"More Statues, Not Fewer"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“More Statues, Not Fewer”

June 28, 2020

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny

and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

                                                                                                George Orwell (1903-1950)

                                                                                                1984, 1949

Statues and monuments are erected not just to honor an individual but as reminders we did not just appear, that we descend not just from our parents and grandparents but from a past and a culture that gave rise to the country in which we live. Despite nihilist messages from Black Lives Matter (BLM), we in America are fortunate. Most nations are not as free as this and none have seen so many “rags to riches” stories. Much of the world lives under totalitarian regimes, and the fact that global poverty has shrunk is (largely) due to the creative genius, entrepreneurial spirit and generosity of Americans. As Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently Tweeted, “America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you.”   

Evolution is a slow process. Life, according to most scientists, began about four billion years ago, primates about a hundred million years ago and humanoids perhaps twenty million years ago. Over the millennia, evolution provided natural selection that allowed our ancestors to survive and gave us inherited traits that permitted us to develop as individuals. It took millions of years for man to live communally and even longer to reach the age of Enlightenment, when concepts of self-government, rule of law, equal justice and individual liberty emerged. Throughout most of history, man fought – generally over land or religion. Today, we are indebted, in terms of liberty, democracy and markets to men like Thomas Hobbes, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Galileo, Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, David Hume and Adam Smith. Their ideas, many based on the writings of ancient Greeks and Romans, developed in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries. The United States Constitution, when adopted in 1788, served as their laboratory. We are still being tested.

Civilizations in other places have materialized and dissipated: Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, India, Mexico and Peru. All collapsed. None offered the universal freedom and respect for the individual’s rights embedded in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. One can find fault in the Declaration, as its soaring rhetoric did not include women, and slavery was still a fact of life. Nevertheless, it was a revolutionary document. And it should be judged against customs and standards of the time. How free were women in England, Germany, China or Japan at that time? Slavery, then, existed most everywhere, including Africa, and it still does in parts of Asia and the Middle East. Context counts when passing judgement on past lives and customs.

A genius of the Founding Fathers was their creation of a government with limited power, a concept necessary for liberty, but one fragile, as it conflicts with man’s instinct for power. They gave us a government that permits free speech, the right to assemble and to protest. We have the freedom to worship as we may. In terms of behavior, we have rights to march, but we also have property rights and the right to defend what is ours. We have a government based on the rule of law, not men, and that relies on civility, tolerance and mutual respect, designed to hear diverse opinions. It has worked for almost 250 years. We must keep it. Its strength is not its military; it is not a powerful executive or a wise judicial branch. Its strength is its people, whose collective wisdom is gained through independent thinking, not propaganda that stems from “group think,” where illiberal ideas today are nurtured in universities, promoted by the media, supported by the entertainment and sports world and executed by government bureaucrats.

We live in a frightening time. In the name of inclusion and diversity, we exclude those whose opinions differ from what has been sanctioned by the “thought police.” In seeking diversity of skin color and sex, we get conformity of ideas that demand allegiance to the “Party.” We have fomented a culture that “cancels” history and divides people into victims and oppressors. Through BLM and terrorist groups like Antifa, and our willing acceptance of their demands, we are led away from liberty into the darkness of totalitarianism. What is happening is manifested in mobs that desecrate and tear down remnants of our past. Writing in The Times of London last week, Gerard Baker noted: “It’s still surprisingly little understood that BLM wants a revolution: defunding the police, dismantling the institutions of capitalism and white supremacy.” We see elected officials, who forego responsibility to public safety and bow to mob demands. Recently, we witnessed the Speaker of the House and other congressional Democrats don Ghanian Kente cloth scarfs and kneel on the Capitol steps, in eight minutes and forty-six seconds of hypocritical silence to a man who should not have died as he did. This desire to be “woke” extended to the Head of my old school. In a recent e-mail, he called for inclusion and an end to hate speech and racism, while saying nothing of the need for excellence in scholarship, or the right of free speech, including diversity of opinion.  “The racial divide,” as Victor Davis Hanson wrote two weeks ago, “will not be healed by black separatist tribalism.”

Of course, Black lives matter, including that of George Floyd, but also the 97% of Black murder victims who, according to the Washington Post, were killed by other Blacks in 2015. As well, we pray that the lives of the 70% of Black children born every year into father-less families will matter. In truth, all lives matter, just as all voices need to be heard, not just those in fashion. But those who tear down monuments and destroy history remove any sense of how man has changed over time. Ours is a troubled era. We need voices to call out: Slow down and think about what is being said and done! In a speech at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois in 1838, a twenty-eight-year-old Abraham Lincoln spoke: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Evil needs to be suppressed, even when done by those who profess to be doing good.

What is needed is a positive message of universal affirmation, that acknowledges imperfections but is not ashamed of who we are and what has been accomplished. We need more monuments and statues, not fewer. We need them of recent heroes, like Thurgood Marshall and Edward Brooke, to add to those erected yesterday. It allows our descendants to see how we evolve toward a fairer, freer and more equitable society.

And we must keep in mind that every sculpture and monument is a work of art. Michelangelo once said: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” Whether the four faces on Mount Rushmore represent the four greatest Americans who ever lived is a matter of personal opinion. But we can all admire the talent and effort of Gutzon Borglum in producing that monument. My parents were sculptors. They worked in marble, granite and clay. They produced what they thought was (and is) beautiful. Politics never entered the equation. Most of what they produced was small – busts of children and statuettes of horses. My father did, however, carve a Madonna and Child from a granite rock. It now sits outside my brother’s bookstore, the Toadstool, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, a symbol of serenity and love – something missing in today’s fractured world.

"Education - The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Education – The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time”

June 24, 2020

“It is absolutely essential that we have quality education in every ZIP Code,

especially in the poorest ZIP Codes in America. That is the path forward.”

                                                                                                Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) (1965-)

                                                                                                Interview with Tunku Varadarajan

                                                                                                Wall Street Journal, June 20-21, 2020

We are a polyglot nation, a people of all races, ethnicities and religions. We come from the four corners of the globe. But we are who we are. None of us chose to be born where we were. We did not choose the color of our skin. We did not choose our sex, height, or the color of our hair and eyes. We did not choose our physical prowess or our intellectual aptitude. Those are factors we are born with and cannot change; though we can, and we should, enhance them to our advantage. But we can also improve our lives through education. We can read, train and practice. And we can be taught that tolerance and civility are critical to survival as a society, community and nation.

Education has been called the civil rights issue of our time by George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. There are, however, disagreements as to how it is achieved. Democrats believe in the power of money, that more should be spent in poor districts and on inner city schools. Republicans favor choice. Money is important, but dollars expended do not always guaranty a positive result. New York City spends more than twice what the average school district in the United States spends per pupil ($25,199 versus $12,201 in 2017). Yet less than half of New York City students in grades three through eight passed State exams, according to the New York Times. Democrats are influenced by their dependence on the two major teachers’ unions, the National Educational Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Ninety-five percent of the $30 million they spent on elections in 2018 went to Democrats.

Choice is preferred by Republicans. It is offered in poorer districts through charter schools and vouchers. Thomas Sowell, writing in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal, noted: “Teachers unions and traditional public school administrators have reason to fear charter schools. In 2019 there were more than 50,000 New York City students on waiting lists to transfer into charter schools.”  Were that to happen, Mr. Sowell adds, that would mean, at $20,000 a student, the transfer of a billion dollars to charter schools. It is little wonder unions fight this trend. The choice of a private school has always been available to the affluent, including most of Washington’s political class; so, it is hard to understand why wealthy white people favor choice for themselves but not for poor Black and Hispanic families.

The release of the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) report for 2018 caused, as the Hechinger Report put it, “considerable handwringing.” In math, the U.S. ranked 36 out of 79 countries and below the international average. As one wag put it, the U.S test scores have been “stable in their mediocrity.” Yet the importance of education to a democracy cannot be overstated. Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for preservation of liberty.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt agreed: “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” Martin Luther King was of the same opinion: “Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.”

Aspirant parents of Black and Hispanic inner-city students realize that children come first when it comes to education. And they know that that has not always been the case, at least in traditional public schools. In the same article cited above, Thomas Sowell wrote: “In 2019, most students in the city’s (New York) public schools failed to pass the statewide tests in mathematics and English. But most of the city’s charter school students passed in both subjects.”  In fact, students in one charter school, Success Academy, “already pass tests in mathematics and English at a higher rate than any school district in the entire state.” Keep in mind, New York’s charter school students are predominantly Black and Hispanic and live in low-income neighborhoods, and that includes Success Academy. What they have are motivated students, parents who care and teachers and administrators who work without the constraint of unions.

Race has been on everyone’s mind since George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin on May 25^th. What happened to Mr. Floyd should not happen to anyone. But we cannot ignore the fact that young Black males face a far greater likelihood of being killed by another young Black male in their own neighborhood. In Chicago, on Memorial Day weekend, 85 people were shot, 24 fatally. Three weeks later, on Father’s Day weekend, in the same city, 104 people were shot, 14 fatally. Most of the victims were Black, as were most of the killers. Unlike Mr. Floyd, these victims have gone unnamed and unmourned, except by their families. We have a problem with violence, especially in African-American communities. Violence is condemned, but political correctness forbids causes being addressed and realistic prescriptions being offered.

As mentioned above, we are a nation of people from myriad backgrounds. But should we accentuate our differences, be they race, sex or religion, or should we emphasize our common interests, that we are all part of the great American experiment? Should we let ourselves be segregated by race or sex, or should we encourage integration based on the conventions and norms that have helped guide this nation? Politicians like to compartmentalize voters but doing so is divisive. We celebrate Black lives but discard the notion that all lives matter. Five years ago, Tamara Keith wrote for NPR: “’All lives matter’ is a phrase adopted by those who seek to minimize or criticize the movement” (Black Lives Matter). Are those healing words? Don’t all lives matter?

Living in a nation of different races and religions demands tolerance. And tolerance is a function of understanding, and understanding comes from education. Education breeds (or should breed) an atmosphere for respectful debate, which is absent in today’s polarized world. Yet unity is critical to our future. In an August 22, 1862 letter to Horace Greely, editor and publisher of the New York Herald Tribune, Abraham Lincoln wrote: “My paramount objective in this struggle is to preserve the union…”

As we find ourselves increasingly drawn into segregated communities by politicians and agitators, we should keep Lincoln’s admonition in mind. While equality of outcomes is a dream that can never be realized, and in fact is an anathema to liberty, we must promote equality of opportunity. Education is the key.  When we fail to provide youth a good education, we deprive them of the human capital necessary for democracy to succeed. Education is indeed the civil rights issue of our time.

"Pandemic by the Numbers - My Numbers"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Essay from Essex

“Pandemic by the Numbers – My Numbers”

June 21, 2020

“Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do

but never gets you anywhere.”

                                                                                                Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)

                                                                                                American humorist

                                                                                                           

We have all found different ways to spend the time we have been given but didn’t want. My wife and I have now spent thirteen weeks on Essex Meadows’ property. Caroline had blood work done on March 19^th, which was our last time off the campus. During these past three months temperatures outside have ranged from below freezing to the high eighties. While my official temperature has remained normal, my internal engine has become heated. I have enjoyed the time with my wife, and have kept busy writing, but the monotony of the days is getting to us, so I thought it would be fun to jot down some of things done – how the days have been spent, a look at the Pandemic by my numbers.

Reviewing the list, I am amazed at how much I did, and thought how little I must have done before. I shouldn’t be surprised, because lists tend to exaggerate. If I had kept all the empty bottles of wine I drank last year, my wife would call AA. Nevertheless, a quote from P.G. Wodehouse, when he was interviewed in 1974 by the Paris Review, did come to mind: “I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don’t remember what I did before that. Just loafed, I suppose.” I was not loafing before the pandemic arrived; it is the listing that makes it seem that way. Keep in mind, however, every number is an estimate. As to whether the numbers are underestimated or exaggerated, I leave for the reader to decide:

600,000 – estimated steps taken in walking about 250 miles (two and a half miles a day = 6000 steps) on Essex Meadows property and trails through the Preserve. The Health App on my 1-Phone has kept me (relatively) honest.

30,000 – estimated words written during the past three months, which include fifteen Thoughts of the day, six Essays from Essex and five Burrowing into Books reviews.

3,250 – crunches and about half as many leg lifts, based on five workouts a week.

1,625 – pushups, see above.

1,000 – number of sheets of paper used (and thrown away) in writing the above essays.

300 – essays of others printed out and read on matters dealing with politics, culture, education and climate.

200 – two daily newspapers read (the Wall Street journal, the New London Day, and the Sunday New York Times)

175 – an estimate of the number of poached eggs cooked by me and eaten by same.

100 – TV movies or shows watched after getting into bed, usually around 8:30.

26 – number of times we received groceries and sundries from our son and his family who live in Lyme

25 – loads of laundry. (When we moved to Essex Meadows, my wife put me in charge of laundry.)

10 – books read and begun – five fiction, five nonfiction.

5 – Zoom calls with our children and grandchildren.

3 – virtual high school graduations.

3 – pedicures given my wife.

3 – number of pounds lost since the lockdown began.

2 – webinars participated in, courtesy of the Hayek Institute of Vienna, one to be broadcast this Thursday.

1 – miles driven around the parking lot, trying to prevent batteries from dying, unsuccessfully in one car.

0 – our Master Card bill for April and May. (I cannot say the same for American Express.)          

Of course, time for this exhaustive list was made possible because of things not done:

We have not visited our children’s homes.

We have not hugged our children or grandchildren in over a hundred days.

We have not filled our cars with gas since mid-March

We have not been in a grocery store, drugstore, newsstand, liquor store, dry cleaners, barber shop (my hair is getting bushy), dentist or doctor for three months, though both my wife and i did have one experience each with telemedicine. (We prefer real visits.)

We have not been out for dinner, by ourselves or with friends.

We have not been to the beach club, which opened with “proper distancing” on Memorial Day.

I have not been able to attend weekly ROMEO (retired old men eating out) lunches for three months.

A planned trip to England and Scotland in April was cancelled.

At some point this nightmare will end, and we will look back as at a bad dream. But while in its midst, we should make the most of what we can do to keep ourselves productively (or even nonproductively) occupied. Do not lose faith and do not worry. Remember, what some have rent asunder, others will rejoin.

"Is Anybody in Charge?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Is Anybody in Charge?”

June 20, 2020

“The inmates have taken over the asylum.”

                                                                        Idiom, adopted from the short story

                                                                        “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” 1845

                                                                        Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1949)

Civilization moves inexorably forward. Over centuries, more and more people have enjoyed the freedom that democratic forms of government offer, and the fruits that industrial and technological advancements and free market capitalism provide. But bumps and potholes inhibit progress. The United States (and the western world) must not allow the disruptions by a few to impede the rights of the many. In the midst of chaos, we ask: Is anybody in charge?

Reminiscent of the takeover of deans’ offices in 1968, college students at UCLA, already granted safe spaces where they are protected from white-privileged professors and students, demand a “no-harm” grading system, shorter exams and extended deadlines for Black students. As a form of virtue signaling, corporations empower activists, in hopes of reducing the threat of litigation. The New York Times, at the instigation of the staff, fired James Bennet, a white, male editor for publishing a Republican Senator’s op-ed. A headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Buildings Matter, Too,” led to the resignation of a top editor. In a dozen and more cities, like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Des Moines protests turned into riots, and looters took to the streets, burning cars, smashing windows and robbing stores. Police stepped aside and knelt in obeisance to protesters.

Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle has allowed a vigilante group to take over six blocks in the residential area of Capital Hill, which includes a police station, as an autonomous zone (CHAZ). They patrol its border with weapons, demand rent control and reverse gentrification. They want to abolish the police force and receive free healthcare, and they want the release of all those imprisoned on marijuana charges. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, mobs have defaced and destroyed statues across the country. While their preferred targets are Southern Civil War Generals, they have been indiscriminate in their targets. In Los Angeles, a statue of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of thousands of Jews during World War II was marred with irrelevant slogans: “BLM” and “Free Palestine.” In Washington, D.C., vandals defaced the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial. World War I American doughboy statues in Birmingham, Alabama and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania were vandalized. The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Wasco, California had its head ripped off.

The erection and tearing down of figures from our past should be left to sober debate and reflection, not mobs. Nevertheless, it is not statues that should be permanent in our culture, but respect, civility and tolerance. Our local paper, the New London Day, celebrated the taking down of the statute of Christopher Columbus because it was “offensive.” They said it represented a symbol of “dominance of one group over another.” But that has always been so – tribes have fought tribes and nations have fought nations. One side always dominates.  No mention was made of the risks Columbus took in his voyage of discovery. Far wiser were words uttered by President Trump at West Point: “What has historically made America unique is the durability of its institutions against the passions and prejudices of the moment.”

Half a dozen retired U.S. Generals denounced President Trump for threatening to call in the military to subdue violent protests. On June 3, 2020, National Guard vehicles, along with police, blocked 16^th Street near Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. Under the Insurrection Act of 1807, Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and George H.W. Bush deployed troops to states. In a June 1, 2020 article in the Chicago Tribune, Jonathon Berlin and Kori Rumore listed twelve occasions when the President, under the Armed Forces Reserve Act of 1952, sent troops to quell riots.

While the use of the military to quash civilian rioters is rare, it is even more unusual for retired generals to criticize an elected President. Under our Constitution, the military is subservient to an elected, civilian President. There should never be any question as to who has ultimate authority. General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for joining the President in his walk across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Episcopal Church whose basement had been burned by rioters. It was his apology, not the walk, that turned the event political. General Martin Dempsey referred to President Trump’s rhetoric as “inflammatory.” This is the same General Dempsey who as President Obama’s nominee to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to deploy F-16s from Aviano Airbase in Italy to protect U.S. soldiers at the Benghazi compound in September 2012. General James Mattis, in The Atlantic wrote: “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people – does not even pretend to try.” Has General Mattis forgotten the ways in which we have been divided by those who feign inclusion? The compartmentalizing of the electorate by sex, sexual orientation and race; the splitting of us into oppressors and victims; the calling of Trump voters “deplorables” and “clinging to guns and religion.” The identity politics of Democrats are not politics of inclusion.

Slavery was an abomination, which the Civil War was fought to eliminate. But preservation of the Union was also critical to Lincoln. An estimated 360,000 Northern soldiers died during the War and almost as many from the South. Families were torn apart, brother fought brother. Statues of Southern generals and politicians were erected, not to honor the antebellum South, but to help reconcile a nation divided by rivers of fraternal blood.

In his 1919 poem “The Second Coming,” written in the aftermath of the Great War and during the infamous Spanish Influenza, William Butler Yeats wrote; “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…/The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.” The right to protest is protected; anarchy is not. We need leaders who call for unity, but who do so with wisdom, sanity, civility and tolerance.

Defunding the police is not an answer to crime-infested streets, nor is dividing people into victims and oppressors unifying. A free people are not a homogenous unit. We need an escalator that allows people to move up the economic ladder, based on ability and aspiration, regardless of race, sex or religion. We cannot forget that a poor white family in Appalachia has more in common with a poverty-stricken inner-city Black family, than does that Black family’s “woke,” hypocritical ally twenty blocks south, who marches with a sign calling out white oppressors, and then heads home to her doorman building. When leaders abdicate responsibility, as has happened in blue-coated cities, elite universities and schools, corporations and media outlets, chaos ensues. During the economic challenging and inflation-ridden 1970s, the New York Times concluded an April 14, 1978 column that we lived in “an atmosphere of confusion, indecision and incoherence.” Words that could serve as an epitaph for today.

"The Home Stretch"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Essay from Essex

“The Home Stretch”

June 14, 2020

“This is not about going back. This is about life being ahead of you and you run at it!

Because you never know how far you can run unless you run.”

                                                                                                Attributed to Penny Chenery (1922-2017)

                                                                                                In the film, “Secretariat,” 2010

Using a horse race as a metaphor for life, with its starting gate and finish line, might appear morbid, but that is not the intent. As Benjamin Franklin noted in 1789, there are no certainties other than death and taxes. We are born; we live, and we die. The relevant question is: how much ground do we cover and what do we accomplish in the time allotted? More pertinent, as we come down the home stretch (and something a racehorse never considers), can we look back on our race as fairly run, and did we make time to hug those we love?

To get around the track – to make it onto the home stretch is not assured when the race begins. And we cannot forget that there are those who are loaded into the gate and then denied the opportunity to run when the starting gate opens. The length of the course varies, depending on luck, behavior and genes. Some of us founder, others get bumped, a few break down or become exhausted and retire early. But most of us make it onto the home stretch.

We enter the first turn in our early teens and exit it as independent young adults. The back stretch begins as we leave college, continues on with careers, marriage and our own offspring, who themselves begin their race. During this period, as we gallop along, our children grow and enter their first turn. Our families and jobs, and schools and colleges for our children, consume our time as the furlongs pass. When our children begin their backstretch, we enter our final turn, during which we witness the marriages of our children and the appearance of our first grandchildren.

As we exit the final turn and head for home, we pass through what is sometimes mislabeled the “golden years.” The pace slows but time speeds up. A week, which when we were children felt like a month, has become a year that feels like a week. With the advent of children and grandchildren, our future has enlarged. Lives have been created for which we bear responsibility, and we want to know that they will turn out to be happy ones. But we also recognize, as the song has it, that “the future is not ours to see.”

We should not despair, though. The home stretch is filled with family and friends, some new and some old. We have memories to comfort us, a few regrets but mostly good times remembered. We know we have slowed, but our speed has increased. We pray the pounding hoofs will slow. The seconds, minutes and hours tick by in their regular, inevitable and foreboding way. We cross the finish line, each in our own time and each at our own pace, not with applause and best without tears, but, we hope, with love and appreciation for a race well run.

"It's the Culture, Stupid - Part II"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“It’s the Culture, Stupid – Part II”

June 13, 2020

“Nothing in the entire world is more dangerous

than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                Strength to Love, 1963

                                                                                                collection of sermons

Ignorance is the bane of civilized society. It is inexcusable in a country with free high schools. In a manifestation of cancel culture, mobs tear down statues of yesteryear’s heroes. I wonder: what is gained by destroying historical artifacts? Where is the curiosity expressed by Washington Irving in Sketchbook almost two hundred years ago? “I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievements.”[1] Should we rename army bases in a moment of exuberant zeal, or would it be wiser to debate the issue when heads are cooler? Are past wrongs righted when relegated to the ash heap of ignorance? Can we assume we have reached perfection where our descendants will find nothing wrong in today’s actions? Would those whose bravery stems from being part of a mob tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus have had the courage of the Italian navigator to sail across an infinite sea to an unknown land?

History must be considered in context and with perspective. It is impossible for us to judge the behavior of our forefathers based on today’s moral standards, just as it will be unfair to us for our descendants to mock our actions today based on values a hundred years hence. Should we ignore Columbus because he is now pilloried as a racist, more than five hundred years after his voyage of discovery? Should we disregard Thomas Jefferson, and the words he wrote about self-evident truths and of how all men were created equal with unalienable rights, because he kept slaves? Cannot we admire the former and criticize the latter?

The cultural war is perhaps most pronounced in the Washington D.C. environs, where 283,000 federal bureaucrats work. They are joined by about 14,000 staffers for the 535 Congressmen and Senators. Lobbyists comprise another 11,600 people. Added to the mix are thousands who work in media. In all, they make up almost 20% of the metro areas workforce. These are highly paid people who live in four of the nation’s five wealthiest counties – Howard (MD) and Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington, all in Virginia. It is a self-contained culture where most jobs are based on who you know. Once hired, they are ensconced, moving from agency to lobbyist firm to agency. But as Richard Grenell, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and ex-acting Director of National Intelligence, recently noted, the D.C. culture is autonomous, where there is “no outside thought, there’s no perspective.” While forty million Americans lost their jobs due to a state-mandated shut-down of the economy, these people kept theirs, even when told to stay home – most paid from our tax dollars. The contrast to the rest of the country is startling. It was this narcissistic cocoon that Donald Trump threatened to dismantle in 2016 when he pledged to “drain the swamp.”

So, is it a surprise that this mixture of conventional bureaucrats, lobbyists and media worked hard to defeat Mr. Trump in the 2016 election? Should we be stunned to learn that the Obama Administration and the intelligence services interfered with the peaceful transition of power post-election and pre-inauguration? Was it startling that seventy members of Congress refused to attend the inauguration, or that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up her copy of Mr. Trump’s State of the Union speech in front of 37 million viewers? With the Durham report pending, should we be shocked that 1,500 Justice Department retirees have spoken out against Attorney General William Barr, or that so many have attacked the President and his Administration? Has any previous President been treated with such hypocritical condescension?

And why is it that racism is most prevalent in bastions of progressivism like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Baltimore and Philadelphia? Have policies that provide uncompetitive schools, a failure to support two-parent traditional families and a culture of victimization failed the very people they were supposed to help? For Democrats, a year that began with a strong economy and record levels of employment for Black workers, the killing of George Floyd was a godsend, to complement the shuttering of the economy to counter COVID-19. Just as scare stories regarding the pandemic proliferate, the murder of Mr. Floyd has been exploited as systemic racism. Why do so many now want to defund the police? In a review of Stacy Abrams new book, Our Time is Now, Barton Swaim provides one answer: “Because, for overeducated white liberals…blaming the cops is easier than blaming themselves.” Certainly, there are bad cops who should be fired. But these same liberals ignore inconvenient facts like bad cops get protected by unions, that police shootings have declined dramatically in the past twenty years and that racism is most prominent in Blue-run cities and states. The legitimate protests gave activists like George Soros the opportunity to unleash Black Lives Matter, an organization he helps fund through Open Society Foundation. BLM draws attention to alleged racism and inequalities but does little to address root causes – education, family and personal responsibility – and did little to curtail the riots and looting, abetted by radical groups like Antifa. As Candice Owens says in a video viewed over six million times, a divided nation is fundamental to the success of progressive politics.

Nevertheless, great harm was done to African-Americans. First slavery and then a century of “Jim Crow” laws that prevented Blacks from achieving the promises of America. The 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act largely corrected past wrongs, though implementation was slow and sometimes painful. To help atone for centuries of ill treatment, affirmative action was introduced in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson in Executive Order 11246. It was a necessary program at the time. But implicit in that policy is that it gives birth to victimization – that without help from government, success is impossible. It is patronizing and racist. No one race is intellectually or morally inferior to another.

Politicians choose to compartmentalize the electorate. When the goal is votes, it is more efficient to address the concerns of a group than to consider the fears and desires of an individual. Like everyone, Blacks need tools to succeed – strong family ties, a good education where choice is an option, and an environment that encourages personal responsibility and accountability. Millions of Blacks have made successes of their lives in fields ranging from the military, music, literature, law, sports, politics, medicine, science and hundreds of others. They have done so as individuals – as Democrats and as Republicans, as liberals and as conservatives. But when they do so as conservatives, they are disparaged by white liberals; they are told they are traitors to their class, that they are “Uncle Toms,” that “they ain’t Black.”

Ignorance of our past is no excuse. Platitudes do not provide answers. Political polarization is not uncommon. America has always been splintered by policy differences. It is only in time of war that we become truly unified. However, a culture that emphasizes diversity of race, sex and religion, but not thought is negative for freedom and independence. It is when opinions are censored, as they have been in our universities in recent years, amplified in the press and social media and promoted by politicians that we risk authoritarianism. We move forward as individuals, not as Christians, Jews, Blacks, Whites, gays, women or men. That is how we should be weighed, by the “measure of our character.” But politics is about garnering votes; it is about power, something we all need to keep in mind, especially in an election year. 

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[1] As quoted by Nicholas Basbanes in his biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Cross of Snow.

"It's the Culture, Stupid"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“It’s the Culture, Stupid”

June 8, 2020

“The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation

to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment

 of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior.”

                                                                                                Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)

                                                                                                Anthropologist

                                                                                                Patterns of Culture, 1934

The framework of a civil society is comprised of multiple threads, representing common traits like etiquette, respect for one another, accountability, deference to one’s parents and teachers. These customs are woven, along with art, music and literature, to form a nation’s cultural fabric. Culture includes traditions, knowledge of one’s own history and the history of one’s country – the good and the bad. It is what allows a civil society composed of those from myriad backgrounds, races, religions and opinions to amicably live together. Without the ability to civilly debate, darkness falls.

In the political world, there have always been extremists who refuse to comply with rules of civility that bind us. Those generally represent fringes of society. But extremism has become more mainstream, as political correctness, victimization and safe places have proliferated on our nation’s campuses. We have lost a moral sense of universal values. For example, the permitting of protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s killing was right. The failure to condemn and confront violent rioters and looters was wrong.

Gerard Baker, in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal wrote about the old liberal order being under siege: “A basic tenet of the old liberal order is the toleration of views we find detestable.”  Today, illiberal Leftism compels submission to identity politics. How else to explain Joe Biden’s contemptuous outburst: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Blame must be found for the killing of George Floyd and what better target than the persistence of “systemic, institutionalized racism.” The irony, of course, is that Mr. Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, a city that has been run by Democrats for forty-two years, with an African-American Police Chief, Medaria Arradondo. Where were the Democrat-controlled police review boards and unions? The five most crime-ridden cities in the United States, according to an August 19, 2019 report in USA Today, are Democrat-controlled cities: St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Memphis and Kansas City, Mo. A list of the top cities for murder rates, according to Rapid City Journal: St. Louis, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans and Birmingham, Alabama – again, all cities run by Democrat mayors. Yet they look for someone else to blame.

Diversity is a worthy goal and has been aggressively sought in schools, colleges, eleemosynary institutions and businesses. But diversity has been defined only in racial, sexual, religious and ethnic terms, never in terms of freedom of opinion. A few days ago, the New York Times abandoned any sense of impartiality when its publisher and editors gave in to staffers who have no concept of freedom of thought. They revolted over the paper’s running of an op-ed by United States Senator Thomas Cotton (R-AZ), a U.S. Army veteran. In the op-ed he condoned the use of military force to bring peace to cities under mob rule. One can disagree with Senator Cotton’s argument, while still allowing it to be vented. The English biographer of Voltaire, Evelyn Beatrice Hall (1868-1956), once wrote, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” How far we have fallen since those words were penned!

Protests are a legitimate means for citizens to demonstrate against disliked policies. But when peaceful protests become destructive riots, the welfare of people and property become at risk. Rightful protests against the murder of George Floyd by policeman Derek Chauvin morphed into violent acts of vandalism, killing the innocent, wounding dozens, burning police vehicles, looting and destroying stores. In response, some mayors refused to confront the rioters, allowing them free rein to rob some of their livelihoods and others of their lives. Martin Luther King famously said: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Regardless of skin color, what sort of character willfully destroys private property? Mob justice is untenable in a civil society. It is associated with the untamed west of the late 19^th Century and the Ku Klux Klan of the early 20th. The Klan wore white hoods. Antifa wears black masks.

This murder has added fuel to the false narrative that the United States is a racist nation. Certainly, there are racists. We are a nation of 330 million people, some of whom are racists, mostly ignorant underachievers whose egos inflate as they belittle others. But, as Heather MacDonald contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week: “A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing.”  A Washington Post data base noted that in 2019 the police shot dead nine unarmed Blacks and nineteen unarmed Whites. While the percentage of unarmed Blacks killed exceeds their percent of the population (34% versus 13%), FBI reports for 2018 show that 39% of murders in the U.S. and 54% of robberies were committed by African-Americans. In 2016, 2,870 Blacks were murdered in the U.S., 90% (2,570) by other Blacks. It is the “why” of these statistics that should concern us.

“The customs and practices of life in society sweep us along,” wrote Michel de Montaigne more than three hundred years ago. Fundamental to our culture are family life and education. Too often we have failed on both. We de-emphasize the importance of married, two-parent families, and we do not permit school choice for impoverished, inner-city families. Charter schools and voucher programs, desired by aspirant parents, have been shot down by politicians who are financially dependent on teachers’ unions who see any competition as a threat. As well, youth must be taught right from wrong. And they must disabuse themselves of the concept of victimhood, which allows one to disavow personal responsibility. And the definition of diversity must be expanded to include opinions.

The horrific murder of George Floyd convinced many politicians and most of the media that the United States remains a racist nation, which justifies the looting and rioting that followed the protests. However, “without order,” as Andrew McCarthy recently wrote, “our liberties are just parchment promises.” Democrats seek someone to blame for the sorry state of cities they have run for decades. But when something is wrong – and something is – it makes sense to first look in the mirror. Failed, well-intentioned policies should be reviewed. The biggest risks we face are not “authoritarian impulses” of President Trump. (After all, no authoritarian would reduce the role of government by cutting regulations and lowering taxes). The biggest risk is the denunciation by supercilious Leftists of those who do not conform to their prevailing orthodoxies, which were forged in universities, distributed through the media and given expression via left-wing government bureaucrats. Theirs is the way of fascists and communists, not a free people. It is a culture of arrogance that has created this sad state of affairs that must be addressed.