"Who's in Charge?"

I have a copy of the book of cartoons I referenced. While still amusing, despite almost eighty years, the cartoons are a reminder that we need the ability to laugh at ourselves, not to take ourselves too seriously, something becoming more difficult in this age of political correctness. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Who’s in Charge?”

October 28, 2021

 

“Who’s in charge here?”

                                                                                                                    Herblock (Herbert Lawrence Block – 1909-2001)

                                                                                                                     Editorial cartoon, Washington Post, July 18, 1979

 

My parents had a book of cartoons titled, Who’s in Charge Here? Written in 1943, it is a compilation of cartoons by George Price (1901-1995) who had started drawing for The New Yorker in 1929 and continued doing so into his 80s. While Herblock’s cartoon was aimed at President Carter, the message could be directed at today’s White House. As last Saturday’s lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal put it: “…all Presidents stumble in speech. But Mr. Biden’s frequent public confusion about the major issues of the day is a reason for the growing public concern.” If Mr. Biden is mentally unfit, who is in charge?

 

Mr. Biden’s incoherence and mental lapses should concern us. Roger Kimball, the American art critic and conservative social commentator recently posed a rhetorical question: “Is it more worrisome that Joe Biden might not be in charge, or that he actually is in charge?” The White House website states that the power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States. Including members of the armed forces, the Branch employs more than four million Americans, more than any private company, and a number that exceeds the population of the United States when George Washington became our first President. (In total, according to the Brookings Institute, the federal government employs nine million.) The White House website reads: “The President is both head of state and head of government of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.” It is arguably the most powerful position in the world. The American people deserve to know who is in charge.  

 

It does not appear to be Joe Biden whose political reputation extends back over fifty years. During last year’s campaign, he ran as the moderate alternative to Senator’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He promised, like his predecessor Warren Harding 100 years earlier, a return to “normalcy.” However, his support of Critical Race Theory and gender-neutral pronouns, and his recent proposals for a “Green New Deal,” universal basic income, a wealth tax and a five trillion-dollar budget satisfy the most radical Progressives in Congress. They remind us of Barack Obama’s pledge in late October 2008 in Columbia, Missouri, shortly before his election: “…we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” While Mr. Obama later walked back those comments, they preordained Mr. Biden’s intent to “transform” our culture, schools and economy.

 

Despite his despicable behavior to Judge Robert Bork, when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987, Mr. Biden, through most of his career, shied from extremism. He is, though, prone to gaffes, plagiarism and disrespectful behavior, all excused by a mainstream media more interested in promoting an agenda than in reporting hard news. He has used political connections to enrich himself and his family. His affinity for coming close to women – touching them and sniffing their hair – earned him the sobriquet “Creepy Uncle Joe.” He has been condescending about and to blacks. In 2007, he was quoted in the New York Observer regarding Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean that’s a storybook, man.” In 2012, during the Presidential race, he told a largely black audience that Mitt Romney’s economic policies would “put y’all back in chains.” To Charlemagne the God on “The Breakfast Club, an American syndicated radio show, during the 2020 Presidential race, Mr. Biden said: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black.”

 

With the exception of Donald Trump, who was falsely accused of Russian collusion by Democrats and mainstream media, Mr. Biden has become more unpopular more quickly than any President in recent history. Rasmussen puts his approval ratings at 43% and disapproval at 56%. His list of failures is long: Regulatory and monetary policies that have given rise to nascent but rampant inflation. The cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline and restrictions on fracking and offshore drilling have made the U.S. no longer energy independent and have given rise to higher gasoline and heating fuel prices. COVID restrictions kept children out of schools, and they have abetted a labor-starved supply chain, which created product shortages and kept millions of Americans sidelined. His Attorney General has accused parents of school children of being domestic terrorists. His mixed messaging about masks and vaccine mandates have created confusion with families, in places of work and in schools. In opening our southern border, he has permitted a record number of immigrants to illegally enter our country. “Defund the police” has resulted in high crime and murder rates, especially in minority sections of cities, along with low morale and an historic exodus of police officers. The disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan resulted in unnecessary deaths and abandoned 450 Americans to the Taliban; and it sent a message of American weakness abroad, giving rise to an obstreperous Russia and militant China. A vacuum of leadership overseas has allowed Iran to move forward on nuclear weapons and encouraged Europe to work more closely with Russia and China. Mr. Biden’s inarticulateness and refusal to answer questions have left millions in the dark as to who is piloting the ship. Given Biden’s recent polls, it is unsurprising why whoever is manipulating the puppet strings does not want to be identified. But that does not mean some one (or some cabal) is not in charge. 

 

Successful politics in a liberal democracy is always about compromise. It is what allows us to avoid being mired in an uncompromising past and prevents us from leaping unprepared into an unknown future. Compromise requires mutual respect and civility. But voters must know who represents us, not the cartoon figures provided by the media. Is Mr. Biden in charge, or is it another individual or an oligarchy that governs us? Not knowing is unfair to the American public. Consider how The New York Times and The Washington Post would report this story if it were a Republican President who had campaigned from his basement and now, as President, hides from the press. 

 

Perhaps I am wrong, and Mr. Biden has his mental faculties, and what we witness is simply a manifestation of his radical transformation. Perhaps. But most people do not become more radical as they age, and Mr. Biden will enter his eightieth year on November 20. It is more likely he is cognitively challenged, the extent of which is being kept from the American people. His interviews remind me of Lewis Carroll’s Alice (us) in her conversation with the inane Mad Hatter (Mr. Biden). The Hatter had Alice “very much confused. ‘I don’t think…’ [she says]. ‘Then you shouldn’t talk,’ said the Hatter.” Despite efforts by the Administration to confuse us with rants about climate, gender and race, we are beginning to think and to speak out, as parents in suburban Virginia have demonstrated.

 

However, the question remains unanswered: Who’s in charge?

"Federal Debt"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Federal Debt”

October 22, 2021

 

“Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave driver.”

                                                                                                   Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

                                                                                                  The Devils Dictionary, 1906

 

“And to preserve our independence, we must not let our

rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election

between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”

                                                                                                 Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

                                                                                                 Letter to Samuel Kercheval (1767-1845), July 12, 1816

                               

 

 

On September 30, 1981, interest rates on U.S. Treasuries peaked. The yield on the 20-year stood at 15.78%. Nobody recognized that the bear market in bonds had ended, and a new bull market had begun. (Coincidentally, this was ten and a half months before the stock market bottomed in mid-August 1982.) Jason Zweig wrote in the October 1, 2021, edition of The Wall Street Journal: “The inescapable lesson of September 30, 1981, is that markets can keep moving in the same direction longer than anyone can imagine – and then shoot explosively in the opposite direction when no one expects it, impelled by forces no one may ever fully understand.” The current yield on the 20-year is 1.9%. On March 9, 2020, the yield on the 20-year was 0.87%. Are we in the early stages of a new bear market for bonds? If we are, lower prices will mean higher rates and increased costs for the American taxpayer. I don’t pretend to have an answer, but the question is relevant given the amount of debt our nation is carrying and the speed with which deficits are building, with few politicians on either side of the aisle seemingly concerned.

 

……………………………………………………….

 

We live in an age when debt is considered a good thing. As long as interest rates remain low and one’s income allows the payment of interest and the repayment of the principal, borrowing at today’s interest rate levels may be a sensible strategy. It allows one to purchase and use something today, like a home, car, dish washer or college education, without having to pay for it until tomorrow. Yet not all sources of income are secure and not all interest rates are static. Incomes can disappear and interest rates can rise. Debt can have unforeseen and unfortunate consequences.

 

Throughout most of history, debt was considered a form of servitude of the borrower to the lender, as suggested by Thomas Jefferson in the rubric above. Those of my generation remember Tennessee Ernie Ford’s 1955 hit song: Sixteen Tons, which begins: “Another day older and deeper in debt,” and ends: “I owe my soul to the company store.”

 

The Bible’s Proverbs 22:7 reads: “The rich rules over the poor/And the borrower is servant to the lender.” In Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, Henry Ward Beecher (brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe) warned: “Interest works night and day, in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man’s substance with invisible teeth.” A quote attributed to President Andrew Jackson is blunt: “When you get in debt you become a slave.” It was not only slave owners and Presidents like Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson who equated debt to servitude, Frederick Douglass, who had escaped slavery in Maryland in 1838, wrote in his 1855 autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom: “I had a wholesome dread of the consequences of running in debt.” Today, with historically low interest rates, such concerns have slipped our consciousness.

 

Federal debt should concern us. When compared to GDP, it is the highest since World War II. And, unlike that war which ended on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, today’s federal debt continues to grow, with no end in sight. When one includes unfunded liabilities (And why wouldn’t one, since they are liabilities and unfunded?), estimates range up to $220 trillion, or almost $700,000 per individual. The size of these estimated liabilities varies, depending on assumptions made regarding future funding, investment returns and changes in demographics. But what makes them frightening is that Progressives want to expand them, despite their existing financially shaky foundations.

 

Using data from the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the last twenty years show a modest shortfall in federal tax collections relative to GDP growth, but a massive increase in federal spending. US GDP was $10.2 trillion in 2000 and estimated to be about $23 trillion in fiscal 2021. Tax receipts were $2.0 trillion in 2000 and estimated to be $4.0 trillion in fiscal 2021. Federal spending, which was $1.8 trillion in 2000 will climb to an estimated $6.8 trillion in fiscal 2021. Roughly 61% of today’s spending is “mandatory,” which includes entitlements like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, but not interest rates. With the government paying about 1.3% on its borrowed funds, interest expense is about 5% of spending. If rates returned to their postwar average, interest costs would amount to about 15%, further squeezing non-mandatory programs like defense, infrastructure and education. Total federal debt this year will exceed the current $28.4 trillion debt ceiling. Trillion-dollar deficits will keep that number growing. 

 

In an economy, with many uncertain as to their future, with inflation on the rise and with birth rates below replacement, low interest rates serve as a palliative, encouraging profligacy. Low interest rates allow borrowers to achieve more affluent lifestyles, and they encourage greater investment risk. It is not often that the prime rate (3.25%) is below the rate of inflation, but that has been true for the past several months. In September, the CPI was reported at 5.4%, above expectations and above August’s rate of 5.3%. While some economists claim inflation is transitory, most do not expect a decline anytime soon. So, why would anyone lend money to the federal government at a rate below the inflation rate? Perhaps other asset prices – stocks, commodities, real estate, etc. – are expected to decline precipitously. If so, an investor can buy a Three-month US Treasury and receive the 0.05% yield currently offered, which implies the value of their current dollar would lose only 5% over the next twelve months.

 

Countries with large levels of debt lose options. Those with fiat currencies, like the U.S., can employ monetary policies to keep interest rates low, at least for a while. They can employ fiscal policies to promote moderate inflation, so that today’s debts are repaid with cheaper money tomorrow. However, as mandatory spending increases it means less for other projects like infrastructure, defense and interest expense. And the world does not stand still. Countries must have the financial flexibility to adapt to unanticipated change. 

 

……………………………………………………………

 

Nobody knows how much debt is too much, but we do know that ultimately too much brings higher rates and places debtors at the mercy of creditors. Recent excessive accumulation of debt reflects Progressive’s unconstrained view of government versus the constrained concept conceived by the Founders and favored by conservatives. Nevertheless, all things being equal (which they never are), interest rates in western-style democracies tend to be lower than in totalitarian regimes, as free nations treat their debt not simply as a financial and legal obligation, but as a moral commitment, just as it is (or should be) for individuals.

"Parents and Schools"

 Whether the current Administration is the most corrupt in the history of our nation, I leave to those better qualified to decide. But, as we know from the influence peddling of Hunter Biden and the recent revelations of Merrick Garland’s son-in-law’s business ties to the teaching of critical race theory, there is no question as to its corruption.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Parents and Schools”

October 16, 2021

 

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

                                                                                            Terry McAuliffe

                                                                                            Democrat gubernatorial candidate, Virgini

                                                                                            September 29, 2021, in debate with Glenn Youngkin

 

“Regardless of family background, students whose parents are involved in their

schooling are more likely to have higher grades and test scores, attend school

regularly, have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school.”

                                                                                        National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education, 2006

 

Terry McAuliffe was correct in the sense that it would be impossible for a school to design individual syllabuses for each child. Nevertheless, the input of parents should be sought, not denied. As the NCPIE (quoted above) expressed, when parents do take an active interest in the education of their children they achieve higher grades, gain better social skills and more easily adapt to school.

 

It was once rare for any American of any political persuasion to deny the importance of parents in the education of their children. As educator and author Dorothy H. Cohen (1915-1979) once observed. “No school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children’s best interests.” Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s weaponization of the Justice Department has put that partnership at risk. In response to a letter to President Biden from the National School Boards Association, which likened parents’ protests to acts of domestic terror, Mr. Garland said he would use the Patriot Act against those parents who have “threatened” school boards for the teaching of critical race theory-type themes, adopting NEA New Business Item 39[1], cancelling history and tradition, distributing sexually explicit curricular materials, and allowing transgender bathrooms.

 

Violence against any person, including school board members, is a crime, but disallowing dissenting voices of parents is a violation of their First Amendment rights. As for the rights of public schools to teach what they choose, consider Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2011 dissent in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants: “The ‘freedom of speech’ as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.” To arbitrarily ignore parents’ concerns is what one would expect of a totalitarian regime more interested in indoctrination than education, not from the world’s foremost and oldest constitutional republic. 

 

In America, education flourished when it emphasized the basic elements or reading, writing and arithmetic, and, as students progressed, when it encouraged skepticism, inquiry and empiricism. Unfortunately, public school education today de-emphasizes education in favor of equity, to achieve graduation rates that reflect the racial composition of the student body. Standardized tests have been eliminated. The Regent Exams in New York have been watered down over the years, and in 2019 a commission was established to potentially eliminate the exams as a requirement for high school graduation. In this past year, New York’s Mayor de Blasio ordered the elimination of the city’s gifted and talented programs. In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown signed a bill ending a requirement that high school students prove they are proficient in reading, writing and math before they are granted diplomas. 

 

This dumbing down of educational standards is being done in the name of social justice, as the claim is that standardized tests are unfair to racial minorities and people of color. The sad thing is that those are the very people who have benefitted by such programs. In a list of the top ten secondary schools around the world attended by Nobel recipients over the past one hundred and twenty years, five are in the United States, four are in France and one in England. Of the five in the United States, four are elite public high schools in New York City. Historically, these schools have accepted the brightest students, regardless of race or color. While the student bodies of these schools may not be representative of the population, they reflect a truism that progressives do not acknowledge – that while people are equal in rights and under the law, they are not and never will be equal in abilities or aspirations. If there are too few blacks admitted to these elite high schools that is the fault of their elementary and middle schools, not of the tests. To claim otherwise suggests innate racial differences, which I do not believe to be true, and neither do the parents of these children, which can be seen in their demand for more charter schools and vouchers.

 

Wealthy parents, which include most members of Congress and a substantial number of the Washington bureaucracy, do not have to engage in heated discussions with local school boards, as they have options. If they do not like a school’s curriculum, they can move to a different district or enter their child in a private school. Poorer parents, regardless of race and especially those in inner cities and in rural areas, do not have that option; so, if they see or hear something of which they disapprove, they can and they should express their opinions. It is their duty as a parent.

 

The decline of the nuclear family has adversely affected all children, as it pertains to education Aristotle wrote that the family is nature’s established association for the supply of mankind’s everyday wants. In 1995, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was asked what was the biggest change he had seen over his 40-year career. He responded: “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that the family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world.” In the April 24, 2012 edition of The New York Times, William Bennett, former secretary of education, wrote: “The family is the linchpin of society, both economically and socially.”

 

Yet traditional family formations have been in decline for over half a century. According to PEW Research, 64% of all children today – those under age 18 – live in married two-parent households. In 1960 that number was 88%. According to the CDC, four out of every ten children today are born to unwed mothers. The statistics for black children are more devastating. In 1965, 24% of black children were born to unwed mothers. By 2018, according to the National Vital Statistics Report, 69% of black children were born out of wedlock. Because of the effects such births have on poverty and education, reasons for this decline should be investigated by a bi-partisan panel. One consequence, as it affects education, is that school boards, unions and teachers have accrued power at the expense of parents.

 

Schools should teach history and civics with honesty and without bias, while keeping historical actions taken and words written within the context of time and place. Like a nation, schools do not have to be perfect to be good. But they should not teach discriminatory policies, treat children as other than their biological selves, or alienate parents who only want what is best for their children. Morally and ethically, this is the right path to follow.

 

 

 

 

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[1] The NEA New Business Item states: “The NEA will provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or the 1619 project.”

"Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell," by Jason Riley

 As much a biography, this book by Jason Riley is a treatise on intellectual thought over the past six decades, for it his mind that truly distinguishes Thomas Sowell. Sowell is an exemplar of the value of empiricism when formulating ideas that become good policy, of which, sadly, there is too little today. 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell,” Jason L. Riley

October 10, 2021

 

“The kind of idealized unity, projected by political leaders and

intellectuals, has seldom existed among any racial and minority

anywhere. Nor has the economic progress of racial or ethnic groups

been much correlated with their closeness to, or remoteness from, such unity.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Thomas Sowell (1930-)

                                                                                                                 As quoted by Jason Riley in Maverick

 

Thomas Sowell was born into rural poverty in North Carolina in 1930. His father died before he was born and his mother a few years later, giving birth to a younger brother. With an aunt, he moved to Harlem. Two years after being admitted to New York’s Stuyvesant High School he dropped out. At eighteen he joined the Marines. After his service he acquired his GED and entered Howard University. Following freshman year, he transferred to Harvard. He earned a masters at Columbia and a PhD in economics at the University of Chicago. After giving up teaching at age fifty, he has spent the last forty-one years at the Hoover Institute. He has written at least thirty books on subjects ranging from economics, race, education, to politics and intellectual thought. It has been his intense research and life-long pursuit of facts, which usually produce conclusions that do not conform to what is expected of a black American male. 

 

The author, Jason Riley, was born in Buffalo, New York in 1971. He graduated from State University of New York in Buffalo in 1993. After stints at Buffalo News and USA Today, he joined The Wall Street Journal in 1994. In 2005, he joined the editorial board and since 2016 has had a weekly op-ed column. He is also a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.  With this biography, he has authored four books, including Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed (2014), a book Thomas Sowell applauded.

 

In this, Riley spends little time on Sowell’s personal history, relying on his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, published in 2000 (and written up by me in August 2020.) “The goal,” Jason Riley wrote in his introduction, “…is to place what he and others consider his (Sowell’s) most important observations into context, and then trace the intellectual traditions from which those insights derive and the orthodoxy they often challenge.” While Thomas Sowell is an economist – his PhD thesis was an analysis of Say’s Law – his interests extend far beyond economics. While studying under Milton Friedman and George Stigler at the University of Chicago, he remained a Marxist, but that changed in 1960 when he became an intern at the U.S. Department of Labor, studying Puerto Rico’s unemployment in the sugar industry. A study of the data convinced him that the cause for unemployment was due to a mandated minimum wage. 

 

The book, which is 248 readable pages, is divided into nine chapters, with titles like “Higher Education, Lower Expectations,” Sowell’s Knowledge,” “Civil Rights and Wrongs,” and “Culture Matters.” Sowell is an intellectual and empiricist. Riley quotes from the preface to Sowell’s book Race and Culture: “…what is most needed is an understanding of existing realities, the history from which the present evolved, and the enduring principles constraining our options for the future.” It is the reliance on empiricism, rationalism and skepticism that has always distinguished Thomas Sowell, whether he is writing on economics, race, education or culture. For example, in an essay written in 2000, “Success Concealing Failure,” when U.S. universities bragged that Americans win more Nobel prizes than any other nation, Sowell pointed out an unpleasant truth: “While Americans won the lion’s share of Nobel Prizes in 1999, not one of these winners was actually born in the United States.”

 

Riley points out Sowell’s belief that well-intentioned people (“useful idiots,” as Lenin described them) strive to help blacks and other minorities. Yet the results, as both Sowell and Riley have noted, are often the opposite of what was intended. Sowell says it is unclear whether Civil Rights leaders’ and politicians’ intentions are unintended, as both groups have built careers on the concept that blacks can only succeed with the help of programs like Affirmative Action – a policy Sowell finds insulting to the millions of individual blacks who succeeded without assistance. If it were true, how does one explain the success of Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., a black-only high school, where black students out-scored white students in segregated schools in the 1950s? School success is a function of ability and effort on part of the student and insistence on learning on part of the teacher. Can a gifted black youngster in the nation’s capital today receive as good a high school education as one could sixty-five years ago? 

 

Sowell is concerned about current trends toward wokeism. In an essay, “Lessons not Learned” published twenty years ago, he wrote, “…we and our children are being trained to be sheep and to respond automatically to words that strike an emotional chord…The very tactics of those totalitarian movements – intimidation, demonization and disregard of all rules in favor of politically defined results – have become hallmarks of political correctness today.” And political correctness has become more ubiquitous over the past two decades. 

 

While this is not a biography in the traditional sense, Jason Riley enters the mind of a man about whom Steven Pinker once wrote, “…is one of the most brilliant thinkers in the world today.” Like most black conservatives, Sowell is denigrated by much of mainstream media and progressive politicians because the conclusions he reaches do not accord with those who feel that all blacks should speak with one voice. Riley’s contribution is to better understand this man, and that it is the individual – not the gender, tribe or race – that is important. We are not born equal. We do not have equal abilities or aspirations, but our Constitution provides for equal rights and equal protection under the law. We must strive for inclusion, diversity of ideas and equal opportunities; but equal outcomes are dreams of the naïve, which deceitfully serve only those who seek power. Ironically, and perhaps counter-intuitively, Sowell has greater confidence in the innate ability of blacks than do many of those who claim to help them. “Sowell wants to make his readers smarter, not tell them what to do,” Riley writes.

 

Maverick is an important book. It illuminates a brilliant thinker; it explains why current, perhaps well-intentioned, but racially discriminatory policies, like critical race theory, hurt those they are supposed to help, and it describes a man who rose to prominence, despite enormous odds, based on his abilities and his willingness to follow where his knowledge and research led, regardless of what public opinion might say. 

"Fear"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Fear”

October 6, 2021

 

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas,

alien philosophies, and competitive values; for a nation that is afraid to let its people

judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        President John F. Kennedy

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          February 26, 1962

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Speech at HEW

 

How far ago it was when a Democrat President could speak of open markets and of trusting the American people. Fear has become a tool of American politicians, especially those on the left, to help control the people they are supposed to serve. In a recent issue of The Spectator, regarding the United States’ handling of the COVID-19 virus, Karol Markowicz wrote: “We are in a moment of profound fear in the U.S…We cannot continue to succumb to a fear of life. We must not continue to be scared of each other.” Yet, politicians used fear to place the sick in nursing homes, and to close places of worship, schools and businesses, and to issue mask and vaccine mandates. 

 

As well, fear of climate change infects our youth. Writing in February 2020 in The Washington Post, Jason Plautz wrote: “Kids are terrified, anxious and depressed about climate change,” while academics, politicians and certain businesses thrive on this fear. Michael Moore and Al Gore made millions out of scaring people about climate change. Thomas P. Gloria, managing director of Industrial Ecology Solutions and Program Director, Sustainability, Harvard Extension School, wrote in the April 22, 2020, edition of the Harvard Gazette: “My fear is, despite the science and the early warning signals that we bear witness to – record temperatures, 1000-year storms, glacial retreat, coral reefs dying on a continental scale – global society may finally wake up, but it may be too late.” 

 

Fear of expressing non-conventional ideas has become pervasive. Many will not speak out for fear of financial retaliation. Ted Rall, author of The Stringer, wrote in Monday’s Wall Street Journal: “What meaningful difference is there between an authoritarian state, where saying the wrong thing can get you arrested, and a regime of economic censorship, in which the consequence of unpopular expression results in unemployment, potentially followed by eviction and destitution?” A culture that cancels history and opinions is one that denies free speech. How many students fear expressing opinions that depart from a progressive narrative that has become ubiquitous? How many junior executives question their senior managers? Do members of Congress let demands of Party out-weigh their own consciences? Fear of failing grades, loss of job and political retribution are used to suppress speech and control people. 

 

Yet is this fear justified? COVID-19, is likely to soon become endemic, as Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease physician and professor at the University of California San Francisco, wrote a week ago in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “…no virus in history has ever continued to evolve to higher pathogenicity…An endemic virus doesn’t require continuing isolation and other restrictions.” And was Mr. Gloria injecting fear of climate change to encourage funding for his management consulting firm? Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Danish think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center, spoke in March of this year on Fox News: “Yes, climate change is a real problem. However, it is typically vastly exaggerated, and the resulting alarmism is exploited to justify the spending of trillions.” He added: “They claim that ‘countless lives’ are being lost to climate related disasters worldwide. Yet, the International Data Base (maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau) shows that in the 2010s 18,357 people died each year (on average) from climate-related impacts such as floods, droughts, storms, wildfire and extreme temperatures. That is the lowest count in the past century, a 96% decline from the 1920s, despite a larger global population. And 2020 had an even lower death count of 8,086.” As for fear of speaking out, Ted Rall concluded his op-ed referenced above: “When two-thirds of self-identified moderates are scared to express their views in public for fear of losing their jobs, America has ceased to be a free society.” It is this fear that should be our primary concern.

 

Fear is a natural human emotion, which alerts us to the presence of danger. It helps us prepare for, avoid, or survive threats to our safety. But the instillation of fear is also a weapon long used by governments to control their citizens. In her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote of how quickly – less than ten years – Germany went from a functioning democracy to operating concentration camps. Fear is what keeps such movements alive, where lies are claimed as gospel, where history is changed to suit the narrative, where the line between truth and falsehoods becomes blurred, and where opinions are expressed as empirical facts. 

 

In such an environment, independent thinkers are excised, and bureaucracies are expanded. It is not necessarily the rise of new totalitarian governments that concerned Ms. Arendt. She wrote: “Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations, which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.” We, as a people, should worry when government harnesses fear to perpetuate itself through special powers. We should be concerned when people fear expressing opinions contrary to convention – conventional dogmas, institutionalized by progressive politicians and bureaucrats and abetted by a sycophantic press and monopoly-like social media companies. 

 

COVID-19 has been a threat, which is being addressed by drugs and vaccines. Climate change is real, but it always has been and is also being addressed. What should concern us most are infringements on free speech, the cancellation of history and censorship. We should be alert to ubiquitous government and monopolistic social media companies. Facebook and Twitter have powers that Hitler, Stalin and Mao could only dream of. According to Statista, Facebook has over 200 million users in the United States and 1.7 billion worldwide. Twitter has an estimated 77 million American users and over 200 million worldwide. The ability to manipulate people, which these companies possess, is something that the world has never-before faced. And now they have become platforms for political advocacy, and they censor people and ideas that do not conform to their preferred narrative.

 

Warren Buffett once said that no one should bet against the United States. But the challenge we face today is unlike any we faced before – a cultural war, which divides people by race, gender and religion for the benefit of certain businesses, activists, progressive politicians and government bureaucrats. Unlike a civil war, this one suppresses personal initiative. It elevates the tribe, race or gender over the individual. It focuses on equality of outcomes at the expense of equal opportunity. Merit has surrendered to inclusivity. Work has lost its dignity. Personal responsibility and independence have been abandoned for dependency on government. Fear is a weapon of choice of those who prosecute this war.

 

As President Kennedy said in 1962, “…a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” Democracy only works when citizens are without fear to express opinions, and when the marketplace for ideas is free and open. The loss of that freedom, which this war on traditional, western culture is provoking, is something we should all fear.

"The Ambassadors," Henry James

 As a reminder, these short essays are not critical reviews, but to provide a sense of the book, and to convey, I hope, why I found it enjoyable and/or informative. Henry James’ books tend to be longer, as he wrote for a people whose time was not taken up by television and social media. But, if you can find the time you will appreciate his characters and their lives. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Burrowing into Books

The Ambassadors, Henry James

October 2, 2021

 

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter

what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.”

                                                                                                             Lambert Strether speaking to Little Bilham

                                                                                                             The Ambassadors

 

Lambert Strether, a 50-something, educated but impoverished, widower, has been sent, as an ambassador, by Mrs. Newsom of Woollett, Massachusetts, to retrieve her son Chad who has spent the past five years in Paris, allegedly beguiled by a “foreign” woman. His reward is a promise of matrimony by the widowed Mrs. Newsom. Upon arriving in Liverpool, he makes the acquaintance of Maria Gostrey, an American woman in her mid 30s. They become friendly. She questions him about his ambassadorial duties: “You’ve accepted the mission of separating him from the wicked woman. Are you quite sure she’s bad for him?” He responds: “Of course we are. Wouldn’t you be?” They both travel, independently, to Paris where Chad has been living and where Maria, a former schoolmate of the “wicked woman,” becomes confidant to Strether. 

 

The woman is Madame de Vionnet. Several months later Chad’s sister Sarah, her husband Jim Pocock and sister-in-law Mamie Pocock (whom Chad’s mother had pre-selected for her son) arrived in Paris, also as “ambassadors,” to check on Strether. We see him closeted with Chad’s friend “Little” Bilham who asks him whom Chad should marry: Strether replies: “Not marry at all events Mamie.” “And who then?” “Ah, that I’m not obliged to say. But Madame de Vionnet – I suggest – when he can.” The strait-laced Strether has been seduced by the sexual freedom that is late 19^th Century Paris, anticipating Walter Donaldson’s 1919 song, “How You Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm.”

 

While the allures of Paris can be catching, they do not infect everyone. Chad’s sister Sarah is immune from the city’s attractions. On the other hand, “charming” and “funny” Mamie Pocock blossoms. Strether had met her in Woollett, as she was in a literature class he had taught in Mrs. Newsome’s parlor, but he had no real memory of her; “it not being in the nature of things at Woolett that the freshest of buds should find herself in the same basket with the most withered of winter apples.” 

 

While reading 19^th and early 20^th Century novels can be challenging because of the syntax and vocabulary, one of the pleasures is seeing how definitions have changed: gay – happy; glass – mirror; festal – festive; drollery – comical gestures. Other words common at the time, like mirth, twigged, verily and fortnight are rarely used today.

 

But back to the story; it is the change in Strether that is at its essence – from a conservative “stuffed shirt” to a renewed free spirit, as can be seen in his quote that heads this essay. Nevertheless, in the end, Chad, on his own, chooses to return to Woollett and the family business, while Strether, despite offers of intimacy from Madame de Vionnet and Maria Gostrey, dismisses the appeal of Paris and decides to return to Puritan Massachusetts. “To what do you go home?” asks Maria Gostrey. “I don’t know. There will always be something,” answers Strether. 

 

What happens back in Woollett is left to our imagination.