"Know Thyself"

 Welcome to the post-Labor Day period, traditionally, the beginning of the fall political campaign season, though in today’s world that season has no beginning and no end.

 

A few words on Donald Trump. As we all know, he is not a saint. But neither is he a semi-fascist, as President Biden claimed, nor is he a lunatic, as National Review recently wrote. His super-sized ego and bombastic language are offensive. But lost in the polarization of feelings he engenders, it is worth remembering why he decided to run for President. He went to Washington for at least two reasons: He went selfishly, to raise his profile, and he went magnanimously to drain Washington’s swamp. His profile has risen, but not in ways he would have wished. Keep in mind, his net worth declined by about a billion dollars while he was President. The swamp, however, remains dense and dark. Establishment politicians of both Parties, with their enablers in Washington’s bureaucracy, banded to destroy the threat he posed to their comfortable way of life, which in hundreds of cases have converted public service to private gains.

 

The swamp remains – at an enormous cost to taxpayers – as does the job to drain it. Is there another politician from either Party willing to take on this unpopular and Herculean task, or will the swamp grow danker, deeper, and darker?

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Know Thyself”

September 6, 2022

 

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself

can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

                                                                                                George Goodman as Adam Smith (1930-2014)

                                                                                                The Money Game, 1968

 

The words “Know thyself” were, according to legend, engraved above the forecourt in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on Mount Parnassus in central Greece. A search for self-knowledge is common, and its importance has been lauded by many, from Benjamin Franklin to Lao Tzu to Pythagoras. To fatalist Greeks the saying meant that one should accept the role nature assigned one. But for those of us today who believe we are also nurtured by our environment. self-examination should be an ongoing process.

 

There are those who dismiss the concept, because we change. Andre Gide wrote in Autumn Leaves: “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” But a search for self-understanding is not seeking perfection in the here and now; it seeks to understand; it recognizes that change is given: We have new experiences; we meet different people, and we read. Life does not stand still and neither do we. What if Gide’s caterpillar wanted to become a butterfly? Some conflate self-knowledge with hubris – that in claiming to know ourselves we admit to knowing what we do not know. That, to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favorite expressions, is malarkey. It’s an argument used by woke philosophy professors to confuse young, impressionable minds. It is impossible to know what we do not know. 

 

Self-understanding is important in an ever-changing world. In a recent interview in The Wall Street Journal, American tennis player Danielle Collins spoke “of how to use your strengths and how to work around your weaknesses” to win matches. She understands that her weaknesses will improve with practice, and that her strengths can be harbored and utilized. It was Heraclitus (c.535BC-c.475BC) who is credited with the saying: “Change is the only constant in life.” Knowing oneself is acknowledging that truth.

 

Knowing oneself is especially important in this age of political polarization that has tipped into extremism. It is easy to get carried away by the swift-moving current of political correctness. Those of us who still believe in the premise of classical liberalism face a political mindset that invokes moral equivalence to justify a belief that the United States is inherently evil, founded on the backs of slaves – that we are no better than other despotic nations. Today, amidst a torrent of “wokeness,” we face a crisis in education, where equity trumps excellence, where conformity reigns due to a lack of diversity of ideas, and where history incorporates “presentism,” promoting ignorance of earlier eras and cultures. The consequence has been high school and college graduates who know little of our history and civic affairs, and where persistently low scores on international tests have become common. The Department of Education (DOE) recently released fourth grade test scores that show the effects of Covid-related shutdowns. But shutdowns were not solely to blame, as charts show declines in math and reading scores began ten years ago.

 

We face a border crisis that is unfair to immigrants and to American citizens, where the only beneficiaries have been human and drug smugglers. We have created a national debt that has reached a size that a normalization of interest rates is no longer a viable alternative. We no longer celebrate the two-parent family, value the moral teachings of religion, or appreciate the dignity of work. We have a “semi-Socialist and semi-authoritarian” President (to borrow from Daniel Henninger) who promised to unify the nation, but who recently called his 2020 competitor a “semi-fascist.”

 

Except for the Reagan years, for over eight decades an expanding and “compassionate” government has been seen as the answer to problems we individually face. On January 6, 1941, in his State of the Union, President Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four freedoms: The first two were lifted from the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech and freedom to worship. The next two involved government, in a way unintended by the Constitution – freedom from want and freedom from fear. After a dozen years of depression and a European war underway, it is understandable why his words were so well received and are so fondly remembered. But all the ills of the world cannot be resolved by a pen and a phone. Want has persisted as has fear. Sadly, there will always be poverty, illness, and accidents. But, keep in mind, no political system yet devised has been better at reducing poverty and alleviating fears than a democratic-republic and free-market capitalism. 

 

As we head toward the midterm elections, we should each take stock of our own political beliefs. I can only speak for myself: I want constrained, self-paying government, with separation of powers, a fair judiciary. a government which functions under the rule of law, guarantees our enumerated rights and our borders, provides for defense – a government that allows us to freely have options, which fit individual needs. I want a vibrant, competitive, free-market economy that responds to millions of people making thousands of choices every day, not one directed by bureaucrats in Washington. We have seen the unfortunate consequences of government-managed economies, in an earlier period of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe and today in places like China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Paraguay, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, among others.

 

Knowing oneself involves soul-searching and asking difficult questions. Do we like what we have become? The President has called Mr. Trump and his followers “semi-fascists.” Democratic advisor Kurt Bardella, speaking on MSNBC last week, said that modern Republican ‘playbook’ was like that of Nazi Germany: “We are watching right now a very radical and extreme Republican Party mirror what we have seen in other places like Nazi Germany, like other people, like the Bolsheviks. We have seen this playbook before.”

 

Really? Which Party weaponized the IRS in 2012 to slow-walk non-profit status for groups whose ideology was deemed unhelpful? Which Party colluded with the FBI to find dirt on their political opponents in 2016? Which Party referred to parents as terrorists in 2020? Which Party in 2022 authorized an unprecedented FBI invasion of the home of a former President? Which Party has most expanded the state and constricted the private sector, with restrictive rules and regulations? Both Parties are guilty of extremism, but the sanctimonious left, “the anointed” as Thomas Sowell calls them, has been guilty of undemocratic actions.

 

Politics historically, through debate and vote, have been used to resolve controversial issues. But we live in an age of extremism. Donald Trump, if he cares for conservative values, should remove himself, as he has become Democrats’ principal asset and Republicans’ biggest liability. But it is Democrats, with their sycophants in Washington’s bureaucracies, media and social media, universities, big corporations, and the entertainment industry who are stifling freedom and destroying democracy, not Republicans. I urge my Democrat friends to consider the rhetoric and vendettas of their Party. It has been their words and actions, plus censorship in schools and colleges, and a politicization of climate change, which imperil the freedom and prospects of the citizens of this exceptional nation. Socrates said that to know oneself is the beginning of wisdom. There is no need to navel gaze, but we should take a few moments to consider our history, to think of who we are and what we want, and to ask: What has happened? Why has so much gone wrong?

 

We are better than what we have become.