What Do the Simple Folk Do? Letter #5

Dear fellow American,

In this the final letter before you vote, here’s a brief restatement of why I believe we need to put the family in the Constitution.

As preface, one State Delegate thanked me for “thinking outside the box.”  Having lived in the USA now for over 50 years, it’s true I ask many questions about life around me and generally don’t like the answers of conventional thinking.  I would have fewer questions and distractions and “headaches,” so to speak if my thinking and conventional thinking were the same.  I don’t have real headaches, but all my questions and searching for answers keep me from other things.

For example, conventional thinking teaches today that guns somehow walk around and shoot people, and, therefore, to stop shootings we must limit gun sales.  If only human violence could be stopped so easily!  Our solution to human violence – whether from guns, knives, bombs, poison, assassins, etc. – is not more and better gun laws but more and better families tending to the hearts and minds of its members, in my opinion.  

Yes, building better families is a time-consuming route to stopping human violence, but it’s doable.  After all, we’ve had strong family life in the USA in the past and can do so again. 

Before we even consider The Family First Amendment – one State Delegate has, kindly, asked me not “to mess with the Constitution” – there’s a smaller step we can and probably should take first.  Although I believe constitutional amendments – more than one – are necessary to put the family securely back into American society and culture, we can take some smaller steps in the meantime.

For one example, the Utah Republican Party Platform has one section, as follows, which could be changed:

Family Values

            We recognize the traditional family as the fundamental unit of society.  We affirm that 

parents have the fundamental right and primary responsibility to direct the upbringing 

of their children and to provide nurturing care, discipline and training in moral values.

Notice this section uses the conventional thinking and phraseology of today, speaking of “family values” and saying that the family is the “fundamental unit of society,” common, vague phrases we hear often.  

Notice also that this section says, in so many words, that parents do government.

If so, why “beat around the bush,” so to speak?  Why does our Utah GOP Platform avoid the truth of the matter – that the family is a form of government?

Also, isn’t that phrase “fundamental unit of society” another way of saying that the family is the fundamental government of society?  If so, can’t our Utah GOP Platform call this section “Family Government” instead of the conventional phrase “Family Values?”  

The reason our Utah GOP Platform doesn’t call the family the fundamental government of society is because it’s boxed in by conventional thinking.  Today, according to what our media and others teach, government is done in capital cities by an elite few, so we common people think we can’t use that word for what we do.

As I showed in my first letter to you, however, American patriots saw the family as “family government” during the early days of our republic and called it such.

Here again, please read what Jeremy Belknap wrote in 1784 in his history of New Hampshire:

All commissions under the former authority [Great Britain] being annulled . . . town committees 

had a discretionary but undefined power to preserve domestic peace.  Habits of decency, family 

government, and the good examples of influential persons, contributed more to maintain order than 

any other authority.  The value of these secret bonds of society was now more than ever conspicuous.

Jeremy Belknap, The History of New Hampshire, 1784, Vol 2, pages 394-5. [Emphasis added.]

In a nutshell, could we Utah Republicans agree to at least change the Utah Republican Party Platform to reflect the truth about family life?  

Instead of a vague section called “Family Values,” let’s speak the truth about family life and simply call this section “Family Government.”  The wording inside that section is good, but its title misses the core truth about family life.

I believe we Republicans should also include Jeremy Belknap’s statement in our platform to better help people – those boxed in by conventional thinking – understand that the family is a form of government.

What I believe has happened over the years, since the founding of our republic, is that the so-called “elites” in Washington and their media supporters have “kidnapped,” so to speak, the good and prestigious word “government” for their own uses.  After all, news reporters and historians, who use words as tools, love to be in the reflected glory of the bright lights and shining marbled buildings of our big government in Washington.  They have told us that only a few people “do government,” and it’s not us.    

Those “elites” have deprived those of us in the hinterlands from the status we would normally have if everyone knew that common, simple folk also “do government.”  Those “elites” have also called us sexists, racists, etc., so it’s not surprising they think little of us.

Please remember, John Locke, one of the English writers who helped start the American Revolution, called formal government, the kind in capital cities, “civil government.”  John Locke, writing way back in the 1600’s, understood, as his readers did then, that there were many forms of government operating in a society.  The phrase “ecclesiastical government,” meaning church government, was also a phrase used in earlier times.

In other words, the word “government” once had a broad meaning, with many forms of government – family government, civil government, ecclesiastical government – all acting at the same time for the well-being of society.  Unfortunately, over the years, sometime after the founding of our republic, “elites,” or as some call them today, “swamp creatures,” have captured the good word “government,” using it to describe what they do, preventing most of us from even knowing that we common people also “do government.”

Yes, State Delegates, we have lost the use of an important phrase – family government – and to reclaim it, I believe we need to amend the Constitution at some point soon.

In the meantime, as we go to our Caucus Meetings in coming years, we hope in person, let’s at least consider changing our Party Platform acknowledge family government.

Please vote for me, Cathy Hammon, and I’ll bring new, republican ideas to Washington.  Again, I’m not now, nor have I ever been, a career politician and promise not to be captured by big money interests in Washington.

Thank you, again, for your service as a State Delegate, to our state and nation, sincerely,

Cathy Hammon