"Noblesse Oblige"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Noblesse Oblige”

November 27, 2021

 

“We should be too big to take

offense and too noble to give it.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

 

The words noblesse oblige refer to a sense of responsibility of the privileged few to act with magnanimity toward the less privileged – to be responsible for their welfare, but not necessarily to let them into their living rooms. While the term was originally associated with French-speaking British nobility in their treatment of natives in their colonial empire and serfs on their vast estates, it can be said to reflect a conspicuous self-righteousness on the part of today’s Progressive elites who want to preserve their status, while using taxpayer money to keep happy an expanding body of welfare recipients. 

 

Elitism, we are taught, is un-American, yet it is a natural phenomenon. Every society produces elites. Tsarist Russia had theirs and so did the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany had its elite and so does Communist China today. Colonial America had its planters in the south and its merchants in the north. The Industrial Revolution, in the United States, produced the “Gilded Age” in the second half of the 19^th Century, giving the Nation New York’s “four hundred,” made famous through the novels of Edith Wharton. 

 

Elitism is inequitable when it becomes entrenched, as it is in despotic countries, like China, North Korea, Cuba and Iran. The top of the economic, social and political ladder should never be comfortable: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” spoke Henry IV in Shakespeare’s eponymous play. A free and democratic country should be open to new ideas and allow free expression. It should praise individualism, independence and self-reliance. It must encourage debate and recognize universal truths; it must commend honesty and integrity. The elitist class should be fluid, not static.

 

Static elitism was endemic in 18^th Century Britain and was a major cause of the American Revolution: Thomas Jefferson’s opening words in The Declaration of Independence that “…all men are created equal…” expressed a concept inconceivable to aristocratic Britain. A dozen years later, the Constitution created a government to be one, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg in 1863, “…of the people, by the people, for the people” – a message inconsistent to a country with a House of Lords. George Washington’s decision to limit his Presidency to two terms was a clear message that he wanted no part of royalty, an idea alien to a nation whose royal leader served for life. 

 

Nevertheless, like all societies, America has always had an elitist class. Late 19^th and early 20^th Century elites were primarily white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs). For over a hundred years they dominated the wealth and culture of the U.S. Like Britain’s nobility, wealthy WASPs practiced a form of noblesse oblige, to justify and maintain their economic and social power, while limiting social and economic mobility. Blacks, Catholics and Jews were discriminated against. Immigrants from China, Ireland and Italy were treated abominably. During World War I, German-Americans suffered because of name association with the Kaiser. The reign of WASPs came to an end in the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II, when merit and diligence, rather than family ties, determined financial and social success. Yet anti-Semitism persisted in Ivy League colleges into the early 1950s and Jim Crow remained in the south until the mid 1960s when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were enacted. 

 

Our political world has turned upside down from sixty years ago. Today, despite accusations to the contrary, it is not race and gender that face discrimination, but economic class and ideas. In a real-life rendering of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, a new group of establishment elites control our schools, universities, Wall Street, big business, tech, the media, social media, entertainment, cultural institutions, unions and government bureaucracy. As Yale Professor David Bromwich wrote last August in The Nation, Democrats have become the party of the rich, in terms of household income and in representing the country’s ten wealthiest congressional districts. These progressive elites have altered history, as in the 1619 project, and, in cancelling college speakers, they have denied open discussion. They emphasize national faults, while ignoring the good America has done at home and abroad, including the generosity of its individuals and the sacrifice of men and women in foreign wars. Proponents of “Build Back Better” want government control of industries like energy, healthcare and banking, but fail to acknowledge the risk to a people enslaved by government.

 

The United States has a distinct heritage. Unlike other nations, we are composed of immigrants who sought opportunity. These émigrés vacated their native government-controlled, hierarchical countries, some of which, like Communist and Socialist countries, promise equity but deliver poverty and tyranny. They chose to be free, to pursue individual dreams, unimpeded by the constraint of an omnipresent government, a Nation where they could succeed based on aspiration, talent and hard work. Legal immigrants come to these shores, not for promises of welfare and free health, but because of the opportunity to scale the economic ladder. Assimilation has never been easy or quick, so most immigrants, like their colonial predecessors, looked upon success as generational – as opportunity for their children and grandchildren. There is no other country to which one could emigrate and in one, two or three generations rise to prominence. There is no other country whose amalgamated culture reflects peoples from virtually every country in the world. And we should never forget that these people come because they prefer our form of representative government, our system of capitalism and our culture.  

 

To maintain power, today’s elites have chosen division over unity, cleaving the citizenry by race and gender, into oppressors and oppressed with acolytes and dissenters, and they have pitted the individual against the group. These divisions serve as red herrings, to divert attention from their personal accumulation of wealth and power. With those as guiding stars, these elites use taxpayer dollars to create a dependent constituency. In doing so, they have flaunted the Lincoln ideal as expressed in the rubric and assumed the mantle of noblesse oblige.

"The Rittenhouse Acquittal"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“The Rittenhouse Acquittal”

November 21, 2021

 

“He wishes none of this had happened.

But as he said when he testified, he did not start this.”

                                                                                                                                Defense attorney Mark Richards

                                                                                                                                November 19, 2021

 

Supporters of Kyle Rittenhouse were quick to take a victory lap, as news of his acquittal came across the wires – that it validated the right of self-defense. On the other side, Jesse Jackson spoke for the Left who saw Mr. Rittenhouse as a vigilante: “It seems to me that it’s open season on human rights demonstrators.” When did violent rioters, with criminal records, become human rights demonstrators? As a Presidential candidate, and despite both the accused and the victims being white, Mr. Biden referred to Kyle Rittenhouse as a “white supremacist.” After the jury’s decision, and now as President, while he called for calm and acknowledged the jury had spoken, Mr. Biden said the verdict made him angry. Was his expression of anger supposed to subdue a combustible nation, already polarized? 

 

Of course, the young Mr. Rittenhouse is a winner in that he does not have to go to jail, but the heroes of the story are the jury, the judge and Mark Richards, all of whom stood firm despite personal threats. And Mr. Rittenhouse’s acquittal does not condone what he did. Even though legal, the very fact that a seventeen-year-old would carry a loaded AR-15 down a public street into a melee of rioters was crazy. What were his parents thinking? He should not become a poster boy for the Right. He appears an immature, not very bright, kid. The maintenance of civil order is supposed to be the responsibility of the police. If anything, this trial was an indictment of the politicians who ordered the police to stand down. This incident exposed the risk to the public of those who want to “defund the police.” No municipality, state or country can function without the rule of law. And laws must be enforced. In a democracy, if one does not like a particular law there are legitimate means of getting it changed, without taking to the streets in violent protests. 

 

Protests across the nation, following the death of George Floyd on May 25^th, 2020, caused, according to The Hill’s estimate, two billion dollars in damage and 18 deaths. It is as though the Ku Klux Klan lynch mobs of Jim Crow days have returned, only this time under the hateful banners of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Cities from Seattle to New York, from Minneapolis to Hartford, Connecticut have seen a rise in murders and violent crimes, mostly black-on-black. A refusal by politicians to take responsibility for that rise has meant a loss of life and property by mostly inner-city black families. The idea that “victims” are not responsible for their actions dooms them to a life of subservience. When people are taught that failure is a function of race, not a lack of effort, what incentive do they have to succeed? When a poor, ill-educated young white man is told he is an oppressor, how is he supposed to respond?  He carries a weapon to a demonstration.

 

The entire incident was sad and unnecessary. But it says far more about our politicians than about Mr. Rittenhouse and his unfortunate victims. We live in a remarkable country, one prized by people all over the world, especially in poor, third-world countries., yet despised by the Left’s elites. It is both a privilege and a responsibility to live in this great nation. If our young are not taught our entire history what happened in Kenosha, Wisconsin fifteen months ago will become even more common. No one can want that.

"Woke Racism," by John McWhorter - A Review

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Woke Racism, John McWhorter

November 18, 2021

 

“The failure of so many thinkers to understand the difference between the effects of racism

In the past and racism in the present has strangled discussions about race for decades.”

                                                                                                                                                John McWhorter

                                                                                                                                                Woke Racism, 2021

 

John McWhorter is an independent thinker – a rare (at risk of becoming extinct) individual in today’s academy. He is professor of linguistics at Columbia University, where he also teaches American studies and music history. At age 56, with a PhD from Stanford, he has written almost two dozen books. In his spare time, he is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and an opinion columnist for The New York Times. He describes himself as a “cranky, liberal Democrat.” He is a black man who believes that affirmative action should be based on class, not race, and that woke racism hurts those it claims to help.

 

In this book, he argues that woke racism represents a third wave of anti-racism, “…from people wishing they hadn’t missed the late 1960s.” This wave, he claims, has assumed the traits of a religion, with white privilege as original sin. The third wave “has taken it from the concrete political activism of Martin Luther King to the faith-based commitments of a Martin Luther.” He castigates the proselytizers of this religion, “The Elect,” as “pious, unempirical virtue signalers.” They resemble, in his words, early Christians who “thought of themselves as bearers of truth, in contrast to all other belief systems…” Like other such movements, they appeal “to an idealized past, a fantastical future, and an indelibly polluted present.” For the Elect, black people’s noble past is Africa, a glorified future is one without hate, but the present consists of oppressors and oppressed. He finds the Elect’s sanctimony insulting to blacks, who are led to believe that victimhood is destiny and success is due to special treatment. When conservative blacks deny victimhood, they are smeared by the Elect: Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor-elect Winsome Sears is a “white” supremacist and South Carolina’s Senator Tim Scott is an “Uncle Tom.”

 

Mr. McWhorter does not deny the existence of racism. He writes: “Racism, in all its facets, is real, but since the late 1960s a contingent of black thinkers has tended to insist that things are as bad [today] as they were in 1940, leaving many black people who actually experienced Jim Crow a tad perplexed and even put off.” The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were positive steps toward racial equality, but they feed the argument “that black people could [no longer] have a basic pride in having come the whole way…” In the 1950s, black leaders criticized minstrel shows like Amos ‘n Andy for not showing successful black people Today, black leaders denigrate shows like Julia for not showing poverty and racism experienced by American blacks.

 

Interracial marriages in 1970 represented less than one percent of all marriages in the United States. Today, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, “about 17% of new marriages in the U.S. are interracial couples.” Blacks represent about 11% of college graduates today; fifty years ago, that number was less than five percent. These are facts ignored by the Elect. Ironically, colleges often teach black students a view of whites as oppressors. Mr. McWhorter quotes a Pew Research Center survey, which noted that nine percent of black high school students report experiencing racism regularly; “the number doubles among black college graduates to 17.5 percent.” “Half of black people with college degrees say that racism has made them fear for their safety; just a third of younger black students do.” 

 

It is the condescending attitude of the Elect toward blacks that troubles him most. He writes: “An enlightened America is supposed to hold a public figure accountable for her ideas. On the issue of the Revolutionary War, Hannah-Jones claim is simply false, but our current cultural etiquette requires pretending that isn’t true – because she is black.” The claim that America is systemically racist ignores societal changes over the past several decades. Is there further to go? Of course. Are those like me brought up in educated white families privileged relative to blacks brought up in poverty? Of course. But should the focus be on pretending there has been no change or celebrating the fact that racism has declined over the past fifty years? Privilege is less a factor of race and more a matter of class.

 

McWhorter writes that if we could accept “three real-world efforts that combine political feasibility with effectiveness” that would address what ails America today: “There should be no war on drugs; society should get behind teaching everybody to read the right way; and we should make solid vocational training as easy to obtain as a college education.” In the book, he elaborates on all three. As to accusations that he is not “black enough:” “I know racism when I encounter it, even when it’s subtle. I have written about it often. And yet I still believe every word I am writing in this book.”

 

Professor McWhorter is better educated than most of his critics who comprises the “Elect,” which gives this short book heft at a time when emotion outranks composure. “Reason,” he writes, “must prevail. This is the heart of the enlightenment. The abolitionists knew it; Civil Rights leaders knew it; today’s liberals know it. Only the Elect propose that rationality, where it discomfits them, is mere ‘whiteness’.”

 

I encourage all my friends, especially those who consider themselves liberal Democrats, to read this book. Heather MacDonald, in City Journal, wrote words on science being viewed through the lens of “equity,” which apply to Mr. McWhorter’s book: “Step by step, we are shutting down the very processes of open inquiry and the cultivation of excellence that have freed humanity from so much unnecessary suffering.” Dispassionate discussion on race is being similarly treated. Anti-racism is racist, as it targets the group, not the individual. It is contrary to Martin Luther King’s plea that people should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Common sense and tolerance, with a focus on the person should be our guides regarding race, not the absolutism of religious puritanism. This is a powerful book.

"Travels with George," by Nathaniel Philbrick

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Book

Travels with George, Nathaniel Philbrick

November 14, 2021

 

“But as anyone who knew Washington understood, his only interest was in

establishing a federal government that was strong enough to survive without him.”

                                                                                                                                                Travels with George, 2021

                                                                                                                                                Nathaniel Philbrick (1956-)

 

In 1789, newly inaugurated as the country’s first President, George Washington recognized that for the nation to endure the individual states had to be united in a common bond, based on principles of self-government, individual liberty and the rule of law. He knew there were challenges. The industrialized north and the agrarian south were different. The country’s citizens had come from multiple European countries and spoke several languages. It was populated with men and women with differing dreams, aspirations and talents. And he knew that he was uniquely situated to help foster that unity.

 

As commanding officer of the army that had defeated the British empire, he had traveled to most parts of the country. Now, he felt it imperative, as President, that he visit each of the thirteen states that had ratified the Constitution and imbue the nation’s citizens with a sense of unity and national pride. 

 

Between October 1789 and July 1791, President Washington devoted 16 weeks to traveling as far north as Portsmouth, New Hampshire and as far south as Savannah, Georgia. Nathaniel Philbrick, in his informative and readable history, Travels with George, recounts those trips. In the fall of 2018, prompted by John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charlie, Mr. Philbrick, his wife Melissa and dog Dora started out on their own trip, following, as best he could, in the footsteps of George Washington. His purpose in writing this book: “More than ever before, Americans need to know what our first president did, at the very beginning, to bring this nation together.” We follow Washington along rutted dirt roads (with Philbrick in his air-conditioned Honda), to New England villages and factories, through longleaf pine forests in the Carolinas, to rice plantations in Georgia. As for security on Washington’s trip across unpopulated sections of the country, “…the affection of his fellow citizens was all the guard he wanted.”

 

Philbrick’s own journey, which he shares with the reader, followed Washington’s as closely as possible. In doing so, he makes us realize the tremendous growth the country has experienced. In a time of bifurcated political feelings, the author ponders as to whether Washington’s legacy is worth preserving. His conclusion is, yes. He writes as to how catastrophes are always around the corner, but this time it feels different: “The sinews of this country have been stretched to what feels like the breaking point,” but if the sinews should break, “it won’t be Washington’s and Jefferson’s fault…The fault will lie with ourselves.”

 

Mr. Philbrick devotes a lot of time to the subject of slavery, an evil practice, which was common at the time among land-owning southerners, while less common, though not unheard of, in the north. The practice bothered Washington who knew it was wrong, but felt trapped in its grip, as slaves represented a large portion of his wealth and were critical to the economics of his Virginia plantation. We follow Mr. Philbrick as he leads us through the evolution of Washington’s thoughts on slavery. According to the terms of his will, his slaves were set free after his death. 

 

In writing through the lens of today’s moral values, Mr. Philbrick comes across as a bit of a scold, more interested in flouting his woke credentials than in enlightening the reader as to values of yesterday. For example, he writes approvingly of crowds pulling down statues of Confederates: “History isn’t being lost when a statue is toppled to the ground. History is being made.” George Washington, in contrast, condemned those who destroyed a statue of King George III in New York in 1776. Who was the more magnanimous? 

 

Two hundred and thirty-two years have passed since George Washington took to the road to help unify the newly-free country. That this nation, against all odds, still stands as a beacon to the world that self-government can succeed among myriad peoples, we owe, in large part, to our first President. Washington was sensitive to regional differences and the wide diversity of the American people. Yet he recognized that united the nation would succeed; divided it would fall. Today, politicians and the media encourage polarization, sensing it brings out the vote and sells more ads. The people, in my opinion, are wiser. They recognize we will never settle all differences, but, so long as opinions can be freely expressed, we will be fine. In yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal, Christopher DeMuth wrote: “Citizens understand that their security and freedoms depend on their nation and its imperfect institutions – that their fortunes are linked for better or worse to those of their disparate compatriots.” What was true in Washington’s time is true today. We have differences. We are linked as Americans. United, we thrive. Divided, we fail.

 

This is a light but informative read. One finishes the story recognizing the importance of Washington’s trip, knowing more about our country then and now, and liking Nathaniel Philbrick, his wife and his dog.

"Winter"

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Essays from Essex

“Winter”

November 13, 2021

 

“The summer days are over and the fields are waving gold,

The days are getting’ shorter and the nights are turning cold;

Autumn is a lonesome time when the year begins to wane,

But I’m eagerly awaiting those winter nights again.”

                                                                                            “Long Winter Nights,” 1989

                                                                                                                     Tommy Makem (1932-2007)

                                                                                                                      Irish Folk Musician

 

Winter in Connecticut will arrive at 10:59 am on December 21, probably after we see our first snowflakes. Those first flurries are harbingers of winter. In “A Winter Eden,” Robert Frost wrote about snowfall: “It lifts existence on a plane of snow/One level higher than the earth below/One level nearer heaven overhead…” Our first snow usually arrives in November, a transition month that marks the change from Autumn’s glorious foliage to winter’s leafless (but not lifeless) branches. As the first snow falls, children catch flakes in mittened hands, each appearing to be unique, an imagery spoiled by scientists who have determined there are only thirty-five unique crystals or flakes[1].

 

When I was young, before the onset of winter, seasonal chores had to be performed: Snow tires were placed on the car’s rear wheels, with chains easily accessible. Its radiator was topped off with antifreeze. The woodshed was filled with logs and kindling. Chimneys were swept and stove pipes and fireplaces cleaned. The coal-burning furnace was readied, and the bin filled. Insulating autumn leaves were banked against the house’s foundation. Flashlight batteries and candles were replaced. Winter clothes were taken out of moth balled-filled closets. Skis were waxed and steel edges sharpened.

 

Preparation is easier today. With all-weather tires there is no need for snow tires. A 50/50 water/coolant in radiators means less need to add antifreeze. Gas and electric fireplaces are replacing wood-burning ones. In 1940, 75% of homes in the U.S. were heated with wood or coal; today, the number is less than two percent. Mothballs have given way to cedar-lined closets. Today, we exchange a polo shirt for a sweater, a light jacket for a parka, a baseball cap with a wool hat. While wood is still the core of most skis, the use of carbon fiber or aluminum alloys and plastic bottoms have obviated the need for steel edges and waxes.

 

Perhaps it is because I was born on a January afternoon in New Haven, but winters have always been special. It may be because one of my earliest memories was Christmas 1944, with my father about to sail to Italy with the 10^th Mountain Division. We were in Madison, Connecticut, with our mother and her parents. Among my gifts that year was a pair of skis, suitable for the eldest son (about to turn four) of a Ski Trooper.  Or my love of winter could be because skiing became my favorite sport. But it may be because I met my wife on a cold, sunny day on New Hampshire’s Temple Mountain, on December 31^st, 1961; and ten weeks later, still in winter, she agreed to become my wife.

 

No longer skiing, I enjoy a walk through the woods, if the snow is not too deep. Snow hushes footfalls and many animals sleep through the winter. Most birds are in winter quarters. Leafless trees are soundless in a gentle breeze. The silence is audible. Yet life is all around. Roots provide nutrition to trees above. A hawk alights on a branch in Mud River Swamp. Tracks show that a rabbit preceded me down the path.     

 

I love winter, but a long season of short, cold days make one yearn for warmer ones. Winter prepares us for spring’s birth. “Winter will pass,” said Charlotte speaking to Wilbur in E.B. White’s eponymous story, “the days will lengthen, the ice will melt in the pasture pond. The song sparrow will return and sing, the frogs will awake, the warm wind will blow again. All these sights and sounds and smells will be yours to enjoy, Wilbur – this lovely world, these precious days…” Spring days will come for all of us. Days will lengthen as we pass through January and February. By March we will be looking forward to spring’s return – listening to songbirds and peepers as they herald a new season, observing turtles as shells harden in the sun, smelling blossoms as they wave to us, and eyeing a shy garter snake as it makes its way through the grass.

 

Winter clothes will be packed; sneakers will replace boots, as we walk along trails once covered with snow.

"Is Past Prologue?"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Is Past Prologue?”

November 12, 2021

 

“We have two classes of forecasters – those who don’t know

and those who don’t know they don’t know.”

                                                                                                                             John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)

                                                                                                                              Attributed

 

Yogi Berra is alleged to have said: “Forecasting is very difficult, especially when it involves the future.” Republicans were quick to conclude that Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia last week promises wins for Republicans in next year’s midterms. I hope they are right, but there is a lot of time between now and then. Such predictions can lull candidates into complacency.

 

However, the election may have put a stop – perhaps temporarily – to the leftward shift of the Democratic Party. Sanity was the winner in Virginia and a handful of other states, with derangement the loser. Even deep-blue New Jersey appeared to have second thoughts about their fall into leftist lunacy, though the heavily taxed state chose to stay with its spendthrift governor. In its aftermath, Congress passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, with the help of thirteen Republicans (from swing districts) and with six Congressional Democrats (including all four members of “The Squad”) voting no. Nevertheless, following Virginia’s election, progressives showed their colors: Michael Eric Dyson, a guest on MSNBC’s “Reidout,” called Virginia’s newly elected Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, a “black voice for white supremacy.” Jemele Hill, a former host on ESPN, tweeted that Ms. Sears is a white supremacist.  New York’s Chuck Schumer and California’s Nancy Pelosi, ignoring Tuesday’s elections, assured Progressives they will pass the far-more-expensive “human infrastructure” legislation (Build Back Better) by Thanksgiving – a single bill whose all-in costs equals what total annual federal spending had been in 2014.

 

One lesson for Republicans is that the personal presence of Donald Trump may prove a hindrance, at least in blue and purple states. Mr. Trump alleged that without his endorsement Mr. Youngkin would have lost by fifteen points. My guess is that the reverse is true – if he had personally campaigned for him, Mr. Youngkin, would have lost by ten points. As President, Mr. Trump was victim of what probably was the largest political scandal in our nation’s history – the Clinton campaign-inspired Russian collusion story. As well, he was confronted with one of the worst pandemics to hit this nation. Yet he reduced regulatory red tape, increased economic activity at home, raised wages for black and minority workers, brought energy independence to the country, slowed illegal immigration, and, with the Abraham Accords, brought glimmers of peace to Israel and her Arab neighbors. But his narcissistic personality and polarizing ways accentuated the divide of an already ruptured nation. His policies were correct, His character was not.

 

Voters understand the challenges we face. In their pocketbooks, they see the cost of rising fuel prices caused by shutting down the Keystone XL Pipeline and limits placed on drilling. They experience higher prices at the supermarket. Wage growth is no longer keeping up with inflation. They live with supply-chain shortages, as we head into the holidays. They know their children are being indoctrinated with Critical Race Theory, while they underperform in global tests, in math, English and science. They recognize the social and economic costs associated with letting into the country two million unvaccinated illegal immigrants in less than a year. They watch as science becomes politicized. They recognize the damage to America of a deadly, chaotic exit from Afghanistan, which emboldened enemies like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. They see an aging population, creating greater strains on already underfunded Social Security and Medicare systems. [In 1960, life expectancy was 69.8 years, the average age was 29.5 and there were 5.1 workers for every retiree. Today, life expectancy is 77.3, the average age is 38 and there are 2.9 workers for every retiree.] Voters understand the consequences of politicians ignoring these challenges.

 

Most Americans are political middle-of-the-roaders. They yearn for reason, respect and decency. They do not want supercilious, woke, far-left Democrats dividing the nation by race and gender, telling us how to live our lives. And they do not want the angry voices of Republican extremists. They want logic, common sense, civility and tolerance. They would like a media that reports the news, not one that only prints the news it sees fit to print. 

 

Joe Biden was elected, in part, because voters believed him when he promised to bring a sense of normalcy to the political scene. They did not anticipate he would become a puppet manipulated by unknowns with far-left leanings, wreaking havoc on citizens exhausted from political extremism. 

 

Does Virginia’s election foretell a more amenable, political climate? I don’t know. As John Kenneth Galbraith and Yogi Berra reminded us, forecasting can be a fool’s game. Nevertheless, I and millions of others hope that Wokeism and its reign of terror is dying, and that we are headed toward a more civil and commonsensical time. However, with the insanity and fright that come from a culture of intimidation, with the “Elect” controlling our schools, universities, media companies, Hollywood, big businesses and government bureaucracies, we worry – there may be no halting this tyranny of the left. But America has been in tough places before, and it has never been wise to bet against her over the long term.

"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"

 Two lessons come with Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia: One, Republicans should stick to issues, such as education, which are more important to voters than personalities, and two, endorsements by Donald Trump are fine, as long as he does not campaign in the candidate’s district.

 

New Jersey, as I write, is still too close to call.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf”

November 3, 2021

 

“Once you abandon strict adherence to what science tells us, once you

start arranging the truth in a press conference, then anything is possible.”

                                                                                                       Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

                                                                                                       American author & filmmaker

                                                                                                       Michelin Lecture, Caltech, January 17, 2003

 

The moral of Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf is that false cries for help mean real calls for help will be ignored. A climate apocalypse has been forecast for years, sometimes by the well-intentioned but naïve looking to do good, but often by the cynical seeking political or personal advantage. 

 

Two years ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, recognizing that global temperatures are indeed rising, compiled a list of dire climate predictions that did not happen. Here is a sample: In 1969, the Nobel winning German scientist, Paul Ehrlich predicted that everybody would “disappear in a cloud of blue steam.” In 1974 Time Magazine warned that “space satellites show new Ice Age coming fast.” The New York Times in 1978 reported that an “international team of specialists” feared the world would experience a never-ending “cooling trend in the Northern Hemisphere.” Over the next ten years, Cassandras changed their forecasts from cooling to warming: An Associated Press headline from 1989 read, quoting UN officials: “Rising seas could obliterate nations.” And who could forget Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in which he predicted that Artic ice would be gone in seven years. Today, doomsayers blame every forest fire, drought and hurricane on anthropological-caused climate change.

 

I am not a climate change denier. In fact, I know of no one who is. The term is used by climate disciples to belittle heretics who dare question the dogma that man alone is at fault for a warming planet. They are ruthless in their treatment of those skeptical of their professed causes of a changing climate. In National Geographic’s film Before the Flood, Bjørn Lomborg is listed as one of the ten most prominent “climate deniers.” Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and, in my opinion, the most reasonable voice on the subject. He begins every interview by repeating that he believes the Earth is warming. His sin is that he uses empirical evidence, logic and common sense to demonstrate that claimed apocalyptic consequences are more hyperbole than factual, which he explains in his 2020 book False Alarm. Fostering panic over climate change gets Progressives elected, sells books and movies and abets corporate welfare for renewable sources of energy. But for the rest of us, it does more harm than good.

 

Nobody really knows the costs of climate change, but it is not cheap. “Analysts,” according to an article in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, “say as much as $150 trillion is likely needed over the next three decades to fund renewable energy projects, upgrade electric grids, mothball fossil fuel plants, seed new agricultural technologies, and pay for damages tied to climate change.” The questions have always been: What are the economic and social costs of doing nothing versus the economic and social costs of holding the rise in temperature below two degrees Celsius? And, is that possible? Regardless, funds will be needed. The job of convincing the world’s banks of the urgency of adjusting their loan portfolios to accommodate what politicians are calling for has fallen to Mark Carney, former head of central banks in Canada and the UK, and now the United Nation’s point man on climate-change finance.

 

It was the Industrial Revolution, which raised living standards for all fortunate to live in countries affected, that caused man-made emissions of CO2. And it has been that wealth over the years that has enabled the problem to be addressed. Assuring future economic growth is the best antidote to the problems of climate change (and of poverty). Policies that hinder growth, such as raising the cost of energy, whether in developing or developed nations, will harm living standards. We should all take responsibility for how we live our lives, which means being environmentally sensitive. But leaders must avoid fomenting a class war. We must recognize that the poor, whether individuals or nations, need affordable sources of energy to improve lives. Feel-good corporate welfare, in contrast, funds favored businesses in exchange for political support and boondoggles that are more spectacle than substance. 

 

A meeting of the G-20 in Rome last weekend preceded the United Nations’ 26^th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow. Leaders of five countries (China, Russia, Mexico, Japan and Saudi Arabia) failed to show up. Those five countries represent just over 40% of all CO2 emissions, according to worldometer. The meeting in Glasgow brought together between 20,000 and 25,000 politicians, officials and businesspeople from about 140 nations, fifty fewer than met in Paris in 2015. Nevertheless, London’s Daily Record estimated on Sunday that “more than 400 private jets will blast 13,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere…which will produce more global warming gas than 1600 Scots burn through in a year.” 

 

In Rome, President Biden brought with him seven cabinet officers, including Secretaries of State, Treasury, Interior and Transportation. He traveled in an 85-car motorcade for a one-on-one meeting with the Pope. All vehicles had been shipped to Italy, with some shipped on to Scotland before heading back to the U.S. Perhaps such grandeur was felt necessary, but it seemed excessive and insensitive when the subject was man-caused climate change. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams would have united in condemning such a monarchial display by the President.

 

With the exception of a trade agreement with the EU on steel and aluminum, most news reports said the Rome meetings failed to live up to expectations. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa said of the G20 meeting in Rome: “The world’s biggest economies comprehensively failed to put climate change on the top of the agenda ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.”

 

On the Glasgow conference’s opening day, Jeremiah’s continued with dire predictions. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who hosted the meeting, likened the challenge to a James Bond “doomsday,” saying time was running out to save the world from global warming: “this is not a movie – and the doomsday device is real.” He warned that, in the worst-case predictions, cities like Miami, Alexandria and Shanghai could be lost “beneath the waves.” Johnson was followed by Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the UN. He said we are “digging our own grave.” The Prince of Wales, told the world leaders that “time has quite literally run out.” At some point, doomsayers will be right. The Earth had a beginning. It will have an end. Scientists have estimated that that time is probably a billion or two billion years in the future, based on a six or seven-billion-year life.  A changing climate is a prospect for which we must be prepared. But rather than giving a false sense of hope that we can forestall the inevitable, we should focus on adaption. What happens if we hit net zero in terms of CO2 emissions and climate continues to warm…or cool? Those who issue calls of doom would be wise to re-read the story of the boy who cried wolf.