"Are We What We Read?"

Neatniks will look at the photo of our library here at Essex Meadows and despair. But I find comfort amid the books, photos and pictures – as familiar to me as a pair of old shoes.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Are We What We Read?”

September 20, 2025

 

“We are what we read – and the power of books to transform the minds and

personalities of their readers can give cause for anxiety as well as for celebration.”

                                                                                                                Prof. Richard Kieckhefer (1946-)

                                                                                                                Northwestern University

                                                                                                                Introduction – Forbidden Rites, 1997

 

We have oft heard the expression that we are what we read. But are we? That I enjoy books is no secret to my family or friends. At our home in Old Lyme we had a library of 5,000 volumes. Even in our apartment at Essex Meadows, some 700-plus books keep me company, on shelves, furniture and the floor.

 

In the March 16-18, 1709 issue of The Tatler, a British literary journal founded that year, Joseph Addison wrote: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” I hope he is right, as fear of dementia haunts many my age. In Between the Acts, her last novel, Virginia Woolf wrote: “Books are the mirrors of the soul.” If she is right, we must be cautious in our speech, and I must be careful in what I write.

 

However, reading may have limits. Albert Einstein – no slouch when it comes to brain power – is alleged to have said or written: “Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” As Einstein had a first class mind, we cannot dismiss his words as balderdash when we browse our local bookstore.

 

For the past twenty-five years I have kept a record of what I have read. The total comes to 849 books, with approximately two-thirds being fiction and one-third non-fiction. While that may seem a lot, keep in mind that according to a Google Search there are thirty-nine million books in the Library of Congress. With the choices we have, we should be selective in choosing what to read. 

 

While many of my men friends prefer non-fiction, I have always felt that good fiction is better at expressing eternal truths. Gerard Baker, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, wrote “The good novel exploits the virtue of storytelling to capture a truth.” While he was writing specifically of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, I could add Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, both of which I have read this year. It is from great writers of fiction that we amass an understanding of myriad character traits: honesty, bravery, loyalty, empathy, patience and integrity, but also jealousy, pride, prejudice, arrogance, laziness and deceit.  Perceptive novelists write of immutable values and add perspective to historical events and people. They help us better understand the people and world around us.

 

So, are we what we read? Certainly, we are formed by what we read, but we are also molded by people around us, our families, friends, those we interact with, by travel, and by jobs and experiences. However and in my opinion(and in contradiction to Einstein), reading and re-reading, done for pleasure and/or instruction, can be creative. We come to understand the vanity of Lear, appreciate village life in Middlemarch, and sympathize with the social aspirations of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

 

Worry not about the question and worry not about what you read. Just continue to read.

"Doubt and Skepticism"

 Friday’s disastrous meeting in the White House is a reminder of how doubt and skepticism can help us observers, and our political leaders. Certainly, there was enough blame for each of the three participants – President Trump, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Vice President J.D. Vance – to take a share. Besides watching a re-run of the events on YouTube, I read twenty interpretations of the afternoon’s events, from all perspectives. Yet, I am still unsure how best to allocate blame. It is common knowledge that Mr. Trump is thin-skinned and likes to be praised. Mr. Zelensky is stubborn and theatrical – look at how he dresses. Mr. Vance is smart but immature, at least in matters of diplomacy.

 

All three made mistakes in that Oval Office meeting, but especially, in my opinion, Mr. Vance. He should have kept quiet. In debate or argument, Mr. Trump, right or wrong, does not need defending. He often digs himself into a hole, but just as often extracts himself. Mr. Zelensky would have been better served to have kept quiet, not argue with Mr. Vance, and let the offered deal play out. Mr. Trump, as everyone knows, shoots from the hip, but he is also quick to walk back what he has said. I feel confident he knows that Putin is a dictator and that Zelensky is not. Was he wrong to imply otherwise? Of course. But did Mr. Zelensky believe he could win over Mr. Trump by publicly disagreeing with him and his Vice President? It would seem so. Contrast Mr. Zelensky’s behavior with that of Emanuel Macron and Keir Starmer when they met with Mr. Trump.

 

Nevertheless, there is doubt in my mind as to who bears most responsibility.

 

I hope you find this essay of interest.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Doubt and Skepticism”
March 3, 2025

 

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect

confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

                                                                                                                                Robert Hughes (1938-2012)

                                                                                                                                Australian author & art critic

                                                                                                                                “Modernism’s Patriarch”

                                                                                                                                Time Magazine, June 10, 1996

 

“Our doubts are traitors and cause us to miss

the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” 

                                                                                                                                Lucio speaking to Isabella

                                                                                                                                Measure for Measure, 1604

                                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

As the two epigraphs infer, doubt is personal. In her Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, the American poet wrote “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” On the other hand, in The Selected Letters of Tennessee Wiliams, the playwright is quoted: “I don’t believe anyone ever suspects how completely unsure I am of my work…”

 

………………………………………………………….

 

Doubt, including self-doubt, and skepticism are not synonymous but are related. Doubt can be defined as uncertainty regarding one’s abilities (as Lucio infers). It also serves as questioning one’s judgement (as Robert Hughes suggests). It is intuitive, reflecting a lack of knowledge, as Thomas wanted proof of Jesus’ resurrection. On the other hand, a skeptic is one with an open mind who questions the truth of something stated or alleged, or at least who defers judgement until more facts are available.

 

This is not to argue that belief in one’s self is uncommon. When a youth, I was not skeptical about much and had few self-doubts. Many of us were raised on the American folktale, The Little Engine that Could. Theodore Roosevelt, allegedly, expressed a similar sentiment: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” All good advice, so long as it does not morph into cockiness, arrogance, or conceit. As I grew older, I read and thought more, I became more skeptical. I recall, when a teenager, the president of a brokerage firm who told me that the longer he worked in the business the less he felt he knew about finance.

 

Self-doubt is often a positive. Fyodor Dostoevsky struggled with doubt. In an 1855 letter to his friend Natalya Fonvizina, he wrote: “…the mind which does not labor will wither.”[1]Recently, I had a conversation with an old school friend, now living in Denver, and told him of my struggle with this essay. He reminded me of “Pascal’s Wager”[2] – that even if one cannot definitively prove the existence of God, it is better to believe in Him, as the potential benefits outweigh the risks of being wrong. Believe you can do it, he said.

 

But it is for our political environment I am most concerned, where skepticism has been overwhelmed by a tidal wave of hubris. In a 1901 letter to the Swiss professor of Greek and history Jost Winteler, the 22-year-old Albert Einstein wrote: “Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” In our hyper politically-polarized world, neither doubt nor skepticism is widely extant. Instead there is an attitude of “either you’re with me or you’re against me.” This fractionalization has set brother against brother and friend against friend. Conservative students are hesitant about speaking out. In schools and universities, speech that is deemed “harmful” is disallowed. The dogmatism of progressives on the left and ardent Trump supporters on the right are notably void of skepticism.

 

At the risk of widening even further the gulf between conservatives and progressives, I place most (but not all) of the blame on progressives. Certainly, there are some on the right who don MAGA hats, pump fists in the air and, incoherently, raise their voices for Mr. Trump. However, most on the left do not just disagree with Donald Trump, they hate him, and they let hatred drive their responses; reason falls victim to emotion. In part, their aversion to Mr. Trump lies in his muddled syntax. Like Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter, Mr. Trump speaks in unintelligible riddles. Whether he is negotiating a deal, reflecting whomever he most recently spoke to, or speaking from ignorance, I don’t pretend to know. But I suspect he is neither as stupid nor as uncompassionate as he sometimes sounds. His opponents would be wise to let skepticism replace their instinct for immediate condemnation. 

 

We witness this arrogant audacity from media disciples of both parties, especially on televised cable evening news programs, podcasts and video-sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Twitch. Social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) make it easier for viewers to limit their news to only that with which they agree. Do Rachel Maddow or Jesse Waters ever have moments of doubt, of questioning their loudly proclaimed ideologies? 

 

There are, of course, situations when conviction should be paramount – love for family, belief in freedom, and faith in God. “You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think,” said Christopher Robin to Pooh. But generally, skepticism is healthy and doubt drives creativity.

 

True conservatives tend to be skeptics. In 1967, the prescient Daniel Patrick Moynihan was invited to speak to the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa: “Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.” Conservatives are concerned of the power that accrues to political leaders and for the tendency of the state to expand inexorably. This concern is not only because of the difficulty of paying for ever more programs, but because such growth threatens individualism, the bed-rock of conservative thought. Doubt and skepticism are generally associated with reflection, not spontaneity.

 

“Skepticism: the mark and even the pose of the educated mind” are words attributed to educator John Dewey. Like chastity, as the philosopher George Santayana is alleged to have once said, it [skepticism] should not be relinquished too readily. Truth (the holy grail of the skeptic) is illusive, perhaps never to be discovered; it is the search that is important.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] As quoted by Gary Saul Morson, professor of Slavic languages at Northwestern University, in the February 28 issue of The Wall Street Journal.

[2] Blaise Pascal, 17^th Century French philosopher.

"Education Matters"

 According to the Julian calendar, then in use, George Washington was born on February 11, 1731. However, in 1752 Britain and its colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar, which had the result of moving Washington’s birthday forward by one year and eleven days. Growing up, this day was always a school holiday, as was February 12, Lincoln’s birthday. While I recognize the value of a three-day weekend, I have always thought we lost something in not celebrating the actual birth dates of these two remarkable men and presidents.

 

This essay was particularly difficult to write. The subject is so large and there is so much information. But there is, perhaps, no more important issue facing us. Why do so many politicians allow teachers’ unions to hold back the education of our youth? I suspect most teachers are devoted to their cause. The fault lies not with them, but with the leaders of their unions and the politicians who place more value on their money than on the needs of children.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Education Matters”

February 22, 2025

 

“I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for

ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man..”

                                                                                                            Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

                                                                                                             Letter to Cornelius Camden Blatchley

                                                                                                             21 October, 1822

 

“Student academic achievement is the cornerstone of national success and security. This

makes a lack of academic progress today a direct and urgent threat to our collective future.”

                                                                                                            Patrick Kelly

                                                                                                            National Assessment Governing Board Member

                                                                                                            On release of Nation’s Report Card

                                                                                                             January 29, 2025

 

A recent editorial in The Washington Post, lamenting threats to close the Department of Education, referred to a “landmark” 1983 Reagan Administration report, “A Nation at Risk.” The editorial divulged “that 13 percent of American 17-year-olds – and up to 40 percent of minority youths – were functionally illiterate” at the time. The editorial claimed the United States had been falling behind its adversaries, which caused businesses and the military to spend millions of dollars on “costly remedial education and training programs.” The editorial added: “Test scores have improved (apart from an alarming slippage in recent years), and presidents from both parties have worked to make American schools more accommodating for children with disabilities, and to improve low-performing schools.” But has that been true?

 

Today, the Department of Education spends approximately twenty-two times as much per student as it did forty years ago, yet the results are dismal. According to the recently issued report from the U.S. Department of Education – the bi-annual National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the Nation’s Report Card – 60% of fourth graders scored below what the NAEP deems a proficient level in math. 8^th Graders fared worse, with 75% performing below proficiency. In reading, almost 70 percent of students scored below the NAEP proficiency level. In the report, the author Stephaan Harris quoted Governing Board member Patrick Kelly of Columbia, South Carolina: “Student academic achievement is the cornerstone of national success and security. This makes a lack of academic progress today a direct and urgent threat to our collective future.” It does; education is the foundation on which our democracy is built.

 

Internationally, our students are not where they should be. According to the 2022 to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, American students did best in reading, ranking 9^th overall, behind Macau and Canada. In science, however, they ranked 16^th, behind Slovenia and the UK. And in math, the ranked 34^th, below the average and behind Norway and Malta.  The scores, according to Education GPS, “…are among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics. In reading and science, results confirm a long-term stability in result,” albeit at a mediocre level for a nation that prides itself on its schools.

 

These tests foretell a depressing story. We are a nation that has been the technological, medical and science leader of the world; and some might argue its cultural leader. Yet our public schools are a disgrace, with minorities and the poor suffering the most. 

 

School choice is the obvious answer, but it is widely opposed by teachers’ unions, and therefore by most Democrat politicians. Open Secrets reported that, for the 2024 election cycle, the two largest teachers’ unions, National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), gave a combined $32 million to candidates, with 94% going to Democrats. That dollar amount was up from $4 million twenty years ago. In the meantime, a Heritage Foundation survey (2023) found that 47% of House members and 51% of Senators enroll their children in private schools. In a February 1 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Michael Bloomberg wrote: “In New York, the teachers union has fought to maintain a cap on the number of charter schools, [schools that] have dramatically raised achievement levels, even as student waiting lists grow longer.” Hypocrisy thrives. 

 

The world faces many problems, and it is not simply the threat of foreign powers, like China with its Belt-and-Road initiatives, a revanchist Russia wishing to reclaim its lost empire, a Middle East under the threat of Iran and Islamic terrorism, or African Christians having to live with daily threats. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing are in their infancy. We must, as J.D. Vance warned our European partners in Munich, confront “the enemy within.” We must not allow fear of censorship prevent us from speaking out. We should, as Noah Rothman wrote in the January 2024 issue of National Review, “summon the courage to repudiate what passes for sophistication in the academy and renounce the trite moral relativism that cannot distinguish between the Western world and its enemies.” Western liberalism, which dates back two-hundred-and-fifty years to the Enlightenment, is under attack. One consequence has been the divisiveness of our political parties. Another is manifested in the current crop of political leaders from both parties.

 

The best antidote is an educated populace. “Education is the movement from darkness to light” is a quote attributed to Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind. Martin Luther King believed that the purpose of education was to help people “to think incisively and to think for one’s self.” This is particularly true as it applies to our roles as citizens. Our youth must read our Constitution, understand what makes our government unique, and how rare it is in the annals of mankind. All public school students should have some familiarity with the canon of classical liberal Western thought.     

 

Recently, Jason Riley, writing in The Wall Street Journal, noted: “Given the strong correlation between educational achievement and life outcomes, a society that allows such a large fraction of its youth to fall by the wayside academically is asking for trouble down the road.” We cannot allow this decline in education to be the “canary in the coalmine,” predicting a decline in our nation’s democracy and its global leadership. Education trains the mind to question assumptions, to challenge authority, to think, to be open to new ideas. It is the resource, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, that “most to be relied on…for advancing the happiness of man.” 

 

For forty-five years, Congress has shoveled increasing amounts of money into public school education. By itself, that money has not worked. Like other businesses, our schools need competition – not just the private schools primarily available to the wealthy – but charter schools and voucher programs that allows all parents to choose the best alternatives for their children. They need home-schooling and Catholic schools that once educated many of the nation’s neediest. Albert Einstein is alleged to have once said that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Yet that is what has become of our public schools. The poet William Butler Yeats once said that education is the lighting of a fire, the instilling in young students a passion to question, to learn. That is what our future demands. 

 

Yes, education does matter.

"Life is Short but Eternity is Forever"

 “Know Thyself” is a maxim inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. They are also words found in Lamentations from the Old Testament. 

 

The quest for self-knowledge is a journey requiring honesty and is key to understanding our purpose in the world. Many of my personal essays, like this one, are short trips along that path of self-discovery. I have found that it is not the destination – which is always elusive – that is the goal, but the journey. 

 

Thank you for allowing me to share them with you.

 

Sydney

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Life is Short but Eternity is Forever”[1]

January 20, 2024

 

“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the 

profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive

forms are accessible to our minds – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute

true religiosity; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”

                                                                                                              Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

                                                                                                             “The World as I See It,” An Essay by Einstein

                                                                                                              1931

 

At a recent family dinner, the discussion turned to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its ramifications. A grandson remarked that AI machines have limits. For example, they have been unable to create a living organism, except possibly Xenobots, supposedly self-replicating living robots. Scientists can modify genes to make wheat more durable and blueberries bluer. They can clone sheep and women can freeze eggs. But man reproduces through copulation, a biological function common to most animal species.

 

Life, as we know, is short. In the two thousand years since Jesus’ birth (a small fraction of the time that Homo sapiens have roamed the earth), six thousand generations of people have been born and died. Now, as I age, I think of mysteries of life, for instance that causality requires a first cause – from whence came the first spark of life? Evolution is understandable, how species evolve over millions of years, how they are still evolving, and even why, looking back from a perspective of a million years or more (assuming the planet and our galaxy survive), what we now know as man may seem like an early, primitive creation.

 

But what did create that first form of life? We think of infinity, but it is beyond comprehension. If the universe is finite, what lies behind it? What does eternity really mean? Was the world as we know it, the creation of some power far greater than anything we can imagine? Or is any of this worth worrying about? Should we turn the page of the book we are reading, switch channels, or view another posting on Instagram? 

 

I am not a student of religion. In fact, we rarely go to church. When our children were young we did take them regularly to St. Barnabas in Greenwich where I served on the vestry and they attended Sunday school and became acolytes. When in boarding school, I was required to read the Bible. But I retained little, with my then non-retentive speed-reading skills. Nevertheless, I have found that I am thinking more about such questions. And I keep a copy of the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer within easy reach. In the same book mentioned in the footnote, Tyrrell wrote of reading the 17^th Century French philosopher Blaise Pascal and his wager: If one lives by God’s rules as laid out in the Bible, and believes in God’s existence, God will be satisfied. If God does not exist, one has lost nothing, while living with love and compassion. 

 

Accepting Pascal’s wager appears sensible. And with Einstein admission that there are limits to human knowledge, God’s existence seems a reasonable possibility. I’m getting there.

"The Danger of Identity Politics"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Danger of Identity Politics”

September 7, 2023

 

“We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.

It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

                                                                                                                    Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA)

                                                                                                                    Speech, National Republican Committee

                                                                                                                     July 31, 1968

 

Identity politics has divided us into categories, convenient for politicians to address perceived concerns and, more dangerously, to exert control, turning us into a nation of oppressed and oppressors, so that Washington’s “progressives” can ride in as savior. Identity politics places the group above the individual, while those who think independently – outside the box – are slighted, demeaned, or cancelled. One consequence is rising distrust and hatred; a second is that the group, not the individual, defines who we are; and a third is a loss of faith in America, its history and in its accomplishments. 

 

Issues of identity have a long history. Women’s rights date back before the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments in 1848. My paternal grandmother, a well-educated woman, was forty-five when the 19^thAmendment was passed, allowing her to vote in 1920. It was in 1965, a hundred years after the civil War, that the Voting Rights Act directed the Attorney General to enforce the right of Blacks to vote. However, even as we made progress – slow as it has been – self-manufactured divisional bitterness increased. 

It is important to step back, not to rest on laurels, but to gain perspective and celebrate what our nation has achieved over more than two centuries. Winston Churchill, in a back-handed compliment, is alleged to have observed: “The Americans will always do the right thing…after they have exhausted all the alternatives.” America continues to evolve, too fast for some and too slowly for others. We are best off when momentum is deliberate, when we individually, as Governor Reagan is quoted in the rubric, accept responsibility for our actions.  Our country is unique in the annals of human history. It is based on the rule of law, and on the individual, his sovereignty and his uniqueness – “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…” Those words have evolved over time to include more of our citizens. We have further to go, but we have come a long way. We do not want to return to a time where some groups are favored, and others excluded, as identity politics would have us do. 

It is true that as social animals we seek out those with common interests, which explains why there are myriad groups devoted to such pursuits as fishing, bridge, antique cars, golf, and P.G. Wodehouse. It is why sororities and fraternities exist on college campuses, why there are different religious denominations, and why civic organizations, like Rotary, Elks, American Legion, and the Knights of Columbus, exist in communities across America. Fifty and sixty years ago, some of these organizations were restrictive, based on race, gender, and/or religion, but such restrictions lessened in the wake of the passage of civil rights legislation and as tolerance became more common. Man’s social progress has always been evolutionary. We live today in a nation more accepting and tolerant than that known to our grandparents. We have further to go, but we have been moving in the right direction.  

 

Today’s focus on identity politics is a setback. It has been fueled by political correctness and a desire for power, and it emits accusations of racism and denials of merit. It has created division and hatred, and it threatens to undo the good that has been achieved over the past two and a half centuries. It is, perhaps, most dangerous in the nation’s schools, on the nation’s college campuses, and in the armed forces. The fact that so many of our children, especially in inner city schools, cannot read or do math at grade level is an indictment of teachers’ unions whose funds support Democrat politicians in return for the monopoly they enjoy. Vituperative attacks have led to the cancellation of conservative speakers on college campuses. Demands that students conform to a preferred ideology has suppressed intellectual inquiry. Subjecting the military to “woke” ideologies is not smart in a dangerous world. In October 1933, at Albert Hall in London, Albert Einstein – having just left Nazi Germany – spoke: “If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake…Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton, no Faraday, no Pasteur and no Lister…Most people would lead a dull life of slavery just as under the ancient despotisms of Asia. It is only men who are free, who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worthwhile.” 

 

It is natural for people to find others with similar interests, as opposed to the artificial compartmentalizing of people by skin color or gender. Immigrants to this country often live with others of a similar heritage. But after two or three generations, through marriage and association they assimilate into broader society. In New York City, Germantown is only a memory. Little Italy and Chinatown are no longer exclusive to Italians and Chinese.. 

 

Identity politics returns us to a world we had been escaping. Politicians find it convenient to appeal to specific identities: Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, native Americans, male, female, gays, transgenders and cisgenders, young and old. As Americans, we are all of those things – often a mixture – but a single category does not alone define anyone of us. It is the desire to live freely, to speak, to write, to pray and to associate as one chooses that has made the United States the unique nation it is, and it is why we have been a magnet for the world’s poor and oppressed. Let us keep it that way.

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                

 

"Is Sanity Replacing Wokeism?"

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com  

 

Thought of the Day

“Is Sanity Replacing Wokeism?”

February 3, 2023

 

“On Thursday the University of North Carolina board of trustees voted

12-0 to create a new school committed to free expression in higher education.”

                                                                                                                                Editorial, The Wall Street Journal

                                                                                                                                January 26, 2023

 

As is always true, many problems confront our nation, but one is in the forefront of what divides us: culture. It is the culture wars that strike at the heart of what it means to be an American, a nation of people from every corner of the world, individuals with myriad beliefs but with one common objective: to live freely. But what happens when definitions of freedom are in conflict – when, for example, the wishes of teenagers, empowered by teachers, run counter to the desires of parents? When we disagree as to the founding principles of our nation, or when merit is subservient to racial diversity in college admissions?

 

…………………………………………….

 

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” is a saying attributed to Albert Einstein. It is applicable in the “Woke”[1] world we inhabit: Does it make sense to persist in pouring money into the gaping jaws of public education, in hopes that this time money will cure failing schools? Why do teachers, administrators, and the curriculum escape blame when students score poorly on international tests? Does it make sense to blame the weapon above the one who pulled the trigger in a mass shooting? And why are criminals so often released without bail, even after having committed armed robbery, and why is the mental health of the gunman not considered a cause for the crime. And why were interest rates kept artificially low, even as federal debt expanded exponentially? 

 

These problems and more are of concern, yet there are signs that sanity may be returning. As The Wall Street Journal editorialized last week (and quoted in the rubric above), the University of North Carolina found it desirable to create a new school committed to free expression – a practice that was once considered the norm for universities. Was this an admission that “woke” policies had failed? Hamline University, a small liberal arts college in St. Paul, Minnesota, was in the news recently. Its president Fayneese Miller fired art history instructor Erika López Prater for the sin of having shown two slides of the Prophet Mohammed in her online art history class. One student, the president of the Muslim Student Association, complained that Ms. Prater had violated the rights of students to be protected from seeing or hearing something they dislike. However, the faculty has risen in support of her. Seventy-one of the ninety-two faculty members have called on President Miller to resign. 

 

School choice is gaining momentum, as a Wall Street Journal editorial noted last week. Public charter schools, which typically hire non-unionized teachers, have brought needed competition to traditional public schools. At the end of 2021, forty-three states had charter schools, with demand exceeding supply. They are a political football, though, fought against by well-funded teachers’ unions. A poll released last August by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools found that “seventy-seven percent of parents want more charter school offerings in their area. This is consistent across political affiliations.” As well, eight states have education savings accounts – with a dozen or more now considering legislation – making private schools more accessible to more families, bringing needed competition to traditional public schools. 

 

State tax relief and reform are being considered. Stateline, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service of the Pew Charitable Trusts reported a year ago that sixteen states, led by both Republicans and Democrats, had cut taxes in 2021. Admittedly, in part that was due to a surfeit of funds associated with Covid relief. But more states are cutting taxes. A January 30^th, 2023 article in The Wall Street Journal reported: “By year-end, nearly half of all states will have cut their income-tax rates within a three-year period,” with flat-tax reforms spreading. The Tax Foundation affirms that returning revenue to taxpayers spurs faster economic growth.

 

But I don’t want to appear Panglossian. We are not yet in the clear. As an editorial in the February 1^st edition of The Wall Street Journalnoted, regarding UNC’s new school, “…faculty grandees are outraged that the UNC trustees thought such a school necessary and didn’t even seek the faculty’s permission.” Teachers’ unions, which for years have fought charter schools, are among the largest donors to political campaigns. In 2022, according to Open Secrets, they donated just under $70 million, with 99% going to Democrats. And while interest rates have risen, and inflation has ebbed, rates on Fed Funds (4.5%) and the U.S. Ten-year (3.52%) remain below the current inflation rate (6.5%), benefitting borrowers and inhibiting savers.

 

And taxpayers have ceded power to government, reminding one of the letter Lord Acton (English historian and politician) wrote to Bishop Creighton (then chair of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge) in 1887, regarding the application of moral standards: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich Hayek warned: “We shall never prevent the abuse of power if we are not prepared to limit power in a way which occasionally may prevent its use for desirable purposes.” It is difficult to slow the growth of our leviathan-like federal government: bureaucrats rely on its persistent expansion and dependents count on its continued beneficence. 

 

Looking out ten or twenty years, questions arise: What is in store for our children and grandchildren? Will government exert ever more control over what they do and how they think? Will its workforce continue to expand? Will more people become dependent on its largesse? Will people be free to follow their dreams? Will aspiration, effort, and ability lead to success, regardless of race or gender? Will the Fed continue to print money at a rate that exceeds economic productivity? Or will government revert to its more limited role as servant to the people? I don’t pretend to have answers, but I am heartened by what appears to be indications of people fighting back – parents of public school students arguing to be heard, university trustees assuming responsibility, state legislators who are cutting taxes, and a Federal Reserve that persists in raising rates, even as inflation appears to be ebbing – suggesting a possible return to common sense.

 

Fingers crossed!

 

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[1] I define wokeism as the actions of those who publicly (loudly and proudly) express more sensitivity to the social concerns of racial, gender, and ethnic groups, than to the plight of individuals within those groups. Wokeism claims to be inclusive yet has proven to be divisive. It professes adherence to such nebulous objectives as “saving the planet,” with little concern for disruption or costs. The woke promote diversity of race, gender, and ethnicity, while they demote diversity of ideas and opinions. As a consequence, wokeism leads to ideological conformity.

"AI in the Age of Wokeness & Expanded Government"

 Peggy Noonan was right in her weekend column in The Wall Street Journal, “George Santos Has Got to Go.” He should not be in Congress. While he fits in with that august body of liars from both Parties, he is an embarrassment to the American people. But Ms. Noonan failed to address the most disturbing questions. How did he become the Republican nominee? Why did the Republican Party not fact-check him? Why did mainstream and social media fail to investigate him? Why weren’t voters in his district more skeptical? One cannot help but suspect that Republican leaders did not want to peer too closely at someone who looked he might claim a Democrat seat, and it is my guess that New York’s left-wing media gurus knew of Mr. Santos’ transgressions, but they preferred to disclose them after the election, when embarrassment to the Party would be more keenly felt. 

 

We are reminded once again of the wisdom of Mark Twain: “There is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.” At any rate, today we start the Chinese year of the rabbit, a happy omen for what we all wish will be a good and productive year.

 

Sydney M. Williams

http://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“AI in the Age of Wokeness & Expanded Government”

January 24, 2023

 

“Technology is a useful servant, but a dangerous master.”

                                                                                                                Christian Lous Lange (1869-1938)

                                                                                                                Norwegian historian

                                                                                                                Nobel lecture, December 13, 1921

 

Over a hundred years have passed since Professor Lange gave his speech upon winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921. A few years later, Albert Einstein, made a similar observation: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” Both men – Lange in response to the trench warfare of World War I and Einstein to the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – had in mind the destructive nature of modern weapons. Yet technology, generally, has been a force for good: from medicine, communications, factories, publishing, heating, and air conditioning, to transportation, information, food processing, agriculture, entertainment, sports, etc. Technology has increased productivity, enhanced living standards, and reduced poverty. It is not so much that technology represents a threat, it is how it can be used and manipulated.

 

Just as technology has become ubiquitous in our lives, so has government. We may disagree on how big government should be, but it has grown larger over time. According to data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, in 1940, before the U.S. entered the War, U.S. federal spending, as a percent of GDP, was 9.2%. During the War years, it topped 40%. After the War, factories that produced tanks and machine guns reverted to making cars and washing machines. Government spending fell. Following the Johnson and Nixon years, it rose to the low teens. Under both parties, it has since drifted higher, reaching 31% of GDP in the recession year of 2020. With the economy recovering, the ratio declined modestly, but the trend toward higher spending remains. This increase in federal (as well as in state and local) spending has inhibited private investment. From 1950 to 2000, U.S. GDP growth averaged just over 3%, while, for the first twenty-two years of the 21^st Century, GDP growth has averaged just over 2%. The increase in government spending is not the only cause for slowing economic growth, but it is one reason, and perhaps the principal cause. (Other factors would include an increase in the average age of Americans, from 29.5 in 1960 to 38.8 in 2021, and labor participation rates, which have fallen from 67% in 2000 to 62.2% in 2021.) 

 

As the tentacles of government reach deeper into our lives, the role of artificial intelligence (AI) should concern us. It has powers we are just beginning to appreciate. In the current issue of National Review, Vahaken Mouradian wrote, “Don’t Rage Against the Machine: AI can create something beautiful by identifying and replicating the features that constitute beauty, such as smoothness, rhythm, elegance…, and symmetry…It cannot, however, obtain the sublime, because it does not have feelings; it does not have faith; it does not have the ability to think independently…AI cannot reproduce a humanlike psyche or develop one of its own.” Bots (robots) have a “brain,” which allows them to take in, retain, digest, and regurgitate data, in accordance with instructions dictated by whomever controls the input. An artist might use a Prisma Labs’ Lensa to convert a photograph into a work of art, or a writer might use Chat GPT to complete an essay. AI computers may be able to express through writings religious beliefs, music, poetry, love, hate, or fear, but they cannot feel them. They have what might be considered a brain; they do not have a mind that allows them to think independently.

 

While AI is limited to what has been inputted into its “brain,” it can be manipulated as to what output will reach its target audience, reminding one of dystopian novels, like George Orwell’s 1984 and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The ability to control human behavior was a concern expressed by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in an interview on BBC in December 2014: “If you try to create a thinking machine, then it will pose a threat to our existence.” Two years ago, Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher of MIT wrote The Age of AI and Our Human Future, which introduces the reader to the promises and perils of artificial intelligence. In a review, Kevin Roose of The New York Times posted his first few paragraphs into Sudowrite and asked it to finish his review.  “…within a few minutes,” Mr. Roose wrote, “the A.I. was coming up with impressively cogent paragraphs of analysis – some, frankly, better than what I could have generated on my own.” Computers have already defeated the world’s best chess players, flown drones, and launched missiles. They soon will drive cars and diagnose diseases. But will they be used in schools and universities to indoctrinate youth with a preferred ideology? If we believe that wokeism is infecting our schools now, think what is possible with AI in the wrong hands.

 

We must continue to innovative; however, we must ensure individuals remain free to think, to argue and debate, to read and opine on whatever they choose. Democracy and freedom depend more on diversity of thought and expression than on such wokeisms as DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance). These policies, promote discrimination by physical traits, and they prefer identities over merit, even as the latter is blind regarding race and gender. LinkedIn ranked diversity and inclusion managers the second-fastest growing jobs over the past five years. We saw this elitism in the arrogant, platitude-filled speeches that dominated the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. We see this antidemocratic attitude in the requirement of signed “loyalty” oaths at cultural events (such as the ones at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, so humorously described by Gary Geipel in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal), and in the cancellation of conservative speakers and the shutting down of debate on college campuses.

 

Artificial intelligence can (and will) enhance our lives. But in the wrong hands, it aids those who wish to control what we do and how we think, whether the perpetrator is government, an organization, or an individual.  It is a threat that should not be dismissed. Combined with recent growth in government, it portends “Big Brother.” How to respond? Families should instill in their children values that have stood the test of time. And schools and universities should instruct students in the art of skepticism – to investigate and question, to think independently. Don’t trust AI’s formulaic answer to the question.