"A Cauldron of Challenges"

Yesterday, a grandson, a graduate student in 20^th Century European history, texted me a copy of the front page from the October 1, 1938 New York Times: “Czech Rulers Bow, But Under Protest.” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned to London from meeting Hitler in Munich the previous day, declaring that, in offering Germany Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland he had brought “peace in our time.” My grandson was reminded of that event after President Trump’s urged Ukraine’s President Zelensky to give up Crimea to Russia.   

 

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While Francis was not my favorite Pope, there is no question that he was a compassionate man, especially to the poor and those unable to care for themselves. However, his allowing China’s Communist Party to select (or approve) Bishops I thought was wrong, but Francis may have concluded that it was the only way the Church could exist in that despotic, secular country. I also have long felt that like so many Socialists, Francis failed to credit capitalism as being the principal (albeit imperfect) force in reducing poverty. One has only to compare life in the Democratic and capitalist West with the Socialist world.

 

Nevertheless, I wish him eternal life, and, having watched the movie Conclave, I eagerly await the results of next month’s Conclave.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Cauldron of Challenges”

April 25, 2025

 

“Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

                                                                                                                Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1 (1606)

                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Socrates (c. 469 BC – 399 BC)

 

President Trump has achieved a few goals. Border crossings by illegal migrants have declined by close to ninety percent. Military recruitment is up, with Army recruitment at 15-year highs. DOGE has exposed waste and fraud in many government agencies, and woke ideology is on the run. And, unlike the Biden years, we know who is in charge at the White House. 

 

But in other respects Mr. Trump has been less successful. He is wrong, in my opinion, when he calls for the capitulation of Ukraine, and when he advocates for tariffs – a tax on American consumers. His on-again-off-again tariffs have wreaked havoc with the stock market, weakened the dollar, and caused a pause in the economy. A weak dollar would result in higher interest rates for U.S. Treasuries. While illegal migration poses cultural and dependency risks, globalization and a strong dollar have raised living standards, as the cost of consumables, measured in hours worked, have declined over the decades, due to manufacturing being done where it is most cost efficient, along with technological innovations. Stronger education standards, secure borders, and a tax code that encourages innovation and investment are what is needed, not barriers to free trade. And I fail to understand Mr. Trump’s love affair with cryptocurrencies.

 

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This essay focuses on a few of the challenges we face. (There are, obviously, many others). Shakespeare’s three witches had filled their cauldron with fillets of fenny snakes, eyes of Newts, tongues of dogs, and other such delicacies, but the cauldron of which I write is filled with threats: federal debt and unfunded liabilities at record levels; interest rates that encourage borrowing and discourage savings; public schools that don’t educate; declining birthrates – a world-wide phenomenon; an imperialistic China; a revanchist Russia; a soon-to-be nuclear armed Iran; and, I would argue, an absence of moral judgement. 

 

As a percent of GDP, today’s federal debt exceeds the level reached in 1945 when it peaked at 121.2%. Then, the United States financed a large portion of the Allies needs to fight a global war. Currently, the debt to GDP ratio stands around 122%, and is estimated to rise further, as a projected $1.3 trillion deficit for fiscal 2025 will be added to the current $36.2 trillion in U.S. federal debt. Today, more than half the federal budget is spent on entitlements. None of this debt, of course, includes an estimated $73 trillion in unfunded liabilities, principally from Medicare and Social Security. The reason that deficits continue to increase is simple – we spend more than we take in. Resolution can only lie with higher taxes or reduced spending, or a combination of the two. Reduced spending penalizes recipients of government largesse. Increased taxes inhibit economic growth. Will anyone in Washington address this problem? 

 

Low interest rates encourage consumption and speculation, and they discourage savings. When Treasury rates are only a percent or two above inflation they offer little incentive, apart for foreigners who benefit (or have benefitted) from the strong dollar, which explains why they currently own about one third of all U.S. Treasuries publicly held. If Mr. Trump is successful, in achieving a weaker dollar one can expect foreign investors to fade. If they do, rates will rise, as domestic investors will demand higher returns. 

 

Thomas Jefferson believed that for a society to be self-governed it had to be “educated and free-thinking.” Yet, according to Pacific Research Institute 43% of high school students in the U.S. graduate illiterate and innumerate. A debate between Republicans and Democrats over whether boys can play on girls sports’ teams and use their bathrooms may be worth having, but it should not detract from the fact that not all our children are being taught to read, write and do simple arithmetic. Superintendents and principals need to be able to fire non-performing teachers, without fear of retribution from teachers’ unions.

 

Attention must be paid to the demographic crisis soon to confront us. Total Fertility Rates (TFR) measure the average number of children a woman is expected to bear in her lifetime. A TFR of 2.1 represents replacement rate. For the last fifty years, the TFR in the U.S. has been below replacement. Today, the TFR in the U.S. stands at 1.76. And during the last fifty years, the average age in the U.S. has risen from 27.6 to 38.5, even as the population increased by better than 50%, or about130 million. A little more than a third of that increase reflects legal immigrants. Additionally, current population numbers include illegal migrants. Nevertheless, births in the U.S. outnumbered deaths by approximately 380,000 in 2023. However, declining birthrates and an aging population pose economic and social risks. In the EU the situation is dire. Deaths outnumber births by more than a million, and the TFR for 2024 is estimated to have been 1.4, with the median age having risen from 31.3 to 42.5 over the past fifty years. Birthrates below replacement, with increasing longevity will have economic consequences, yet politicians and the media seem to care little about what could become a monumental challenge. “Attention must be paid,” as Linda Loman says to her husband in Death of a Salesman.

 

Overseas, China dominates the Pacific and is making inroads in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East through its Belt & Road initiatives. Putin’s Russia seems determined to restore its Tsarist boundaries, while Iran and North Korea threaten the peace in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. U.S. defense spending, as a percent of the federal budget, has declined from 24.3% in 1980 to 13.5% in 2024. At the same time interest expense in 1980, when the Ten-Year yielded 11.4%, has risen from 8.8% to 13.2%, even as the yield on the Ten-Year has fallen to 4.2%. World peace demands a militarily strong United States.

 

………………………………………………….

 

If blame for the challenges cited above were allocated fairly among our two political parties, there would be no one to manage government. Playing to the choir and grabbing headlines is more important than debating controversial subjects. If Diogenes were to wander the streets of Washington searching for an honest politician, he would have better luck looking for a Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree on the Tibetan Plateau.

 

Perhaps I exaggerate the threats. We have been in tight spots in the past – obviously during the Civil War, but also in the 1960s, when Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement caused bloody protests, campus shootings and assassinations. Nevertheless, today’s divisiveness is disturbing. We need as President a Lincoln-like figure, an individual capable of uniting the diverse strands of our people, a person with humor and possessed of moral certitude based on the Judeo-Christian heritage on which our nation was built.

 

After all, we are the United States. Surely such an individual must exist…somewhere in this great Country.

"Voice for the Voiceless," Dalai Lama - A Review

 

I have been working on a TOTD, which I had hoped to have out yesterday, but its complexities have caused a delay. We often know what we want to say, but finding the right words (and avoiding the wrong ones) is never easy. However, it should be ready by next Friday.

 

The Dalai Lama’s short book – the subject of this essay – I found fascinating, not only in his descriptions of his ongoing plight with China’s Communist rulers, but in his incredible patience and his persistence in his belief that non-violence is key to protests. The book may also, as it did me, prompt you to reference an atlas to better understand this country, where Mount Everest defines the border with Nepal.

 

My wife joins me in wishing everyone a Happy Easter.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Voice for the Voiceless, Dalai Lama

April 19, 2025

 

“However, as I have thought about it over the years, what is lacking in

Marxism is compassion. Its greatest flaw is the total neglect of basic

human values, and the deliberate promotion of hate through class struggle.”

 

For sixty-six years the Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, has had to live as an exile from his ancestral lands. India accepted him as a refugee and thousands of other Tibetans in 1959, nine years after Chinese Communists first occupied his Country. Thus, Dharamsala has been his (and the Central Tibetan Administration’s (the government in exile), home for almost seven decades. In 2011, after a Tibetan Buddhist monk self-immolated, the Dalai Lama gave up his role as head of state. 

 

This is a short book – 222 pages, including 74 pages of appendices – that describe his experiences as a refugee and his attempts to reach some sort of a rapprochement with the Chinese government, including letters. Early on, he realized advocating for full independence would be futile. He wrote of a meeting in Switzerland in 1988: “I stressed at this gathering of Tibetans that the essence of what we aspired to – the ability protect our language, culture, religion, and our identity as a people – could be achieved within the framework of the People’s Republic of China” – a policy he termed as a “Middle Way” approach.

 

In the appendices he cites the relevant articles of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that would allow such freedoms. But China’s Constitution is written for show, not adherence. He spoke to the adoption by the United Nations, in December 1948, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of how, in 1976, it acquired a legal basis: “Almost immediately after the Universal Declaration of human rights was adopted, China began what has been more than seventy years of systematic abuse of the human rights of the Tibetan people.”

 

Throughout his years in exile, the Dalai Lama has been a strong advocate for non-violence in his people’s repudiation of Chinese enforcement, even as excessive mining, deforestation, and the burying of nuclear waste has devastated the Tibetan plateau. Over the years, the Dalai Lama visited with all of China’s leaders, beginning in 1950 when he was sixteen and met with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. After each visit, he felt assured that his wishes would be honored, yet time proved his hopes fruitless. “At its core,” he wrote, “the issue (for him and Tibetan Buddhists) is not about bread and butter. It is about the very survival of Tibetans as a people.”

 

This reader sensed a naivete on the part of the Dalai Lama, but on reflection realized His Holiness is driven by non-violence and the knowledge that six million Tibetans are no match against 1.4 billion Chinese. He is correct when he suggests that if China were to recognize the multiple nationalities that live within its territories, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would achieve modern status. Sadly that won’t happen in a totalitarian regime intent on controlling the thoughts of its citizens.

 

As much as the book is evocative of the Dalai Lama’s devotion to his people, their culture and religion, it is also an indictment of the malignancy of China’s Communist Party.

"Looking Backward"

 This is an enormous (dare I say huge?) subject, and, in under 600 words, I have only touched on a few aspects of how the creativity and inventiveness of a few individuals have radically improved our lives over the past 150 years. I suspect many of you have had similar thoughts, especially those of you who were fortunate to know your grandparents.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Looking Backward”

April 6, 2025

 

“Backward, turn backward, O time, in your flight,

Make me a child again just for tonight!”

                                                                                                                “Rock Me to Sleep,” 1859 

                                                                                                                Elizabeth Akers Allen (1832-1911)

 

The future holds my attention, but as I get older I spend more time looking backward. While historians look to the past to gain insights for the future, I look back – mostly at my paternal grandfather – to better understand the world of 150 years ago and contrast it with the one in which I grew up (and am still growing up). While the history of man, through written records, can be traced back 5,000 years to civilizations in Egypt and what is now Iraq, it constantly amazes me to realize how much our material lives have changed in just the past 150 years. 

 

Fortune favored me, in that I knew all my grandparents, though my maternal grandfather died when I was six. But my paternal grandfather, who was born in February 1873, died in 1963 when I was twenty-two. I knew him well, and because we shared the same name I always felt a special kinship.

 

But the circumstances in which we were born reflect a vastly changed America. When he was born, the United States had a population of 40 million. Alexander Graham Bell had yet to invent the telephone, which he did in 1876. And he was nine when Thomas Edison opened the nation’s first commercial power plant, the Pearl Street Station, in New York City. The first commercially available automobile, the Duryea Wagon, would not be offered for sale until 1896 when he was two years out of college. He was thirty when the Wright Brothers took their first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first paved road in the U.S. appeared on a one-mile stretch of Woodward Avenue in Detroit in 1909 when my grandfather was thirty-six. And it would be 1935, when he was sixty-two, before one could travel from New York City to San Francisco on a paved highway, the Lincoln Highway. 

 

By the time I was born, the population of the U.S. had more than tripled to 132 million. Thirty-six percent of households had telephones and 75% had electricity. The number of cars on American roads were about 34 million and able to drive on 320,000 miles of paved highways. By 1953, airlines were flying non-stop commercial flights across the U.S.

 

War was more of a constant for my grandfather than for me. The February 15, 1898 sinking of the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor, shortly after my grandfather’s 23^rd birthday was the catalyst for the Spanish American War. He joined the Massachusetts Militia but never went to Cuba. Sixty-four years later I joined the U.S. Army Reserves, a year or so before our entry into the Vietnam War. He was forty-one when World War I broke out and sixty-eight when the U.S. entered World War II. His three sons and two sons-in-law served in the War, one of whom was wounded at Okinawa.  

 

Time moves on, and my grandchildren’s lives will be different (and probably improved) from mine, in ways we can only guess. Readers will note that the title of this essay comes from Edward Bellamy’s 1888 eponymous utopian novel. The difference being that Bellamy’s principal character, Julian West, is looking backward from a futuristic world he can only envision, while I look backward on a life I have lived.

"Tariffs and Other Thoughts"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Tariffs and Other Thoughts”

April 9, 2025

 

“So set aside the folk memory of the Great Depression, and try to look

at tariffs in a non-hysterical way, as a policy with rational political aims.”

                                                                                                                                David Frost (1965-)

                                                                                                                                Former British diplomat & politician

                                                                                                                                The Spectator, 3 April, 2025

 

President Trump bears responsibility for the rout in the world’s equity markets. His tariffs, if used to raise revenues, as he claims, will cause a global recession, or worse. If they are used to negotiate lower tariffs on U.S. exports, which he also claims, they will strengthen the economy and may lead to global free trade. He is right, however, in his complaint that there is much in our politics and culture that has gone wrong over the past several years. We are a country, like much of the West, with a spending problem. Federal debt, as a percent of GDP, is higher than it was in 1945 (121% in 2024 versus 112% in 1945). Both political parties are at fault for excessive spending. As well, there has been a rise in anti-Semitism, fueled, in my opinion, by dislike for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and often masked as anti-Zionism. And, of course, our border was open throughout President Biden’s term in office.

 

In this age of technology, we must focus on ensuring access to needed raw materials. Over the past several years, we have let defense spending lapse, while permitting China unchallenged access to commodities and markets across Africa and South America. We have allowed unfettered (and illegal) migration into our country, and not just for those seeking political refuge from despotic governments, but for criminals and gang members, some of whom brought in fentanyl, a drug that has killed an estimated quarter of a million Americans since 2018. We have seen the Democratic Party take a sharp turn to the left, as it became increasingly patronizing in tone – do as I say, not as I do. The Party has focused on equity, not equal opportunity. In the name of diversity, it has encouraged racial division and allowed identity policies, rather than ability and diligence, to become the standard for admissions into colleges and businesses; it has let universities become beacons of “social justice,” rather than pinnacles of learning where students debate controversial subjects in a respectful and tolerant manner; it has encouraged sports venues to allow males to compete against females. Just last year, the Party knowingly nominated a man for President who was mentally unfit, and now we have a Supreme Court Justice who is unable to define a woman. In all of this, mainstream media has been complicit. 

 

None of us want to return to the past. Each generation builds on the previous. Much of manufacturing, in the 21^st Century, will be done by robots, so bringing industries back to the U.S. will not necessarily bring back jobs. Three hundred years ago, and thousands of years before that, the principal source of wealth was land, and the crops grown and the minerals mined. Wealth gaps were enormous and slaves and serfs who worked the land had little or no freedom. The Industrial Revolution, which began almost two hundred years ago, gave rise to a new group of capitalists – those who were innovative, creative, aspirant and diligent. Income and wealth gaps were still enormous; but new products, from railroads to plumbing, improved lives. And that period saw trade expand beyond borders. Industries, to stay competitive moved production facilities. After World War II, in my home state of New Hampshire, textile mills relocated to southern States, to take advantage of cheaper labor and other economic incentives. While those moves hurt New Hampshire’s economy, lower prices of finished goods benefitted consumers across the nation. 

 

More recently, finance and technology have provided sources of wealth. Life is never fair, and there will always be those who have more than others. But definitions of poverty have been defined upwards. Capitalism has improved lives. Keep in mind, the role of government is not to redistribute wealth or equalize outcomes, but to set rules and regulations, enact and ensure adherence to laws, provide a system of equal justice, and offer access to ladders that lead to opportunities for success, recognizing that the rungs on a ladder go down as well as up. And education represents the first and most important step on that ladder. So, education should be a principal concern of government. Yet, because of the power of teachers’ unions – major supporters of the Democrat Party – education has been neglected, as test scores show.  

 

Mr. Trump’s flaws are legion; they include an over-sized ego (a characteristic common to all politicians) and his preference to surround himself with sycophants (another characteristic common to most politicians). And just as his enemies are blinded with hatred, his acolytes are blinded by devotion. Nevertheless, tariffs, as proposed, are not the answer the Administration claims. In fact, left standing, they will cause more damage to markets and the economy. So, the question is: Will they remain as they are? I don’t know.

 

I want to end, however, on a positive note. The people of the United States recognize the extraordinary luck they have to live in this country. This is the only country in the world founded on the principle that men and women are born free, with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, yes, I recognize our history has not always been just, that injustice is part of our past. But I also recognize the great strides we have made over the years and the acknowledgment of those injustices by leaders in politics, education and business. Overseas, the United States must continue to practice and project the moral standards that have defined our nation for the past 250 years. 

 

Volatility in the stock market is a concern, but it is worth repeating Benjamin Graham’s quote: …that the market, in the short term, can be seen as a “voting machine,” influenced by investor sentiment and emotions, but in the long run it acts as a “weighing machine,” reflecting the value of companies based on their fundamentals. Current volatility, while putting at risk traders with short time horizons, offers opportunity to long term investors seeking value.

 

As for our nation, Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It is true that Founders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison owned slaves, but it is also true that they provided the framework, in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that permitted America’s moral universe to bend toward a fairer and more inclusive society. And that arc is still bending. History is a continuum. 

 

So, stay positive and stay focused. There is good and bad in all people. We have not yet seen the final act in this play about tariffs. Applause or catcalls should wait.

"Very Good, Jeeves," P.G. Wodehouse - A Review

 A correction of yesterday’s TOTD: An alert reader noted a mistake in the population of the European Union. The numbers used were for all of Europe. The European Union has a population of 449 million, which is expected to decline to 420 million by 2100. My apologies for the error. A corrected copy is attached.

 

Markets continued their downward slide yesterday, amid fears of a global trade war and a possible recession, or worse. While that is cause for concern, it may be meaningful to recall that P.G. Wodehouse – an author who needs no introduction – did much of his work during the three decades between 1914 and 1945, a time when the world was mired in two world wars, a global depression, and a time that saw the rise of Communism, Fascism and Nazism.

 

He brought humor to a suffering world. Open anyone of his books, and the furrowed brow will be replaced by a joyous smile.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Book

Very Good, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

April 5, 2025

 

“…Mr. Wodehouse has created Jeeves. He has created others, but in his creation of

Jeeves he has done something which may respectfully be compared to the work of the 

Almighty in Michelangelo’s painting. He has formed a man filled with the breath of life.”

                                                                                                                     Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

                                                                                                                     English writer, politician, historian

                                                                                                                     Introduction Weekend Wodehouse, 1951

 

P.G. Wodehouse has been part of my life since childhood. While Wodehouse biographer Frances Donaldson has written that women, as a whole, do not care for the “masculine fantasy” he specialized in, it was my mother and grandmother who introduced me to him. Most of my collection did not make the trip from Old Lyme to Essex, but I still have sixty or so titles on my shelves. And I continue to belong to an informal group of Drones in New York where me meet – less frequently than we once did – but we still quote “The master,” tell bawdy tales and throw rolls at one another.

 

It is hard to explain why Wodehouse has accumulated so many fans over so many years. Most of his 96 titles are still in print. Many assume he wrote of the Edwardian age (1901-1910), but Wodehouse fan, publisher and editor Roger Kimball, wrote in The New Criterion, that the world Wodehouse created is one that “never existed.” Regardless, it is his playfulness that is the draw. While we laugh at Bertie Wooster having to be bailed out of self-inflicted predicaments by his valet Jeeves, the humor is never mean-spirited, even when Bertie’s Aunt Agatha calls him a “chump” and tells him: “Don’t gibber!” As much as anything, the love for his books stems from the fact he is a “master of the ludicrous” (Richard Usborne, author of Wodehouse at Work) and, as Evelyn Waugh wrote, the “exquisite felicity of his language.” 

 

In this collection there are eleven Jeeves and Bertie short stories. The book was originally published in 1930, a decade and a half after the two were introduced in 1915, when readers met them in “Extricating Young Gussie,” a short story published in The Saturday Evening Post.

 

Some examples of his bon mots in this volume:

 

                   “There’s no time when ties do not matter.” – “Jeeves and the Impending Doom”

 

                   “…he broke a vase in rather a constrained way.” – “Jeeves and the Song of Songs”

 

                   “Ha!, and I said it rather nastily.” – “The Love that Purifies”

                  “You know how it is in these remote rural districts. Life tends to get a bit slow. There’s nothing much to do in the long winter evenings but listen to the radio and brood on what a tick your neighbor is.” – “The Ordeal of Young Tuppy”

 

The British author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams, once wrote: “give me Shakespeare for tragedy, Shaw for wit and Wodehouse for lighthearted comedy.” To which I add, Amen!

"Europe - One Man's Perspective"

 Yesterday’s violent sell-off was a reminder to recall Benjamin Graham’s advice: “In the short run the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

 

I don’t pretend to have any insights as to the future direction of stocks, but I would caution against quick judgments. A grandson, a graduate student, born in 2001, asked me yesterday if he should be concerned about the market. While we should always be alert, ‘concerned’ was too strong a word. I told him that the compounded annual price return of the DJIA, since he was born, was about 6%, roughly the same annualized return since I was born 84 years ago. Not that that means anything, other than to suggest stocks may be fairly priced, but one has to expect volatility. Stocks can become overvalued, just as they can become undervalued. Five years ago, the market acted violently to the outbreak of COVID. In March of that year 20 days out of 23 trading days had the DJIA up or down more than 1.5%. On March 12, the Index was down 10%; the next day it was up 9.4%. Uncertainty leads to volatility, but long-term investors have always benefitted by the magic of compounded returns – that the market, in the short term, is a voting machine, but in the long term it is a weighing machine.

 

Now, on to today’s TOTD, which has nothing to do with the market.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Europe – One Man’s Perspective”

April 4, 2025

 

“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”

                                                                                                                                Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

                                                                                                                                British Prime Minister, 1979-1990

 

I remember my first trip to England, looking out from the plane’s window at the island’s green fields, thinking that it was from this place that most of my ancestors sailed westward across the Atlantic to a new world. Most were poor, traveling as indentured servants, but endowed with a belief in the promise of a new start in a new world. They were driven by optimism, a belief that an unknown future in a strange country would be better than what was ordained for them at home. It was with a sense of wonder and pride in their courage that I gazed at a land that, had they not emigrated, I might have called home.

 

However, what prompted this essay were recent condescending remarks of Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In his February 14^th speech in Munich, Mr. Vance said, “What I worry about is the threat from within.” While I am sympathetic to the idea of the threat from within – a failure to focus on economic growth, anti-democratic attempts to silence opposing opinions (for example, the extraordinary treatment of Marime Le Pen), and the failure of most European nations to assimilate hordes of migrants seeking refuge, and the consequence of their impact on culture. However, his patronizing tone unnecessarily imperils our relationship with Europe. And the comments by Vance and Hegseth, relayed by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, from what is now being called “SignalGate:” Vance: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” Hegseth: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s pathetic.” While it is true that most European countries have not complied, until recently, with the two percent rule for defense contributions, most have increased their spending since then President Trump made a fuss in 2017. They should give credit where credit is due

 

Americans should be careful about belittling old allies. The United States – for better or worse – is far different than Europe. More than a hundred and fifty years ago, Henry James wrote to Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton: “It’s a complex fate being an American & one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting a superstitious valuation of Europe.” Unlike Europe, where migrants mostly live segregated lives, years of assimilation in the U.S. have produced a multi-cultural population, so that almost all Americans, whether white, black or Asian, can trace part of their ancestry to one country (or several) in Europe.

 

And consider what Europe has gifted us over the Centuries: Artists like Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Constable and Picasso. Writers like Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, and Dante Alighieri. Composers like Bach, Vivaldi, Debussy and Tchaikovsky. Scientists like Archimedes, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Enrico Fermi. Thinkers and philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to Adam Smith, Voltaire and Nietzsche. Think of the palaces, museums and cathedrals designed by architects like Louis le Vau, Bernini, Juan de Villanueva and Christopher Wren.

 

These are gifts from the past that keep on giving, as can be heard in any symphony, seen in every museum, and read in libraries and classrooms. But what about the present and the future? The European Union is a worthwhile experiment. Keep in mind, the Continent was embroiled in two world wars in the 20^th Century. Peaceful coexistence is better than war. But there remains much that is unknown. Will a united Europe retain the customs, cultures and languages of their individual states? Or will it become an amorphous mixing bowl? George Washington once, allegedly, forecast: “Someday, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.” I hope so.

 

During the Cold War, Western Europe and the United States were united in their pledge to defeat the scourge of Soviet Communism. Europe was divided, because of an imperialistic Soviet Union, by what Winston Churchill described as an “iron curtain” that had “descended across the continent.” One consequence was the formation of NATO three years later, in 1949. Russia’s continued belligerence, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, meant that NATO remained relevant, but the situation changed. Russia was smaller, but still the possessor of thousands of nuclear weapons, and had aligned with other totalitarian regimes like China, North Korea and Iran. Europe, after being battered in two World Wars, a decade-long global depression, and a forty-five-year Cold War, focused on becoming social welfare states. Since the end of the Cold War, E.U. nations have spent roughly ten times as much on “social protection” as on defense. (Eastern Europe, with close memories of Soviet occupation, spends less on welfare and more on defense than does Western Europe.) 

 

But that generosity has brought other problems. As Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Europe has not focused on the productive side of its economy. In 2023, the U.S., with a population 110 million less than that in the E.U., produced a GDP 62% larger. Since the turn of the millennium, Europe’s economy has increased 134% versus 172% in the U.S. Europe needs to ensure they can continue to afford the governments and societies they have created.

 

As well, the continent has a more significant problem – an unaddressed demographic problem, which will further affect their future well-being. Not enough women are having babies. The total fertility rate (TFR) in Europe in 2023 was 1.38. The last time that rate was above replacement (2.1) was 1974. Today, the population of the European Union stands at 449 million, with an average age of 44.7. Projections suggest that the population in Europe by the end of the Century will decline to 420 million, with an average age in excess of 50. Europe is not alone with this demographic challenge. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong share the dubious distinction of having the planet’s lowest birth rates. China at 1.18 and Japan at 1.26 are both below Europe’s. The United States’ is higher but at 1.78, still below replacement. Low birthrates in Europe are being offset by increased migration. For example, in 2023 3.67 million babies were born in the E.U., while 4.6 immigrants arrived from non-E.U. countries. Nevertheless and as mentioned above demographers suggest the population will continue to age, and their culture will change to accommodate their changing populations. No one knows what the economic and cultural effects will be, but over the past several decades growth rates have shown a persistent slowing, yet the welfare state continues uninterrupted. That trend is unsustainable.

 

Nevertheless, for reasons both sentimental and practical, Europe is worthy of our friendship. It is the first line of defense against Russia. As well, it is our past and, given what it has produced over the past two thousand years, it is a fount of inspiration and brings pleasure to our futures. Despite despots and kings, wars and famines, the world is a better place because of Europe. It needs a correction but deserves our respect.