Architecture of the human spirit

Lincoln Memorial, Wahington, D.C.

Standing on Capitol Avenue in front of the Diocese of Cheyenne, visitors to Cheyenne can take in a wide-ranging sample of Capitol architecture. Look to the left and you see the stately lines of the Wyoming Supreme Court. Farther left you will see ennobling and inspiring Capitol Dome framed by the trees of Capitol Avenue. Continue sweeping left until your back is to the Diocese and your view is obstructed by the imposing concrete mass of the Joseph C. O’Mahoney Federal Center.

Built in 1964, the Federal Center is typical of the modernist buildings that the federal government began to impose on cities across America after World War II. Architectural purists may scorn me for saying so, but the building is neither beautiful nor inspiring. Those with a trained eye will surely point out a thousand interesting details, but none of them can draw the eye and command immediate respect like the Capitol or the Supreme Court Building.

That’s the objective nature of beauty. The common man can recognize it immediately even while a lifetime of study may fail to define it fully. The same is true of inspiration, nobility and respect. Like other common senses, the common man has the capacity to perceive transcendent qualities even if he lacks the vocabulary to define them.

The founding fathers knew this and planned accordingly. According to President Trump’s Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture, signed December 21, 2020, “They wanted America’s public buildings to inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue.” That’s an objective and measurable goal that they wanted to accomplish through the art of architecture.

To accomplish this, “President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson consciously modeled the most important buildings in Washington, D.C., on the classical architecture of ancient Athens and Rome. They sought to use classical architecture to visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity, reminding citizens not only of their rights but also their responsibilities in maintaining and perpetuating its institutions.”

Pantheon in Athens, Greece

Before reading these lines, I must confess that I had given little thought to the purpose and function of public architecture. Perhaps I took it for granted. Was the look of Washington, D.C. merely a thoughtless whim? It turns out that our founding fathers were not prisoners of their own times and personal tastes. On the contrary, they deliberately chose the appearance of federal buildings “to inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue.”

Public buildings are the kind of art that is impossible to avoid. You can choose not to see a movie, or to patronize an art gallery. You can spend your entire life and never go to a concert. But government buildings are unavoidably public monuments. There is no choice but to see them, and to see them is to be affected by them.

Your heart is affected differently when approaching a massive concrete block than it is when passing through tall marble columns. You may not notice it until the experience is brought to your attention, but architects have studied these effects and design buildings with these principles in mind.

For the first century and a half of America’s existence, an unbroken tradition followed the intention of Washington and Jefferson. America’s public buildings called forth the nobility of the Roman republic and the Greek citizen. These familiar shapes filled hearts with pride, lifted minds to noble thoughts and assured individuals that their God-given rights would be recognized.

But, shortly after the second World War that changed. America had just defeated the brutal modernist governments that reduced their citizens to mere machines. Fifty million humans had been crushed under the wheels of war. Yet, in bitter irony, we brought their architecture home and began to design public buildings that looked more like crushing factories than ennobled halls.

The Executive Order signed before Christmas is a deliberate reversal of more than six decades of inhuman architecture. It is a return to the ethics of the founding fathers. It embodies the simple assertion: “Federal public buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public.”

As we stand on the threshold of a new year, my heart is encouraged and inspired to know that a new generation of architects will be unleashed to construct buildings for our children and grandchildren that speak to the common man about uncommon virtues. They promise to draw on the wisdom of the past while guiding our way into the future.

Pres. Trump signing the Order

Beauty, inspiration, nobility and respect resonate in every human heart. They should not be set aside as relics of the past but celebrated as beacons of the American spirit. I applaud President Trump’s architectural vision for bringing federal architecture back to its roots.

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, 1/1/21.

WTE: How Christmas brings the world together

Christmas is, without a doubt, the greatest unifying holiday on the world’s calendar. In these days of turmoil and division we cannot do better than to think on this blessed unity during these holy days.

First, consider how Christmas unifies us on a cultural level. It remains one of the few holidays that all Americans celebrate together. Globally it stands with Easter as the only two holidays that are celebrated on every continent. On December 25th of each year people from Siberia to South Africa to San Francisco set their minds on a singular event that forever changed the world.

Christ’s birth made such an impact around the globe that nearly every person alive can name the number of years since his birth without a moment’s hesitation. While scholars may quibble about whether the ancient calculations were completely accurate, it cannot be denied that the year 2020 intends to count the years since Jesus’ birth.

For all the time before Christ, civilizations marked time by the establishment of a new local kingdom. Judea might note the year as, “the 39th year of King Uzziah.” Next door, Israel had a different king; and that same year was called the first year of King Jabesh (See 2 Kings 15:13).

With rare exceptions, that is no longer the custom. Rather, nations the world over all count back to the date of Jesus’ birth. We acknowledge this every time we put the letters “A.D.” after the year. These initials stand for the Latin words “anno domini,” which are translated, “in the year of our Lord.”

This reveals the second of Christmas’ unifying qualities. It declares that Jesus is the king of all the earth. While the ancient world knew of great and sprawling empires like those of the Persians, Greeks and Romans, never was there a single man ruling over the entire globe. The birth of Christ changed all that.

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder” (Isaiah 9:6). The “King of kings and Lord of lords” was born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger (see Revelation 17:14 and 19:16).

Of course, the principalities and powers of this world are always attempting to achieve a one-world government. By the exercise of raw power through vast stores of wealth, they believe that they can solve the world’s problems if only they can control one more lever of power. Yet, the more power they gain, the more misery spreads.

Jesus’ lordship is not like that. He rules not by raw power, but by self-sacrifice. The Creator was born as a man to give His life as a ransom for the sins of the world. What sets Jesus apart from every other king and lord is that he knows the true cause of the world’s division.

The hate, anger and lust that destroy and divide us are not caused by the differences among us. They are caused by the sin within us. So, the unity that Jesus brings to the world is not accomplished by the mere shuffling of power, wealth and status. The unity that is the true hope for the world is brought about by addressing the problem of sin. For Christendom, that means repentance.

This is what makes Christmas truly unifying. Unity begins when each of us, individually, stops blaming others for the evils around us. When we face up to the greed, lust, anger and ill will in our own hearts, the Christ-child comes with His forgiveness to reconcile us to all those who are around us.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it well. “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.” Jesus brings reconciliation not by forcing others to treat us differently, but by changing our own hearts. This permits us to love and be loved despite our sins.

When sins are real and cause real harm, forgiveness cannot be mere sentimentality. Real forgiveness comes at a high price. That is why Jesus’ lordship over the world was brought about by his own self-sacrifice. By paying the debt that we cannot pay, He reconciles us to one another by restoring what others stole from us by their sin and by restoring to others what we stole from them. This, and this alone, brings unity and good will to the world.

As you celebrate the birth of Jesus, seek out the true unity that He came to bring.

“O come, Desire of Nations, Bind in one the hearts of all mankind; Bid Thou our sad divisions cease, And be Thyself our King of Peace. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to Thee, O Israel.”

Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, December 25, 2020.

...and the Cowboy State Daily, December 24, 2020.

WTE: China’s attack requires an immediate bipartisan response

Foreign policy is not a high priority for the average American. But an international storm has broken that requires immediate attention. Wyoming’s lone representative, Liz Cheney, took to the airwaves last Wednesday to say that “the Chinese Communist Party [CCP], the Chinese government, is on the attack against the United States of America.”

Earlier John Ratcliffe, the U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI), wrote in the Wall Street Journal, “If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point [as DNI], it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.”

“The intelligence is clear,” Ratcliffe continued, “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Only days later, video surfaced showing a professor from Beijing bragging to a November 28 conference of approving communists that “we have people at the top” of American institutions. Embarrassed by the candor, the CCP immediately censored the video.

Most recently, documents unmasking millions of CCP members embedded in corporations and governments around the world were leaked to the public. According to the New York Post, each has sworn to, “fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the party and the people, and never betray the party [and] guard party secrets, be loyal to the party.” Nearly two million of these oath-takers sit in positions of power in international corporations from Boeing to Pfizer, communication giants and governments around the world.

All of this should put into perspective the recent revelations about Eric Swalwell and the Chinese spy who helped fund his meteoric rise to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. It should be borne in mind as the Department of Justice investigations into James and Hunter Biden’s China deals are reported.

Everybody knows that graft and corruption are crimes. But fewer people consider how selling one’s influence for financial gain harms anyone. After all, if some politician or corporate huckster can leverage his position to earn a few million bucks, isn’t that the American dream? How does that hurt me?

For starters, remember that bribes are money with strings attached. Those who give lucrative deals to American corporations and politicians want something in return—and they have ways of making sure they get it. What they want are domestic and foreign policies that favor them and disadvantage their enemies.

Here's the rub. Anyone who speaks, assembles and worships freely is considered an enemy by the CCP. The recent arrest and imprisonment of Agnus Chow, Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam demonstrate this point. They were betrayed by the globalist corporations and politicians that should have fought alongside of them.

These young heroes led the citizens of Hong Kong to stand up for the rights that the CCP guaranteed to them in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Beijing made a promise to the world and the world should have held them to that promise.

Instead, through money and power lavished on private individuals and corporations, the CCP persuaded the world to turn their backs on the Chinese people. The civil rights of Hongkongers, protected by international treaty, evaporated in the span of a single decade. Now these young people are in prison for legal activities that were deemed “crimes” retroactively.

International corporations and corrupt politicians sold the human rights of seven million Hong Kong citizens for personal enrichment. We who support these corporations and politicians are complicit in the betrayal. And unless America acts with resolve today, still more human beings will be sold into slavery tomorrow. The 24 million people of Taiwan are next in the crosshairs of the CCP.

America fought a bloody war to end slavery. And yet, the Apple corporation recently lobbied congress against the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” which is designed to stop the CCP from using the slave labor of three million citizens to make products for American corporations. This is shameful.

All Americans—across the political spectrum—must demand the vigorous investigation and prosecution of graft and corruption on Wall Street and in Washington, in Silicon Valley and wherever it may be found. We must not allow political considerations to shield one party or another. We must not give in to corporate greed that would protect our favorite name-brands from investigation and prosecution.

Ratcliffe is right. The CCP poses “the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.” The hour is late. The time to act is now.

 Also published in the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, December 19, 2020.

Graft and corruption are not victimless crimes

Agnes Chow, Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam convicted November 22, 2020

Agnes Chow was only 14 years old when the Chinese Communist Party tried to impose a law in Hong Kong that Christian schools must teach communist “moral and national education.” Communist morals are designed to undermine families, religion, property rights and community cohesion.

A Roman Catholic, attending Holy Family Canossian College, she joined a sit-in to protest the law. As a citizen of Britain and a resident of Hong Kong she was exercising the right to speak that was guaranteed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984.

When Beijing backed down, that should have freed her to be a child again. But it didn’t. As the CCP kept violating its commitments to Hong Kong’s seven million British citizens, Chow kept joining greater and greater numbers of fellow citizens to protest Beijing’s injustices.

In June of 2019 two million people flooded the streets of Hong Kong to speak against an extradition arrangement. That law would have permitted the CCP to arrest political enemies in Hong Kong and bury them in the secret prisons and labor camps on mainland China.

The extradition proposal was withdrawn but came back with a vengeance. On July 1, 2020, Beijing unilaterally imposed a new “security law.” This law enables the CCP’s secret police to operate in Hong Kong. It is written vaguely enough that virtually any speech or assembly protesting communist policies can be deemed a crime. And it criminalized actions that took place before the law went into effect.

Soon afterwards, the arrests began. Chow and several others who were prominent in the June 2019 protests were charged with organizing an “unlawful assembly.” On Monday, December 2, the day before her 24th birthday, she was sentenced to spend ten months behind bars. In ten short years Hong Kong went from China’s guaranteed haven of free speech to a police-state.

Chow is among the first to be imprisoned. But more, many more, will follow. Moreover, the threat of aggression from the CCP will not end when Hong Kong’s freedoms are devoured. Across a narrow strait of sea sits the independent island of Taiwan. The CCP does not recognize the independence of Taiwan. If it is successful in imposing communism on Hong Kong, Taiwan will be next in its crosshairs.

President Richard Nixon visits China in 1972

Five decades of trade with the Chinese communists have lulled most Americans into thinking that they are a benign business partners with the same goals as Wall Street—to make money. But as should be obvious by their treatment of Hong Kong, Beijing is quite willing to sacrifice the prosperity created by freedom in pursuit of power.

John Ratcliffe, the U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI), published a column in the Wall Street Journal the day after Chow was sentenced. He wrote, “If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point [as DNI], it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.” These are strong words.

“The intelligence is clear,” Ratcliffe wrote, “Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.”

As if any more corroboration was needed, a November 28 video of Di Dongsheng, a Chinese communist official surfaced soon afterwards. It showed him bragged to an audience of CCP elites that “we have people at the top” of American institutions.

Di Dongsheng, November 28, 2020

Days later, a 2015 database file was leaked showing 1.95 million members of the Chinese Communist Party that have infiltrated corporations and governments around the world. They sit in positions of power at places like Boeing, Pfizer and other international corporations. Others are employed in government. All present serious threats to America’s national security.  

All of this should put into perspective the recent revelations about Eric Swalwell and the Chinese spy who helped fund his meteoric rise to the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. It should be born in mind as the mainstream media finally begins to report on the Department of Justice investigations into James and Hunter Biden.

Everybody knows that graft and corruption for financial gain are crimes. But fewer people spend time thinking about why they are crimes. After all, if some politician or corporate huckster can leverage his position to earn a few million bucks, isn’t that the American dream? How does that hurt me?

For starters, we should remember that bribes are not free money. They have strings attached. Those who give lucrative deals to American corporations and politicians want something in return—and they have ways of making sure that they get it. What they want are domestic and foreign policies that favor them and disadvantage their enemies.

Agnus Chow is considered an enemy by the CCP—as is anyone who speaks, assembles and worships freely. Every deal of graft and corruption with the CCP that lines the pocket of someone lucky enough to have connections is paid for by innocent people like Agnes.

Selling out the human rights of Chinese nationals does not only affect China. It spills over to Taiwan and into America itself. The selling of public influence for private gain is as evil as it gets. It betrays the American public and every good thing that America should be doing in the world.

America fought a bloody war to end slavery, had momentous struggles to secure civil rights for all people, and continues to stand against oppression wherever it may be found. Yet, the Apple corporation recently lobbied congress against the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act” which is designed to stop the Chinese Communists from using the slave labor of three million citizens to make products for American corporations. Similarly, the National Basketball Association stifles public criticism of the CCP’s mass arrests and genocide of the Uyghur people.

All of this, and much more, makes millions for American and Chinese financial elites at the expense of both countries’ citizens. It is outrageous that American business is so deeply entangled with the CCP that they regularly turn a blind eye to injustice and actively fight against policies that would protect the basic human rights of people under the thumb of the Chinese communists.

All American people—across the political spectrum—must demand a vigorous investigation and prosecution of graft and corruption on Wall Street and Washington, in Silicon Valley and wherever it may be found. We must not allow political considerations to shield one party or another. We must not give in to corporate greed that would protect our favorite name-brands from investigation and prosecution.

If America is to remain a beacon of freedom to the world, it must stand up to China now. The hour is late. The freedom of America itself is now in jeopardy.

A Time for choosing

It has now been a full month since Americans went to the polls to elect a president. By the time America went to bed on November 3, it was clear who had won the election. When they woke up the next morning, it was clear who had won the counting.

In normal elections and healthy republics, the count winner and the election winner are the same person. When the two are different, voters are dismayed. Neither Democrat voters nor Republican voters won America’s 2020 election. According to a Rasmussen poll, almost a third of Democrat voters believe that election was stolen from President Trump. Three quarters of Republicans think the same. 

These were the numbers before Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia televised open hearings that detailed election fraud in their respective states. The number of voters who feel disenfranchised have surely grown since then.

During a time of crisis such as this, the Fourth Estate ought to be moving mountains to find and report the truth. Instead, it has conspired to hide the truth from the America people. The mainstream media doggedly stuck to its monolithic talking points: “baseless claims” and “without evidence.” The American people are not convinced.

Mayor Rudy Guiliani displaying affidavits

The affidavits of eyewitnesses to the massive fraud perpetrated by election officials grow day by day. By some accounts, they number in the thousands. Each sworn statement is legitimate evidence in any court of law. This is so obviously true that every repetition of the words “without evidence” is simply further evidence that the once-trusted source is lying.

So, Americans are turning in increasing numbers to social media to discover reliable facts. Enter Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey. Using the raw power of their monopolistic platforms, they exploit their users like so many trojan horses. Every user who wants to communicate some fact about voter fraud to his or her friends will find that Dorsey or Zuckerberg intercepts the post and tars it with the word “disputed.” Logically, posts that make the opposite claim are also disputed. That they are not also tarred with the “disputed” label gives away the game.

When election officials in six to ten states defraud voters in strikingly similar patterns it is reasonable to suspect that there is collusion going on. When news outlets competing for market share lose viewers and readers for the same shoddy reporting, it is reasonable to suspect collusion. And when corporations that make their money by encouraging conversation deliberately stifle it, something strange is happening.

One does not have to be a rocket-scientist to see these anomalies. The mainstream media may continue to turn a blind eye, and social media may continue to suppress curiosity. But it will not succeed in keeping voters from both parties in the dark. In a December 2nd speech to the American people, President Trump said, “Everybody knows it.” He is right.

The game is up; and it is a time for choosing. This is no longer about a presidential election. It is about the preservation of our Constitution. “As President, I have no higher duty than to defend the laws and the Constitution of the United States. That is why I am determined to protect our election system, which is now under coordinated assault and siege.”

Wyoming’s senior senator, John Barrasso, recently appeared on Fox News. Asked by Harris Faulkner to respond to Trump’s charge, he said, “this is why we need to get this information and this investigation done quickly. Look, I campaigned for President Trump, voted for President Trump. Over 72 million Americans voted for President Trump. Over 70 percent of the people in Wyoming have done so. We need to make sure that there was a fair election, that there was integrity in the system. Because that’s the basis of our nation.”

“The president,” Barrasso said, “is doing exactly what I would expect him to do under this situation: provide information, look for answers and then, take it to the courts. That’s what he’s doing.” He pointed out that fraud has, “a criminal element to it. This needs to be prosecuted and punished. People need to be arrested here.”

Recently, Representative Cheney said that the president “should fulfill his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States by respecting the sanctity of our electoral process.” This has been widely interpreted as "casting doubt on the Trump campaign's claims of widespread voter fraud".

Senator-elect Lummis also said on Good Morning America, “the integrity of this election needs to be verified.” To the question of whether President Trump should concede, she said, “No! Heavens no!” Later, she tweeted out the interview with the comment: “Ensuring election integrity is core to our democratic republic. Let’s get it right and protect the vote.”

Unlike cultures beaten down by totalitarian regimes, the people of America have strong political opinions and are willing to argue vociferously. Win or lose, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives take seriously their responsibility to speak and vote in a democratic republic. Precisely for this reason, they will not stand by while their vote is cancelled and their voice is throttled.

Every illegal vote disenfranchises an American. Every stolen ballot is stolen from a citizen. Every phantom vote suppresses a flesh-and-blood person. It is a time to choose the real over the fraudulent, the truth over the lie, and justice over power. The world is watching.

Also published in the Cowboy State Daily, 12/7/21.