"The Light of Battle," Michel Paradis

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Light of Battle, Michel Paradis

September 28, 2024

 

“He had wanted to be a general since he was a little boy…”

 

“He wore ambition lightly.”

 

The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower, 2024

                                                                                                                                Michel Paradis

 

The two quotes appear contradictory, and to an extent they are – the first appears on page 15, and the second in the “Author’s Note” on page 410. But they help explain the boy raised on a Kansas farm, in the last decade of the 19^th Century – a boy who became Supreme Commander of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

 

In this deeply-researched book, Mr. Paradis tells the story of the preparation for Overlord, from the Cairo Conference in early December 1943 when President Roosevelt informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill of his decision to name General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of Allied forces, to June 6, 1944. Eisenhower, not George Marshall, was the perfect choice, in part because of his experience in Washington and North Africa, but mostly because his modesty permitted him to deal with talented prima donnas like Montgomery and Patton, as well as with FDR, Churchill, and even Stalin and de Gaulle. He was allowed to build his own team. In Paradis’ words: “Looking forward to Operation Overlord, Eisenhower’s priority was building the right team because if he had learned anything over the past year, it was that putting the right people in the right positions was the most important decision he made.”

 

But it wasn’t just people who made this job challenging. He had to coordinate the different armed forces – army, navy and air – from two different countries. He had to get the number of ships needed to land 150,000 troops, thousands of vehicles, including tanks and minesweepers, as well as food, water and medical supplies on D-Day. He had to consider civilian casualties and whether to use white phosphorus munitions. Weather was a worry, as were the delays it might cause, as the British had learned at Dieppe. Churchill wanted a simultaneous landing on the south of France, which complicated the movement of LSTs. Keep in mind, at the same time Eisenhower was planning the invasion, German resistance In Italy had intensified. Allied forces, north of Anzio, were bogged down. After advancing the approximately four hundred miles from Sicily to Naples in four months, it took four more months for the Allies to press on the last forty miles from Anzio to Rome, which was finally reached in early June 1944.  

 

As readers, we are guided through this maze of logistic and bureaucratic threats and objections that Eisenhower faced. But we are also offered snippets of his early life, his family, and his personal life, including his relationship with Kay Summersby. In answer to the question of why another book on Eisenhower and D-Day, Mr. Paradis answers by noting that one effect of World War II was that the U.S. displaced the British Empire as the unrivaled leader of the West, and of the consequential role played by General Eisenhower in becoming the first U.S. President to be called “Leader of the Free World.”

 

Thousands of books have been written about Eisenhower and D-Day. This one deserves a spot near the head of the list. 

"Mission: Preserve the Republic"

 Over the weekend we saw the movie Reagan, with Dennis Quaid playing the title role. It brought back waves of nostalgia for a time and a President so different from what we have and what we are offered. But pining for yesteryear does no one any good. As the saying goes, we must play with the cards we are dealt. Nevertheless, the movie – the first for me in a theater in over five years – is worth seeing. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Mission: Preserve the Republic”

September 23, 2024

 

Elizabeth Willing Powel: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Benjamin Franklin: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

                                                                                                      Philadelphia, September 17, 1787

 

That exchange took place 237 years ago outside Independence Hall, where delegates had met to discuss weaknesses in the Articles of Confederation, as they pertained to the central government. It was recorded in the journal of Maryland delegate James McHenry (1753-1816), a journal now in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. (The Articles of Confederation, agreed to in 1777, were replaced a decade later by the United States Constitution, which provided for a stronger central government.)

 

Democrats have seized the expression “save democracy,” which means elect them, not Republicans who they argue would destroy democracy. They express concern of storm troopers led by Donald Trump who they say would tear down our democratic institutions. But might this be an example of projection?

 

Our Founders were concerned about despotism, including what James Madison called “the tyranny of the majority.” So they constructed a Republic, with checks and balances, a federal government with three equal and independent branches – legislative, executive and judicial – to protect the rights of both the majority and the minority. 

 

In a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, George Washington University law professor Jonathon Turley wrote: “In an October 2020 interview, Harvard law professor Michael Klarman laid out a plan for Democrats should they win the White House and both congressional chambers. They would enact ‘democracy-entrenching legislation.’ But what does that mean? They have called for the elimination of the Electoral College. They want to increase the size of the Supreme Court, and widen the reach of the federal bureaucracy through new administrative agencies. They would give Congress the ability to impose term limits on Supreme Court Justices and have the Court abide by a code of ethics prepared by Congress. Their plans would emasculate the concept of federalism and require amending the Constitution.  

 

On the Republican side, the Heritage Foundation published a 920-page document, reflecting their vision for a second Trump administration, Project 2025. A copy of the plan was brought to the Democrat convention in Chicago where it was presented as a blueprint as to what they claimed Republicans would do: transform the FBI, abolish the Department of Education, dismantle NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association), terminate the legal status of 500,000 “Dreamers,” and curtail women’s rights. Unmentioned was the fact that the Heritage Foundation has, every four years, released a “Mandate for Leadership” since the early 1980s, or the fact that Mr. Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025.

 

None of this is to belittle risks to our government, which is unique in the annals of mankind. Fifty-seven years ago, at his inaugural as California’s Governor, Ronald Reagan stated: “Freedom is a fragile thing, and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction.” Yet threats continue. Sixteen years ago, speaking to a crowd in Columbus, Missouri, Barack Obama proclaimed: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” What did he mean? And now we have the unelected wife of an elected President running a cabinet meeting. Where was his Vice President? Shades of Edith Wilson?

 

Fundamental to our system of government, whether you choose to call it a democracy or a republic, is freedom of expression, with the obvious exceptions of – without cause – yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater, or declaiming in front of the Supreme Court, as did New York’s senior U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer: “I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” In a nation of 330 million people such threats can have unintended consequences, as assassination attempts on Mr. Trump have demonstrated. On the other hand, censorship, whether practiced by the government, as in the Russian collusion story in 2015-2019, or by the media, as in the Hunter Biden laptop story of 2020, is detrimental to inherent freedoms, and thus to the preservation of our democratic republic.

 

The Founders decided on a bicameral legislature so that smaller states would have equal representation in the U.S. Senate, to offset the House of Representatives, which is based on population. The Electoral College, which elects the President, is a combination of the two, being allocated votes equal to its number of Senators and its number of Congressional districts. Keep in mind, in 1787 this reflected magnanimity on the part of Virginia, which was the largest state in the union and home to principal authors of our founding documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and The Federalist Papers. As well, Virginia was home to four of the first five Presidents. If Washington, Jefferson, Madison or Monroe had preferred a pure democracy they could have railroaded one through. 

 

Our form of government has survived a British invasion in 1812-1814 and a Civil War. It has survived the scourge of slavery, years of Jim Crow and reconstruction, a debilitating depression, segregation, and the anti-war protests of the 1960s. It has survived the assassinations of four U.S. Presidents. It went to the aid of Europe in 1917. It saved the world from Nazism and Imperial Japan in the 1940s. It has produced more Nobel and Pulitzer prize-winners than any other nation. Its economy and freedom have been a beacon for the world’s oppressed, drawn by opportunities the Country offers. At its heart are personal, political and economic freedoms. It is a nation that adheres to the lesson of the old Chinese proverb – “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.”

 

Yes, our mission should be to preserve the Republic gifted us. I am not happy in the choices we have for President in 2024. Neither political party seems concerned with our massive debt, which can (and will) destroy our way of life, especially as we face demographic challenges unknown to our forefathers. And I am not happy that both Parties focus on what they can do for us, rather than emphasizing the opportunities free markets offer to those talented, aspirational and diligent. I am not happy when diversity is reserved solely for color, race, sex, or creed, and when it excludes abilities, opinions, and interests.

 

As we head to the polls, we should consider: Which political party is more likely to shrink regulations, limit spending, and stop the dangerous silliness of letting boys compete against girls in school sports? Which party is more likely to give the aspirational opportunity to succeed in the fields of their choice? Neither candidate is one I would choose. Harris is vacuous, either by design or by nature. And I wonder: Who is the “Oz” behind the curtain guiding Mr. Biden, and is there a “Toto” to pull back the drapes? The bombastic Mr. Trump is personally unappealing, but at least we have his four-year record as President, in which he – even though the Country was hit by Covid – performed well. And with mainstream media lined up against him there is little chance of his becoming authoritarian. Preserving our Republic should be our priority.

"Mail - Missing are Letters"

Astute readers will recall that I wrote a similar essay a year ago, entitled “The Lost Art of Writing Letters.” But this is a subject that bears repetition.

 

Here in Essex we are having another beautiful late summer day.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Mail – Missing are Letters!”

September 14, 2024

 

“In an age like ours, which is not given to letter writing, we

forget what an important part it used to play in people’s lives.”

                                                                                              attributed to Anatole Broyard (1920-1990)

                                                                                              literary critic and editor, The New York Times

 

Personal letters are as rare as a Woody Allen smile. I love letters, but, sadly, I don’t often write them and even less frequently receive them. I have hordes of old family letters and once edited a book, Dear Mary, which consisted of letters between my parents during the Second World War. I do have copies of letters written to each of my ten grandchildren on their tenth birthdays. I have a collection of E. B. White’s letters and Philip Stanhope’s (Lord Chesterfield) Letters. I have framed letters from Noah Webster, Harriet Beecher Stowe, T.S. Eliot, Gideon Welles, and P.G. Wodehouse, reflecting bygone eras. This absence of letters saddens me. They once played a big role in my life, and I am sure in yours.

 

Recently, when I stopped by the mailroom the pickings were typical – a couple of bills, two requests for money, an unwanted catalogue, and a statement. The bills were put aside, the statement filed, the catalogue recycled, and one of the requests was tabled. The other was shredded. There were no letters, not even a postcard. Going to the mailbox has lost the breathless anticipation I remember from my youth.

 

In boarding school, opening my mailbox was fraught with emotion. Would anything be there? It was thrilling if the envelope had the cursive handwriting that only a fifteen-year-old girl could master – a girl met the previous summer, or at a dance with a sister school – a girl whom I would have liked to call a girlfriend, but I was too shy. More often the envelope bore my mother’s distinctive handwriting, with a message admonishing me to study hard and stay out of trouble. Those of us who served in the armed forces remember the excitement of mail call – We would gather around the corporal who dispensed the mail. Names were called. There were days – perhaps most – when I retreated to my bunk empty-handed. On others, I was happy. Since I had met the girl who is now my wife, it was her letters I cherished. 

 

I have always liked letters. They offer a snapshot of the author. Tucked away, my wife and I have letters from our parents and grandparents. They help us better understand them. Letters were once inherent to our culture. Twenty-one of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament are epistles or letters. The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium is a collection of 124 letters by the Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger, written toward the end of his life in 65AD. But letters are rare in this internet age – e-mail, social media posts, and texts have taken their place. Some argue that the telephone, or even the telegraph, foretold the end of letters. 

 

That may be true, but if so their death was prolonged. My parents and grandparents communicated primarily by mail. A sister who died twenty-seven years ago was known as “the last of the letter writers.” But now the end seems to be finally here. In his poem “Birches,” Robert Frost ended with this line: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” One could do worse than be a writer of letters. Someone will be happy.

"Voting"

 Whether it was the participants, or whether it just being tired, I fell asleep Tuesday night just after the opening remarks from Harris and Trump, and then awoke in time for their closing statements; so I am in no position to offer a fair appraisal. But ignorance has never stopped me. Trump did not seem especially angry or defensive, as he sometimes is, but he rambled as usual and was as unpleasant as always. He is a bad lawyer for a good cause. Harris reminded me of an artificial unintelligent robot, programmed to spew a rehearsed message. While sounding like she was running against Joe Biden and the last three and a half years, she said that she would be President of “all the people,” as though that were a radical concept. And she added that as a prosecutor she never asked a defendant if he (or she) was a Republican or a Democrat. I had never realized such a question was common practice.

 

Mostly, my sense was (and is) one of sadness, that this great Republic has descended so low that these two represent the best we can do. God, help us, our children and grandchildren.

 

………………………………………………………………

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Voting”

September 12, 2024

 

“As I have done in every election since I started voting so many years

ago, I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates,

see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in,

the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme

Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.”

                                                                                                       Attributed to Colin Powell (1937-2021)

 

In an era when convenience substitutes for deliberation, Colin Powell offers wise advice. One of the great privileges and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy is the ability to help determine the course of government by their vote.

 

While there are almost eight weeks before election day, early voting in five states – Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, and Virginia – will begin in just over a week. (Only three states – Alabama, Mississippi, and New Hampshire – do not allow early voting, though all allow absentee voting.)

 

While early voting is a relatively recent phenomena, absentee voting has been around in some states (for instance Connecticut) since the Civil War. Advocates for early voting argue that it is easy to implement and increases turnout. Opponents suggest it leads to ill-informed decisions, prevents voters from changing their minds, creates logistical concerns, which increases the risk of fraud. While there is no question that for some people early voting simplifies their lives, the principal beneficiaries are politicians (and their surrogates) who hold rallies, pump up their followers, and send them off to vote on an emotional high. 

 

Nevertheless, voter turnout in 2020, at 66.6% of the voting eligible population (VEP), was the highest in recent years. The closest comparable number was 62.5% in 2008. However, other factors in 2020 may have been at work. New Hampshire, one of three states that does not allow early voting, had a VEP in 2020 of 73.96% while Pennsylvania, which allows 50 days of early voting, had a VEP of 69.93%. One wonders: With so much attention lavished on the election by the media, why is turnout not higher? 

 

As the reader might suspect I am not a fan of early voting, though I do believe in the necessity of absentee voting, (and I am a big fan of the study of civics in school). For years, while having my residence in Old Lyme, Connecticut, I would spend weekdays in New York. During those twenty-five years I always voted absentee – showing up at the town hall on Friday afternoon before election, casting my ballot, putting it in the proper envelope, and handing it to the registrar. I voted, knowing that if new information came out over the next two or three days I would be unable to change my vote. As well, I missed the comraderie of going to the polls, being a part of the community.

 

Polarization has made voters’ lives more difficult. With media bias common and with social media ubiquitous and biased, independent, free-thinking voters have a more difficult task than those of an earlier time. Facts and opinions are tossed together like a salad, which has given us disinformation masquerading as fact, relative truth professing to be objective, dishonesty hyped as sincerity. Opinion writers, such as me, are exactly that – putting opinions into words, trying to explain why we believe as we do. But when opinions slip into lead articles on the front page of The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the New York Post, media has abandoned its role as disinterested observer. The New York Times should amend its motto: “All the News WE See Fit to Print.” Fox News is the propaganda arm of the right, the same role played by CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and network TV on the left. The voter is treated, not as an individual interested in learning and capable of making up their own mind, but as a fan rooting for the home team. It is no wonder politicians love early voting: Speak at a rally, with an emphasis on emotion, not facts. Watch your supporters pump their fists; then send them out, like sheep, to the polls, while you move on to the next venue – wash, rinse, spin, and repeat.   

 

In this mad, mad world, we have lost sight of the fact that voting is both a privilege and a duty. It is a privilege because of the good fortune we have to live in this country. It is our duty, because it is incumbent on each of us to use our vote to help influence the direction of the country. And we seem to have forgotten that a core value in our system of self-governance is the right to cast a secret ballot, to protect our privacy and guard against coercion.

 

My advice: Take your time. Don’t hasten to the polls. Read as much as you can, including history for background, but also about the issues our country faces today. Keep things in perspective. Know the opinions of those you read and listen to. Journalists have assumed the properties of the propagandist. Remember, things are never as good as what one person says, nor as bad what another claims. Allow for nuances and never forget that the goal should be that our descendants enjoy the furtherance (and improvement on) of the life we have been privileged to live.

 

So vote, but do so thoughtfully and deliberately, and remember there is no reason why you should feel compelled to tell others what lever you pulled. Take General Powell’s advice: take your time, examine the candidates, understand their policies, and learn of the people with whom they plan to populate their administration.

"Why Read?" and "Under Western Eyes," Joseph Conrad

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“Why Read?

September 7, 2024

 

"To read is to fly: it is to soar to a point of vantage which gives a view over wide terrains

of history, human variety, ideas, shared experience and the fruits of many inquiries"

A.C. Grayling (1949-)

                                                                                                                                Against All Gods, 2012 

 

Why, you might ask, should an 83-year-old retired stockbroker read Joseph Conrad? It is not as though I do not have a choice. North of 250 thousand new titles are added every year, just in the U.S. Authors operate in what is probably the most competitive business in the world. While in school I read Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, two of Conrad’s earlier books, then popular choices for summer reading. More recently I read The Secret Agent and Victory. But I had not thought much about Conrad until recently, when a friend mentioned at lunch one day that he had written his senior thesis on him sixty-seven years ago. 

 

Unable to tell you what makes a book a classic, I know they are rare: Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Tolstoy, Hugo, and others, including Conrad. Over the past few years I have re-read several, a habit lauded by the late Italian writer and journalist, Italo Calvino, who wrote in his posthumously published Why Read the Classics: “When we re-read the book in our maturity, we then discover these constants which by now form part of our inner mechanisms though we have forgotten where they come from.” Books, especially classics, are a lens through which we view our lives and make sense of the world around us. 

 

……………………………………………………

 

Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad”

 

“…they seemed brought out from the confused immensity of the Eastern

borders to be exposed cruelly to the observation of my Western eyes.”

                                                                                                                                Under Western Eyes, 1911

                                                                                                                                Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

 

In 1889 Rudyard Kipling wrote the lines that open his poem “The Ballad of East and West:”

 

“Oh East is East, and West is West, and

never the twain shall meet.”

 

Kipling wrote of India, Indians and their British colonizers, but his words apply to the difference between 1911 pre-World War I Western Europe and authoritarian Tsarist Russia. Under Western Eyes tells of revolutionaries in St. Petersburg in those dozen years between the failed revolution of 1905 and the successful overthrow of the Tsar in 1917. Victor Haldin, a student, helped assassinate the brutal Minister of State, and then requests help of fellow student Razumov whom he trusts, even though he is not a revolutionary. Razumov is a young man, alone in the world, whose sole goal is a silver medal for academic studies. Haldin’s entry into his life threatened the future he had mapped out. The story is narrated by an unnamed “Teacher of Languages,” a retired English professor (a man of the West), who lives in Geneva. It moves back and forth between St. Petersburg and Geneva. It is a timeless story of trust, self-reflection, subterfuge, betrayal, love, honor, dishonor, guilt, and, ultimately, punishment and redemption.

"Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark^[1]”

September 5, 2024

 

“American politics is undergoing a profound change in its core pattern.”

                                                                                                                                Newt Gingrich (1943-)

                                                                                                                                New York Sun

                                                                                                                                August 29, 2024

 

When Marcellus utters Shakespeare’s immortal line, he speaks of the corruption that led to Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet, being murdered. When Mr. Gingrich wrote the words in the rubric, it reflected his opinion that corruption, incompetence and dishonesty have come to characterize American politics. One does not have to be in accord with all that Mr. Gingrich believes to agree that politics in the United States has become polarized and that people, in general, have become disenchanted with those who labor in the vineyards along the Potomac.  

 

Complaints about politics and political leaders are as old as civilization, but they have reached new heights in the U.S., and, in fact, in much of the West. A PEW Research study, conducted a year ago, concluded: “Just 4% of U.S. adults say the political system is working extremely or very well; another 23% say it is working somewhat well.” Things have worsened since. On August 21 of this year Statista Research put the approval rating for the U.S. Congress at 16 percent. Keep in mind, this is despite the 118^th Congress “being the most diverse Congress in American history.” Their report concluded that “nearly 60% of Americans have no confidence the parties can govern in a bipartisan way.”

 

When asked how they feel when they think of politics in the PEW study, 65% said they were “always/often exhausted”. Asked as to what words best described the current state of American politics, “divisive” and “corrupt” were the top choices. Members of Congress, especially those on the left, are famous for extolling wealth and income disparities. Yet, the median net worth of an individual member of Congress is more than five times the median net worth of American households. Wikipedia, in a list of presidents ranked by net worth, adjusted for inflation to 2022 U.S. dollars, shows that three of the last five U.S. Presidents head the list: Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. (George W. Bush is twelfth and Joe Biden is tied with Eisenhower for twenty-second.) Last on the list is Harry Truman, who famously replied when offered a corporate board seat: “You don’t want me; you want the U.S. Presidency, and it’s not for sale.” Today, everything in politics is for sale, including access.

 

“Antiestablishment populism is on the rise in Europe, fueled not just by migration and economic and security fears, but also by a deeper trend: eroding confidence in governments’ ability to overcome these challenges;” so began an article in last Tuesdays The Wall Street Journal by Bertrand Benoit. This lack of confidence in government can be seen in recent elections in Italy, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. As for problems of inflation, migration and the war in Ukraine, there is, as Mr. Benoit wrote, “confidence is crumbling that elected governments can solve them.”

 

In the U.S., our history has become a cesspool of political correctness. Schools and colleges depict our forefathers as racists and colonizers who despoiled an idyllic Eden. Certainly, we should not revere the Founders of our nation as God-like figures, but we should acknowledge that slave holders like Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe bequeathed us a government that gave us, over time, Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, and then, a hundred years further on, Civil Rights. Is all perfect today? No. We should always strive to improve, but we should never lose sight of the fact that it has been our history of free speech, free enterprise and limited government that have been foundational to our culture and economic growth, the latter which has provided us with living standards unimaginable to our grandparents, even to our parents.

 

Without a common enemy to hate, such as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, we have lost our moral compass. The substitution of climate change as an “existential threat,” while popular among Western elitists, does not work. It is an excuse to justify more government control. The Earth’s climate has changed continuously over its billions of years of existence, long before man made his appearance. It will continue to change. Like all living things, man must adapt. It is true that man has used many of the Earth’s resources to improve his living standards, which certainly has had some effect on climate. But, as aspiration, ability, diligence, and free markets made him wealthier and gave him more leisure time, he became more conscious of his environment. When an individual is battling for subsistence he cares not what happens to his waste. The best way to improve the environment in the undeveloped world is to promote economic growth. 

 

The absence of morality is deadly. It can be seen in the attitude of Western politicians who apply a moral equivalence toward the democratic nation of Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, which governs (or did govern) Gaza. When six hostages were recently shot execution-style by Hamas terrorists, the reaction by the White House (and most leaders in Europe) was to blame Israel along with Hamas, but specifically Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to achieve a cease fire. Why have we lost our sense of right and wrong? The West is challenged in many places. Leaders of China want hegemony in the Pacific, Russia’s Putin wants to restore his country’s Soviet empire, and Iran would like to dominate the Middle East. America’s role should be that “shining city on the hill,” a phrase first used by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, then by John Winthrop in 1630, and 259 years later by Ronald Reagan – an example of what man is capable.  

 

I am not so cynical as to believe that someone, or some group, is deliberately trying to undermine our nation and its values – family, work, accountability and responsibility, courage, respect for others, individualism and unity, fairness, merit, care for those less fortunate – though it sometimes seems that way. What I do know is that something is wrong in our country, and in the West – it is the fissures that divide us; it is the sense of entitlement that permeates our bureaucracy and some of our people; it is the claim that exceptional achievements of thousands of individual Americans over hundreds of years was only possible because of a benevolent state. Newt Gingrich is right. Our politics is undergoing a profound (and disheartening) change. We should never be blind to our faults. We should always strive to improve our lot and that of those around us. But we should celebrate our successes, and we should learn from our failures. 

 

At its essence, the United States has been a virtuous country, as has been the West. Both provided individuals the freedom to succeed based on merit, which, in turn, has raised living standards for their citizens, and both have given promise of opportunities to millions who live elsewhere, those whose lives have been reduced by dictators and barbarians. Both have defended freedom. But when nations ignore the moral compass that allowed them to succeed, when they denigrate their history and disregard their Judeo-Christian heritage, they offer an opening to authoritarians, whether from the right or the left. That is what is rotten, and that is the risk the U.S. and the West face.

 

 

 

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[1] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene IV