of the two plausible causes of the problem.

This was interesting to me four a couple of reasons. First, back when I was doing a lot more political writing than I have been recently, the issue of increasing participation in the political process was one that I was vocal about addressing. I suggested that increasing levels of citizen participation would be akin to our nation experiencing a new birth of freedom. Second, because in lamenting the voter turnout in 2008 – where we actually had fewer people voting than in 2004 despite a larger population of eligible voters – I suggested an idea that was very much like non-partisan runoffs (a term I had not heard before today). My suggestion was that in voting districts where one party received more than 60% of the votes that party would be required to field two candidates on the ballot. That idea really would work best in a runoff system where the top two candidates, regardless of party (assuming neither got over 50% initially), then had a runoff (I would suggest the Saturday after the election). In areas where the dominant party managed to get both of their candidates in the top two it would be the equivalent of an open primary between those two candidates (after the party delegates had weighed in on which two candidates should carry the banner at their conventions).

A chart from an earlier post by Adam shows that prior to me becoming old enough to vote, Utah always had at least 60% participation or more in presidential election years and 40% participation or more  in non-presidential election years. Since that time we have never hit either of those benchmarks and our participation has gone from above average to below average (measured against the rest of the nation). That leaves me with two questions:

1. Is this a generational issue?
   • Did people starting about my age an younger lower our participation levels by not stepping up to the plate when they came of age?
2. What effect would an idea like non-partisan runoffs have?
   • What would it take to implement such a systemic change?
   • How could we make such a system work in conjunction with the rest of the nation where federal elections are concerned?

I would love to hear what others think about those questions because if I really thought it would make a difference and that it was possible to make such a change I would start finding ways to get the issue on our legislative agenda (not this year of course – that would be impossible).

It’s not exactly the message you would expect to hear on election day. For those who know me it’s not a message they would ever expect to hear from me. As I drove to work this morning after casting my vote I got thinking about how destructive an uninformed vote can be. I won’t claim that there is a definable standard of what constitutes being informed. I think that is a decision that must be left to each potential voter, but for those who know they are not informed (those that can’t even see past the party label enough to recognize the party platform for example) not voting just might be your patriotic duty.

To the Voter

First, if you do not feel informed your task should be to get informed. Even if today is the election day you might be able to get informed enough to vote if you are have time to cram for the election. If you have no understanding of what the issues are it might be pretty hard but if you generally know the issues you should be able to get a feel for the candidates enough to decide if anyone deserves your support.

Second, if you do not get informed you cannot complain about what is happening – even if you voted. If you do get informed you can lobby for what you see as right but you can’t complain about who is actually making the decisions if you did not vote when they were elected.

Third, do not be afraid of a blank ballot. In other words, if none of the candidates merit your support for a particular office don’t feel that your time was wasted. In the case of municipal elections where you have the chance to vote for multiple candidates it is okay to not vote for a full suite. For example, in my area today I had the opportunity to vote for three candidates. If I had felt that there were only two candidates who had earned my support I could cast a ballot for only those two. Worst case scenario, write someone in for the final slot.

To the Activist

First, encouraging people to vote is wonderful but do not be satisfied with telling them to vote or worse, with telling them who to vote for. It’s fine to advocate for candidates that you support but always give some reason why you support them. (“Because they belong to my favored party” does not count as a reason!) Whenever you encourage people to vote always encourage them to become informed. Feel free to offer information but don’t stop encouraging them to vote if they disagree with you.

Second, encourage people to be informed before there is voting to do. Better yet, encourage them to participate. Promote attendance at caucus meetings and candidate events, not just the ballot box.

Third, for those who believe that a caucus system is subject to being overrun by fringe elements, dismantling the caucus system is not the solution to that problem. Caucuses favor those who show up. People who show up tend to be informed already or else they get informed quickly (sometimes by adopting the view of those who were already informed and sometimes by gathering information to counter the prevailing view of attendees). Primaries tend to favor those with money. That money is as likely to come from fringe elements as it is to come from mainstream voters – actually, it is more likely to come from fringe elements.

The solution to caucuses being dominated by fringe elements is to increase participation in the caucuses. There may be other tweaks worth considering, but the point is that ending the caucus system does not fix the problem.

Conclusion

Voting is our opportunity as citizens but simply casting a vote is not enough. We must take the time to become informed and to be involved. And we should encourage others to do the same – even if they disagree with us.

photo credit: Camera Slayer

Regardless of how much some people may talk about the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States during their celebrations on the fourth day of July each year, and despite reports suggesting that participation in such celebrations makes children more likely to identify politically as Republicans, it seems obvious to me, based on the situations that we currently face as a nation and the fact that they have been steadily building under the leadership of both major parties, that what is really being celebrated on this day is fireworks.

Certainly some are celebrating as much as fireworks, parades, and traditional American cuisine all at once, but none of this constitutes a celebration of American independence, of our nation, or of our system of government. True celebrations of these things may only take place in the most insignificant of ways on this national holiday. Some may argue that a real celebration of our nation’s independence and of our system of government takes place at the polls each November. I would agree that voting is a real form of such a celebration, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Only those who do as the generation of Americans who actually won our independence and established the foundation of our government can truly be said to celebrate our independence. That requires days, weeks, and even months over the course of each year. It means getting informed about the issues of the day. It requires participating in civil, if spirited, debates about the proper solutions to the challenges that are most pressing. It means helping family, friends, and neighbors to also understand the issues and participate in the debates. Of course it includes carefully choosing the people who will represent us in the various offices of government for which we are able to vote. It also means raising the next generation with an understanding of what we have been given and the continual effort it takes to keep our citizen-driven government operating.

The only place fireworks factors into any of those things is in possibly capturing the imagination of our children with the opportunity to connect that excitement with the type of government we have now. While there is apparently some evidence to suggest that these displays of pyrotechnics tend to coax children toward the conservative regions of the political landscape there is no evidence to suggest that they help the children to understand and appreciate the realities of government and what it takes to preserve the liberty that our nation was built to preserve.

In short, the true celebration of our independence is in the perpetuation of that independence.

I’ve been thinking about the massive disconnect between the abysmal ratings that Congress enjoys (8% approval I recently read) and the virtual invincibility of Congressional incumbents (incumbents consistently win 90% of the elections where they seek reelection).

I realized that the apparent disconnect was not as stark as it first appeared (11 out of 12 disapproving of Congress while 9 of 10 chose to reelect their Congressional representatives). The reality is that eleven out of twelve people people disapprove of Congress but only five out of twelve vote for someone new when given their current member of Congress as an option.

The fact that six out of twelve voters disapprove of Congress and yet they consistently vote the same people back to represent them over and over again is evidence of a colossal failure on the part of the voters of this nation. They fail to recognize that Congress is working exactly as designed given the input they provide at the polls in November of each even year.

I really appreciated the 36 questions that came out of the first meeting of the GRAMA working group and wanted to offer one perspective on a first pass at answering those questions. I will say upfront that the answers provided here are subject to modification or revision based upon more detailed information. Consider this the legislative intent or deliberative process version of any final answers. Before answering the questions I wanted to make one related comment.

When I saw that Common Cause was running a full page ad in the Salt Lake Tribune today calling for the repeal of HB 477 I worried that they were positioning themselves to take some credit after it gets repealed tomorrow (and it will). As citizens we need to be careful in our consumption of information. We need to make sure that we are not fooled by the claims of any interest group. Common Cause appears to be using this situation to help them jump start the reopening of their Utah chapter. I don’t know whether that will be a good thing in the long run or not – I don’t know much about the group – but we should not confuse their core advocacy for open government with any significant work to get this repealed. It was the uproar by the citizens of Utah that brought about this legislative reversal, not the political astuteness of some interest group.

Now, on to the questions:

1. Is there any reasonable expectation of privacy for an elected official? If yes, what should be private? What should be public? Not unless the person was elected against their will. They chose to be a public figure and should expect that their actions are under public scrutiny because they have the opportunity to make public policy.
2. Does it make a difference if an elected official uses a publicly funded or a privately funded device? Not at all.
3. When are the personal notes of a government official public records? Anytime they have any connection to their office or to anything voters might consider relevant in deciding whether to continue supporting them as an officeholder.
4. What personal records of an elected official should be protected, and what should be public? Should a government official be required to release personal notes created solely for his or her own use? If so, what constitutes a personal note? Does the form matter (handwritten, diaries, appointment books, computer files)? Does it matter if those notes are or are not related to policy or government duties? This gets to the heart of this issue. I’m not sure there is a clearcut or lasting answer to this question. Some things are clear though, any record created for their personal use and not shared with others or related to policy or government duties ought to be considered private. The form of those notes only matters insofar as the form may be used to help define of the note was considered to have been shared.
5. Is there a difference between a digital conversation and a digital record? How should channels of communication like text messages, IMs, Email, video chat, Twitter DMs, Facebook Messages and voice mail be considered under the GRAMA statute? The difference between a digital conversation and a digital record is whether the medium is designed to be preserved or discarded. Digital records such as blog posts are designed to be preserved while digital conversations such as twitter are not (just see how easy it is to retrieve or search old tweets, it’s not nearly as reliable as old blog posts). The default assumption on the part of government should be to preserve where possible. Holders of government office need to realize that the more information people have the more likely they are to agree with their elected officials. Those in favor of open government already realize that officeholders tend to make reasonable official positions in direct proportion to the amount of information they share with the public.
6. How should we categorize the increasing new channels of electronic communication as they arise? Categorizing is not as important as retaining the default assumption of “preserve where possible.”
7. Who owns the records? The elected official, the elected body, or the company that provides the electronic forum? I.e. Facebook, Twitter? Who should archive these records? For formal meetings and conversations the elected body owns the record. For informal settings the elected official owns the conversation. In all cases the owner is responsible for archiving records where possible. The better they do the more prepared they will be to respond to watchdog groups who already archive anything they feel they can use.
8. Who should pay the real costs for searching and producing these records? the owner of the information should pay the costs of archiving the record while the person requesting access should pay the costs of searching and reproducing the records.
9. Does a citizen have an expectation of privacy when they contact their elected official? Only if their contact is unrelated to policy or government function.
10. Should records that contain information about a person’s health be protected? Generally yes.
11. Should personal Email addresses be classified as protected records?Yes.
12. Should a lobbyist have any expectation of privacy when they contact an elected official? No.
13. The more complicated the rules for privacy become, the more complex and expensive the legal review in responding to records requests will be. Who should pay these costs? First, the rules should be simplified as much as possible. Second, the requestor of the information should generally pay those costs of compliance.
14. Should the GRAMA statute contain intent language? If so, should the intent language be allowed to trump the actual text of the code? Intent language only opens the door for inconsistency of interpretation. If the text of the code alone produces results different than the intent of the legislature then the code should be altered. The intent should be included in the discussion when creating and debating the text of the code.
15. Currently, GRAMA does not address which party has the burden of proof on an appeal to show that the public interest in disclosing a record outweighs the record’s private or protected status. Who should bear this burden of proof? If the legislature feels that information disclosure is in the public interest they should proactively make it available. The burden of proof when someone wants protected information made public should reside with the requestor.
16. What protections should be afforded to the internal and deliberative processes in the three different branches of government? With the possible exception of judicial deliberations, the common sense of office holders should be such that their deliberations should be able to withstand public scrutiny. Likewise the public should be astute enough to figure out how much credence to give to anything that occurs during the deliberative process.
17. Is there any situation in which a deliberative process should be protected? Should private creative brainstorming play any role in the policy-making process? In the legislative and executive branches at least creative brainstorming should be part of the process but it need not be private.
18. Should the governor & legislature be allowed to discuss policy issues with staff in private before they take a public policy position? After a bill is passed or policy is made public, does this protection remain or open up retroactively? Yes, they should be allowed to have private discussions with staff before taking a public position but those discussions should be made available to public scrutiny once the position has been taken.
19. Should elected officials’ discussions with their staff be presumed to be protected or presumed to be open? Under what conditions should elected officials’ communications with staff be presumed to be private? They might have a temporary protected status while choosing a public position. The only time they should be presumed private is when those communications are related to the staffing itself rather than any government function (in other words communications about people joining or leaving the staff may be presumed to be private).
20. Is there a time-frame equation that could be useful in making information public? I.e. records presumed protected for a certain amount of time, then presumed public. it would be perfectly reasonable for a record to be presumed protected for the length of time it takes to review the record and correct any obvious mistakes.
21. Should any person or organization be given a special exemption from fees associated with a GRAMA request? No.
22. If the request requires the review or search of a large number of records, extensive redacting or other work, legal review, or technical expertise, who should be required to cover the cost of the request? The requestor.
23. Should we revise the current GRAMA policy of not charging for the first 15 minutes spent to fulfill a request? Not unless there is some agreement on a longer period for free initial effort.
24. Should the wise use of taxpayers’ funds be part of the assessment equation when assessing fees? In other words, should governments have the ability to waive fees if it is in the public’s best interest? Yes.
25. Should the audit records of the State Auditor and Legislative Auditor General be protected if their disclosure would interfere with an audit, investigation, or internal procedures? Yes.
26. Should attorneys representing a taxpayer-funded government entity have the same protections as attorneys representing private entities when creating documents or having communication about reasonably anticipated litigation? Probably.
27. Should records relating to fiscal notes on legislation be protected until the legislation has passed or the session has ended? How about protected until the legislation reaches the floor for debate or the session ends – whichever comes first.
28. What role does private communication among elected officials, constituents, and interested parties play in formulating good policy? What effect would classifying a record public or private records have on the legislative process? Private communication has no advantages in forming good policy, only in forming bad policy. When records are classified as public it serves as a deterrent to foot in mouth disease.
29. What role should our legislature’s part time status play in the classification of information? Their part time status means that whatever they do in their employment outside the legislature should receive the same protections as any other employee unless it has some connection to government function or policy.
30. Looking forward, how can we automate the legislative process of archiving records and properly making them available? That is a technical question and a technical answer is outside the scope of what I would try to address here even if I were qualified to do so.
31. How does the decentralized and geographically dispersed structure of the legislative branch affect record production and storage of records? It has little bearing in our digital age.
32. Is there a defining line or equation we could use to discern between the private life and public life of a elected official? Is there a same or similar line that would also work for a governor, citizen, activist, lobbyist, media representative or a government employee? The simple line is that before they declare their intent to run is their private life and after they are no longer a candidate or officeholder is also private life. Everything else is public life. For all others their life is public to the degree that they affect or seek to affect public policy.
33. Is there a role for confidential discussions in the deliberative process in the different branches of the government? I don’t see how this question differs from questions 16, 17, & 18.
34. Given recent advances in technology we have experienced an exponential increase in the volume of potential records available, and a concurrent increase in demand for those records. Given the reality of limited government resources, how should this workload be managed? Along with the volume and demand for records brought on by technology we also have an increase in the capacity of technology to help manage the records and consequently the workload. Is there actually a greater demand on resources or has technology already compensated for the theoretical extra burden of extra records and extra demand? If there is more burden on government resources the demand will be managed if the cost of record retrieval is paid by the requestor.
35. What technological advances do you foresee over the next 10 years that will effect how we might archive and access public records? The ability to archive and access records will probably improve at least as fast as the number and type of records increases but I can’t guess what changes the next 10 years will bring. Perhaps the legislature should be required to periodically review GRAMA and determine if changes have become warranted.
36. What further policy questions should we consider as we bring GRAMA into the next century? No further questions your honor.

photo credit: avinashkunnath

It’s time to set the record straight on the difference between the best BCS football programs and the best non-BCS football programs in response to the ill-advised and self-serving comments of Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee. TCU did their part responding on the field by beating 11-1 Big Ten co-champion Wisconsin (from Mr. Gee’s own BCS conference) and people have noticed.

Mr. Gee’s claim was that the schedule in a non-BCS conference could not compare to the schedule in a BCS conference. The fact is that conference schedules account for only 2/3 of the season and that strong BCS programs rarely play a decent opponent outside of their conference. They’re too busy playing the “Little Sisters of the Poor”—either weak teams from weak conferences or teams that do not even play at the FBS level. (Of course there are some rivalry exceptions but they are a minority of non-conference contests among BCS programs.) Non-BCS programs spend most of their non-conference games playing the toughest teams that are willing to agree to play from BCS conferences.

I would agree with Mr. Gee that the schedules of schools in BCS conferences are generally harder than the schedules of schools in non-BCS conferences but the difference is not nearly as vast as Mr. Gee implied.

I am not one to advocate for an NCAA football playoff. I don’t take the sport seriously enough to worry about whether there is some dissent about who really is the national champion each year. But so long as you are having a game that is billed as the championship game you ought to do what you can to ensure that the most deserving teams play in that game.

There is a simple fix that would help to do that. I know that as long as there is only one game and more than two undefeated teams there will be someone left out—just ask Auburn from 2004—but if the BCS simply acknowledged that what happens on the field is more important in determining the best teams than any theoretical strength of schedule by adopting a rule that so long as there are only one or two undefeated teams at the end of the season any undefeated team is guaranteed to play in the championship game and then use the BCS rankings as a tiebreaker among undefeated teams and separately among teams that have at least one loss.

The fact is that there is only one year in BCS history that would have been changed. Such a rule would have guaranteed that Utah, as the only undefeated team at the end of the regular season, would have played in the championship game with a chance to prove that they really were the best that year. There is no way to know if they would have beat Florida (or Oklahoma who they would have played in the title game that year) but at least they would have had the opportunity.

It might even be acceptable to put a caveat on that rule that it only applies to undefeated teams that have played in a BCS game before – thus helping to address the extremely remote possibility of a team from the Sun Belt Conference (as an example) going undefeated through a weak conference while winning all four of their non-conference games against BCS opponents who by some twist of fate all ended up having losing seasons that year. They would still deserve a berth in a BCS game, I would think, but perhaps not the title game against a 12-1 BCS conference champion.

I would bet that almost all the people who have read The Fourth Turning have wondered at one time or another whether 9/11 was our nation’s crisis as predicted in that book. I know that I read somewhere that the authors of the book indicated that they believed that 9/11 was the crisis that marked our passage into the fourth, or crisis, turning for this saeculum (for those who have not read the book and may be unfamiliar with that term, a saeculum is composed of four time periods, called turnings, which each have distinct characteristics and last for the length of a generation – roughly 18 to 25 years – and the saeculum is equal to a long human lifespan – between 80 and 100 years).

I have long felt that if 9/11 was our crisis then we failed because nothing changed – we have not addressed any of the issues that have been pushing us toward crisis over the last generation. Today I stumbled upon 9/11 – A Fourth Turning Perspective by James Quinn. He does a great job of identifying the things that made me think that 9/11, if it was our crisis, was a failed crisis. As he talks about the book he mentioned that a fourth turning crisis ALWAYS leads to substantial change. That gave me hope (and dread) that our crisis had not come. Certainly 9/11 had the potential to be such a crisis, but apparently we were not ready to enter the next turning at that time.

Mr. Quinn goes on to speculate that our crisis was really the market crash of September 2008 and that our reaction to that crisis is not yet resolved. We have not come to a point where the outcome of our crisis can be known. In fact, the crash might even be viewed as the catalyst for a coming crisis rather than the crisis itself. Quinn goes on to describe the types of crises we might yet face in the near future (and keep in mind that there is no guarantee that we will face only one crisis) and some of the potential outcomes.

I won’t pretend to be smart enough to be able to say with certainty how accurate his speculation is, but it is certainly worth a read and some careful consideration.

photo credit: More Than Maths

Last week I received a new donor card from the Red Cross and a letter to go with it. The letter contained an interesting statistic that the Red Cross receives a large majority of their donations from only 30% of their donors. Just to be clear, the statistic is that 30% of those who donate – not 30% of the total population – provide much more than half of the blood supply. Specifically it is the 30% who donate repeatedly and of course the message of their letter is that they want me as part of that minority of donors.

Later in the week I was at the temple when the thought struck me that although I have no statistics on it, I think it highly likely that the great majority of temple work done is performed by a minority among those who go to the temple. I realized that this is a consistent pattern. Only a small minority of Boy Scouts perservere in their scouting and advance to the Eagle rank. A minority of families raise the majority of children in each succeeding generation. A minority of active voters participate in the primary process and earlier activities to get informed and select candidates for office. A minority of religious people actually attend services regularly and keep their respective churches operating.

As I thought about it I realized that the only minorities that matter are not those we are assigned to such as Hispanics, African Americans, blind people, or midgets, but the ones we decide to be part of like repeat blood donors or involved citizens.

Everyone, by their choices, is part of some minorities whether good or bad. For those who wish to make a difference the question is not merely “what good things do I want to do” but “what things can I do more or better than most of the people who are casually involved?” As we make those decisions we must recognize that we can’t do everything but we can choose where to do something.

photo credit: sigma.

As if to prove the point I made in my last post about passing out casts and crutches, the Seattle Post Intelligencer this week published an essay from Brad Soliday, a teacher in eastern Washington, where he shares his perspective about how the increasing money bring allocated to education is being misspent because it is focusing on a mistaken solution.

I doubt it is truly coincidental that while real education spending has risen 49% in the last two decades it is dysfunctional or broken families that have seen a corresponding rise in society rather than educational outcomes (which have flat-lined despite the ever rising funding). This should be irrefutable proof that those perpetually sounding the cry that education is underfunded are either misinformed or intentionally deceptive (I’m sure there are some who fall into each of those camps). Education is under-supported due to the disintegration of a solid family foundation in society but money cannot solve that problem.

Mr. Soliday puts into words a disturbing fact that many people would be unwilling to articulate:

Many educational reforms attempted in the last fifteen years are an attempt to recreate or substitute for the structure, attention, discipline, support, love and expectations of a healthy family.

I can’t imagine that there are more than a very few people who truly believe that such an attempt could ever be truly successful.

Perhaps my favorite part of the essay is the prescient statement at the end in which he summarizes:

For forty years educators and politicians have been trying to raise test performance and reduce dropout rates by “fixing” schools. These efforts have largely failed or returned meager improvements. They have failed because they are trying to fix the wrong institution. Schools are not the problem and schools are not the solution. The disintegration of the family is the problem and its restoration is the only solution (to several social issues besides educational achievement).

Schools and teachers can always improve, they can do better, and they can make the difference for tens of thousands of individual students, but they cannot make up for systemic dysfunction in the most important institution in America, the family.
(emphasis added)

Mr. Soliday ends by offering some conclusions about the true way forward in education. Among them he offers this, which sounds very much like something prophets and apostles have been telling the world for fifteen years already:

Curriculum, programs, and even laws should be developed to promote and protect the family, especially the role and responsibility of fatherhood.

photo credit: RSzepan

Over the course of six years of writing online I have been asked why I focus so much on political issues and not so much on promoting a moral society. I think it’s a great question and I have thought much about it. The short answer is that my focus has been mainly on the political system and how it impacts society as well as how we can have a positive effect on the system that is currently in place.

For some time now I have found myself falling back in private political discussions to the position that all the best efforts and intentions with regard to political activity are no more than a bandaid over the ills of society and that true progress and stability in society are utterly dependent on the underlying morality or righteousness of the society being governed. It is exactly the same with a wound: a bandaid can help keep it clean and impede further infection but real healing is an internal function of the body. From outside the body the most we can do is create an environment that is conducive to healing.

What does that mean with regard to political involvement? A couple of things:

The most important thing it means is that we must recognize that no matter how pure or even effective our political efforts may be they cannot finally solve any of the problems we face. We must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that actual solutions must begin and be rooted in the basic cells of society, our families. With that understanding we might be more careful in the laws that we support to make sure that we are supporting and enabling healthy families rather than passing out casts and crutches for the broken homes which we have in ever increasing abundance. (We should also recognize that “broken” homes include more than just the poor or single parent families that get so much public sympathy.)

The second thing that means is that we must recognize that even though we cannot force people to be righteous, or smart, or tolerant through legislation what we establish in law is a baseline of decency and goodness in society—in other words, what we legislate is what we can and should enforce as a society and the bare minimum of what we should adhere to as individuals. When we remove or alter existing legislation we should consider whether we are truly promoting liberty or whether we are aquiescing to the destructive forces operating on our society.

Third we need to recognize that the vast majority of those who wish to use legislation to do more for society than it can actually do, in other words those who would use legislation as a tool for social engineering, are good and honest in their intent even when they are misguided in their efforts. Those who recognize the natural limitations of political action must work to help them recognize those limitatons and also work to expose that small minority who are actually using the power of government under the guise of social justice who are not acting honestly but instead are seeking for their own power or for the destruction of that which supports a moral society.

In summary, political power can be used to define and enforce a social baseline for conduct and expectations but it cannot be used to make society good—even if we want it to—and those who seek to use political power for more than that generally do so out of ignorance or misunderstanding rather than out of malice.

More importantly for me: what does this mean for my political involvement?

It’s going to be a less prominent part of my life. I still see political participation as vastly important to letting my light shine. I plan to be an example of an informed citizen who takes his opportunities to participate in the political process seriously. I will always be there at the ballot box and will do everything possible to help my elected representatives at all levels to make enlightened political decisions in my behalf. That being said I feel the need to talk more about building an ideal society than about the specifically political aspects such as the legislative process, voter participation, and Constitutional government. All those things are important and I will not abandon my beliefs and positions with regard to those things. My focus is shifting but not my beliefs.

Along with that shift in focus I plan to consolidate my writing here on my personal site. Pursuit of Liberty will eventually go away but it’s content will be preserved as a subdomain here. I might go so far as to crosspost specifically political content on that subdomain but I make no promises to do so. my focus will be on building and documenting how we should build a strong and sustainable society with healthy families at the core and morality and faith in God as essential pillars along with good government to keep it stable. Mitt Romney spoke of strong defence, strong economy and strong

This is an expanded and slightly modified version of what I posted as Limitations of Politics at Pursuit of Liberty.