"Eleven Weeks in Europe - 1965"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essays from Essex

“Eleven Weeks in Europe – 1965”

May 29, 2021

 

“Short honeymoons are better than no honeymoons,

but long honeymoons are best of all.”

                                                                                                                           John L. Davey (1916-1984)

                                                                                                                           English missionary

                                                                                                                           Partners in God’s Love

                                                                                                                           Published posthumously, April 2007

 

When Caroline and I married on April 11, 1964, I had ten months of college to go. We were married in New York on a Saturday. On Sunday, we stopped to visit Old Sturbridge Village and then my grandmother in Wellesley before heading to New Hampshire. On Monday I was back in class and Caroline was looking for a job. Once my degree requirements were completed in February of 1965 and a job with Eastman Kodak lined up for June, we took our long-planned, but delayed, real honeymoon to Europe. We had saved $2,000. With it, we bought roundtrip tickets to Paris for $440.80[1] each and arranged to rent a car for the eleven weeks we would be there. We brought Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day, which had been first published eight years earlier. With a bit over $1000 in American Express Travelers Cheques, we felt confident in our plans. And we were right to feel so. After buying some gifts for ourselves, including crystal in Venice and a mantle clock in Switzerland, and “a little gift for everyone,” as Caroline reported to her parents, we returned home with $100.00.

 

On the evening of March 5, we flew to Paris, with a change in Brussels, seen off by my brother and his wife. We left from New York’s recently renamed John F. Kennedy Airport. Once in Europe, our route, in a white rented Volkswagen, took us south through Tours, Bordeaux and the beautiful port village of Saint-Jean-de Luz. We stopped in Madrid for four days and then headed to Alicante, where we spent five days in a pension across a highway from the beach. From there we drove along the Mediterranean coast, arriving in Rome on April 1. We then headed north toward Florence, Venice and arrived in Vienna in time to celebrate our first wedding anniversary, which we did at Vienna’s oldest restaurant, Griechenbeisl. After a side trip to Budapest, we headed west to Salzburg, Munich, Innsbruck and Zurich. From there we went to Vevey, where my grandfather had been born on February 4, 1873. After visits to Zermatt, Geneva and Grenoble, we headed south to the French village of Serres and then back to Paris. After eleven weeks, we flew home on May 21, met by Caroline’s parents.

 

There are only two times in one’s life when an extensive trip can be taken by most – when first starting out (with a job in hand but a delayed starting date) and when retired. Because of youth, energy and without the need for the luxuries one expects with age, the former is the most fun. We kept our living expenses low. Toward the end of the trip, I wrote my parents: “We were not staying at any first-class hotels, but they are clean and comfortable, and much more interesting.” Re-reading letters written to our parents during our belated honeymoon, along with Caroline’s diary, photographs, post cards and the Shell Touring Map we used have allowed us to re-live the trip. The photograph that accompanies this essay shows the two of us with Pat Bourdery, the sister of a friend of my parents. She had married a Frenchman in the 1930s. Widowed when we stayed a few days with her in mid-May, she lived on a small farm outside the village of Serres, in the Hautes-Alpes region of southeastern France. Caroline and I would hitch her burro ‘Kiki” to a small cart and go off on private, romantic picnics.

 

……………………………………………………..

 

Our room in Paris, when we arrived on March 6, was small, inexpensive, with the bathroom at the end of the hall and down a flight of stairs. After two or three days, we headed south. At a small pension in Tours, the proprietor informed us that a bath would cost an extra two francs (approximately $0.40). When we told him it was too expensive, he removed the stopper. Not to be denied, Caroline stuffed a T-shirt in the drain. At the Prado Museum in Madrid, we enjoyed the copy of Rubens’ “Rape of Europa,” which shows the Phoenician Princess Europa being carried off by Zeus in the form of a bull, appropriate, we felt, for Spain. After four days in Madrid, we drove south to Alicante. Caroline wrote to my parents of the landscape: “…rows and rows of olive trees…The leaves look as though they were brushed with silver.” We booked into the Hotel Costa Azur, at a cost of $7.87 a day for the two of us, which included a private bath and three meals a day. We spent five days, recovering from work and college classes. We enjoyed the beach and swam in the Mediterranean. Our drive east took us through Barcelona, to the walled city of Carcassonne, which had been used by the Germans as a headquarters. We took the tour conducted in French, because, as I wrote my parents, “the tour in English was about 7X as expensive.”  The next day, in Perpignan, we had our car serviced at the Hotchkiss (my mother’s maiden name) Garage, across from our hotel. We continued along the Mediterranean Coast, past Marseilles, with a side trip through Aix-en-Provence, back down to Cannes, Nice and Monaco, where we saw Princess Grace of Monaco (Grace Kelly) exiting a building. On the road between Aix-en-Provence and Montagne Sainte-Victoire, unable to find an affordable hotel, we slept in sleeping bags under the stars.

 

Crossing the border into Italy, we drove past Genoa and saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa by moonlight, and then spent the night in our Volkswagen bug. Five nights in Rome followed, where we spent hours in the Sistine Chapel, the Colosseum, museums and other touristy places. I wrote my parents (both sculptors) that my favorite piece was Michelangelo’s “Moses” in the Church of San Pietro. Caroline sent a postcard to my parents from Florence about Rome: “We were there 5 nights and still feel as though we only touched the surface.”  From Florence, our route took us over the Apennines, through Bologna and across the Po River at Ferrara, near where my father had crossed twenty years earlier with the 10^th Mountain Division. After crossing under German shelling on April 23, 1945, he wrote my mother a week later: “We made the bridgehead across the Po River, which was without doubt the most exciting boat ride I ever took, and I hope I never take another like it.” With no one firing at us, but hunkered down in our “beetle” just in case, we crossed the Po in under a minute. We spent a few days in Venice, where, on the island of Murano, “we bought,” as Caroline wrote to her parents, “some very beautiful wine, liquor and water glasses.” We had them shipped to her parents in New York.

 

We left Venice early Saturday morning, April 10^th, as we wanted to celebrate our first wedding anniversary the next day in Vienna, which we did.  That morning we attended a small church where the Vienna Choir Boys performed. We spent the week visiting St. Stephen’s Cathedral, watching the Lipizzaners of the Spanish Riding School at Hofburg Palace, riding the Wiener Riesenrad, Vienna’s 212-foot-tall Ferris Wheel, driving out to Schönbrunn Palace, the Hapsburg’s 1,441 room summer palace and Baden bei Wein. On Easter weekend – the next weekend – we joined a tour to Budapest, with fifteen Austrians, two American school teachers, four Italians and one German. The four Italians and the German were our age, and we became fast friends over the next two days. Still a member of the U.S. Army Reserve, I was nervous (needlessly, as it turned out), as armed Soviet soldiers boarded our bus to check passports and go through our luggage. It was the contrast between a free Vienna and Communist-controlled Budapest that was most obvious. I wrote my parents: “You should have seen the crowd that gathered and the way they looked when we left. It is all very tragic.” Caroline wrote her family: “Boy, count your blessings and be thankful we are who we are and have what we have. You don’t realize that until you have crossed over into the Communist section.” 

 

Two more days in Vienna and then it was off to beautiful Salzburg, where we walked up to the Fortress Hohensalzburg, instead of riding the funicular, to save a few pfennigs. In Munich, we visited with the sister of a friend of ours and had dinner with the wife of a couple we had met in Vienna. (Her husband was in Liberia on business.) Caroline wrote my sister and her husband: “The beer in Germany is delicious, and we seem to be drinking quite a bit.” From Munich it was on to Innsbruck, where I skied Patscherkofel, where the 1964 Olympic downhill race had taken place. After getting lost on the way down and having to hike part way back up (too proud and too cheap to take the cable car), Caroline met me at the bottom of the Luge track.

 

We crossed Switzerland, spending a couple of days in Zurich, then on to Vevey where we stayed at the Pension Beau Séjour and looked up my grandfather’s, whose name I carry, birth certificate. We spent two nights at the Hotel Dom in Zermatt, where the view from our room was of the Matterhorn. In a cable car, descending the 500-meter cliff from Sunnegga that looks down on the village of Zermatt, Caroline stood looking out, while acrophobia kept me cowering in the rear. In Grenoble, Caroline felt ill, so I had dinner alone at the railroad station. The next day, she felt better as we drove to Serres to visit the hospitable Madam Bourdery. We had a wonderful, relaxing three days in this mountain village, picnicking and swimming in remote, sylvan pools. From this small village, I sent Caroline a postcard, which she received at the American Express office in Paris: “Wasn’t this the most beautiful part of our trip?” By the 19^th of May we were in Paris (in a better room than the one we had eleven weeks earlier!), our honeymoon behind us, ready to board Air France flight 015 on the 21^st, home to the U.S., and back to the real world.

 

The trip was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Caroline wrote to her parents from Vienna: “This trip is really wonderful. We are free to leave, and do as we want, and to stay as long as we want.” Jobs, children, schools, and many long years of delightful married life, would follow. But we will always have this trip to look back on. A friend, as he got older, once told me: “I regret nothing that I have done. I only regret the things I did not do.” Leaving for Europe, as we did, airline tickets in hand, clinging to Frommer’s book and the keys to a rented Volkswagen “beetle,” we did the crazy thing. But, in doing so, we got to know one another even better, and we made lasting memories from our eleven weeks in Europe.

"Cult of Personality v. Suppression of Voices"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Cult of Personality v. Suppression of Voices”

May 25, 2021

 

“The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.”

                                                                                                                                Alexander Berkman (1870-1936)

                                                                                                                                Author, The Bolshevik Myth, 1925

 

Olawale Daniel, founder of TechAtLast International, once said: “The most dangerous and powerful people in the world do not carry guns or shoot missiles; they write code to surveil and suppress opposing views.” There is no question that a commanding personality can become demagogic, especially when emotion supplants reason, and the goal is nefarious. But a demagogue only becomes dangerous when accompanied by a willing state, a compliant media and a culture of conformity that does not permit dissenting voices. So long as people are free to exercise their natural rights to speak, write, assemble and pray, people will remain the master and politicians the servants.

 

For four years the Left ranted about the risk to democracy, with a “demagogic” Donald Trump in the White House. They spoke of his coarseness, exaggerations, and his non-PC speech. Ignored were the facts he diminished government’s impact on individuals through deregulation and reduced government’s resources through lower taxes. A charismatic personality can camouflage a bad leader, as the world learned in the last century, with Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, but it can also magnify a good leader, like Churchill, FDR or Ronald Reagan.  

 

It is the suppression of voices that should concern lovers of freedom. In 1950, when the United States was experiencing a “Red Scare” and Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) was starting his infamous hearings, President Truman sent a special message to Congress on August 8: “…we must be eternally vigilant against those who would undermine freedom in the name of security.” Three years later, in the March 1953 issue of the Vassar Alumnae Magazine, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote: “Restrictions of free thought is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one Un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” Over the years, free expression allowed man to grow and expand his horizons. Freedom, progress and wealth are its progeny. It is a never-ending process, which will continue so long as man is able to think, speak and act freely.

 

In his concurrence in Whitney v. California (1927), Justice Louis Brandies wrote: “Man feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.” When universities ban books for fear of hurtful language, they do damage to those they purport to protect. When politicians repress opposing views with threats of investigations and inquiries, they do irreparable harm to our Constitution. When tech companies shut down social media accounts for those they dislike, they set precedents that affect all mankind. When mainstream media reports only the news that fit their narrative, they promote ignorance rather than knowledge. During the Trump years, the response of the Left was far more dangerous than anything Mr. Trump said or did, for they blocked dissent and suppressed speech. It is not just Mr. Trump who was treated in this manner, but those who supported him. This was done under a hypocritical flag of moral righteousness, abetted by mainstream media and a cultural environment that celebrated wokeness, and which canceled history and opinions when they did not conform to a predetermined narrative.  

 

Who is responsible for this state of affairs? Politicians? The media? Schools and universities? Churches? Wall Street and large corporations? TV personalities? Cultural institutions? Hollywood? Publishers? Eleemosynary organizations? All bear some responsibility. In a political environment inundated with conflicting opinions and no one to sort them out other than ourselves, we must, like Diogenes, conduct the search for truth alone, whether it is asking about the unpublished Durham Report, learning exactly what happened on January 6, or uncovering the origins of COVID-19. In an undated video, Carl Sagan (1934-1996), the astronomer and planetary scientist, spoke: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge.”

 

While Sagan was speaking about science, his words reflect the current environment of enforced conformity to woke ideas regarding equity, diversity, inclusion, victimization, race and gender. Roger Kimball, writing in the May issue of The Spectator, noted that at one time colleges and universities were dedicated to the “pursuit of truth and the transmission of the highest values of our civilization.” Today, the “mantra is ‘diversity.’ The reality is strictly enforced conformity about any ideas that might disturb the heavy moral slumber of wokeness.” The story of our past is cancelled, for fear it celebrates the whiteness of our European ancestors, thus denying today’s youth the history of man’s progress over the centuries. Today, some of the United States’ most successful individuals emigrated from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. It was here, within our culture and customs and under our government and our laws, that they flourished. Is not that something to recognize and celebrate?

 

History moves across a continuum, reflecting events and ideas, along with changing and unchanging values. We cannot know who we are without learning of our past, the good and the bad. Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter, under the banner of equity, would have us fall backward into a discriminatory and divisive past, when we should be moving forward toward a mutually respectful and tolerant future. In a recent column in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote: “When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all-too predictable future becomes terrifying.” Staying silent, when an enormous cloud of fairy dust is sprinkled on the people by woke elites, is not the answer.

 

While there is, at present, no mesmerizing politician on the Left capable of lassoing the current cultural environment of wokeness and suppressed speech, the landscape has been prepared and the gate is open. I am reminded of how the ground in Germany was furrowed and seeded in the half dozen years leading to Hitler’s Chancellorship in 1933. We must be vigilant. For, it is when the charismatic politician enters an arena with uncritical support from the media, universities, woke corporations and cultural institutions that we have to fear.

"Missing the Forest for the Tree"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Missing the Forest for the Tree”

May 19, 2021

 

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

                                                                                Attributed to Albert Einstein, but also to Mark Twain and others.

 

A principled stand by a politician is admirable. Too often, politicians follow the road of least resistance (or the one with the most voters). But when a principled stand evolves into stubbornness, the forest can be lost in concentration on a single tree. That, in my opinion, is the problem of Elizabeth Cheney (R-WY).

 

Most Republicans do not want to denigrate President Trump, but neither do they want to elevate him. Benign neglect is the preferred path. The good of what he did – freeing up the economy from restrictive regulations and confining taxes, repatriating more than a trillion dollars in corporate cash, raising wages for the lowest income workers, and creating the most jobs ever for Black and Hispanic; taking real steps to resolve the border crisis; addressing the bureaucratic morass in Washington; calling out international governmental bodies for their undemocratic ways; getting NATO nations to pay a greater share of their defense; confronting enemies of freedom like Communist China, Russia and North Korea; signing the Abraham Accords and instigating Operation Warp Speed to get a COVOD-19 vaccine out in record time – was overshadowed by a supersized ego and mean-spirited, feckless Tweets.

 

Democrats, on the other hand, would like to keep the spirit of Donald Trump front and center. While it is true that his ardent Republican supporters do not want to give up on him, neither do Democrat leaders who see him as someone around whom they can rally their troops. Trump Derangement Syndrome helped Mr. Trump with the public when he was President because complaints about him were so outrageous. But it hurts the Republican Party and their chances today when anti-Trump opinions are voiced by other Republicans. “Prudent Republicans,” wrote Andrew McCarthy in the May 15^th issue of National Review, “perceive that the best way to move on from Trump is to stop talking about him.” I agree.

 

If Republicans want to take control of the House and Senate in 2022, they will have to focus on issues, not on the personality of the former President. Single issue politicians detract from legitimate policy debates. In refusing to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump has done no more than what Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In all three cases (2000, 2016, 2020), there were certainly electoral irregularities, but there always have been. However, from what we now know, none of those elections would have been reversed. “If questioning the results of a particular election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath,” writes Mollie Hemingway in her forthcoming book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, “nearly the entire Democratic Party and media establishment would have been incarcerated following the 2016 election.” It is not that Mr. Trump’s character should be ignored, but that it must be kept in perspective.

 

As for the January 6 protests that culminated with a number of people making their way past security into the Capitol, an independent commission has been created to investigate exactly what happened. But to call the event an “insurrection” is argumentative and misleading. More than 400 individuals have been arrested, with dozens incarcerated without trial. What ever happened to one of the most sacred principles in American justice, the presumption of innocence? None of those entering the capitol that day, according to reports, carried a firearm. The only individual shot and killed was a thirty-five-year-old female protester, Ashli Babbitt, from California. She was shot by a police officer who has been cleared of any wrongdoing and has never been identified. Would media silence have reigned were roles reversed and had the protester been a Democrat? Nevertheless, we should await the finding of the commission, and trust it will be as non-partisan as possible – a difficult, if not impossible, task in this factional age.

 

While it is still too early to claim the Biden Administration a success or failure, its start has certainly done little to heal a fractured nation, despite promises in his Inaugural. On the other hand, his Administration’s policies have offered opportunities for his opponents. His positive ratings have slipped, while his negative ones have risen. As Gerard Baker wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal, this is what happens “when you construct an ideological dreamscape made up of impossible promises, implausible assertions and dishonest propositions.” A few of the Biden policies that offer opportunity to Republicans: The crisis on the southern border, with children being smuggled in by paid “coyotes,” and sometimes abandoned on remote desert ranches; a rise in urban crime amid continued calls to defund the police; an education system that looks to end meritocracy and free speech, while promoting racial differences rather than encouraging melting pot commonalities; urging schools to adopt the segregationist and Marxist views embedded in Critical Race Theory, and the simultaneous “cancellation” of our history and literature; threatening economic expansion by paying people not to work; a continued rise in federal debt to historic levels; a federal budget that proposes a 16% increase in non-defense, domestic discretionary spending, with only a 1.6% increase in defense spending; a Federal Reserve that seems unconcerned regarding the inflationary consequences of an expansive monetary policy; sharply higher gasoline prices and shortages in six states; abandonment of the Abraham Accords and a rise in Middle East violence; an aggressive China, which threatens Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Russia, with increased troops on Ukraine’s eastern border. 

 

With the “forest” so ripe with issues beneficial to Republicans, it would be a shame to let the “tree” that is former President Trump be the focus of Republicans looking to take back the Senate and the House in 2022. While Republican leadership must understand the reasons for Mr. Trump’s popularity (and they must appeal to his supporters), they must also highlight and concentrate on all that which has gone wrong in the first few months of Mr. Biden’s Administration. For Republicans, to repeatedly bang on the anti-Trump drum is a form of insanity that will surely lead to political losses.  On the other hand, the misdeeds and errors of the Biden Administration would be, as Rahm Emanuel might say, a terrible thing to waste.

"The Age of Acrimony," Jon Grinspan

 In a letter to a concerned John Sinclair, founder of Scotland’s Board of Agriculture, who had brought news of British General John Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga in October 1777, Adam Smith wrote: “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” He meant that countries are able to cope with disappointments, poor policies and bungling politicians. Britain lost the battle at Saratoga and the American Revolution, but they want on to create the greatest empire the world had ever known. In the second half of the 19^th Century, the United States went through a trying time, just as we are today. It is worth remembering Adam Smith’s voice of calm in his reply to Mr. Sinclair.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Burrowing into Books

“The Age of Acrimony,” Jon Grinspan

May 16, 2021

“There is incredible variability in how we have used our democracy, with plenty

of room for ugliness without apocalypse, and for reform without utopia.”

                                                                                                                Jon Grinspan

                                                                                                                The Age of Acrimony, 2021

 

The preamble to the Constitution begins: “We the people of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union…” The emphasis is on “more.” The Founders never claimed to have formed a “perfect” Union, but one better than those that then existed. Also, in providing a process to improve and adjust the Constitution amendments were permitted. In fact, the first ten amendments (the Bill of Rights) were ratified on December 15, 1791. In the subsequent 230 years, seventeen additional amendments have been ratified. Our democracy is not static; it adjusts, not easily but judiciously, as customs and behaviors change. Jon Grinspan has given us, who now live in a new age of political strife, a well-written – albeit brief – informative look at the fifty years following the Civil War – a time of political acrimony. 

 

The time span covered by Mr. Grinspan – 1865 to 1915 – begins with the assassination of Lincoln and a Country emerging from the Civil War; it ends with the United States having surpassed Britain as the world’s largest industrial power. He takes us through Reconstruction and how it petered out, with violence in the South against blacks and with the North having given up on the concept of equal rights. We travel through the “Gilded Age” when fortunes were made in railroads, mining, oil, steel, electricity, shipping, newspapers and finance, and when former farmhands, women and children were recruited to work in city sweat shops and factories, where they performed low-paying, mind-numbing (often dangerous) repetitive jobs. His story ends with the reforms of the “Progressive Era.” In the early post-Civil War period, the public wanted the entertainment that political campaigners provided: “They expected charisma and wit and the hottest-burning fuel of the era: political outrage.” During these fifty years, we saw eleven Presidents, high voter turnout and two Presidents assassinated, Garfield and McKinley. Voter turnout peaked in the election of 1896 at 79.5%. Twenty-eight years later it troughed at 48.8% in 1924. While Republicans dominated the White House during the fifty years covered by Mr. Grinspan, elections were always close. The only two Presidents to be elected with more than 53% of the popular vote during that period were Ulysses Grant in 1872 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. Presidential election winners in 1880,1884, 1888, 1892 and 1912 won with less than 50% of the popular vote.

 

The author employs the father-daughter team of William D. “Pig Iron” Kelley (1814-1890) and Florence Kelley (1859-1932) to guide us through the political history of that era. Will Kelley was a thirty-year Republican member of Congress from Philadelphia. He had been an abolitionist and was a supporter of tariffs, especially on pig iron, an intermediate product used in the manufacture of steel, products important to Pennsylvania’s economy. A self-made man and exceptional public speaker, he loved the heat of political battle: “These are terrible times for timid people.” Florence Kelley, as a young girl, devoured the books in her father’s library. She became a political activist and social reformer. She graduated from Cornell and studied under the German economist Friedrich Engels. While her father was a politician, Grinspan writes: “Florie was beginning to see the limits on American electoral politics as a solution to social problems…imagining a future unchecked by constituents.” She had grown up in a time when politics were prized but not governance. She preferred the concept of professional bureaucrats to run government, not elected officials. She fought against sweat shops, and she fought for a minimum wage, an eight-hour day and the rights of children. She founded the National Consumer League and was a co-founder of the NAACP.

 

One is tempted, in looking back from today’s rancorous political atmosphere, to acknowledge truth in the old saying that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But that is not correct, at least not in this instance. While both then and now were [and are] characterized by rapid commercial advancement and acrimonious politics, there are significant differences. Wealth gaps have narrowed, and college graduation rates have improved. In terms of wealth gaps, Mr. Grinspan quotes one source that claimed 5,000 people controlled 50% of the wealth in the 1880s, or one hundredth of one percent of the then population. Today, approximately one percent (3.3 million people) own 43% of the nation’s wealth. Theodore Roosevelt’s trust busting, the implementation of a federal income tax in 1913 and an estate tax in 1916 helped mitigate wealth inequalities. As for education, college graduates, as a percent of the population, have gone from two percent in 1900 to more than a third today. The 19^th Amendment and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 greatly expanded voter rolls. On the darker side, however, unaccountable bureaucrats – those desired by Florence Kelley – have changed the nature of a government into one less responsive to the people.

 

Yet, one finishes Mr. Grinspan’s book with a sense of optimism. As the rubric above this essay suggests, our democracy is versatile. It has been, is now, and will be tested. It bends but does not easily break. Nevertheless, liberty is precious and must be guarded. Everything has its breaking point. All laws, rules and regulations present a tug-of-war between the rights of individuals versus the needs of society. It is the balance a democracy seeks. In a speech at the Wisconsin State Far in September 1859, Abraham Lincoln quoted the ancient adage attributed to a Persian monarch: “And this, too, shall pass away.” But he added that the saying was “not quite true.” He pointed out that it is the cultivation of the physical, moral and intellectual worlds within each of us that sets the course toward prosperity and happiness, in our quest for the “more perfect union.”  Lincoln’s point in his speech: It is only because of the efforts of individuals that the forward trajectory of democracy shall not pass away. Mr. Grinspan has provided a pertinent and providential history of our experiment with a democratic republic, during an acrimonious time.

"Rsik"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Risk”

May 12, 2021

 

“If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.”

                                                                                                                                                Neil Simon (1927-2018)

 

Recently, while walking around Boone Hall Plantation and Gardens, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, my son and his family came across an alligator. They watched it, but wisely did not approach it. Risk aversion can be a wise decision. Seth Klarman, president of Baupost Group once wrote: “In contrast to speculators preoccupation with rapid gains, value investors demonstrate risk aversion by trying to avoid loss.” But as Paul Singer, another wise investor, remarked regarding the role of government in our economy: “…the forces of risk aversion and constant conflict serve to stultify and narrow the range of ideas up for debate.” We must walk the line, avoiding obvious risks, but being unafraid to speak out and take risks. “Security,” wrote Helen Keller, “is mostly a superstition. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

 

Every day we make hundreds, perhaps thousands, of decisions that involve risk. Many, if not most, are subconscious – standing on one leg to put on our trousers, reaching high for a coffee cup, ignoring the slippery spot on the floor, crossing a street. Do we take the short cut over the mountain, or the longer but safer route? Determining risk is a measurement of success versus failure. In investing, businesses calculate the potential for profit against the possibility of loss, which is why the Biden Administration’s proposal to strip Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson and Johnson of their patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines add risk to all future investments drug companies make in research. If patent protection can be breached, what does that say to those who invest in scientific research, and to those who risk everything in the creative arts, all of which are supposed to be protected by intellectual property rights? 

 

At a time when hesitancy has caused the number of daily vaccinations to decline by almost two thirds, the President, who was fully vaccinated in December, should not have worn a mask when outside and not surrounded by others. Yet he did just that last week when he and his wife left Jimmy and Roslyn Carter’s home. The message: the vaccine does not assure safety. When the FDA ordered Emergent BioSolutions to suspend production of Johnson & Johnson’s single dose vaccine because seven out of seven million vaccinated patients developed life-threatening blood clots, was the risk worth the cost of scaring people off being vaccinated? On Jimmy Kimmel’s show last week, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was frustrated that nearly 26% of the population won’t get the vaccine, yet he said he would not dine in an indoor restaurant, despite being fully vaccinated. What kind of a message was he sending? Being vaccinated will not eliminate all risk of getting COVID-19, but it greatly reduces it. Responsible leaders lead, not inject fear.

 

While COVID-19 made us more risk averse health-wise, we have become more precipitate in our willingness to take financial risk. Financial and commodity markets soared over the past twelve months, especially products like crypto currencies, with the price of Bitcoins having risen over 500% from $8815.23 on May 12, 2020, to $56,871 yesterday. Given its volatility, is it possible to gauge what a cup of coffee or a tank of gas will cost in Bitcoins tomorrow or in two months? Over the past year, the value of Tesla stock has risen 280%, from $161.88 to $617.20 yesterday. While the company’s growth rate has been phenomenal, has not risk for the investor increased with a price to earnings ratio over 500 times? During that same time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 44%%, from 23,764.78 a year ago to 34,269.16 yesterday. Over the past year, copper prices are up 100% and wheat is up 22%, suggesting inflation may well be in our future. Stock markets reflect future economic growth and imply a discounted rate for forecasted earning. US GDP is forecast to be up 6.5% in 2021 and 3.1% in 2022. Based on consensus earnings estimates, the S&P 500 is selling at 22X 2021 earnings and 19X 2022 earnings. How does one measure risk in valuations and the likelihood that forecasted earnings will be correct? With Treasury borrowing record amounts, what interest rate should be used in discounting future earnings? In the May 1, 2021 issue of The Credit Strategist, Michael Lewitt wrote: “We are in a bubble because valuations of virtually every asset class are untethered from economic fundamentals.” However, the decision to sell assumes one can successfully time markets. But, as Laszlo Birinyi in his May Market Commentary wrote, “…since 2009 [with the S&P 500 up 280%], there have been 3,082 trading days, but just 60 of those days have accounted for the entire gain in the market.” Who among us is that astute?

 

Government believes it can remove risk in people’s lives and achieve equity, by focusing on equality of outcomes, rather than equal opportunities. But does not an anti-meritocratic, government-led diversity policy risk unintended results? Historically, individuals were free to make choices, assume responsibility, and then reap the benefits or suffer the consequences of their decision. In the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union address two weeks ago, Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) made the point: “The beauty of the American Dream is that families get to define it for themselves.” In mediating risk, will the opportunity to better one’s life be diminished? To live freely is to accept risk. When does cradle-to-grave security interfere with the freedom to create individual opportunities?

 

We should not live in fear, yet a well-intentioned government intent on protecting us makes people Eloi-like. Schools and colleges have created an environment – now passed on to businesses, government offices, Hollywood and the media – where to challenge the consensus is to risk retribution or worse. Whites are told to view themselves as oppressors, to atone for the past sin of black slavery. To disagree is to risk condemnation. To question whether a trans woman should compete in female sports is to risk rebuke. To question Critical Race Theory, which itself is discriminatory, is to be tagged a racist. Is aversion to risk in expressing opinions what we want for our children, students, employees and citizens?

 

One result of this preference for a collective emphasis on conformity and government-ensured safety over freedom and personal choice has been a rise in pessimism for the future. A Gallop Poll last year found that pride in the U.S. is the lowest in two decades. A Pew Research survey in 2019 noted that by 2050 the U.S. will be worse off in many ways, including the national debt, political division and the cost of health care. That pessimism has manifested itself in record low fertility rates. For 2020, according to data from the CDC released last week, the total fertility rate (TFR) was 1.64, the lowest since tracking began in the 1930s. (A TFR of 2.1 is needed for a population to remain constant.) This was not simply a response to COVID-19, as total births have been declining since 2007, the last year the TFR was above replacement. By 2050, it is expected that the number of people over 65 will exceed those under 18. People who fear the future don’t have children. How do we recover the optimism of our Founders who risked so much?

 

Fifty-seven years ago, Caroline and I took a risk in getting married. I had done my military service but was still in college, with no idea as to how I would make a living. Despite a future we could not see, we had faith in each other. The road ahead held challenges and included potholes, but we believed in ourselves and in the Country in which we were blessed to be born, raised and where we lived. So, my advice: Be not afraid to take risks, just not foolish ones, like petting an alligator. “In a world that is changing really quickly,” said Mark Zuckerberg, “the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” Margaret Thatcher once wrote: “Discipline yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult. It is the high road to pride, self-esteem and personal satisfaction.” My advice: Be self-reliant, responsible, and accountable. Do not let government dictate choices or deter you from taking sensible risks to improve your lot. Look ahead, optimistically, with clear, wide-open eyes.

"Our Woman in Moscow," by Beatriz Williams

 As most are aware, Beatriz is my daughter-in-Law who writes historical fiction. She is a New York Time best-selling novelist. This is her 13^th novel. Additionally, she has co-authored three novels with Lauren Willig and Karen White. Having grown up on the West Coast, she now lives in Connecticut where, as she says, she “divides her time between laundry and writing.”  And, I add, raising with her husband, our son, four wonderful children.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“Our Woman in Moscow,” Beatriz Williams

May 10, 2021

 

“…the sisterhood is not divided neatly into adventurous Ruths and

retiring Irises…bravery is woven from all kinds of different fabric…”

                                                                                                                                Our Woman in Moscow

                                                                                                                                Beatriz Williams

 

The worldwide depression of the 1930s caused many naively idealistic, college-educated young people to join the Communist Party. They saw capitalism as a failed system and believed Soviet propaganda regarding the benefits of Marxism. They ignored the estimated one to two million who died in Soviet Gulag camps and the six to seven million who were deliberately starved in Ukraine. The fact that the Soviet Union was an ally during World War II, imposed a media silence on the horrific nature of Stalin. It was not until the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 that the Cold War got underway. The Soviets were able to detonate the bomb because they had turned a few British and American agents and infiltrated U.S. and British intelligence services. That is the backdrop to Beatriz’s book.

 

She uses different time periods: 1940 (before the U.S. entered the War); 1948 (aftermath of the War); and 1952 (during the McCarthy hearings). She intermixes her characters with historical figures, including Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean who were part of the Cambridge Five, a British spy ring penetrated by Soviets, and which was active from the 1930s into the early 1950s. 

 

Five characters dominate the story: Ruth Macallister and her twin, Iris; Sasha Digby; Sumner Fox; and Lyudmila Ivanova. In 1940, Ruth and Iris are twenty-two. As a youth, Ruth was blond, “long limbed and just shapely enough.” She liked to take charge, a trait she still has. Once, she was accused of having a “God complex.” But she is also described by those who worked with her during the War as “fiercely intelligent, honorable, tough but fair and not above using [her] personal charisma.” Iris is quieter, with a fondness for sketching. As a young girl, she had “chubby limbs” and “frizzy curls, the color of dirt.” It is Iris that surprises. “…loyalty was the stuff of Iris’s bones.” Toward the end of the story, she reflects: “…part of her wants to explain…that she was never the little pumpkin of Ruth’s imagination, that the sisterhood is not divided neatly into adventuresome Ruths and retiring Irises, that bravery is woven from all kinds of different fabric…” True to character, she keeps those thoughts private.

 

Like Ruth and Iris, Sasha Digby grew up in New York. His real name, which he does not share, is Cornelius Alexander Digby. Iris meets him in the Galleria Borghese, while studying Bernini’s The Rape of Proserpina. They had met, briefly, in New York, as his mother and the Macallister’s uncle Charles Schuyler had grown up together. Sasha is tall, blond, an “Apollo” who smokes too much and is secretive. He works in the American embassy in Rome. The other man is Sumner Fox: “…a large fellow, not exceptionally tall but built like an angus steer, all shoulders, square rawboned head on which a bare half inch of extremely pale hair bristles-up like a field of mowed hay.” Now working for a U.S. intelligence agency, he had been known for his football prowess at Yale. A fifth character has her own chapters: Lyudmila Ivanova who works in Moscow for Soviet Intelligence. She has an “avowed hatred of bourgeois capitalist society” and an “exceptionally ascetic lifestyle.”  She has two rules for survival – first, do not attract attention and second, trust nobody. Her office has responsibility for British defectors. She waits, “like a spider in the center of an exquisite web.”

 

The book’s title will remind the reader of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. Like Greene’s novel, this story takes place mostly during the Cold War, with democracy pitted against communism. But, while Greene’s story used satire to poke fun at Britain’s MI6, this is a story of the honor, defiance and courage of two women, especially of the one who becomes “our woman” in Moscow.

"Biden - A Marionette?"

Writing this essay was not easy and took longer than most I have written. The subject is a sensitive one, but nonetheless important, and I have tried to be fair. But if my speculation is correct, it reflects a cynicism unique to our politics.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Biden – A Marionette?”

May 5, 2021

 

“It is possible to be a puppet on a string without fully realizing it.”

                                                                                                                                Life is a Cocktail, 2017

Steven Redhead

                                                                                                                                Founder Life Coaching Systems

 

In February 2017, less than a month after he had taken office, Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), in a floor speech, questioned Mr. Trump’s mental health. He was joined by Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA). According to an article in The Hill on February 17, 2017, thirty-five psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers signed a letter to the New York Times that stated, “the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions make him incapable of serving safely as president.” The American Psychiatric Association has long held that to render a professional opinion on a public figure one has not examined is unethical. However, that didn’t stop the thirty-five, none of whom had met with Mr. Trump. We now have a new President. While no gaggle of psychiatrists has weighed in on Mr. Biden, one wonders: Are the President’s cognitive abilities declining, as some have suggested? The truth is, we don’t know; but some, including me, are suspicious that age has taken its toll on the man.   

 

President Biden has been a stutterer since childhood. According to the National Stuttering Association, stuttering is a “neurological disorder that interferes with the production of speech.” It does not indicate a psychological disorder or mental deficiency. It does not suggest dementia, but neither does it preclude it. Dementia is a catch-all word to describe various symptoms of cognitive decline. Early manifestations would include forgetfulness and limits to social skills and reasoning. In 1988, Mr. Biden suffered two brain aneurysms, but there is no reason to believe they would lead to any form of dementia.

Like those eminent psychiatrists and psychologists who passed judgement on President Trump, my opinion regarding President Biden is empirical, not analytical, so accept my words with caution – a warning the Times did not offer. Yet, to publicly question Mr. Biden’s fitness for office is apparently off limits. In 2017, Republicans like Mike Simpson (R-ID) agreed that Mr. Trump exaggerated and made false statements, and that it is always fair to question any President’s judgements. Yet, there is a deafening silence from both sides of the aisle when it comes to questioning the mental well-being of President Biden. Why?

 

Why do I feel as I do? Mr. Biden spent thirty-six years in the nation’s most deliberative body – the U.S. Senate. He could be mean-spirited, as Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas came to learn, but he could also be a consensus builder. He campaigned as a moderate and unifier, yet he has governed by Executive Order, signing over sixty EOs in his first hundred days as President, more than double what Mr. Trump did and more than triple what Mr. Obama signed in his first hundred days.

 

During the campaign, Mr. Biden’s handlers kept a tight rein on him. Like 19^th Century Presidential candidates who campaigned from their front porches, Mr. Biden communicated to the electorate from the basement of his home outside Wilmington, Delaware. In contrast with Mr. Trump who enjoys dueling with a Press that despises him, Mr. Biden, as President, has shunned the media that adores him, as they ask about his favorite ice cream or photograph him picking dandelions for his wife. In his first message to Congress, Mr. Biden spoke for an hour with no hint of senescence. Of course, he was speaking from a place he has called home for forty-four years, and he read from a teleprompter, as have all Presidents since President Eisenhower first used one sixty-seven years ago. While he stumbled rarely, his stance was wooden, without the relaxed appearance of a man who knows what he is saying. He lacked graciousness toward his political opponents, inconsistent with a message of unity.  There seems, to this observer, a disconnect between the words he now utters and those of a man who has been in Washington since 1973.

 

President Biden has been accused of many indiscretions: from plagiarizing to lying about his college record, from financial relations in Ukraine and China to behaving inappropriately with women. He can be impulsive. When a popular black radio host, Charlemagne the God, asked him how to respond to someone struggling to decide whether to support him or President Trump, Mr. Biden shot back: “If you have a problem figuring out whether to support me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” In 2018, when asked to comment on one of President Trump’s crude comments, he said he wished they were in high school, so he could take him out behind the gym and “beat the hell out of him.” But Mr. Biden was not a left-wing radical. The New York Times, on October 18, 2020, called him “a seventy-seven-year-old moderate.” Yet, as President, he has proposed a radical, left-wing agenda. On April 29, 2021, the New York Times, changing their tune, described Biden as seeking “a fundamental reorientation of the role of government not seen since the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal.” But is his radical agenda rational when the most states are in Republican control, when the Senate is split 50-50, and when Democrats’ majority in the House is the smallest since World War II? Has Mr. Biden undergone a transformation, or is something more insidious at work?

 

It makes one wonder: Who is in charge? The voters in November chose a candidate whom they thought was a moderate and who was not Donald Trump. They wanted the normality his campaign promised. So, I ask: Is he being manipulated to implement policies the voters did not choose? Has Mr. Biden become a marionette, acting on behalf of unknown handlers? I don’t propose to have an answer, but I believe it is a possibility we cannot overlook, and an issue that should concern us all. Adam Smith wrote that there is a “great deal of ruin in a nation,” by which he meant it takes a lot of bungling by political leaders to bring down a powerful and prosperous nation, but all free countries are vulnerable, as democracy is fragile and not all men and women are angels.

 

Peggy Noonan, in a column in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, wrote that President Biden, unlike his three predecessors, is not “hated.” That seems true; but has the radical left taken advantage of a cognitively impaired President to advance an agenda rejected in last year’s Primaries? If this speculation has any merit, then we have experienced one of the most undemocratic, dastardly tricks ever played on our democracy, with mainstream media fully complicit.