“The ultimate outcome will be transformational, for I believe there is no way to avoid the massive restructuring of the Muslim world that will follow (and parallel) this conflict. The ruling elites in these societies, friend and foe alike, must choose which future they want, and the status quo ante is not acceptable, for us or for them. In too many instances in the past, U. S. foreign policy has supported stability as the ultimate human objective, where revolution would have been preferable, albeit messy.”—The Texas Pilgrim, November 2001.

With apologies for again repeating this passage from the period immediately following the 9-11 attack on America, I must ask, folks, how are we doing so far? With the impending ouster of Syria from Lebanon, the first real elections in Egypt now imminent, The New York Times editorial page and several normally anti-Bush European editorials at least leaning toward an admission that the Bush Doctrine might be working, the radical anti-American Lebanese Druze leader Jumblatt equating the Iraqi elections to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and other related “dominos” falling, it is clear that revolution is in the air and the transformation is well underway.

What next? First, no gloating—we are at a tipping point, but it could still tip the other way, particularly in Iraq. There remains much to be done, and firming our resolve to finish the job is the most important priority. And we should keep the pressure on the Saudis, the Russians, Assad of Syria, and the mullahs in Iran. We still don’t know what kind of revolution this will be—let us pray it will be closer to the American style than the French, with its totalitarian legacy, but the important thing is the conversion to freedom and the rule of law for, as Natan Sharansky so well explains in The Case for Democracy, “Freedom’s skeptics must understand that the democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator who loves you”. Viva la revolution!

Meanwhile, on the domestic war front, we owe Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott our thanks for defending the religious freedoms enshrined in the U. S. Constitution by forcefully arguing before the U. S. Supreme Court the case for keeping the Ten Commandments monument on the State Capitol grounds.

To illustrate the point to be made, last year The American Enterprise magazine ran a very interesting picture “tour” of several of Washington, D. C.’s major federal buildings that included: Moses with the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Library of Congress; the Ten Commandments in the floor of the National Archives; the “Liberty of Worship” statue with the Ten Commandments outside the Ronald Reagan Federal Building; Moses with the Ten Commandments tablets on the rear façade of the U. S. Supreme Court; Moses with the Ten Commandments inside the Supreme Court’s hearing room; and an excerpt from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, with its multiple references to God, carved into the interior of the Lincoln Memorial. We could add many other examples in that city, but you get the point.

Some will make the argument that the only way these icons on government grounds, along with such of our heritage expressed in the mottos of “in God we trust” and “so help me God”, can be justified is by confirming their role in a kind of “ceremonial deism”, carefully avoiding any representation that their subject actually informs our creed. In other words, we should pursue a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as to any religious presence in the public square. Au contraire. Listen to James Madison: “We have staked the whole of our political institutions on the capacity of mankind to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God”, or note the argument of Michael Novak: “…….the specific right of religious freedom guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution is based on Judeo-Christian concepts not replicated in any other religion”.

As to sectarian religion we must be neutral, but if by that neutrality we mean neutral on the validity of the foundational belief in a moral order undergirded by natural law with its origins in divine law, then our civic republican ideal of ordered liberty under the rule of law cannot survive.

Meanwhile, in the Supreme Court decision in Roper vs. Simmons to arbitrarily set an age limit on the assessment of the death penalty to juvenile criminals, once again our imperial judiciary has completely disabled state legislators and juries in a decision that pre-empts the value judgments of the people. And again I repeat—the critical issue is not the substance of the underlying case or the moral issue involved, but rather the question of who decides.

To compound this particular decision, we have reliance on “evolving standards of decency” and “national consensus”, the evidence for which is questionable at best, not to mention another instance of reliance on “the overwhelming weight of international opinion”. Where in the U. S. Constitution is the authority for the Supreme Court to impose its moral values as the law, determine the national consensus, or rely on international opinion to overturn an American jury?

Representative democracy is being further undermined, and we need to get very serious about this very soon. We should start by demanding of the Republican Senate leadership that the Democrats be stopped from perverting the constitutional advice and consent doctrine in the confirmation of judicial appointees, regardless of the potential fallout for other legislative priorities, all of which are secondary to this one. We should also demand that our legislative leaders take charge of the jurisdiction of the federal judiciary, as they are empowered to do by the Constitution, and reassume policy leadership on any number of issues on which they have abdicated their responsibility. A good guide to thinking about all of this is Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, by Mark R. Levin.

Recently I was struck by an editorial exchange initiated by Dr. Joyce Brothers in Parade magazine, who suggested that the lack of respect and values seen in today’s popular culture is due to a “lack of shame”. This was followed by a rebuttal op/ed in The Houston Chronicle from Brene Brown of the University of Houston, who seems to equate shame with a lack of, or damage to one’s self esteem, as in “I am a bad person”. My take on this is that shame is a deeply embedded monitor, deriving from the original sin from which we all suffer, but which produces a salutary defense mechanism in us, unless it is overruled by the passions or by social pressures to be entirely “rational”.

Does this mean that I agree with Dr. Brothers? Generally, yes, in that there are some things, behaviors, etc., that are simply repugnant and that this fact alone should give us pause when we encounter them. Leon Kass, Chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, believes we should be very attentive to those things that we find “offensive” or “repulsive”, because these feelings lead to deeper realities and wisdom, and he uses as an example the idea of cloning.

University of Chicago professor of law Martha Nussbaum strongly disagrees. She believes that shame and appeals to disgust have no place in public policy because they are connected with restrictions on liberty in areas of “nonharmful conduct”, and that even attempts by the criminal justice system that aim to reform the whole person are too intrusive, that they tend to stigmatize people. As Roger Kimball explains in responding, Nussbaum wants to remove all stigmatization and shame from penalties, so as to completely free law from the idea of sin and disenfranchise shame from any role in public life.

If postmodernists like Nussbaum can completely free our laws and our jurisprudence from any reliance on shame, moral judgment, or our natural feelings of repugnance, indignation, and disgust, can the police state be far behind?

Thanks to Bethel Nathan for passing along the remarks of former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm from a recent immigration-overpopulation conference in Washington, D. C., which I paraphrase as follows:

“Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and ultimately commit suicide, and so, to destroy America, here is how we do it. First, turn America into a bilingual or multilingual and bi-cultural country, thereby creating unbearable tension; second, invent multiculturalism and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture, making it an article of belief that all cultures are equal; third, celebrate diversity rather than unity, and favor tolerance over hegemony of the dominant culture; fourth, make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated, with a 50% high school dropout rate; fifth, get big foundations and big businesses to give these diversity and multicultural efforts lots of money, investing in ethnic identity and financing the grievance industry; sixth, advance the concept of dual citizenship and divided loyalties; seventh, place all these subjects off limits for debate—make it taboo to talk against the cult of diversity; and eighth, make it almost impossible to enforce our immigration laws.”

I’m told that there was a large crowd listening to his remarks. I hope the White House was well represented.  

(Following is the Executive Summary of the above titled paper. For a copy of the complete paper of about 25 pages, please let me know.)

There is very little doubt among sophisticated observers that Texas has led the nation in public education reform over the past decade or so and that it has served as a model for other states and the nation in the advancement of standards and accountability. This has been accomplished by the dedication of a statewide coalition of educators, administrators, and legislative and business leaders in a consistent effort over a period of twenty years.

However, there is mounting evidence that the easier phases of reform are behind us in Texas, that some of the more intractable student achievement problem areas have not been reached by the reforms while serious backsliding is underway in others, that more of the same accountability and standards will not produce the results we want, and that a much more difficult phase of reform lies ahead.

When we examine the education priorities of the State’s political leadership as evidenced by the policy initiatives of the 79th session of the Texas Legislature, we find a policy mix dominated by three priorities: property tax relief, fixing the broken “Robin Hood” system of school finance, and providing more funding for public education. As for additional reform, in fairness, there are a number of well-intentioned and well-crafted proposals directed toward incremental improvement in the current reform model, but, with few exceptions, there seems to be little sentiment for serious introspection or candid appraisal of the current status of the reforms that have produced what has been dubbed “The Texas Miracle”.

The current reform model, as it has evolved over the past twenty years, is based on the curriculum standards embodied in the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) document adopted in 1997, on which the entire edifice is built—the curriculum, the assessments, the teacher preparation, and the incentive system. The assessment vehicle, the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), is a criterion-referenced assessment subject to all of the possible pitfalls of such an examination, particularly when used as the sole determinant of all aspects of accountability for student achievement.

During the period since the adoption of the TEKS and the implementation of the assessments that have evolved into the TAKS, the improvement in the performance of Texas schools, as determined by the state assessments, has been remarkable. However, upon close analysis, one can begin to detect deficiencies in the standards- and accountability-based model and problems for its future as the primary determinant of progress in student achievement.

In research-based analyses of such indices as college readiness, reading ability, the rigor of curriculum, and the credibility of assessment, there is mounting evidence of the need to revisit the Texas reform model and the foundations on which it is based, and to have the objectivity and courage to make course corrections where they are warranted by the facts.

This process can only begin with complete candor about the current status of public education in Texas, the progress of our reform efforts to date, the prognosis for achieving the essential universal educational proficiency of our children, and the daunting challenges that we face in doing so. And this will involve confronting the enormous vested interests that sustain not only the “one best system” that has been in business for almost a century, but the model that has been chosen as the Texas reform vehicle. Total honesty and transparency is a must, a difficult principle to enforce when even the most well-intentioned of us are often intimidated by the inertia of the current structure of education and the natural reluctance to be introspective.

Armed with an objective analysis of where we have been and where we are, and keeping in mind that everything we do or don’t do should be evaluated in terms of its impact on Texas student achievement, there are specific actions that can be taken in key areas that would immediately begin to revive and advance the “Texas Miracle” in public education, as follows:

• Academic Standards—Return to the premises of TEKS, refine and strengthen it to identify explicit, objective grade level expectations for all core subject areas, and revisit and reject the foundational “constructivist” philosophy of education.

• Assessment—Replace or supplement criterion-referenced testing with national norm-referenced testing and add end-of-course exams in high school as well as value-added assessment throughout K-12.

• Academic Accountability—Significantly increase the State standards for K-12 district and campus performance, add college readiness as a standard, measure it with the SAT or ACT exam for high school exit, and install urgent and serious consequences for underperforming campuses.

• The Reading Crisis—Because everything about student achievement follows from the ability to read, we should declare the moral equivalent of war on the illiteracy of our children, beginning immediately in our urban areas.

• Empowerment Through School Choice—The centerpiece of delivery system reform must be comprehensive, child-centered school choice in all of its manifestations, including vouchers, charters, online, home schooling, etc., beginning with aggressive expansion of open enrollment charter authority and voucherizing special education and students in failing schools.

• Educator Quality—Aggressively expand alternatives to educator preparation and certification, lead the movement to national standardized certification, significantly expand new teacher mentoring, aggressively recruit non-traditional leadership to school administration, and introduce performance-based compensation for all educators based on value-added evaluation.

• Financial Accountability—Develop a more robust reporting and management system that will bring improved transparency and productivity to education finance down to the classroom level.

• Structural Deregulation—Dump the age old “one best system” and allow wide-ranging authority for deregulation of human resource management as well as innovations in scheduling and delivery that will certainly involve significantly more “time on task” and use of technology.

The current situation in Texas is analogous to the beginning of the furious debate over tort reform in the early 1990’s, when business leaders were finally energized and organized to take on and win a protracted battle against a threat that had seriously jeopardized the State’s economic viability. This necessary opinion leadership is not yet sufficiently energized for this next phase of education reform, but the current state of and prognosis for our public education system represents a threat even more onerous to our economic and cultural future and it is one that is worthy of a similar long-term commitment to overcome. In addition, and more importantly, it represents the civil rights revolution of the 21st century.