Carl Wells Books

The current cost per student of public education in the United States is $11,392.00. That’s per student, per year. That seems to me to qualify as bad news, because that’s a lot of money per student. And without getting into details, do we believe that we are getting our money’s worth in terms of educated, well-informed young people able to think for themselves? Most of us do not believe that.

The state of Indiana, my home state (actually my country, since I have seceded from the United States, but please don’t tell anyone) does somewhat better in its spending than the national average. We spend $9,857.00 per student. That means we are 34th in spending per student. Only 16 states spend less per student that we do. Us Hoosiers are a bunch of Scrooges! Don’t we care about our kids?

Actually, we Hoosiers are just about like everyone else in the country. We want our neighbor to pay for most of the expense of educating our children. And we have not thought a lot about what would really be best for our kids. When a system has existed for many decades, and we are born into the system, we assume the system is the way things should be or have to be, and we just go along with the system. Especially since the system is set up to cause my neighbor to pay for my kids’ education. Hey, free education! Is this a great country or what?

The Christians are like everyone else. A Christian who removes his children from the public education system is a rare bird. We Christians like free stuff about as much as the next person. The Eighth Commandment (Exodus 20:15) means you don’t hold up a liquor store. It has nothing to do with not forcing our neighbors to pay for the education of our children. At least so we seem to think.

Children in public education don’t seem to be learning very well. Physical safety and sexual safety are problems. The worldview of the teachers is increasingly humanist and trite. Public education may be “free,” but it is not really free since it has to be paid for, and taxpayers pay for it. Our neighbors get stuck with much of the bill, but even the ones with kids in school have to pay taxes, so it is not as free as it seems.

So far all the news is bad. But now I want to try to find some good news.

Hoosiers are paying $9,857.00 per student per year. That is a lot of money. And the results are pretty grim, in terms of what that money buys.

The good news is that we could educate children privately for a small fraction of $9,857.00, with much benefit not only to our pocketbooks but also to our children.

The math is not all that difficult to understand. A committed Christian with a desire to help children learn–a person of normal intelligence and of good character–could probably easily take ten children under his wing for $3,000.00 per child, without undue strain. (Not paid by the state, of course–paid for by the parents of the children.) That would allow the teacher an income of $30,000.00 for nine months’ work. No fortune, but still a decent salary.

The cost is 30.4% as much as we are paying per child right now in the Hoosier state. The children would have a safer environment. There would be no bullying. Individual instruction would be right there for every one of the ten students. The teacher could help the kids learn to think God’s thoughts after Him, with nobody whining about separation of church and state.

Teachers in the public schools who no long have jobs would be freed to work at some other job–something where they will really be producing wealth that we all voluntarily would pay for. Some of them might even be good teachers as private individuals.

The good news is that such a world is within our reach.

Why do we put up with a world in which public education is expensive and brings disastrous consequences for many children? The disastrous consequences are many–physical, sexual, inability to read, add, subtract, multiply, and divide, inability to think in a Christian manner. Why do we put up with it?

We all, Christian and non-Christian, are a people with larceny in our hearts. We Christians give God 2.5% of our increase, whereas He requires a tithe (10%). (See emptytomb.org for statistics.) We want our neighbor to pay for the education of our children, when we have no moral right to demand that of him. However, God is the Supreme Ironist. He has declared that theft is a round game, and more than one can play. We want to rip off our neighbor, and as a result we get ripped off also. And at the same time our children suffer from our irresponsibility.

We don’t have to put up with the world that we were born into. We can learn, repent, adjust. We can work toward building a better world. We can probably start by saying, “You know, this is nutty. I am responsible for my children. I’m gonna pay for their education, and I’m gonna leave my neighbor alone.” To show we are serious, we can begin moving up from 2.5% giving toward 4%, 6%, and even up to the tithe (10%) He asks us to give to help Him build His kingdom on earth. When we no longer have larceny in our hearts, our ability to think clearly will be improved. “You can’t cheat an honest man,” as W. C. Fields said.

Our children don’t belong to the state. They belong to us, under the oversight and instructions of the God of the Bible. The bad news is we (both Christians and non-Christians) are a long way from understanding our responsibilities and acting on them. The good news is an attitude adjustment on our part will bring clarity of thought, and our path forward will become more clear as well.

Attitude adjustments don’t come to a mass of people. They come to individuals. That is how God has created the world. The bad part of that is that society as a whole may not want to move in a wise direction. The good part of that is that we don’t need to wait for society as a whole. One person can learn, repent, adjust, and in the process improve life for himself and his family. We don’t have to wait for mass man to act. We can just begin to do the right thing, and we can see what happens. I predict that what happens will be good, and will help our children.

The Bible story of Joseph is well known, and deservedly so. Joseph, one of twelve brothers (by four different mothers), is threatened with death by his ten oldest brothers. The eleventh, his younger full brother, is not involved in any wrongdoing. Eventually Joseph is sold into slavery rather than murdered. He ends up in Egypt, where in the very long run he helps Egypt and also his own family come through an horrific drought. Altogether this takes up much of 14 chapters of Genesis (37-50), the first book in the Bible.

There is much to ponder in all this, and much to move us. Today I want to think about the ten older brothers, and especially about two of them who stand out as different. It doesn’t seem to me that we hear enough about those two, and this blog post will attempt to rectify that situation slightly.

Many of us come from families who put the fun in dysfunctional. A few people grow up in solidly biblical families with solidly biblical behavior going on–but only a few. The rest of us get a mixture of good and bad. Our families may be largely dysfunctional, or only slightly dysfunctional. But most of us have some sort of chance at life. Some children get horrors. My parents definitely gave us four kids a chance; we put the fun in dysfunctional. Jacob’s family?

Well, things could have been better. I don’t know about you, but I was never in danger of being executed by my siblings (although I probably deserved it). But in Jacob’s family, it was a near thing for Joseph even surviving. The ten brothers (at least eight of them, that is) seriously planned to kill him. Reuben, however, was of a different mind. Let’s just throw him in a pit. In fact, Reuben planned to come back later and rescue Joseph and restore him to his father Jacob. Reuben then goes off somewhere; we don’t know why.

While he is gone, it seems clear that the plan to kill Joseph is not completely forgotten. Judah at this point steps to the fore and suggests that killing Joseph is not a good idea; it is better to sell him into slavery to some passing Midianite traders. That is duly done. Joseph ends up in slavery in Egypt. Reuben returns and sees that Joseph is gone, and tears his own garments in frustration. The ten brothers concoct a story by which Jacob will be told that Joseph has been torn to pieces by a wild beast.

Many long years pass, and Joseph is second in command to Pharaoh! The drought and famine are dramatically serious in all that part of the world. Jacob sends the ten brothers to Egypt to buy some grain. Jacob keeps his beloved youngest son, Joseph’s full brother Benjamin, at home with him.

The brothers arrive in Egypt. Joseph recognizes his brothers, but they don’t recognize him. He accuses them of being spies, and keeps Simeon as a hostage. Reuben, quite appropriately to my mind, in effect tells his brothers “I told you so but you would not listen! Now there is a reckoning for Joseph’s blood.” [a paraphrase] Joseph tells them not to come back unless they bring their youngest brother with them.

The nine brothers return to Jacob in the land of Canaan, having to report why Simeon is missing. Jacob has no intention of sending Benjamin off to Egypt with his nine brothers. Once again Reuben speaks up, promising to take Benjamin to Egypt and faithfully to bring him back to Jacob. If he, Reuben, fails in that promise, Jacob has permission to put Reuben’s two sons to death.

Jacob is not persuaded. Time passes; the grain they brought from Egypt is finally consumed. Jacob wants his sons to go back to Egypt in order to buy more grain. Judah reminds him that unless they take Benjamin with them, the powerful man back in Egypt will have nothing to do with them. Judah offers to be surety for Benjamin; if Judah does not bring Benjamin back, Jacob can blame Judah.

Jacob reluctantly agrees to send Benjamin along with the other nine. They return to Egypt. Joseph frees Simeon back to them, but conceals his (Joseph’s) silver cup in Benjamin’s sack. When this cup is discovered, seeming to show that Benjamin is a thief, Joseph says he will enslave Benjamin and let the others go.

Once again Judah rises to the challenge. He pleads that Joseph [still not known to be Joseph, of course] permit Judah to be enslaved instead of Benjamin. His lengthy plea (Genesis 44:18-34) contain some of the most moving words in all of Scripture.

Joseph, emotionally shaken, sends all Egyptians away from them, and finally makes himself known to his brothers. Their first response was dismay. But they followed Joseph’s instructions, to go and get their father and bring him to Egypt with all their families. They were welcomed by Pharaoh and flourished in the Goshen part of Egypt, although of course as the centuries unfolded they eventually became slaves.

In all this there must be material for dozens of sermons. Here, I simply want to recognize the parts that Reuben and Judah played. When the plans were to murder Joseph, two of the ten brothers stood out as having a higher moral stature–Reuben and Joseph. They were the two who insisted on keeping Joseph alive.

Many long years later, as the brothers dealt with the problems they had encountered in Egypt, once again two of the ten brothers come forth as being the most responsible and honorable: Reuben and Joseph. This is not a coincidence. What they were as younger men, they were as older men. They had some good principles early on in their manhood, and they continued to have good principles as they grew to maturity.

We need to remember and honor Reuben and Judah, and not just lump them in with their eight brothers. We also can take note that developing good character is something that should be done at as early an age as we can manage it. Good character will come in handy in our youthful present, and in our mature adulthood and on into old age. Reuben and Judah proved it for us.

Shortly after we begin the story of Joseph, we take one entire chapter side trip completely into the world of . . . Judah. Chapter 38 recounts for us the sexual sin of Judah! When he is found out, Judah confesses that he was the one in the wrong. Then, immediately we go back to the story of Joseph. What a sad interlude! But this too is instructive. Judah was the best of the brothers, but he too could and did do wrong. Moral consistency is needed. We are not supposed to reach a few moral high notes, then fall back into routine wrongdoing. Judah went the wrong direction in one important episode of his life. We are warned; even a man who is basically of good character can go wrong quite easily. It can happen to us.

Meanwhile, let us remember that it was Reuben and Judah early, and Reuben and Judah late, who stood out as having some clue as to what godly behavior should be. The two don’t get enough recognition for being different from their eight brothers.

Recently I finished reading The Long Surrender, by Burke Davis, first published in 1985, a history of the final days of the Confederacy, with special focus on the Confederacy’s president, Jefferson Davis. One Amazon reviewer, who liked the book, said that it was “a good book with the wrong title, because Jefferson Davis certainly did not surrender.”

That was an astute remark. It certainly is a good book, and Jefferson Davis himself made a very strong effort to avoid capture and did not willingly surrender. He, with many of his cabinet and various others, went on the run from Richmond, Virginia, as General Robert E. Lee withdrew his troops from the southern capitol. The South was near its end. General Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April of 1865. Jefferson Davis had unrealistic hopes that the war was not necessarily lost. Only gradually did he understand how hopelessly defeated was the South.

Burke Davis was born and died in North Carolina. In between he also spent about 30 years in Virginia. He is a member of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. He had a long and very productive life as a writer, with a total of about 50 books including novels, biographies, histories, and children’s books. He died at age 93 (b. 1913-d. 2006). This is the only book of his I have read, but off this performance he is certainly worth reading again. I have purchased his Sherman’s March, and hope to get to it soon.

When famed southern Admiral Raphael Semmes saw the marching blue columns of enemy troops approaching Richmond, it reminded him of Patrick Henry’s prophecy that Virginia would be ruined if “she surrendered her sovereignty as a state and joined the Union.” (p. 38) Bullseye. The death of the Articles of Confederation ultimately turned out to be the death of independent states. That need not have happened, of course, if the North had been willing to grant the South their obvious right to secede. The only grant the North had for the South was Ulysses S. Grant, whose generalship was instrumental in the defeat of the South.

General Grant was a most formidable foe to the South, but he was also a formidable friend to their defeated army. When President Johnson and the eternally implacable Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton proposed arresting all southern generals and colonels, including the ones who had surrendered at Appomattox, Grant made his opinion known: ‘”You will have to whip me and my army before one hair of one head of the men whom we captured, and to whom we promised protection, shall perish.”‘ (p. 105)

I have underlined great swaths of The Long Surrender.

The “New York Times” had plans for the fleeing Jefferson Davis. ‘”if he is caught he should be hung.”‘ (p. 55) So much for honorable treatment of the head of a defeated nation which, after all, had wanted to be left alone and had been willing to leave the North alone as well. Horace Greeley’s Tribune pointed out that Jefferson Davis had left the Union only reluctantly, and that severe punishment of him would make him a martyr–especially if he was hanged.

When Davis was eventually captured, it was by no means certain what his fate would be. Would he be tried and executed? To be on the safe side the North began by cruel treatment in Davis’ imprisonment, including chaining him. Dr. John Craven, a northerner who had served in the Union army in several important posts, eventually was appointed to the care of Davis. This honorable man:

“saved the ex-President’s life, foiled the efforts of [Brigadier General Nelson] Miles to hold the prisoner incommunicado and forced a major change in government policy toward state prisoners.” (p. 180)

After almost exactly two years, Davis was released from prison. He lived to rejoin his family, to publish two long volumes entitled The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (in 1881), to be honored by the southern people, and despite intermittent ill health to die at the good old age of 80. Neither he nor his surviving wife and daughter–other children were lost to death as the years unfolded–waxed very prosperous, but they earned enough to get by.

A war which should never have been fought cost the lives of somewhere between 620,000 and 725,000 people, the crippling of many more, the rape of women white and black, the destruction of the South, and the complete and utter death of the constitutional republic. The North “won,” which meant we all, including the North, lost, and are losing still. Secession was defeated. The next time around several secessions may be more successful. The U.S. is bankrupt morally and financially. If the country breaks up again, it may be peaceful, and very successful for all concerned. History has a long sweep, and has a knack for irony.

Burke Davis’ book The Long Surrender is readily available on the Internet. Today I found prices of $3.62 and $3.63 (total cost, shipping included) at AbeBooks. Alibris and Amazon also had reasonable prices ranging from $4.98 to $5.09. It is a book which readily repays the investment in time and money.

This is the Fourth of July, the day some of us celebrate the birth of the United States. So this seems to be an appropriate time to ponder where we are heading as a nation.

Can the country be salvaged? Of course not. The difference in worldviews is too great. Those on the globalist left hate the rest of us, and the rest of us hate the globalist left. To pretend we can get along is a waste of time. Unity is not possible.

The end of the United States is not a tragedy. It is a move, belated but necessary, in the right direction. The country is just too durn big. Leopold Kohr understood that in 1957, when the country was half the size it is now in population. I wrote a blog post about Kohr’s book The Breakdown of Nations on Oct. 13, 2016. I have discussed his ideas in my book Getting Ready for Secession (2016), and also in my book Will War Survive Until 2084? (2013). Just to summarize briefly, when countries get too big they begin to have problems, and to create problems for other countries as well. This has happened to the United States. All we have to do is to look at our foreign policy: we can’t and won’t stop butting into the affairs of other countries. We are just too durn big.

So, if the break-up of the U.S. is not a tragedy, but rather good news, here is some more good news–the results of a recent Zogby poll as commented on by someone called Scott:

‘“nearly four in ten (39%) agree that each state has the ultimate say over their destiny and that secession is a right.” That’s a clear plurality! [He means it is a plurality over the 32% who believed crushing a secession was the best route to take–C. W.] The remaining 29% were undecided. But, to put it another way, 68% of likely American voters are open to the idea of secession from the United States… This isn’t just huge, it’s a game changer!’

Okay, those numbers seem a lot too optimistic to me. I don’t think the American people are that far along in considering secession as a viable possibility. But maybe I am too pessimistic. Maybe people who aren’t speaking up much, nevertheless have had an internal shift toward at least considering secession as a good idea. This is quite possible, actually. Lots of us know that the multicultural left hates and despises us, with a fervent passion. Maybe more of us than I realize have begun to say, silently and inwardly, “It’s over,” or “Maybe it should be over,” or “Please shut up and go away, or at least go away,” or something similar. And likely the left is thinking, “We’ve got to get away from these Neanderthal bozos–either they go or we go.”

Personally, I stopped believing in the United States as a beacon of freedom and goodness a long, long time ago. I am not good at math, but I know 61,000,000 is a large number, and that is how many abortions we have permitted in a bit over a generation. The wars have been idiotic, from at least the Civil War onward (and I think the American Revolution was a mistake also), and we are killing and being killed, and crippling and being crippled in these wars just because the worst people in our nation have told us we had to do what they said and we, poor suckers, went along with them. The welfare state destroys millions of people. The invasion of millions of illegal immigrants has been shoved down our throats. And so on. I left the country in spirit a long ago, or maybe the country left me. As a start, I consider myself a citizen of the country of Indiana. Hopefully I will be a citizen of Southern Indiana eventually–and maybe of a smaller country yet, if I live long enough. For now, address my mail to Indiana–no need to inform the authorities that I am living in that country now. If they want to think Indiana is still in the United States, that’s their problem.

I am very far from saying that the moral devolution of our country is all the fault of the leftists. In fact, I think ultimate blame falls more on the Bible-believing Christians than on any other people. Our brand of Christianity was not very Christian. We didn’t tithe, we didn’t think, we voted like pagans for the welfare state, we cheered at idiotic wars and torture, we turned our children over to the tender mercies of the public schools, we refused to be mature adults, and we willingly turned the country over to sociopaths. I wrote a book on the topic: The Christian Betrayal of the United States (2010). So, I repeat, I am very far from blaming the leftists for what has happened to us as a nation.

But it has happened, and now we have to figure out what we should do about it.

A start–and a start only–will be to break the country up. Parts of states can be new countries. Big and medium size cities can be new countries. This can be an exciting time of experimentation.

For example, what is the best size for a nation? Certainly there is room for variety. But it is fascinating to note that there were over 1,000 Greek city states! Some of them had 10,000 or so people, even perhaps less than that. Athens, numerically the largest, had about 100,000 people.

We may not be able to get along with numbers that small. (Or maybe we will be able–we don’t know yet.)

What we do know for sure is that the break-up need not be with violence. I am quite willing to let the leftists construct their soft (or hard) totalitarian paradises, if they will let me live in my Christian free market idiocracy (or republic or monarchy–or whatever).

States which secede should be ready to let the left-leaning large cities secede as well. These will become soft (or hard) totalitarian places run by the Democratic Party. So be it. Whatever floats your boat–as long as you don’t tax the rest of us to float your boat. And the same states should be ready to let various counties secede if they want to. One of the great principles of biblical Christianity is to leave other people alone. We really have lost sight of that principle. We all keep wanting to bully other people. We revert to the ballot box, so that our bossing around has the illusion of being legitimate. Some of us don’t want to think like that. If we want to build small countries where other people are not bossed around, please let us pursue our folly and suffer the consequences.

Secession is not a complete solution. It is just a necessary step, but it is extremely far from being a complete solution. The only real solution is for a lot of us to develop a mature brand of Christianity. Then we will begin to know how to behave in all circumstances. This is going to be incredibly hard to do. Christians, like everyone else, don’t like to admit that we’ve been doing wrong, and that we brought this disaster upon ourselves.

The thing is, there is no other way to get to where we want to be, than to begin to develop a biblical brand of Christianity which applies to all of life. If we don’t want to do that, we will continue to wallow in nonsense, whether as part of the United States, or as part of a seceded portion of the country. There is no way out–we have to grow up. God wants us to be people who are “mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” (Hebrews 5:14)

We Christians have so many bad ideas! We think that there can be a separation of religion and state, whereas the reality is that every state follows the morality of its god. We think that God is either a Dispensationalist or an amillennialist, whereas He deals with us covenantally. Which means we reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-8). We think our blank doesn’t stink, whereas the Bible teaches that God shows no partiality, and that we may deserve and get more lashes than the non-believer (Luke 12:42-48). We think we can turn the U.S. and its hog-on-ice military into an idol and get away with it, but the Bible teaches that idolatry is not permitted by God (Exodus 20:4). We think we can vote our neighbor’s property away from him and bring it on over to someone who can really put it to good use (ourselves), but God tells us we should not steal (Exodus 20:15) and He wants our hearts on the issue.

In my emotions, I have a hard time understanding flag wavers. It seems so obvious that the U.S. is bringing disaster to its own people and to the world. But when I strain myself, I can at least intellectually understand those who continue to wave flags. After all, we live here, and it is difficult to think poorly of one’s home. Moreover, we were all brainwashed in school, and few of us have done any reading of history. Lots of us have served in the military (not me). Some of us died or were grievously wounded in one idiotic war or another, and it goes against the grain of human nature to admit that all that shed blood was in vain. So, while I can’t quite reach the flag wavers emotionally, I can at least intellectually understand that I am the one who is more than a little bit weird on the topic of the United States. I don’t sense that I will be likely to change on the issue.

Secession is probably coming, one way or another. It may take a disaster for people to grant themselves permission to start thinking theoretically for the first time in a long time.

When/if it comes, it will be a step in the right direction, but only a step. At the worst, our smaller dozens or hundreds or thousands of countries will not be nearly as able to intervene in the affairs of other countries. We will not slaughter as many people, we will not bloviate as much on “our democracy,” since we will be many countries of many types of government. Both the end (or reduction) of the slaughter and the reduction (if not the end) of the bloviation will be a pleasant change.

The battle for Christian civilization is meant to be, well, a battle. If we refuse to take up arms, we should accept the consequences without whining. If we take up arms intellectually and spiritually, we may have a few places on this continent where the God of the Bible can be worshiped in spirit and in truth in entire countries–small countries, but entire countries.

Secession is not a defeat, or a disaster. For all of us–for both the friends and for the enemies, of God and of freedom–it is a start in the right direction.