Welcome Aboard the maiden voyage of The Texas Pilgrim, a personal odyssey of reflection, commentary, and seeking. Depending on how you might know me—professionally, personally, through civic, political, or social venues, or barely at all—this project may strike you differently. Believe me, I have given it plenty of thought and trust it will not evoke visions of boredom, presumption, or egomania. There will be views on a mix of public policy issues, philosophy, current events, books, and other aspects of our culture that give me an urge to expound and, I hope, some opportunities for dialogue with readers who are prompted to respond. My models for this initiative are several, but I particularly want to thank my friend, Colorado State Senator John Andrews, for his example and encouragement. Current plans are for ten issues per year and, after a few samples, I will probably ask for a small subscription fee to continue. Thanks for your indulgence. I will appreciate your critique.

The Y2K Election

I promise that this periodical will not be a political tract, except to the extent that our politics drives ideas that have consequences. Contrary to many, particularly in the mainstream media, I believe this Presidential election is all about ideas and their consequences. It’s also about the struggle for survival of the old politics that thrives on ideas that have had bad consequences. This is the old politics that has stultified the Democratic Party, of labor union protectionism, government programs financed by a confiscatory tax system, “top down” initiatives by political elites to collectivize behavior, and apparent disdain for the virtues of civic republicanism that made this country the hope of the world. And the Al Gore Democrats have dumped Clinton incrementalism and are back in the mode of big government expansion. There are important choices to be made about big ideas, folks. Just one example: When the Supreme Court ruled in late March that the Food and Drug Administration cannot regulate tobacco products without Congressional authority, The Houston Chronicle headline referred to a “victory for big tobacco”! How about a victory for the U. S. Constitution? And how precarious is the 5-4 majority on the Court for such a ruling? Is the 2000 election a big deal or what?

In Pursuit of Excellence in Higher Ed

Retiring University of Texas System Chancellor Bill Cunningham has floated an interesting plan to restructure and enhance Texas’ system of higher education, which in my opinion is long overdue. My six-year tenure as a regent of one of our state institutions convinced me that, among other structural problems, governance of the present system is too fragmented and is deficient in strategic focus. In the recent past, all restructuring attempts have met a quick political death; in fact, the last one in the mid-1980’s was withdrawn even before being proposed to the Legislature. Two points are in order about the current effort: one, the State should concentrate on it two existing flagship centers of excellence, UT-Austin and Texas A&M, as top tier doctoral research institutions and should not diffuse the available resources in catering to regional and parochial interests, and two, enrollment parity for economically and socially disadvantaged students will come only when these students are much better prepared for higher education by our public school system; until then, enhanced funding for remediation and retention will largely be wasted. More on the latter point in future issues.

Don’t Tax the Internet

Columnist Thomas L. Friedman has written that the transformational changes being wrought by the Internet require a reconvening of the Founding Fathers because he believes we are due for as revolutionary a period as the period between 1776 and 1787. He further predicts that the states will lead the revolution as they lose their tax base to e-commerce. Harold Furchtgott-Roth, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, feels strongly that the exploitation of telecommunications and e-commerce competition can’t be centrally managed and that we should allow thousands of “flowers to bloom” and generations of archaic telecommunications regulation to be swept away in the process. I agree, and would add that a rush to tax these new revenue streams would be counter-productive to wealth and job creation that are as yet inconceivable. According to the Cato Institute, state and local governments are awash in funds, and between 1992 and 1998 state revenues grew at almost twice the rate of inflation. As Max Schulz of The Washington Times has written, “the Founding Fathers in their wildest dreams could never have imagined computers or the Internet. But in their wisdom they defined the regulation of interstate commerce as one of the few clearly marked responsibilities of federal authority.” We should make the Internet tax moratorium permanent and let the flowers bloom.

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Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.”—William Hazlitt

This tragedy and all of its underlying conflicts of values has something to say to everyone, but I touch on it here only because of what it says to me about America at large. It is one of those cases that provides an opportunity to reflect on American priorities. For me (at this writing the appellate court has not made its final ruling), it has been a shameful episode for U. S. policy and one that raises troubling questions. At bottom, the case is heavily ideological and has been described as “the last battle of the Cold War”. This element of the fight cannot be ignored and, in that context, it must be remembered that the Castro regime still holds some loyalties and sympathies among the cultural leftist elite in this country. To wit, Castro’s champions in this contest have been of the American left, led by the National Council of Churches and the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church (my church, I am ashamed to say). In the resulting spin from these organizations, other liberal elites, and a complicit mainstream media, we have been led to believe three things critical to subsequent public opinion polling on the issue: (1) family unity trumps freedom, (2) there is essentially a moral equivalency between the U. S. and Cuban regimes, and (3) the anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Miami are to be demonized and disregarded as a cabal of kooky right wing zealots. All of these points can and should be refuted, and some political and opinion leaders have attempted to do so. Unfortunately for U. S. policy and, more tragically, for Elian Gonzalez, the political right in the U. S. has been fragmented or strangely muted at a time when bold moral leadership could have made a difference. For example, the Republican Congress could have approved legislation granting the boy permanent U. S. residency and bears responsibility for the mess for not doing so. As to the early morning raid to transfer custody of Elian to his father as nominee for the Castro regime, suffice to say that even the prominent arch-liberal constitutional law professor, Harvard’s Laurence Tribe, has written that Attorney General Reno’s “decision to take the law and child into her own hands, even if well intended, strikes at the heart of constitutional government and shakes the safeguards of liberty.” In the end, we should have many questions to ask of the Clinton/Gore/Reno administration about its motives and rationale in the management of this case. The loyal opposition should get about the business of the inquiry.

According to Dan Rather, appearing on Larry King Live last month, the “biggest, most important story unfolding now is the transformation of China into a world power on two fronts—economic and military.” This may seem obvious, and it is also clear that, beneath the surface, there is a huge revolution brewing in that country over human rights and the related political rights of speech, religion and consent. Typically, as with the massive repression of the Falun Dafa religious sect, as well as Christian, Muslims, and Buddhists, the Chinese Communist Party is intent on restricting spirituality because it feels it must control all aspects of Chinese life. In the short run, they will succeed; longer term, they cannot suppress this basic human yearning and Beijing will ultimately lose the human rights debate. In the meantime, the Clinton administration continues single-mindedly to pursue permanent most favored nation trade status for mainland China without due regard for these human rights abuses or Taiwan security concerns. In fact, argues Michael Leeden in the Nov./Dec. 1999 issue of The International Economy, “the greatest blunder in recent history is the Clinton administration’s policy, through liberalized trade, of arming the People’s Republic of China.” Further, Abe Rosenthal of The New York Times says that he has never seen the U. S. as much in the thrall of a foreign philosophy as it is now to Chinese communism. These are strong sentiments, but it does seem that the hope, or mirage, of a billion customers has overwhelmed all other motivations. I agree that trade engagement should be pursued for non-military items, but only on a year-to-year basis as to favored nation status, while keeping the heat on human rights abuses by publicizing them directly and through the United Nations. We should also visibly show our support and encouragement to the new democratically elected President of Taiwan by approving the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act and ultimately sponsoring their entry, along with Communist China, into the World Trade Organization. Sen. Jesse Helms makes an apt analogy of the two Chinese states with the former East and West Germany, which were ultimately united under democracy. This is a long-term objective for China that is worthy of our values and our support. 

One of my heroes of the 20th century is Pope John Paul II. He has not only been a great leader for his church and his faith, but a significant statesman and one who provided critical political (yes, political in the philosophical sense) and moral conviction during the momentous final years of Soviet and Eastern European Communism. His 1994 book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, offers insight on the great theological concerns of our times on an accessible level: the existence of God, the dignity of man, pain and suffering, evil, and the relationship among the various Christian faiths and between Christianity and other faiths. Most of all it is about hope for all mankind in his motto, “be not afraid”. Recently, I completed a second reading of his September 1998 encyclical to the Catholic bishops, Fides et Ratio, on the relationship between faith and reason. Here is his magnum opus, a broad sweep of ninety pages of distilled wisdom from a life of philosophical and theological study. In it, he traces the historical relationships between and among faith and reason, philosophy, science, revelation, and empiricism, pointing out many of the false philosophical idols and sophistries along the way, many of which are with us today in the forms of the various postmodern ideologies. Finally, he calls for a return to true, speculative philosophy as “an inquiry that can help greatly to clarify the relationship between truth and life, between event and doctrinal truth, and above all between transcendent truth and humanly comprehensible language.” I have often thought that our intellectuals have failed us in leading us away from this inquiry over the past century. Hopefully, John Paul II has helped redirect us.

The Heritage Foundation has recently published a report entitled No Excuses: Lessons From 21 High-Performing High-Poverty Schools, based on research conducted by Samuel Casey Carter, a Bradley Fellow at the Foundation. I strongly recommend it to anyone remotely concerned with the state of public education in this country. Carter’s research comprised a nationwide survey of the best practices used by successful schools that serve above average “at-risk” populations. For all the differences in these schools, they share certain core beliefs and traits. Seven traits are common to all: (1) principals are free to run their schools, (2) principals use measurable goals to establish a culture of achievement, (3) master teachers bring out the best in a faculty and effective principals turn their schools into schools for teachers, (4) rigorous and regular testing leads to continuous student achievement, (5) achievement is the key to discipline, (6) principals work actively with parents to make the home a center for learning, and (7) effort creates ability, or time on task is the key to success in school. These traits translate into a set of practices common to all the successful high at-risk schools. The two most common themes throughout the study are the importance of leadership from the principal’s office and the high expectations for all students held by these schools. Universally, these successful schools dismiss the popular wisdom that poor or otherwise socially disadvantaged children are doomed to lag behind their peers or that only “developmentally appropriate” instructional models should be used with these children. To these principals, this is a cop-out that has been used to blame the children, the family, or the society for the failures of the schools. Of the hundreds of U. S. schools surveyed, 21 were selected to be profiled in the final report. It has been my privilege to have worked closely for several years with the leadership of one of these schools, Thaddeus Lott and Wilma Rimes of Houston’s Wesley Elementary, in the development of an early intervention reading initiative in Houston sponsored by the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. From this experience as well as close observation of practices, methodologies, and results in a range of environments, I can testify as a layman that we know what works. We know how to be successful in high-poverty, low socioeconomic environments. We have known these things from research and common sense observation for years. So why is it that, as indicated in the Heritage study, 58% of low-income fourth graders can’t read? There are many culprits and not enough room here to give them their due, but the malpractice of the education establishment is staggering. Friends, there are no excuses. 

An honest man surveys “the wasteland”: “You know the difference between we who work in television and they who work in Hollywood? We’re willing to admit that 90 percent of what shows up on television isn’t worth looking at. They think everything they do is a masterpiece. That’s the main difference.”— Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of CBS’ “60 Minutes”, quoted in The New York Times, 3-28-00.