"A Tectonic Election?"

 A beautiful, snow-covered day awaits us here in Connecticut.

 

Being gracious in defeat is not a trait that comes easily to the American political classes. But I do hope on this day, a day in which we celebrate Martin Luther King and all that he did to make our Country more tolerant, that Mr. Trump will use his inaugural address to show magnanimity toward all Americans. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Tectonic Election?”

January 20, 2025

 

“Really big, vital Democratic constituencies shifted, especially among younger voters. And I think if there’s one really big thing which seems to have emerged out of this election, it’s a really decisive shift from race to class.”

                                                                                                                                Allen Guelzo

American historian, Princeton University

In conversation with James Taranto

The Wall Street Journal January 11, 2025

 

Today, as we celebrate Martin Luther King, we will also inaugurate our 47^th President. Mr. Trump is only the second president to serve two non-consecutive terms. As Professor Guelzo indicated in the interview quoted above, this election might represent a tectonic shift in the alignment of the two parties. Personally, I suspect that shift is already upon us. A month ago I wrote an essay entitled “Political Parties are Dynamic.” That essay argued that Democrats failure in 2024 was due to their having ignored middle-class, working Americans, while adopting a bar-bell approach to the electorate – coastal, monied elites offset by those dependent on government. On December 2, 2024 I wrote an essay titled “End of Identity Politics?’, which argued that economic class had mattered more, in the November election, than ethnicity, race, or gender. In speeches, ads and literature, Democrats claim to represent working, middle-class America, but they have abandoned them. Consider education and the poor testing results of students in our public schools, and look at the rising cost of food, electricity and housing – all up more than 23% over the past four years. According to Monster’s 2025 Work Watch Report, 95% of workers say paychecks failed to have kept up with the cost of living.  Is it any wonder that working-class Americans opted for change?

 

Professor Guelzo did not say that 2024 was a “tectonic” election, only that it might prove to have been. He cited three past elections as tectonic: 1800, when John Adams’ loss to Thomas Jefferson spelled the end of the Federalist Party; 1860, when Lincoln’s victory established the Republican party as a major party; and 1932 when Franklin Roosevelt’s win created the modern Democratic party.

 

Even before the election, people had grown weary of sanctimonious virtue signalers: politicians who use the Justice Department to investigate political opponents, government bureaucrats who call out policy disagreements as either dis-or-misinformation; news organizations who use “fact checkers” to muzzle free speech; university professors who censored opinions that did not adhere to a proscribed orthodoxy; high school administrators who permit boys into girls’ bathrooms; “influencers” who are blind to counter-arguments; open borders that let in migrant criminals; citizens being told they will have to give up their gas stoves; and big businesses that claim merit is less important than diversity.

 

Over the past year, companies like American Airlines, Boeing, Caterpillar, John Deere and Walmart have shut down or scaled back DEI initiatives. Recently, Amazon and Meta joined the list. Investment companies have begun to abandon the concept of social or environment-friendly investing in favor of the proven “prudent man” rule. Showing support for the argument that the election was tectonic, Mark Zuckerberg announced on January 8^th that Meta will “dramatically reduce the amount of censorship on their platforms.”

 

Change is in the air. The use of social media by the “anxious” generation may be peaking. Is it not possible, with the Supreme Court banning China-owned TikTok, in the U.S. with its 170 million American users, that social media may have reached its zenith? Concerns about personal privacy may well subsume public displays of self-expression. Is it not possible that some of that generation may conclude that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World may be upon us? At a future nuptials dinner how many men and women would want mementos of their college escapades be shown to family members? Can a twenty-something imagine him or herself, two decades hence, before a Senate sub-committee that displays social media-secured inculpatory evidence from their teen years?  

 

From my perspective, it is less important when or what caused this change, than the fact that extremism seems to be making an exit, and that common sense and, more important, common decency appear to be making an appearance. Of course, the final determination as to whether that trend continues is up to Mr. Trump – if he is successful in addressing the illegal migrant problem, inflation, reducing the deficit, increasing economic growth, reinvigorating the armed forces, while limiting the size of government. If retaliation becomes his cause célèbre then all bets are off.

Despite overall economic growth having been sluggish – averaging about two percent – a small number of people have grown very rich over the past two and a half decades, leaving a sense of dissatisfaction, as wealth and income gaps widened. Despite technology-driven productivity gains, high inflation caused by excessive government spending has left America’s working people worse off. The Left blames the Right and the Right blames the Left. In truth, both bear guilt. Identity politics have divided us. Certainly, in a country of 335 million people, there are racists, misogynists, Islamophobes, and xenophobes. Just as there are supercilious elites who claim to know what is good for us, whether it is using public funds to pay for sex changes or housing illegal migrants in hotels. Buying votes by rescinding student debt is not the same as cutting regulatory hurdles for small businesses.

 

Nevertheless, and at the risk of sounding Panglossian, most people are decent and law-abiding. They love their families and want to live quiet, productive lives. Perhaps we are all exhausted from the childish antics of politicians and the willful bias of mainstream media, but it seems to me that a positive change is in the offing. If 15-year-old Anne Frank, while hiding from Nazis intent on killing her and her family, could express optimism about human nature – “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”[1] – then we should be able to see through the censorious negativism that has enshrouded our culture for the past two decades. 

 

Mr. Trump has an opportunity to be a catalyst for positive change. His two predecessors failed their opportunities. Mr. Obama could have put racism to bed. Instead, he made race a bigger issue. Mr. Biden could have governed, as he promised, from the center. Instead, he governed from the far left. Should Mr. Trump decide on retribution, or should he fail to address people’s concern regarding the border, inflation, free speech, lawfare, and the economy, or should he fail to strengthen America’s public schools and resurrect America’s defenses, then he, too, will have failed. We know that claims of “diversity and inclusion” are no substitute for merit and the values embedded in our Judeo-Christian heritage, including love, tolerance and mutual respect. 

 

The future is in your hands, Mr. Trump. Make the most of it. Show us that your win was tectonic. 

 

 

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[1] The Diary of a Young Girl, page 278, Anne Frank, 1952

"Dependency - A Form of Subjugation?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Dependency – A Form of Subjugation?”

November 29, 2019

“Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go;

I owe my soul to the company store.”

                                                                                    Recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford 1955

Slavery is the worst kind of bondage where the individual has no rights and is treated as chattel. It disappeared in the United States with the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863: “…that all persons held as slave are, and henceforward shall be free.” However, enfranchisement came slowly. It was not until the 19^th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920 that women were able to vote. And it was only on August 6, 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which enforced the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution that had been adopted in 1870. It would be another year before poll taxes – a uniform tax on all individuals regardless of financial means, the payment of which was required in order to register to vote – would be declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections.

Nevertheless, there are other forms of dependency, not as cruel or degrading as slavery but nonetheless demeaning and inhibiting, like addiction to drugs, alcohol or even social media. And there are forms of dependency that chain individuals to a business, a movement or a state. It is dependency on the state, and all that entails, that concerns this essay.

The elected Washington politician who served because he or she wanted to improve the condition of his or her constituents is a species at risk of extinction. Certainly, there are exceptions, but they have become rare, as the benefits of power, fame and money have grown more ubiquitous for those who serve in Congress. Also, among endangered species is the individual who once traveled to Washington, accepting less pay and longer hours, because he was on a noble enterprise to help fellow citizens. But, with an expanded administrative state, he has become a supercilious, egocentric bureaucrat seeking the monetary and retirement benefits now due a public sector worker.

What has allowed this change to take place? Why is Washington populated with those who more closely resemble Kim Philby than Jimmy Stewart? Government’s bureaucracy has mushroomed in size. We are victims of a public education system more concerned with union demands than instructing our youth, teaching civics, getting students to think independently and acquiring an understanding of the morals embedded in our Constitution. We have a media that no longer serves as an impartial watchdog, having foregone dispassionate investigation for blindfolded advocacy. We have an economy that has made life easier for even the poorest among us, but with the downside of a growing dependence on the state and the loss of dignity that goes with dependency. Independence is no longer seen as something worth fighting and dying for. It has become an opportunity to indulge in hedonistic pleasures, like legally smoking pot, enjoying the lifestyle of the morally corrupt, forgoing the responsibility of parenting, all to satisfy personal egos. We have grown soft with comfort and less willing to endure the hardships necessary to maintain true independence.

In September, the spoiled Swedish teen-ager Greta Thunberg took to the podium at the United Nations and excoriated world leaders, telling them they had betrayed youth through inertia over climate change: “You are failing us.” Did anyone remind her of how capitalism allowed her to be where she was, or the cost of the sailboat on which she traveled to the U.S.? Did anyone tell her that fossil fuels allowed her grandparents to live lives more comfortably than their ancestors, or how gasoline fueled the cars her parents, grandparents and great grandparents drove, and of power generated through fossil fuels that lighted, heated and cooled the homes in which they lived and in which she now lives? Was she reminded that innovation, creativity, risk and reward are critical components to capitalism and necessary for economic growth? Would she prefer the state-mandated policies of socialism or communism rather than capitalism? Would she prefer “Big Brother” monitoring all that she does? We must all be concerned with a changing climate and we should all be environmentally responsible. But the young Miss Thunberg’s attack on world leaders was reminiscent of the accusations by teen-age girls of older women and men in the 1692 Salem witch trials, when an ignorant populous accepted the words of even more ignorant youth.

We saw an exhibition of this ignorance regarding capitalism at the Harvard-Yale football game in New Haven last weekend, when protestors took to the field for almost an hour, demanding their colleges’ endowments divest investments in oil, gas and coal, businesses they claim are destroying the planet. Their protest endangered the players on the field of an unlighted Yale bowl and inconvenienced spectators with an hour delay. Like Miss Thunberg, these protestors overlook economic growth, of which they are the privileged beneficiaries – advancements that have been made because of the energy created from the very sources they want to ban – oil, gas and coal, fossil fuels that heat and cool their homes and college buildings, transport them wherever they want to go and allow the manufacture of products like food, clothing and smart phones that sustain them. None of their comforts would have been possible without fossil fuels. Again, as in Miss Thunberg’s case, we must be conscious of climate change and be environmentally sensitive, but we must also be aware of costs, especially for those less fortunate in poorer communities and in developing countries. In a Monday editorial, the Wall Street Journal quoted a 2013 statement from Harvard’s then president Drew Gilpin Faust: “The endowment is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change.” The cost of their education is, in part, subsidized by income from their college’s endowment, an endowment they want to reflect their ephemeral social priorities, not the prudent investments its managers seek.

A citizenry not conversant in history and civics is detrimental to democracy and free-market capitalism. The problem has its genesis in our public schools where social promotion has become accepted policy in big cities, especially those in coastal “blue” states. It is a policy that unfairly targets minorities and the poor and is the embodiment of what President George H.W. Bush called “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” a polite term for racism. That many high schools graduate illiterate and innumerate students can be seen in the number of remedial courses in English and math that are needed by high school graduates matriculating at colleges – an education too often given up after one or two years, but with a debt load that binds the student to the “company store” before a career has even begun.

The risk to society of an undereducated electorate is that such people are too easily led by unscrupulous politicians, more concerned with power than the independence and well-being of the people they represent. Ignorance leads to oppression – a subject that has been discussed for over eighty years in dystopian novels, like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 415 and Anthony Burgess’ Clockwork Orange.  Huxley provided us the happiness-producing drug soma, used to keep the populace quiet and peaceful; Orwell gave us Winston Smith, The Ministry of Truth and Room 101 for the final stages of reeducation, a place where lawlessness coexisted with binding rules; Bradbury showed us a hedonistic, illiterate society, with endless cycles of life, death in flames and rebirth, and Burgess gave us a preview of the violence that dominates today’s movie and video game culture. Without an understanding of how tyranny arises and with censorship on the rise, lessons from these books have gone unheeded.

The common theme is dependence on the state and the concomitant loss of personal freedom, of accountability and responsibility for one’s actions. Enticing promises of fairness and equality are made, like the commandment of “Old Major” in Animal Farm, that “all Animals are Equal.” The commandment was valid until it no longer applied, when pigs stood on two legs. By the end of the book, when animals outside looked in at pigs and men playing cards, the two were indistinguishable. Yesterday’s rebel became today’s tyrant. Dystopian societies rely on “Thought Police” to maintain order, a concept familiar on college campuses where “group think” is used to combat perceived instances of bias.  

This is not written because of an imminent collapse of our democratic Republic, but because the threat to classical liberalism does not come only from the extreme Right. It is more likely, in my opinion, to stem from the gradual erosion of individual rights and the denial of free expression. Key to a continued and prosperous nation is education – the free exchange of ideas without censorship, where one listens to and entertains all ideas, not just those from one side. Nor do tyrants always appear as cartoon caricatures; they can be gracious and articulate. As I have written before, I have seen nothing from the pugilistic and coarse Mr. Trump that has been as chilling as the 2012 “Life of Julia” video released by President Obama, a video that shows the birth-to-death caring for Julia, dependent on a government cloaked in a false mantle of compassionate concern. Is dependency a form of subjugation? I believe it is. Julia owes her life to the “company store,” in this case the government. Who Will Watch the Watchers? was the title of a book written in 1970 by Edwin Fadiman. With the press having foregone their historic role as guardian of the public interest, it is a question that needs answering. Remember that while we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we don’t always use them. The devil is most dangerous when he hides in plain sight.

"The Great Disruptor"

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“The Great Disruptor”

January 20, 2019

“You need to get unhung up

And we can be the great disruptors.”

                                                                                    American Rock Band, Sweethead

                                                                                    July 2009

In Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a small boy calls attention to the fact that the Emperor is naked – that the clothes sold him by an unscrupulous merchant who appealed to his vanity were, in fact, nothing. None of the people who watched the Emperor as he paraded by said anything, as they didn’t want to admit they were too ignorant to see his fine suit of clothes. It took a small boy to call out the truth, that the Emperor was indeed naked. Today, it is Donald J. Trump who has called our attention to the corruption, stagnation and cronyism of political systems populated with elites who think they live beyond the boundaries of criticism. For doing so, he has been vilified. 

But disruption is natural to life. It is everywhere, and for that we should be thankful. Joseph Schumpeter popularized the concept of creative destruction – that progress requires destroying old technologies. It has always been so. Cars replaced horse-drawn carriages. The telegraph ended the Pony Express. Trains made obsolete the Erie Canal. Machine guns and tanks changed the way war was conducted on land, as submarines did on the seas. Wireless phones are eliminating the need for land-line phones. Amazon has changed the way we shop, and Netflix the way we are entertained. 401ks have replaced defined benefit retirement plans. Charter schools, facing pressure from unions and the politicians who rely on them, have competed against and made better traditional public schools. Norman Borlaug, in using plant pathology and genetics, dramatically increased crop supplies around the world. Without disruption, we would be poorer.

Political disruption has now come to the West. It can be seen in Italy, Greece, Austria and Germany. It was behind the Brexit vote in England.  But political disruption is trickier and bears watching. A political system that preserved global peace for seventy-four years and whose economic advances lifted billions from poverty should be treasured. But bad people spouting promises of ever-better lives are a risk to freedom-loving people. Success in the West has led to apathy. Today, we have become less democratic, less free. Universities will not abide the “politically incorrect.” We are segregated by our identities. Timothy Egan wrote in Sunday’s New York Times that “…progressive pragmatists remain open to enlightenedpeople of wealth.” The arrogant assumption being that wealthy people who disagree with him are unenlightened. There is, among Egan’s “enlightened” a sense that father knows best, that government should assume all obligations for the welfare of its people. Think of “The Life of Julia.” Its corollary, though, is a diminution in personal responsibility and a gradual abatement in personal independence. The void created by the absence of individual responsibility risks being filled by those who seek power; not the philosophers who Plato argued are best suited to rule, but the power seekers Barry Goldwater warned against, those who claim to do good, but who demand the right to “enforce their own version of heaven on earth.”  And enforced conformity leads to despotism, as writers like Aldous Huxley and George Orwell showed in their dystopian novels, Brave New Worldand Nineteen Eight-four.    

That is the risk the West faces. Over the past couple of decades, western democracies have evolved to a point where a governing elite of a small number of elected and non-elected patronizing bureaucrats have determined that they know best what it is the people want and need. There have been unintended consequences. We have mounting global debt and interest rates that encourage borrowing and discourage saving. With interest rates kept at exceptionally low levels following the credit crisis of 2008, wealth gaps have widened. We have economies that conform to the “new normal” of slow economic growth, and a fatalistic belief that the United States and Europe will be overtaken by China’s managed economic miracle and expanding military might. The United Nations has become a place that favors the authoritarianism of Islamists over a democratic Israel. Hypocrisy and political correctness have inundated our colleges and universities, fountains from which students should be drinking deeply of art, music and the classics. Identity politics has meant we value form over substance and ignore the world of ideas. We endorse feel good treaties like the Paris Treaty, with no means of enforcement, and we willfully spend millions of dollars to bring delegates to meetings with little or no effect. We disallow defensive missile shields in Europe, for fear of upsetting the nation they are supposed to guard against. 

It was into this environment that Mr. Trump appeared, elected by people who may not have clearly articulated the risks faced, but conscious that the path trod was leaving them isolated, and was neither free nor good for economic and personal growth. We are better, though, than what we have been made to believe. Peace can be preserved without losing our freedom to speak as we choose. The economy is not subject to the limitations of a “new normal.” The United Nations owes its founders a moral commitment, as does the EU and the U.S. Bad people will always try to undo what freedom has accomplished. But it is the “do-gooders” on the Left that Senator Goldwater warned against that is the greater danger, not the mythical and improbable reappearance of Huns on the Right, as the media would have us believe. 

Like Hans Christian Anderson’s little boy, Mr. Trump called out the politically arrogant and the pompous. He angered those who for so long have fed off the fatted calf that has become government. He has upset the status quo in law, media, academia, business and finance – those who have learned to navigate the system to their advantage. Mr. Trump has been the “Great Disruptor.” He may not be the man to lead us forward, but through his unruly ways he has awakened the forces of democracy and liberty among the forgotten middle classes. For that, we owe him our gratitude.