"What Does China Want?"

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“What Does China Want?”

September 26, 2020

 

“China’s objectives are world domination.
They intend to utterly defeat the United States.”

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX)

September 18, 2020

Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders Program

 

With just over 18% of the world’s population, China produces 17% of the world’s GDP. The country has come a long way over the past fifty years. When Nixon went to China in 1972, the country had 22% of the world’s population, but only produced about 0.04% of the world’s GDP. In 2000, the year before China joined the World Trade Organization, the Country’s GDP represented 3.6% of global GDP. In 2000, fewer than 50,000 Chinese students traveled abroad to study. By 2018, that number had risen to 662,100. The “Sleeping Giant” has become the “Red Dragon.”

 

The hope was that exposure to the West would cause China to develop free market economies and more freedom for its people. Yet, as Kevin Rudd and Daniel Rosen wrote in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, “China’s economic norms are diverging from, rather than converging with, the West’s. Long promised changes detailed at the beginning of the Xi era haven’t materialized.” China’s defense spending has risen ten-fold in the past two decades, while the U.S.’ slightly more than doubled. The U.S. still spends more than three times what China spends, but the gap is narrowing. China has built at least seven artificial islands in the South China Sea and has conducted war games in that area, through which an estimated one-third of global trade passes. In consolidating power, Xi Jinping has become the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. 

 

In 2013, on visits to Kazakhstan and Indonesia, Xi unveiled his “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), a center piece of China’s foreign policy. The “belt” refers to the old “Silk Road,” which extended from Xi’an in Central China to the Mediterranean Sea, just west of Aleppo. The “road” refers to 21^st Century sea routes. Today, according to Wikipedia, 138 countries in Asia, Africa the Middle East, the Caribbean, South America and Europe have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China’s BRI. The stated purpose is to connect Asia with the Middle East, Africa and Europe to improve regional integration, increase trade and stimulate economic growth. This has been done through loans to countries and direct investments in ports, roads, rail lines, airports, “…one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever conceived” is the way the Council on Foreign Relations put it in January of this year. 

 

China’s reach extends beyond those countries that have signed on to BRI. They have seduced the United States through technology, sports and the entertainment world. Apps allow the Chinese government to read and influence young American minds. Last October, when Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets issued a Tweet supporting democracy in Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party started pulling NBA games off television and merchandise off shelves. With billions of dollars at stake, the NBA bowed to Chinese demands. China has invested millions of dollars in Hollywood-made movies; scripts have been written with China’s censors in mind. According to Tim Doescher of the Heritage Foundation, “China is on track to overtake the U.S. as the largest consumer of movies in the world.”  

 

What does China want, besides the amenable Hunter Biden’s father as the next U.S. President? Does she want dominion over the region, the hemisphere or the world, as Senator Cruz suggested? What about her Pacific neighbors: Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia? What about India, Australia and New Zealand? Simon Hunt of Simon Hunt Strategic Services in London sees in China a desire to return to predominance in Asia, to re-establish control over territories like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Tibet, and to command the respect of other great powers. Gordon Chang, a lawyer and columnist who lived and worked in Hong Kong and mainland China for two decades, sees China as more vulnerable and therefore more dangerous – countering a “closing window of opportunity, because of problems in the economy, in the environment and demography.” Caveat Emptor, in my opinion, applies to those nations that have signed MoU’s with China’s BRI.

 

Unlike the Cold War, which arose in the aftermath of the Second World War when the U.S. emerged as the preeminent power with hegemonic responsibilities for the West, the faceoff between China and the United States is more subtle and dangerous. For one, the United States is no longer revered as she was seventy-five years ago. Wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan diminished her image and undid her self-confidence. The United States no longer has the unquestioned love of her people, as can be seen in the partisanship of our politics and media, and the riots that course through city streets. Multiculturalism has replaced patriotism. Identity politics and victimization have removed the Unum from e Pluribus Unum. Our founding principles are no longer seen as having descended from the Enlightenment but as tarnished by slavery. 

 

History did not end in 1989. The threat China represents is different from the Mutually Assured Destruction threat that governed behavior between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and it is different from non-state enemies like al Qaeda and ISIS. “What is at stake,” as Simon Hunt recently wrote, “is a clash of civilizations.” – an emerging autocratic China challenges an aging 250-year-old democratic United States. The differences are stark – authoritarianism versus democracy, dependency versus independence, subjection versus freedom, nightmares versus dreams. While the United States is not perfect, it is the only nation based on the idea that government is established to protect individual rights, rights that stem from nature, not granted by man. “American history,” as Stanley Kurtz recently wrote in National Review, “is, in part, the chronicle of our attempts to more perfectly realize the principles of liberty and equality that inspired our founding.” Can the same be said for China?

 

As a nation we encourage self-criticism; we believe in the separation of powers and in the rule of law. China, in contrast, is governed by a Communist dictatorship, where the alleged goal is the establishment of a socioeconomic order structured on common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money and the state – high-sounding ideals, but which are lies that camouflage a brutish reality: less than ten percent of the population are members of the Communist Party; where Xi Jinping has an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion, while median annual household income is $3,650; where a million Muslim-minority Uighurs are held in government re-education detention centers; when BBC estimated that 10,000 protesters were killed in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Claimed ideals but lies, as those who live in Hong Kong and Taiwan know full well.

 

The United States is the most powerful democracy in the world and serves as exemplar to other nations. It has a moral obligation to safeguard freedom among liberty loving people. If you think socialism is insidious in the way it infiltrates society, try communism – Xi Jinping and China style. The free world cannot ignore the threat China poses.

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg - RIP"

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swstotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

Ruth Bader Ginsburg – RIP

September 20, 2020

“She was the best of colleagues, as she is the best of friends. I wish her a hundred years.” 

Justice Antonin Scalia On the occasion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 10^th Anniversary on the D.C. Court of Appeals 1990

In his novel, The Way we Live Now, Anthony Trollope wrote about his main protagonist, Augustus Melmotte: “But there had grown upon the man during the last few months an arrogance, a self-confidence inspired in him by the worship of other men, which clouded his intellect, and robbed him of much of that power of calculation which undoubtedly he naturally possessed.” Americans, especially those on the far left, have a tendency to elevate heroes to elysian heights, while consigning opponents to eternal damnation. 

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a brilliant jurist, a pioneer in women’s rights and a person who put politics aside when it came time to choosing friends, as could be seen in her long friendship with Antonin Scalia, opera being a common interest. She fought for equality, fairness and justice. As a lawyer, she argued six cases before the Supreme Court and won five of them, before being appointed to United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia by President Carter in April 1980. She was worshipped by fans who called her “notorious” RBG. Two years ago, Betsy West and Julie Cohen produced a documentary on her life, “RBG.” At least six biographies have been written on her life. But we elevate people to iconic status at a risk. She, like all of us, was human.

 

Ms. Ginsburg was political. On July 10, 2016, in an interview with the New York Times, she said, “I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what this country would be – with Donald Trump as our President.” Shortly before she died, she dictated a letter to her granddaughter Clara Spera, in which she said: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

 

There is no question that the Supreme Court does not (and cannot) rise above politics. Judges are nominated by politicians and confirmed by politicians. Nevertheless, lifetime appointments should reduce political interference and angst. In fact, Supreme Court Justices have, at times, turned opposite to what had been expected, two examples being Felix Frankfurter and Earl Warren. Nevertheless, what is important if we want this Republic to persist for another two hundred and thirty-three years is adhering to the basic functions of the three branches of government: A legislature that creates laws; an executive that carries out laws, and a court that ensures laws passed comply with the Constitution. 

 

We will mourn Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a few days, with flags around the country at half-mast. Then politics will reenter the forum, with the President nominating a replacement. Democrats will invoke the memory of Merrick Garland, whose nomination by Barack Obama was blocked in 2016 by a Republican majority-held Senate. Had Democrats controlled the Senate four years ago, Mr. Garland would be Justice Garland today.

 

In this partisan world we inhabit, days of collegiality brought about by mourning for Justice Ginsburg will likely be short-lived. RBG’s death highlights the importance of this election – the difference between those who believe in a “living” Constitution that continuously updates reflecting cultural changes, and those who believe that decisions should be based on the written Constitution and precedent. Questions arise: Should the role of judges be to make or interpret the law? Should legislation be conducted from the bench? Seth Lipsky, in an editorial for the New York Sun, wrote of his admiration for Ms. Ginsburg, but he also recalled an exchange she had in Cairo eight years ago. The interviewer had mentioned that Egypt was writing a new constitution and wanted to know if Egypt should look to other constitutions. She replied: “I would not look at the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.” She preferred the more detailed bills of rights in the constitutions of Canada, South Africa and Europe. Mr. Lipsky added in his editorial: “Our Constitution rarely grants rights. It establishes negative rights, meaning prohibitions on government interfering with rights granted by God.” The distinction is important, in what it says about the role of government. A quote often mistakenly attributed to Thomas Jefferson has relevance: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government to take away everything you have.”  

 

I had great respect for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as I do for the opinions of many of my friends on the Left but, just as I disagree with them, I disagreed with her judgments. Nevertheless, she left the world a better place. The real lesson to be learned from RBG is the relationship she had with her fellow Justice Antonin Scalia. They did not let political differences interfere with their personal friendship. Personal relations, even in disagreement, should be civil, collegial and respectful. As for whether President Trump should use this opportunity to nominate a replacement, why shouldn’t he? Surely, Democrats would. As Justice Ginsburg said in that same interview with the New York Times four years ago: “There is nothing in the Constitution that says the president stops being president in his last year.” But I pray rhetoric does not become elevated, and that the enduring friendship of two Justices, who represented different views at the Supreme Court, is remembered, as it hovers over a Senate weighing a decision.

"Political Realignment and the 2020 Election"

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Thought of the Day

“Political Realignment and the 2020 Election”

September 18, 2020

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

“I think it would be a great tragedy…if we had our two major political parties divide on what we would call a conservative-liberal line. I think one of the attributes of our political system has been that we have avoided, generally, violent swings in Administrations from one extreme to another. And the reason we have avoided that is that in both parties there has been a broad spectrum of opinion. 

Richard Nixon Speech, California Commonwealth Club June 11, 1959

 

There are roughly 250 million Americans of voting age, of which about 62%, or 155 million, actually vote.

Gallop, as of May 2020, showed 31% of Americans identify as Democrats, 25% as Republicans and 40% as Independents. Despite the growth in unaffiliated voters. the numbers lend credence to Nixon’s observation, quoted above, that both parties are “big tent” parties. It explains why neither Party has been extremist in governing…yet.

 

But will that happy situation continue? There is reason for concern. There has been an inexorable trend toward big government. Ninety years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal expanded the role of government and he attempted to pack the Supreme Court. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society further inflated government’s role, increasing dependency on “benevolent” government. George W. Bush introduced the concept of “compassionate” conservativism, a euphemism for a more dominant part to be played by government. Barack Obama, with his call for universal health care and his vision expressed in “The life of Julia” of cradle-to-grave government, wanted government yet more powerful. In 1930, government expenditures accounted for 11.1% of GDP. By 1960, that number was 15.1% and today spending by government approaches 40% of GDP – levels last seen during World War II. 

 

Today’s Democrats, a Party once comprised of urbanites, private sector union members and leaders, immigrants, the poor and Dixiecrat segregationists, now encompasses suburban and coastal elites, Wall Street titans, tech company CEOs, globalists, academicians, government bureaucrats, public sector union leaders, the media and those in the entertainment businesses. Republicans, once the Party of fiscal conservatives, country club types, suburbanites, big business, religious conservatives and Wall Street, have become the Party of small business owners, the military, social and religious conservatives, “deplorables” (a catch-all phrase for working men and women throughout the nation, including those who believe in God, honor, duty, family and country), and a small number, like me, who put common sense above ideology.

 

The battle for the Presidency has become nasty. Each Party seeks to hold onto existing members as they search for new ones. An east coast conservative is now persona non grata at her or his country club. A west coast unionized policeman, no matter his or her race, is seen as the enemy by urban rioters. Using Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the Left has waged war against the Right since the 1960s, bringing, as President Obama said he would, a gun to a knife fight. They weaponized the IRS to go after opponents in 2012; they blamed the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens on an innocent Coptic Christian Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who was jailed. They weaponized the intelligence services in 2016, first in an attempt to destroy Mr. Trump’s candidacy and, when that failed, to impede his Presidency. Republicans tried statesmanship, in nominating John McCain in 2008; they tried propriety when Mitt Romney headed the ticket in 2012. Both lost. In 2016 they went with a man without dignity, statesmanship or propriety, but a man who would fight back. They nominated Donald Trump, and they won. 

 

If the DNC Platform is to be believed, a Biden-Harris (Harris-Biden?) administration would mark the end of free market capitalism, free speech and choice, all of which have led to the most successful republic the world has ever known.  The cynical, naïve and ill-educated who now control the Democrat Party are directing it toward Marxism and socialism. Leaders have sold followers a false promise of fairness, equal outcomes, free healthcare and education, a society where identity supersedes ideas. There are those who claim the goal is democratic socialism, as practiced in Scandinavia countries like Sweden. They misunderstand. While Sweden does have a robust welfare system, it is not socialist. The means of production are held privately; the government embraces free trade; there is no state-mandated minimum wage, and families are able to use public funds, in the form of vouchers, to finance their children’s education at private schools. As expressed by far-left Democrats, Socialism is authoritarian; it is McCarthyism; it suppresses individualism and free expression.

 

Socialism is a means to power for politicians and plutocrats who support them, like Michael Bloomberg who announced he will spend $100 million to help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in Florida. For the electorate, however, it is a trip into a dark and dystopian land. In her book Great Society, Amity Schlaes wrote about the siren call of socialism in the 1960s, a comment relevant today: “Socialism was so broad, vague and romantic that it was harder to discredit…So long as socialism was never complete, as long as socialists were still protesting and building, no one could dismiss socialism. That was the beauty of it.” Those who advocate socialism never identify it with the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazis), Cuba, Venezuela, or Communists in China and the old Soviet Union. Besides backing genocide (Nazis, Soviets and the Chinese), Socialism opens a back door that lets in restrictions on liberty, innovation, aspiration and hope. It will result in higher taxes for everyone. Ultimately, it leads to totalitarianism.

 

Democrats have become the Party of elites, forgetful of past supporters and disdainful of plebian opponents. Fearful of a Trump victory, they and a few “never-Trumpers” recently formed the Transition Integrity Project, a deceptively grandiose name for an authoritarian plan that would ensure no peaceful transition of power takes place, should Mr. Trump win re-election. Many blacks and Hispanics, once taken for granted by Democrats who purchased their allegiance through government payments, now realize they have been duped. “What do have to lose?” is the way President Trump put it at the Republican Convention when asking for their support. Republicans offer opportunity to minorities, while Democrats offer bounty. Blacks and Hispanics recognize dependency on government does not lead to success and happiness, that jobs bring dignity and that the traditional family matters. Thus, they have been leaving the Democrat Party. Mr. Trump’s percentage of their votes in November is likely to be the highest for any Republican in more than half a century. As well, immigrants who have come legally to these shores from Eastern Europe and Latin America understand that Socialism is not the panacea claimed. Freedom remains a powerful lure.

 

The last major political realignment was in the 1960s, when President Johnson’s promise of “guns and butter” caused blacks to migrate to the Democrat Party, and Nixon’s Southern Strategy brought conservative Southern whites into the Republican fold. We are now witness to another change. Nixon’s words, in the rubric above, were spoken at the end of the Eisenhower era, a time long past. Extremists have taken control of the Democrat Party. With “cancel culture,” a “broad spectrum of opinion” no longer exists. Will it cost them the election? We better hope it does.

"COVID -19 Has Gone to College - Or Has It?"

                                                             Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“COVID-19 Has Gone to College – Or Has It?”

September 11, 2020

 

“Education is the most powerful weapon

you can use to change the world.”

                                                                                                Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

                                                                                                Speech, July 16, 2003

 

A critical component of democracy is education. The perpetuation of our political institutions, as Abraham Lincoln warned in Springfield, Illinois on a January evening in 1838, is not a given. Passion, he warned, can be our enemy. “Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.” It is to teach one to reason, to think, to calculate that universities exist.

 

In his 1916 book Democracy and Education, the educational reformer John Dewey argued it is education that allows youth to become productive members of society. Franklin Roosevelt said that “the real safeguard to democracy is education.” It is a sentiment that has been expressed by hundreds of politicians and philosophers over the years. Today, in a risk adverse world, schools, colleges and universities weigh needs of students to learn versus fear of COVID-19 and lawsuits that might ensue. Nevertheless, online learning is no substitute for in-person classrooms.

 

Most would agree that a failure to open schools and colleges is harmful to students. However, there are some administrators and professors (as well as a few students) who are vulnerable, either because of age or comorbidities, so universities should proceed with caution. There are, however, some who want to keep the pandemic alive for political purposes, a view endorsed by mainstream media. A New York Times article last Sunday was headlined: “A New Front in America’s Pandemic: College Towns.” The article, which focused on the University of Iowa, reported there were “about 100 college communities around the country where infections have spiked in recent weeks as students returned for the fall semester” – a self-evident truth, as students did return to campuses. The article did add that “there has been no uptick in deaths in college communities,” but they failed to mention a subsequent decline in instances. For example, in Iowa City, there was a spike on August 27 and 28 (1,467 and 2,632 cases respectively), but, left unmentioned, by September 1 the number was down to 612 and on September 7 at 408, in line with where it had been before students returned to the campus. The headline was provocative and deceptive.

 

My wife and I have five grandchildren in college this fall, two sophomores and three freshmen. Their evidence is anecdotal but none the less, interesting. They attend five different universities in four states. The eldest is a sophomore at Bucknell, where their COVID-19 Dashboard reports three active cases, with 17,521 tests having been administered so far. She reported she was “not sure what percentage of classes are in person but all of mine meet in person.” She added: “We haven’t been able to play squash yet but the gym is open so I can go there which is nice.”  Our oldest grandson is a sophomore at Brandeis. All students are tested twice a week. For the two weeks ended September 6, 4,417 individuals were tested, with one testing positive. Two students are in isolation. As in all colleges, rules and regulations have been imposed. In an article for his student newspaper, he wrote: “This new regulation remains conscientiously observed to its necessary effect, but only to its necessary effect. The spirit of youth will find a method to express itself…” Youth will be youth! His classes are online and in-person.

 

Our third grandchild is a freshman at Notre Dame. Shortly after her arrival, a COVID-19 outbreak occurred, allegedly from an off-campus party. She wrote: “COVID definitely has a big presence on campus this year (we had to go online for two weeks because our numbers were so high), but now we are back in person.” 9,416 tests have been administered, with one positive case reported on Monday, which was down from 82 on August 19. The fourth oldest grandchild is a freshman at Wake Forest. According to their COVID-19 Dashboard, there have been forty-one positive cases since August 26 and only three in the last three days. He wrote: “COVID also has a big presence on how Wake operates. Most people only have one in-person class.” The fifth grandchild – she turned 18 yesterday! – is at Elon. She texted: “Elon only has 5 active cases and 78 people in isolation. All of my classes are in-person or hybrid, but the sports season is cancelled.” All five are doing well, as they adjust to a unique 2020 campus life.

 

As expected, infections rose as colleges and schools re-opened. But, critically, across the country, hospital occupancies declined, as did deaths – the latter peaked in the week ending April 18 at 17,039 and fell to 1,192 for the week ending August 29. (To put that number in perspective, about 55,000 Americans die every week.) As Dr. Scott Atlas, special adviser to the president and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, wrote this week in The Hill: “We know who is at risk. Only 0.2% of U.S. deaths [from COVID-19] have been people younger than twenty-five, and 80% have been people over sixty-five.” Schools and colleges, exercising caution, should re-open. Michael Barone, in an op-ed in the New York Post on September 7, pointed out that COVID-19 “has been less deadly to those under 65 than flus were.” Who, when in college, did not get sick?

 

With an election looming, the economy was Mr. Trump’s strongest suit as the year began. Unemployment among minorities was the lowest on record. Wages were rising for those at the low end. The middle class was coming back. The Middle East had quieted. China was being challenged. Then the virus appeared; lockdowns were imposed, schools and colleges were closed, commerce came to a halt. Democrats saw a new opening – vilify the President for his handling of the virus and keep enough of the economy shut down, so Mr. Trump loses what advantage he had. Substitute election day in-person voting with ever-earlier, and less safe guarded, voting by mail. Then, another shoe dropped. Protests and riots followed the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white Minneapolis policeman. That led to the resurrection of the Marxist Black Lives Matter group and gave new life to the fascist Antifa organization. Riots occurred in more than a dozen blue-run cities. People were killed, cars were burned, and property was destroyed. Democrats stuck by the rioters, referring to them as peaceful protesters. They called for the defunding of police, no matter the damage they had done to the lives and property of law-abiding citizens.

 

It was inevitable that COV ID-19 would be politicized. We will leave it to future historians as to whether the lockdowns and school closings were necessary. While we do not have a vaccine for the disease, we know more than we did six months ago – who is vulnerable, who is not, what medicines work, which do not, the value of sanitizing, masks and social distancing. Nevertheless, incredibly, Democrat Vice President candidate, Kamala Harris warned people not to get vaccinated against COVID-19, if one is developed and approved by the CDC and FDA before the election. So, is science to be ignored when it does not fit the narrative?

 

In answer to the question posed in the title of this essay – yes, COVID-19 has gone to college, a nuisance but not deadly and largely abiding in seclusion. As much as we would like, we cannot live without risk. Colleges should accept what risks exist and open normally. To not do so is to deprive the roughly twenty million college students from opportunities they have earned, and which they deserve.

 

 

"The Emperor's New Clothes - Decline of Western Civilization?"

                                                             Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Emperor’s New Clothes – Decline of Western Civilization?”

September 4, 2020

 

“Even so, let me boldly and plainly say that it has long seemed to me clear

 beyond any shadow of doubt that what is still called Western Civilization

 is in an advanced stage of decomposition, and that another Dark Age

 will soon be upon us, if, indeed, it has not already begun.”

                                                                                    Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)

                                                                                    English journalist and satirist

                                                                                    Speech, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 16, 1974

 

The story of the emperor’s new clothes is applicable to our times. Two swindlers, posing as weavers, appealed to the emperor’s vanity, a man fond of new clothes. They convinced him and his courtiers that only those fit for high office or brilliant of mind would be able to see the bright colors and patterns that would comprise his new outfit. For everybody else, they would be invisible. The weavers then wove air on the looms they had set up. Once finished, they had the emperor and his councilors approve what they had done. Not wanting to be seen as stupid or unfit, they all admired what they could not see. The emperor then paraded through town, while the weavers scurried away. It took a young child without pretension to alert the town folk that the emperor was naked. The people at first hushed the child, but as the truth was whispered throughout the crowd, people saw – the emperor was naked.

 

For the past several months, the tale has been spun that America is systemically racist and built on a foundation of slavery, that social justice must be pursued regardless of societal costs, that capitalism created privilege for white males and inequality for minorities and women, and that brutal police oppress people of color. It is a tale that says white males need be indoctrinated with critical race theory, a view that race is not biologically grounded but socially constructed by white people at the expense of people of color.

 

This mythical tale originated in elite universities – ironically, where endowments are the fruit of capitalism – whose wealth allowed professors and administrators to criticize the hand that feeds them. It has been abetted by a media, a vomitorium more interested in promoting ideology than in discovering truth. It is an orthodoxy that combines ignorance and shame and is intolerant of all who do not adhere to its “wokeness.” A recent survey conducted by Heterodox Academy and quoted by John McWhorter in the September issue of The Atlantic, found that “more than half of respondents considered expressing views beyond a certain consensus in an academic setting quite dangerous to their career trajectory.”

 

This orthodoxy instructs youth to condemn Western Civilization, the culture that has done more than any other to free people from the yoke of tyranny, lift them from poverty and extend lives. Many of these professors and journalists promote Marxism, which promises a transcendent life of sunny days and blue skies, a place where equality reigns, but which in reality is state-sponsored dictatorship and which was instrumental in the formation of Fascism, Nazism and Communism. Supporters of Socialism point to Nordic countries, failing to note their capitalistic ways and ignoring the dreary lives of Cubans, Venezuelans and the 90% of Chinese who are not members of the Communist Party.

 

Western civilization is not perfect. While its positive consequences have benefitted millions, its negative effects cannot be ignored. Territorial and religious wars have been fought. It produced empires that enriched a few at the expense of the many. Thousands of American Indians were killed or displaced as the frontier moved west. Western civilization produced Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But it also produced Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, Witold Pilecki, Dwight Eisenhower, Ruby Bradley and the thousands of men and women who joined the Resistance in France, Poland and other countries. Western civilization gave us Thomas Jefferson, William Blackstone, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie and the Wright Brothers. “The essential characteristic of Western civilization…is its concern for freedom from the state,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in his 1962 essay, “In Praise of Government.” In his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Samuel Huntington wrote: “The qualities that make a society western…are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society…”  

 

Yet, in the multicultural world, in which we live, we are told no culture is superior to another. So, questions must be asked: Why did Christianity flourish in Rome and then migrate north, east and west? Why did the enlightenment, which took people out of the dark ages, originate in Europe? Why did the concept of individual freedom give birth to the Declaration of Independence? Why did the Industrial Revolution, which did more to eradicate poverty and extend lives than any state-run program, emerge in Christian-dominated Europe? Why do people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America choose to migrate to Western countries? Why is the U.S. the number one choice of immigrants? With the exception of Macau, Singapore and Qatar, why have European and Anglo-sphere countries produced a GDP per capita that is multiples of those in Asia, Africa, Central and South America and Russia? It is not because the latter do not have resources or populations. It is not racism; it is culture – individual opportunity and personal responsibility, a representative form of government with separation of powers, rule of law, respect for the individual, minority rights and the ability to own property. Eleven and a half percent of the world’s population produces thirty percent of the world’s GDP. Without the West, what would standards of living be? What about life expectancy? What about the art, music, architecture and literature that Western Civilization has produced?

 

Many Americans look at the choices we have this November and despair. On one side they see a dyed blond-orange, boorish braggart, a non-conforming egotist who speaks with a New York accent. On the other, they see a professional politician, an insider who has spent half a century making a good living in Washington’s corridors of power, a nice man but one who has become incoherent and has bedded with those who would bring down the West, like the statues and monuments they have already toppled. In an op-ed a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal, Ruth Wisse, born to a Jewish family in what is now Ukraine and professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, noted differences and similarities between Czarist Russia and the Communist Soviet Union. She wrote of the political distinction between bad and worse: “America today is far removed from czarist Russia, but that lesson has governed my political thinking ever since. Because we in the United States start from a much better place, our ‘progressives’ may destroy even more of the good that exists. When there is no better choice, it is all the more important to vote for the merely bad over the worse.” That, to many, seems November’s choice. But to me the election is clear – to continue the slide toward the end of Western Civilization, or to persist with the Trump disruption that alienates Washington bureaucrats and insiders but returns political power to the people.

 

In every age, there are Cassandras. Malcolm Muggeridge’s prophecy was early. Nevertheless, attacks on the West have become more frequent and virulent. We have been spun this tale by those who blame the West, especially America, as oppressive and systemically racist. It is a tale instigated by “progressives” and brought to us by their accomplices in the media. Its purpose is power. Fearful of not being “woke,” schools, universities, businesses, non-profits and thousands of gullible people, like the emperor and his courtiers, have chosen blindness over truth. Let the child’s voice ring clear – this tale they promote is as naked as the emperor’s new clothes.