You may have heard the stereotypical mother-in-law joke, “Behind every successful man is a mother-in-law who can’t believe it.” Far too many husbands live with the reality of that not so funny joke. I, however, was blessed with a mother-in-law who I have frequently called “a charter member of my fan club.” She proved to be the warmest, most positive, most encouraging woman I have ever met.

Nina Mae Arnold entered the world on August 27, 1923, in Knifely, Kentucky. She and her six brothers and five sisters helped raise tobacco and other crops on their father’s farm. But Nina had a dream to become something other than the wife and mother in a farm family. She had great respect for farmers, knowing quite well what all was involved in making a farm profitable. And until she entered her 90’s, she raised chickens and always had a large garden so that she could have fresh eggs and produce. But farming was not her dream. She wanted to be a teacher.

She completed an A.A. in Education during World War II and immediately began teaching school, since so many other educators had gone to war or to wartime industries. After the war, she was able to earn a B.A. in Religion and Education at Beulah College in Upland, California. While there, she met a handsome young preacher who was also a student. His name was Isaac Schmucker. (The “ch” is silent in German so it is pronounced “Smucker,” like the jams and jellies.) They married in 1949 and stayed in California long enough to have their first daughter. They moved to New Mexico to work at a Christian mission serving the Navajo Nation. Their second daughter was born there. Their third daughter was born in Indiana near Isaac’s hometown. Their fourth and fifth daughters were born in Ontario, where Isaac and Nina established a strong and growing church.

After several years in Ontario, they moved again to Indiana where they founded a small church in a very poor section of the state. The church was never able to give them a salary, so Isaac worked as a carpenter and cabinet maker while Nina taught school. After her children were all grown and married, Nina completed a Masters degree in Early Childhood Education. She taught kindergarten for over 26 years.

Her students loved her. In fact, a number of her former students lobbied hard years later to get their own children into her classes.

Nina taught her daughters to be thrifty, which you have to be when you don’t have a lot of money, but she also taught her girls to appreciate the finer things in life. She taught them how to take care of a family, how to cook, sew, and otherwise make a house into a home. She taught her girls how to see the blessings in every day, how to be optimistic and generous and loving and kind. She did it by example. And when her girls each married, Nina accepted each son-in-law into her heart with as much love and enthusiasm as she did her own girls.

She made sure we sons-in-law knew how proud she was to have us in the family. I never heard her say one negative thing about any of us. She would talk about things that concerned her but only in the context of how she wanted us to pray along with her for this or that situation in her “sons” – as she considered us – lives. She respected us. The computer genius, the professor, the preacher, the rancher – she thought we were excellent at what we did.

When Isaac died – after 53 years of marriage – I became her handyman. I always took tools when we went to visit. I fixed her sewing machine, put up a birdhouse, re-glued her dining room chairs, put a grab bar in her shower, fixed her faucet. It didn’t matter how big or small the job, it was wonderful to her, and she let me know it. I was, in her mind, the best man her daughter could have married. And that’s important to a man. Women thrive on love; men thrive on respect. Every man needs a mother-in-law who finds the good in “her boys” and lets them know how much she appreciates them. And hopefully that mother-in-law has taught her daughters to do the same things for their husbands – by example. It makes a huge difference.

I’m going to miss all that now. Nina died last week, at home, after a four-year battle with the big C – cancer, not coronavirus. We could not go see her during her last days because of the quarantine, but the last thing I said to her when we saw her in February was to remind her that she was a charter member of my fan club. She asked me what that meant. I told her it meant that she loved me and respected me and made sure I knew it. She replied, “Of course I love you. I wouldn’t be a Christian if I didn’t.” If more mothers acted in a truly Christian manner, as Christ taught us, as Nina Arnold Schmucker lived it, we would have happier families. Everyone needs a mother-in-law like mine.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Using Article XII: Temporary Emergency Provisions, the State Central Committee (SCC) of the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) can now meet electronically to figure out how Republicans can nominate our candidates for the November election, elect delegates to the Republican National Convention, and elect Republican Party officials. Our meetings are held on Zoom and are invitation only. However, the public can watch a live stream of our meetings through a link that is available at the Republican Party of Virginia website – Virginia.gop.

To accomplish what we need to, two amendments to Article XII were proposed for discussion at our April 18 (10:00 a.m.) electronic meeting. The first proposal would change one word. The last line of Article XII says, “Provided that this Article shall expire upon the expiration of orders referenced above or July 31, 2020, whichever is earlier.” RPV leadership want to change “earlier” to “later.” They reason that an electronic meeting called before the emergency ends could not be held if the emergency ended prior to the scheduled meeting date. Because the emergency article was thrown together so quickly, grassroots conservatives on the SCC felt that it was better to limit the timeframe of the Article, since it could always be renewed if the declared emergency continued beyond July. Grassroots conservatives prefer leaving “earlier” in the sentence. Elements of our Party Plan should not be left at the mercy of a Democratic governor. We prefer language that allows a meeting properly called before the end of the emergency to go ahead and take place even after the emergency is lifted. This resolves both concerns.

The second amendment adds a third section to Article XII. The third section would allow an official committee to hold its quadrennial convention by either an “unassembled convention” or a “bifurcated convention.”

In an “unassembled convention,” the official committee that called the convention would, as a committee of the whole or by dividing itself into subcommittees, serve as the Credentials, Nominations, and Rules Committees for the convention. The entire official committee would then, on behalf of the convention delegates, vote on whether to accept the recommendations of the three committees. The original proposed amendment did not allow for subcommittees, but grassroots conservatives believe that the subcommittee language is important. It just makes the job easier to accomplish if an official committee is allowed to split the work between its members.

Delegates would not congregate at a single convention site but would cast ballots at “one or more polling locations.” Military delegates would still participate as provided in Article VIII of the Party Plan.

The original amendment allows for either ranked choice voting to provide for a majority vote winner or for a winner to be selected by plurality. I found that second option interesting since some people in the Sixth District and RPV almost blew a gasket when a plurality vote was suggested for the 2018 convention. (For the record, I voted against it.) Now it is sanctioned by the RPV. Curious.

Grassroots conservatives believe that, for the sake of smaller units, an additional option should be provided. We propose to also allow for multiple ballot votes to reach a majority winner. Without the added language, conventions would have only two options. We want them to have all three. Regardless, the method of voting must be clearly stated in the supplemental call that provides for the unassembled convention.

In contests where there is a tie, the winner will be chosen by lot.

A “bifurcated convention” would allow for Congressional nominees to be elected as is done at an unassembled convention, but then the convention would be adjourned to a time, date, and place determined by the official committee – after the conclusion of the declared emergency – in order to complete the required business of the convention.

Either way the delegates get to choose. Absolutely no one wants official committees to nominate candidates. We have several lawsuits in the works to extend legal deadlines so that we have more time in which to work. But when it comes right down to it, someone has to make a decision by the legal deadlines, or Republicans won’t have candidates on the November ballot. Let’s hope these unusual convention rules work as planned.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

We fear the coronavirus for the same reason we fear anything: we can’t control it, we don’t know what will happen because of it, and we might not like the outcome. Like everyone else, those who have an abiding faith in Jesus Christ have no control over the disease nor do they know what will happen, but they have a strong faith that whatever happens, God will use it in their best interests (Romans 8:28). They demonstrate in their own lives the reality of Jesus’ promise: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” (John 14:27).

That promise also played out in the life of atheist – that’s right, atheist – Lulian Urban Lorenzo, a 38-year-old physician in Lombardia, Italy, a community about 15 miles north of Milan, where COVID-19 was hitting harder than anywhere else in the world at the time.

Dr. Lorenzo tells his story: “What we have seen and done in our hospital for the past three weeks has been nothing but a nightmare. First a small stream, then growing, like a large river. A dozen, and then hundreds, of people have flowed through. We have become not doctors but selectmen. It is the selectors who decide who should live and who should be sent home to die. Yes, painfully speaking, all of them are taxpayers for the right to life. But now we decide who should live and who should die.

“Two weeks ago, I and many of my colleagues were atheists. Because we are doctors, we one hundred percent believed that science excludes God. I would look at my parents at church and mock them….

“A seventy-five-year-old clergyman arrived here nine days ago. A poor man. He was struggling to breathe. But he always had a Bible in his hand. He reads it to the patients who are dying. He places the Bible in the hands of some, and we look at it intently…

“Two of my colleagues have passed away. Some are sick and in total despair…. As human beings, we have reached our limits. There is nothing we can do except increase the death toll of the people we care about.”

Then Dr. Lorenzo said, “We began to notice [the priest’s] work. We began to feel that God begins where man ends…. We who were atheists until yesterday, now pray to God for peace. We pray [for God to help us] care for the sick. The courage that was supposed to be lost has somehow returned. We are more energetic now… Yesterday, that seventy-five-year-old priest died. That means 120 deaths in three weeks. He helped to give us the peace we never expected in just nine days, when all hope was shattered. Remembering that we were helped by his weakness . . . the good shepherd went to the Lord.”

Theologian Paul David Tripp repeats a consistent theme in his writings. Human beings made in the image of God do not live life based on the facts of their experience but rather on their interpretation of the facts. Tripp says we don’t actually respond to what is going on around us; we respond to the sense we have made of what is going on around us. Yet without factoring the truth of God into life, life makes little sense. When pushed by crisis, the “truths” we bring to a life without God just do not add up to an understanding that results in peace of heart and mind.

We want our world to bring us wealth and health and happiness – as if those were the only things that matter. But a worldwide illness that leads to economic chaos and a shift in our comfortable lives totally disrupts the things that comfort us. The plans we have for our lives might not happen like we want. In fact, we might get just the opposite. And that causes fear.

Many people refuse to believe that God loves them and that He could have a better plan for them than they have for themselves. Dr. Lorenzo learned that lesson from a dying, impoverished priest who did not have the things we think we want, but rather had found joy in the peace that comes from the living God.

When we try to follow our own plans, we have to carry the burden of fear and worry about how our lives will turn out. On the other hand, if we trust that God loves us and has our lives under control – if we let Him – then we can enjoy that sublime peace that only comes from relying on God to produce the best outcome in our lives. It’s a choice we all have to make – the choice between fear and peace.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

Governor Northam has certainly thrown a monkey wrench into the process of nominations and elections this year. His Executive Orders 51 (March 10), 53 (March 23), and 55 (March 30), prohibit the Republican Party from holding mass meetings or conventions to elect our party officials or to nominate our candidates for the November general election. Executive Order 55 extends Northam’s prohibition through June 10, which happens to be the day AFTER the state’s scheduled primaries. Both Democrats and Republicans are scrambling now since both parties counted on choosing nominees for various offices at the June 9 primary.

State law requires that candidates for the November election be selected no later than June 9. Before COVID-19 was a factor, Republicans chose to select our U.S. Senate nominee by primary. (Three candidates, Alissa Baldwin, Daniel Gade, and Thomas Speciale, are on the ballot.) Some congressional districts chose to select their candidates for Congress by primary. While the state has to worry about how to hold the required primary, any delay will throw off general election campaign timetables. Currently, the State Board of Elections is urging everyone to vote by absentee ballot either in person at the local registrar’s office or (preferably) by mail. However, State Senator Steve Newman – whose district stretches from Lynchburg to Bath County in the Sixth District notes that this may not be lawful. The issue revolves around how much an emergency declaration can overrule the Code of Virginia.

The Sixth District Republican Committee chose to select our congressional candidate by primary. No one filed to run against Ben Cline, so he is our nominee – no muss, no fuss, no conflict with executive orders.

However, the Fifth and the Seventh congressional district committees planned to select their congressional nominees by convention on April 25. (Other districts chose other dates.) That is well before the end of the Governor’s ban on gatherings of more than 10 people. The districts cannot hold their conventions as planned, and district committees cannot meet to discuss what they will do instead. Even the State Central Committee (SCC) is not allowed to meet. Yet the State Party Plan requires Republican official committees to meet in person.

Thankfully, the Code of Virginia (§ 13.1-824) allows the Board of Directors of non-stock corporations to adopt emergency bylaws. Since the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) is a non-stock corporation, the SCC, which serves as the RPV’s Board of Directors, can amend the Party Plan in the midst of an emergency. Emergencies are defined in the Code: “An emergency exists for purposes of this section if a quorum of the corporation’s board of directors cannot readily be assembled because of some catastrophic event.”

In order to create the emergency bylaws, RPV Chairman Jack Wilson and General Council Chris Marston asked the SCC to approve an “Article XII: Temporary Emergency Procedures” which allows official committees to meet by electronic means. The first version of Article XII did not get the required three-fourths approval. Last year’s District 97 fiasco left many SCC members uncomfortable about rushing into adopting Article XII as first proposed. It seemed to be vague enough to allow for unintended interpretations, and it did not clearly state that it would “sunset” when the emergency ended. Several of the grassroots conservative members, via conference call, sorted out the language, and offered a rewritten version. (I did most of the rewriting.) State Chairman Wilson held out for one point from his original version. He wanted to be able to call SCC meetings, during an emergency, with only seven days’ notice rather than the normally required three weeks’ notice.

In return, we clarified that each official committee could determine their own rules for how to conduct their electronic meetings, or they could choose to default to a set of rules established by the SCC Executive Committee, but it is clearly the official committee’s choice as to which rules to use. And even though the Virginia Code states that “the emergency bylaws are not effective after the emergency ends,” we, as a condition of approval required a “date certain” for the emergency amendment to “sunset.” That line reads, “Provided that this Article shall expire upon the expiration of orders referenced above or July 31, 2020, whichever is earlier.”

As this is being written, the proposed amendment has not yet received the necessary votes for adoption. Hopefully, those votes will be forthcoming in the next couple of days. This amendment will not resolve the nomination and Party office election issues, but it will allow the district and local committees to meet electronically so that we can figure out how to do what we need to do in order to have candidates on the ballot and Party officers elected so that we can win in November.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D.

An online meme reads “The Coronavirus will come and go, but the government will NEVER forget how easy it was to take control of your life. To control every sporting event, classroom, restaurant table, and church pew. And even if you are allowed to leave your house.” And because we have been panicked into submission, we let the government get away with it – even though it violates a number of clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

The “Contracts Clause” of our Constitution prohibits states from interfering with lawful contracts, such as employment agreements. The Fourteenth Amendment’s “Due Process Clause” prohibits the government from interfering with life, liberty or property without a trial at which the state must prove guilt. The “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment requires the state to compensate an owner when it meaningfully interferes with an owner’s lawful use of his property. And the First Amendment denies the government the right to prevent citizens from peacefully assembling. It also prohibits the government from interfering with our church services.

Yet these executive decrees – they are not even legislation – fly in the face of constitutional law because we have somehow come to believe we need a nanny-state to protect us from bad things. But the government can’t protect us from bad things. Bad things happen. That’s life. Yet although “we the people” are free to choose to engage in “social distancing” and frequent hand washing with soap, we cannot legally, under our Constitution be compelled to do so.

But that does not stop Democratic governors. NBC News estimates that more than 80 million Americans have been told to stay home – or else. Hawaii’s governor, David Ige, threatens to jail anyone who does not obey his edicts. Alaska calls violation of a quarantine order a Class A misdemeanor with a potential year in jail and $10,000 fine. Mississippi provides a maximum penalty of five years in jail and a $5,000 fine for “knowingly and willfully” violating a quarantine order. Michigan and California would find violations of their “stay home” orders to be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail. In New York, businesses that fail to comply can be fined and shut down by the government. And Los Angeles threatens to cut off water and power to “nonessential” businesses that refuse to close down, calling them “irresponsible and selfish.”  New Jersey’s governor is talking about activating the National Guard to force people to comply. And Virginia Governor Northam’s executive order could put people who gather and pray in church in jail for up to 12 months and inflict fines of up to $2,500.

Americans are letting Democratic politicians get away with direct violations of the Constitution. The whole country is in a panic because instead of turning to God for our safety, we have learned to depend on the government to “give us this day our daily food stamps,” and “deliver us from [the] evil [virus].” Government is a terrible god.

And for what? Dr. Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, notes that the media has “frightened the American people” with salacious reporting about coronavirus. [MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, among others, claims that coronavirus will kill 3.2 million Americans – a gross exaggeration.] Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of the Imperial College London, who created the coronavirus model that has been frequently cited in public reports, has massively downgraded his projected death toll. He concedes that far more people have had the disease over a longer period of time than originally projected, and thus the death rate is considerably lower than his original projection suggested. Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta counters Ferguson’s original study by saying that the virus has been invisibly spreading for at least a month earlier than suspected. Her model indicates that fewer than one in a thousand who have been infected with the coronavirus become sick enough to need hospitalization. And Stanford Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology John Ioannidis calls the response to coronavirus “a fiasco in the making” based on “utterly unreliable” data. He states that “the woefully inadequate data we have… indicates that the extreme measures taken by many countries are likely way out of line and may result in ultimately unnecessary and catastrophic consequences.”

American can take whatever preventative measures they each choose – and they most likely will voluntarily take all reasonable precautions. But to allow governmental edicts based on faulty research to violate our Constitutional rights with impunity is the greatest disaster of all. Our founding fathers secured our freedoms with their “lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.” Today’s Americans are giving our freedoms away to avoid body aches and low grade fever from which most people will recover even without care. We certainly do need to make America great again – and we need to do it first of all by recognizing how our constitutional freedoms are being threatened. Otherwise, we will lose by fear and neglect what our founding fathers gained for us by courage and sacrifice.

Cordially,
Steve “Doc” Troxel, Ph.D