Lately I have been studying the Old Testament more closely than I ever have before and finding some hidden gems there. I am currently in Leviticus which I had remembered as nothing but heave offerings, wave offerings, burnt offerings, sin offerings, and instructions on where to burn “the fat that is above the caul.”

In Leviticus 19 I was surprised to find the answer to the one area of immigration policy over which my mind was not already completely settled – namely the issue of what approach we should take with regard to illegal immigrants who, aside from their immigration status, are decent members of society (which is almost certainly the majority of them). It is an issue that did not seem particularly important to me until some people began to try using immigration as a stumbling block for the LDS church by suggesting that local church leaders should be turning in members who they knew were living in the United States illegally.

Anyone reading the title of this post might have first assumed that the old testament approach to illegal immigration would be stoning – they would be wrong.

The Israelites are told directly in Leviticus 19:33-34 that “if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex (or oppress) him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.”

As I had been reading that chapter the persistent thought in my mind had been, “How is this applicable in our times?” When I read verse 33 it was easy to conclude that we should treat immigrants decently even if they were here illegally. Of course we should prosecute them for real crimes against others (as we should for all people regardless of their legal status here) but simply being here illegally does not constitute such a crime.

Some will argue that illegal immigrants inherently steal resources from legal residents but in making that argument they always admit to breaking one of two other instructions from this chapter. Sometimes the argument is that we have left no resources whereby they can subsist throught their own labor as the Lord commands in verse 9 that we should not reap the corners or glean our fields but rather leave these for the poor and the stranger.

More often the argument is that through our social safety net we have shown undue favoritism to the poor whereby they can subsist off the labor of others without relying on their own efforts in direct violation of the instruction in verse 15.

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.

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.

This year I have already heard some people who argue out of spite that the winner of the Alabama – Texas game should not be considered the National Champion. Personally I think that’s foolish. Whatever team wins that game will have gone undefeated having played against an undefeated team in their bowl game. What more could we ask of them? The same criteria will apply to the winner of the TCU – Boise State game and thus I argue that while the coaches are obligated to vote for the winner of Alabama-Texas the AP voters should create a split championship by voting for the winner of the TCU-Boise State game (unless Texas-Alabama is compelling while TCU-Boise State turns out to be a really sloppy game on both sides). In fact, Obama should follow his sportsman’s heart by inviting both teams to the White House and honoring them as is traditional for the National Champion. (If he really wants a playoff the President could invite them on the same day and watch them play a friendly scrimmage. )

I just had to get this out before the Fiesta Bowl began today so that I could be fair to both teams – especially considering I have a favorite in this contest. While I like both TCU and Boise State better than either Texas or Alabama I would definitely prefer to see TCU win.

It looked like a stunning reversal: the same church that helped defeat gay marriage in California standing with gay-rights activists on an anti-discrimination law in its own backyard.

. . .

The ordinances passed and history was made: It marked the first time the Salt Lake City-based church had supported gay-rights legislation.

More than a year ago – months before the votes started coming in for California’s Proposition 8 the LDS Church stated its official position that they were supportive of the basic rights of all people, including homosexuals, such as probate rights and housing rights. They stated that they were amenable in theory to the Common Ground Initiative but could not take a public position on bills that had not yet been drafted.

The position of the church never changed. Some people claim this is a PR move to blunt the backlash over their role in defeating Prop. 8, but the only thing that changed is that unlike the theoretical five bills of the common ground initiative, the Salt Lake City council actually drafted two bills. The church publicly supported the bills – in keeping with the position they had already taken.

Sadly some people still don’t get it and are suggesting that the church should take a further step by actually writing bill proposals for the state legislature to consider which would extend these same benefits statewide that were just passed within Salt Lake City. The fact is that the church will do just have they have done up to this point – they will not write legislation and they will take no position on theoretical bills that have not been written. When bills are written that are acceptable the church will support them. Bills they can’t quite support will get no comment. In the Utah Legislature they don’t even have to worry about addressing bills that are worthy of their opposition.

Considering that I could not hope to add insights beyond those of Elder Oaks some might question why I would bother to write anything about his speech. There are two reasons – first, this subject of our freedom of religion (for any atheists I could comfortably call it “freedom of conscience”) is important to every American who cares about preserving a viable nation where we enjoy any amount of liberty whatsoever and thus I could not pass up the chance to promote that message; and second, when I saw that some of what he said was being misunderstood (as shown in a poll where 2 in 3 respondents disagreed with his  assertion that the retaliation and intimidation against supporters of Prop. 8 was similar in nature to the voter-intimidation of blacks in the South) I knew that it was necessary for people who understood what he said to stand up and declare their understanding.

I would like to address those two reasons for writing in reverse order, first to address the apparent misunderstanding and then to talk about how we must treat the freedom of religion in order to preserve a free society.

The poll cited above asks if respondents agree with Elder Oaks that “the anti-Mormon backlash after California voters overturned gay marriage last fall is similar to the intimidation of Southern blacks during the civil rights movement.” With only that question to go on it is understandable that people would think to disagree. The blacks during the civil rights movement faced intimidation tactics for a much longer period of time and from more than just lay people, but from official quarters as well. The problem with the question is that it misrepresents what Elder Oaks actually said. Here are his words:

Along with many others, we were disappointed with what we experienced in the aftermath of California’s adoption of Proposition 8, including vandalism of church facilities and harassment of church members by firings and boycotts of member businesses and by retaliation against donors. Mormons were the targets of most of this, but it also hit other churches in the pro-8 coalition and other persons who could be identified as supporters. . .

It is important to note that while this aggressive intimidation in connection with the Proposition 8 election was primarily directed at religious persons and symbols, it was not anti-religious as such. These incidents were expressions of outrage against those who disagreed with the gay-rights position and had prevailed in a public contest. As such, these incidents of “violence and intimidation” are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South that produced corrective federal civil-rights legislation. (emphasis added)

Vandalism, harassment, firings, boycotts of member businesses, and retaliation against participants were all forms of intimidation faced by both blacks in the South and supporters of Proposition 8, yet that is not how he was trying to compare the two situations. Let me repeat his comparison with special emphasis:

. . . these incidents of “violence and intimidation” are not so much anti-religious as anti-democratic. In their effect they are like the well-known and widely condemned voter-intimidation of blacks in the South . . .

If you don’t believe that this is how he meant his statement hear the explanation that Elder Oaks himself gave (h/t Matt Piccolo):

Now for the question of how we must treat the freedom of religion in order to preserve a free society. Elder Oaks quoted Richard John Neuhaus who said, “In a democracy that is free and robust, an opinion is no more disqualified for being ‘religious’ than for being atheistic, or psychoanalytic, or Marxist, or just plain dumb.” If we hope to preserve a free and robust society we must insist that we and those who disagree with us tolerate any expression of opinions whether it be religious, atheistic, psychoanalytic, Marxist, just plain dumb, or any other description. That starts with us before we can reasonably demand it of those who disagree with us. As Elder Oaks said:

“At no time did anyone question or jeopardize the civil right of Proposition 8 opponents to vote or speak their views.”

Once again Elder Oaks has addressed this issue better than I could so I will summarize his conclusion.

1. We must speak with love, always showing patience, understanding and compassion toward our adversaries. . . Even as we seek to speak with love, we must not be surprised when our positions are ridiculed and we are persecuted and reviled.
2. We must not be deterred or coerced into silence by the kinds of intimidation I have described. We must insist on our constitutional right and duty to exercise our religion, to vote our consciences on public issues and to participate in elections and debates in the public square and the halls of justice. . . when churches and their members or any other group act or speak out on public issues, win or lose, they have a right to expect freedom from retaliation.
3. We must insist on our freedom to preach the doctrines of our faith. I will add here that the freedom to preach the doctrines of our faith does not translate into a freedom or right to compel others to participate in that faith. This is true whether the issue is a specifically religious participation or a more secular participation. In other words, it is wrong to punish someone for choosing not to participate in a public religious observance (a prayer in a public setting for example) just as it is wrong to prevent someone from choosing to engage in a religious activity in a public setting.
4. The call of conscience — whether religious or otherwise — requires no secular justification. At the same time, religious persons will often be most persuasive in political discourse by framing arguments and positions in ways that are respectful of those who do not share their religious beliefs and that contribute to the reasoned discussion and compromise that is essential in a pluralistic society.
5. Latter-day Saints (or anyone else) must be careful never to support or act upon the idea that a person must subscribe to some particular set of religious beliefs in order to qualify for a public office. . . Such advocacy suggests that if religionists prevail in electing their preferred candidate this will lead to the use of government power in support of their religious beliefs and practices. In case that was unclear to anyone let me emphasize his point which was that the idea that a person must subscribe to some particular set of religious beliefs in order to qualify for a public office should never be acted upon or even supported.

(italic comments mine)

Cross-posted at Pursuit of Liberty

Let us tell you a few things about David Miller.

He’s wary of socialized healthcare. He’s in favour of weakening the federal government, and he also supports strict caps on income tax for individuals and corporations. Yeah, turns out David Miller’s a really conservative guy. How’d he ever get elected mayor of a city with such a strong lefty contingent? Oh, right. He didn’t.

Actually, he doesn’t even live in Canada.

David Miller of Bountiful, Utah, a conservative blogger (his site is actually a pretty good read), has politics very different from those of our own soon-to-depart Mayor Miller. But the two men do have one thing in common, aside from a name: they’re both active on Twitter, where Mayor Miller uses the handle @mayormiller, and David-from-Utah goes by @davidmiller.

This was how I was publicly introduced to the people of Toronto by the Torontoist. They picked up on the fact that I was being incorrectly linked in messages to/about the mayor of Toronto and thought it was funny enough that they asked me if they could do a story about it. It was a fun read – and I got a few random tweets out of it today – thought I’d share it here.

Anyone who wants more information about my candidacy is invited to visit my campaign website.

Latest Version: 2.0 (March 16, 2009)

Display templates are introduced here giving you total flexibility in deciding what to display. There is one set of template settings for recent votes and another for search results. Each template is made up of a header, a footer, and an item template. Template tags are used to display the variables specific to each recorded vote such as the vote cast or the vote description. There is also a setting for what to display when no votes are returned in the recent votes and another setting for when no votes are returned in a search.

Votes are entered on a dashboard widget:

A vote management page is available from the posts menu:

Recent votes are shown by adding <?php recent_votes(); ?> in your theme templates. You can show a search votes form by using the shortcode [ SEARCH-VOTES ] on a page or post. Options for Voting Record include:

• The option to specify a primary voter (if most or all of the votes being tracked are from one person).
• The option to specify header text/code for the recent vote list.
• How many recent votes to show – limited by number of votes or number of days.
• What to show before a list of recent votes and what to show before a list of search results.
• What to display at the end of a list of recent votes and what to display at the end of a list of search results.
• The format for displaying your recent votes or search results lists, including which pieces of information to show.
• What to display when no recent votes are returned or when a search comes up empty.

To install it simply unzip the file linked above and save it in your plugins directory under wp-content. In the plugin manager activate the plugin. Settings for the plugin may be altered under the Voting Record page of the Options menu (version 2.3) or Settings menu (version 2.5 or later).

I’m hoping that it is a positive experience for my few subscribers.