Good morning!

I’m ending the week with a reflection on the unfortunate habit of talking about liberty as if it were an economic tool, rather than a moral imperative.

First, here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Friday, December 17, 2021
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Speaker Phelan Fundraises With Quorum-Busting Democrats

• Republican House Speaker Dade Phelan (R–Beaumont) bragged on social media about attending a fundraising event with quorum-busting Democrats in the Rio Grande Valley.
     
• “Couldn’t wrap up 2021 without visiting the Rio Grande Valley,” Phelan tweeted along with photos featuring himself with Democrat State Reps. Terry Canales, Sergio Munoz Jr., Oscar Longoria, Armando Martinez, and Bobby Guerra, and State Sen. Chuy Hinojosa (D–McAllen).
      
• Each of the five House members—Canales, Longoria, Munoz, Martinez, and Guerra—took part in the Democrats’ quorum-busting efforts this summer to obstruct the passage of election integrity legislation. Canales was – and remains – the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation, a position to which Phelan appointed him.
      
• Meanwhile, at the same time just a mile away, the Republican National Committee’s Community Center—in conjunction with the Hidalgo County Young Republicans—was hosting a Christmas party celebrating their work to expand the impact of the GOP in the RGV.
   
• Phelan, of course, skipped that GOP event.

Abbott Blames Biden For Texas Troops Vax Mandate

• In a letter to the Department of Defense this week, Gov. Greg Abbott wrote Texas is not complying with the vaccine mandate – even though records show the mandate having been implemented for weeks. Jeramy Kitchen has the story.
   
• Just last week, Texas Scorecard reported that service members in both the Texas Army and Air National Guards were being forced to receive a COVID-19 vaccination or face discharge from their duties and potential withholding of salary, despite an executive order issued by Gov. Greg Abbott purporting to prohibit such a requirement. Since that reporting, Texas Scorecard obtained additional documentation outlining the guidance the Texas Military Department is using to implement COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
   
• In response, Gov. Abbott penned his letter to U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stating Texas would not impose the vaccine mandate on the state’s soldiers. 
   
• But Abbott’s previous orders and statements to the Texas Military Department have gone unheeded. In addition to Abbott’s executive order prohibiting governmental agencies in Texas from imposing a COVID vaccine mandate, he also sent a memo to the state’s Adjutant General – who heads the  military department – with a reminder that his order applied to them.
   
• It’s unclear if the Texas Military Department will now actually heed Abbott’s order, or if the state agency will be allowed by the governor to continue disobeying it.

• In this week’s edition of The Headline, Brandon Waltens and Jeramy Kitchen will cover the military mandates and other news from the week. Join them live at 11 a.m., or catch the video archive and podcast later in the day.

Federal Judge Halts Vax Mandate For Healthcare Workers

• A federal judge in Texas is stopping a new rule from the Biden administration requiring healthcare workers to receive the COVID vaccine as a case against the mandate moves through the courts. Get the full report from Brandon Waltens.
   
• The injunction came from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo, in a case filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
   
• Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered that the federal government provide notice to all Medicaid and Medicare providers in Texas that the mandate “will not be implemented or enforced.”
     
• The judge added, “It is a ‘gun to the head’ and an unconstitutional use of Congress’s spending powers to compel Plaintiffs through ‘financial inducement’ to forgo exercising their police powers to enforce a federal statute.”
     
• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who brought the suit, called it a “TEXAS WIN for employees of providers and suppliers of Medicaid and Medicare!”

Former Houston School Official Arrested In Bribery Scheme

• A former high-ranking Houston Independent School District official, Brian Busby, and a co-conspirator have been indicted on federal public corruption charges for a multimillion-dollar scheme authorities say included bribery and witness tampering. Erin Anderson has the details.
   
• Busby is accused of conspiring to engage in a bribery scheme that involved enriching himself by diverting local school tax dollars and federal money meant for students.
   
• The FBI said several former district officials have already admitted guilt in the case, including former Houston ISD school board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones.

Friday Reflection

There is an unfortunate tendency to present liberty as a means to the end of economic prosperity. We too often hear about liberty as if it is good for what comes out of it, rather than what it is. 

By turning liberty into just another cog in the machinery of generating material wealth, we risk reducing it to a component that, with some tweaking, could be replaced in the quest for comfort and ease.

Liberty is intrinsically good. It is good because it is good, not because of what it might provide. Liberty is not an economic tool, but a moral imperative.

Now don’t get me wrong: The evidence of history is that as liberty expands, so too does general prosperity. 

So, does that mean that if someone isn’t prosperous they should reject liberty? History is full of those who did just that. A horrific, nearly forgotten episode of 20th century life is detailed in “The Forsaken” by Tim Tzouliadis. 

Lured by the promise of abundance in the Soviet Union during the Great Depression, thousands of Americans sold everything to move there and live as Joseph Stalin’s comrades. It was pleasant for them… at first. What they eventually found was abject misery, and that they were prisoners – nearly all simply vanished into the totalitarian abyss as slaves of the state.

Several thousand years ago, God instructed Moses to lead the captive Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. Through a series of miraculous events, not only were the Jews able to leave, but the plague-tormented Egyptians handed them gold and wealth as they left. God Himself protected them from harm and guided them to safety – yet the people immediately complained that, as slaves, they had been provided a variety of foods by their Egyptian masters and wished they had never been set free. 

They felt it was easier to be a slave than their own master.

The most ensnaring shackle isn’t necessarily a physical one placed on wrists and ankles, but the choice some make to perceive the world as a slave.

As St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” 

One who lives as a well-loved slave, in a beautiful mansion with nice meals and comfortable work, is still a slave. The condition might seem appealing in a singular moment, but they are always a slave. A slave never has the opportunity to grow beyond the master’s desires, to pursue their passions and interests without the permission of their owner, or to explore who God made them to be.

Yes, liberty can be messy, and it doesn’t guarantee individual success – but it does guarantee individual opportunity. Socialism is just another form of slavery; it can be well-ordered and offer the illusion of comfort – but it is still just a form of slavery. Your choices are reduced to those which your masters deem most appropriate.

Liberty doesn’t ensure people will make good choices, but it allows them to make choices. It is in the choosing, in that pursuit of happiness, where we find our fulfillment, and it is in liberty where we find the freedom to make those choices. 

It is for the sake of liberty that we must pursue liberty.

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