"Good and Evil"

 Tomorrow is Juneteenth, a federal holiday since 2021, though the name was first used in the 1890s. It celebrates the emancipation of slaves in the U.S., specifically the day slavery ended in Texas in 1865. With the ratification of the 13^th Amendment in December 1865, slavery officially ended in the United States. Delaware and Kentucky were the last two states to officially prohibit the practice.

 

While it is hard for us to understand, slavery was the norm for most of human history. Helen Keller once wrote: “There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.” When the Union that is now the United States was formed in 1781, slavery was common in the agricultural south but was practiced in all of the original thirteen colonies. Nevertheless, abolitionists were beginning to make their voices heard. On February 24, 1820, John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary: “Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union…” So, Thursday is the day we celebrate the end of that evil practice.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Good and Evil”

June 18, 2025

 

“In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them,

and one of them must conquer. But in our hands lies the power to choose – what we want to be, we are.”

                                                                                                        Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

                                                                                                       The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, 1886

 

In the early spring of 1945, my father, a 34-years-old Harvard educated artist, married and father of four was serving as a private with the 10^th Mountain Division in Italy. They had suffered many casualties, as the Germans were gradually pushed north out of the Apennines. A few years later, my father spoke of his experiences. He mentioned that once a few young, enraged G.I.s had killed a captured German soldier with shovels. Earlier that same day, two German soldiers had approached their lines with arms raised. The G.I.s rose to meet them. In a moment, the Germans fell to the ground, and a machine gunner behind them killed two of the Americans. While war can bring out the best in people, it can also bring out the worst.

 

………………………………………………………

 

Just like good, evil lurks in all of us. It is our responsibility – to the extent possible – to contain it, to smother it, to let goodness overwhelm it. “Wisdom,” wrote John Cheever in his Journals, “is the knowledge of good and evil…” In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us…But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.” This is a subject that has been on my mind, with Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and as I have been reading Jonathan Horn’s new book, The Fate of the Generals. It is difficult to reconcile the vile treatment of American and Filipino prisoners by the Japanese, with the Japanese I knew in business and socially. Two generations ago, German Nazis were gassing Jews. Today, they are an ally of Israel. In his 1860 novel The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins wrote: “The best men are not consistent in good – why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”

 

Today, evil is manifested in the anti-Semitism that has infested much of the West. Do college students, born sixty years after the genocide of Jews in Europe and who now accuse Israel of practicing genocide on Palestinians, have any knowledge of history? Battles between forces of good and evil, are as old as mankind. The Bible tells us that Jesus, as the son of God, is inherently good, while man is flawed, so must avoid temptations. Most of my generation have read Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster, of Webster’s defense of Jabez Stone who sold his soul to the devil in return for seven years of good luck. The message: In moments of weakness, good people can make bad decisions.

 

This battle between good and evil is not limited to people. On March 8, 1983, President Reagan correctly referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” Evil manifests itself in nation’s where authoritarian leaders control their populations. In the past century, one can think of Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong. Today Ali Hosseini Khamenei Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un serve that role, as their governments deny citizens their natural rights – “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Governments run by and for dictators disallow people the freedom to achieve their dreams. Yet good people can (and do) live in these countries. Nevertheless, the contrast of autocracies to democracies, where power rests with the people and their representatives, is stark. This can be seen today in Israel’s fight with Iran and Ukraine’s war with Russia. In this uncertain world, and because the United States is a ‘good’ nation, the projection of military strength is necessary to help preserve peace. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt sent sixteen U.S. Naval battleships (the Great White Fleet) on a 42,000 mile, fourteen-month world tour, making twenty port calls on six continents. On Flag Day 2025, President Trump ordered a parade celebrating the U.S. Army’s 250^thbirthday. “Peace is Our Profession” was the motto of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). 

 

In his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Martin Luther King said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” I believe what he said is correct for those of us fortunate to live in a democracy, but, sadly, it is not true for those who find themselves subjected to authoritarian governments, which, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democracy Index for 2024, comprises 39.2% of the world’s population. Thus, more than three billion people are held hostage by evil leaders.

 

As a democracy of free-thinking people, we will always have myriad opinions, from religion to education, from culture to social welfare, and on a host of other subjects. Supporters of these differing opinions are not necessarily evil, nor are their opponents. The history of the United States could be written in protests. Among the successful ones: the Abolitionists of the late 18^th and early 19^th Centuries, which lead to the Civil War and the end of slavery; opponents of poor working conditions and low wages during the early years of the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of unions; Suffragettes of late 19^thand early 20^th Centuries led to the adoption of the 19^th Amendment in 1920; the “Bonus Army” of 1932 demanded payment for service in World War I, and helped relieve poverty during the Great Depression; In the late 1930s, Isolationists battled Interventionists, yet all became unified after Pearl Harbor; Civil Rights’ protests in the late 1950s and early 1960s preceded passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968; anti-war protests, fueled by the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s hastened the end of that war.

 

On the other hand, some recent protests are driven  by self-interest, counter-productive, pig-headed, or just plain silly: anti-Semites calling for the end of what they claim is Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians; the destruction of pipelines by those calling for the end of fossil fuels: Defund the Police, the consequences of which are harmful for those most vulnerable in our society; and the short-lived Code Pink: Women for Peace. Democracy, by definition, allows for civil disobedience. But change is best accepted when its progress is gradual. In 1849, Henry David Thoreau wrote Resistance to Civil Government, in which he argued that individuals had a moral obligation to protest unjust laws. Of course, one person’s definition of an unjust law may differ from another’s, but that is why we have courts to resolve such differences.

 

We are living through a period of political extremism, of assassinations and protests, not always peaceful and sometimes led by professional agitators. In our secular age, with its ‘smart’ phones, social media and artificial intelligence (AI), moral values have splintered. Evil is  more ubiquitous when society is spiritually hollow and human connection absent. Wisdom, today, is in short supply; nevertheless, “the function of wisdom,” according to Cicero, “is to discriminate between good and evil.” Thus, while we should be unafraid to express our opinions, we should do so respectfully. We should avoid falling into the trap of hatred – of letting evil bury the good that is within us.

"Moral Clarity"

 I hope this essay does not come across as narcissistic or sanctimonious. Certainly, no one should read into this essay that I am an example of moral righteousness, for I am not. But it is a subject which many of us think about, especially now with both political parties being held hostage by extremists, with neither side listening to the other and with both deliberately misinterpreting what is being proposed; with hatred pervading our elite universities, as seen in a rise of anti-Semitism; and with both presumed presidential candidates lacking a moral spine. Given our time and place, some thoughts on moral clarity seemed timely.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Moral Clarity”

November 13, 2023

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

“Over the years, I have come to understand a critical difference between the world of fear

and the world of freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the strength to

confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil.”

                                           Natan Sharansky (1948-)

   Soviet dissident and Israeli politician

                                          The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, 2004

 

Critics of “moral clarity” claim the world cannot be divided into good and evil, that there are too many nuances. As well, these critics tell us that the words “moral clarity” suggest exclusionary views, such as that expressed in the phrase, “My country, right or wrong.”

 

In my opinion they misunderstand the words, as they assign a moral equivalence based on claimed beliefs. The fact that Nazis justified the extermination of the Jewish people as a means to achieve a pure, Aryan race was an act of pure evil, as was their concept of lebensraum. It was evil that drove Hamas terrorists to parachute in and slaughter Jewish civilians, including children, in the most horrific manner. None of what they did could be compared to Israelis giving Palestinians two weeks to leave northern Gaza before sending in armed forces to ferret out terrorists in tunnels beneath Gaza City’s civilian population. Moral clarity is the ability to think clearly about good and evil, of what is right and what is wrong. There are times when wars are fought for good causes. Moral clarity implies the existence and ubiquity of evil.

 

However, among the extreme Left, the words have become pejorative, as they associate them with American conservatives. They link them to Ronald Reagan, whose popularity has never sat well with the progressive wing of the Democrat Party, and they were popularized by William Bennett in Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, a book that highlighted the tension between good and evil. Moral clarity demands the United States has a strong defense, the ability to confront enemies and support allies.  

 

As Natan Sharansky wrote in the rubric above, the challenge for western democracies is to acknowledge that evil exists. Those living under dictatorships, victims of Ku Klux Klan marauders in the early part of the 20^thCentury, and Jews subject to anti-Semitism today understand how evil infests individuals. In his 1973 book The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) wrote: “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties – but right through the human heart. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years…It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person.” That each individual, regardless of race or religion, is capable of evil (as well as of goodness) has long been understood by the clergy. When Jesus was asked by His disciples how to pray, He responded with the Lord’s Prayer, a prayer rooted in the Torah and that includes the line “but deliver us from evil.” Yet there are and always have been nations that use evil to motivate their people, like the Nazis in World War II, and China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea today. They claim some group is intent on denigrating their lives so they must be destroyed, as Nazis said of Jews in the 1930s, and that today the Chinese say of the Uyghurs, Russians say of the Ukrainians, and as Iran’s proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis – say of Israelis. Evil may arise in individuals’ hearts, but it can be manifested in government actions. 

 

In his 1794 book Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments, Joseph Addison wrote: “No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.” It was with that in mind that on November 11, 1997, Justice Antonin Scalia spoke of the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust, not just about what Germans did to Jews, but of how it happened in a nation noted for its civilization – a country that had been a world leader in art, music, science, and the intellect. “To fully grasp the horror of the Holocaust,” he said, “you must imagine (for it probably happened) that the commandant of Auschwitz or Dachau, when he had finished his day’s work, retired to his apartment to eat a meal that was in the finest good taste, and then to listen, perhaps, to some tender and poignant lieder of Franz Schubert.” Evil can appear swathed in clothes of the benevolent. Sinclair Lewis’ dystopian novel It Can’t Happen Here comes to mind. Because it can.

 

Our Founding Fathers recognized the presence of evil, which is why they designed a government with checks and balances and judicial restraints. It was not designed to be efficient – efficiency was left to the private sector – but to be deliberative, with decisions and laws based on compromise, arrived at through consensus. The nation they created had many imperfections – the existence and persistence of slavery being the most notable. But they also created a country where justice was allowed, albeit slowly, to rise. Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That has been true in democracies, where the people have a say in the government under which they live, but it has not been true in much of the world, where rule of law, property rights, free markets, and equal justice do not exist. And even in western democracies, the move toward justice can be uneven.

 

We hear complaints of the wrongs America has committed, and no one can deny that slavery existed, that native populations were killed and/or mistreated, and that limits were placed on who could vote. Those wrongs existed but were corrected. Time and history must be considered, and credit must be granted for adaption to change. Man was not created pure and good, and neither were nations, but both should be measured on how they adapt over time. Man first appeared perhaps 300,000 years ago. For most of that time he was tribal. It took thousands of years for him to begin living in communities and cities. Survival meant constant wars, and the defeated were often enslaved. Progress was slow and uneven, as we know from earlier civilizations that flourished and disappeared. We who are alive today are fortunate to live where and when we do. Are not Americans better off today than a hundred years ago? And were not most Americans better off in 1923 than in 1823. And were not Americans in 1823 better off than colonialists in 1723? It is not just standards of living that have improved over time, it is that freedom, gradually, was extended to more people – at first to those of non-European heritage, to non-property owners, and then to blacks and women.

 

But we cannot be complacent. As Ronald Reagan once said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same…” We should respect this exceptional nation that has lived more closely to dictates of moral clarity than most others. But we should not boast of our fortune. Like religion, we do not have to carry patriotism on our sleeves, but we should not forget that we are an example for the oppressed and dispossessed across the world. We should never be ashamed of who we are.

 

Rape, murder, incest, torture, and robbery are evil in every culture. They and the seven cardinal sins – pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth – are the antithesis of moral clarity. We must restrain the evil that is present in each of us and promote the good, which is also within us. Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as moral clarity. It is not a catch phrase or a figment of the imagination. The path toward moral clarity is not always clear. It may be disguised and hard to distinguish; it may be elusive. But, as Justice Potter Stewart once said about pornography, we know it when we see it. Most important, it is a code to live by. 

"What Ails Us?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“What Ails Us?”

February 24, 2020

“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

                                                                                                            Mark Twain (1835-1910)

                                                                                                            Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1935

                                                                                                            Editor, Albert Bigelow Paine

In the summer of 1961, after my sophomore year in college, I worked in the smelter of Canada’s Falconbridge Nickel Mines just outside of Sudbury, Ontario. There were a number of Canadian students – all men – working in the mine that summer. On weekends, we would head into Sudbury to have a few beers and otherwise relax. One evening, fortified with libations, we attended a student union debate. The subject: “Resolved: I Would Rather be Dead than Red,” a common debate topic at the time. At the debates’ conclusion, members of the audience were asked if they would like to come up and speak, first for the affirmative and later for the negative. Having enjoyed debate in school and with vocal cords loosened with a couple of Molson Ales, I approached the dais and gave my reasons in the two minutes of allotted time. A few other students did as well. Then the moderator asked who would speak for the negative. At first no one rose, so again I approached the dais, this time to applause, to offer my opposing views.

The idea of debating two sides of an issue was always good training. Aristotle is alleged to have said that “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” I would go further and claim that if one does not understand an opponent’s position, then there is no possibility of reaching compromise. We have entered a twilight zone where biases are so extreme that we no longer communicate but talk over one another. Institutions, like family, church (or, at least, traditional Christian churches) and community organizations are in decline. They have been replaced by groups like #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #Resistance, #MAGA and social media, which give participants a chance to gather on like-minded platforms but offer little opportunity to witness or appreciate opposing views.

Unlike Swedes, French, Chinese or Japanese, we are Americans by choice, a choice that was either ours or that of our forefathers. While a typical Swede or Chinese can be imagined, a typical American cannot. We are too diverse. While our land was inhabited by immigrants in the early 17^th Century, our nation was formed in 1789, with men wise in the knowledge of laws and with an understanding of the governments of other nations, past and present – their strengths and their weaknesses. Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Founders knew that “…unaccommodated [uncivilized] man is no more but a bare, forked animal…,” metaphorically suggesting he was anarchical, with the capacity for good and evil. They also knew, through a study of history, that governments without restrictions become instruments of tyranny. So, they devised a government in which laws, not men, set boundaries, and one in which three, counter-forcing branches balance one another, so that no individual or group would wield power indiscriminately.

Our Founders were not perfect by today’s standards, but measured against those of 250 years ago, they were extraordinary, enlightened men. From the start, we were a polyglot nation. In those far away days, according to Joshua Kendall’s biography of Noah Webster, The Forgotten Founding Father (and my four-greats grandfather), more than fifty languages and dialects were spoken in Pennsylvania alone. Overtime, the country became – and is still becoming – a melting pot. The mixing of religions, ethnicities and races. Not too many years ago, Germantown, Little Italy and Chinatown were culturally distinct neighborhoods in New York City, not marketing venues as they are today. Europe, with its long history of nativist populations, has had a far more difficult time integrating immigrants, as has been seen in violent attacks in France, Sweden, Germany and Britain. Yet the consequence of progressives today, with their emphasis on identity politics and victimization, is to divide a people struggling to unite, to create a salad bowl, a place where the radishes, carrots, peppers and tomatoes have their distinct places. Their reason for doing so is political, as it is easier to tailor messages to distinct groups – ones of race, religion and heritage, and others of gender and sexual preference, but not ones of ideas based on a study of history and civics. What has been lost is a sense of what America means, of a people of disparate opinions, backgrounds, aspirations and abilities who formed (and are still forming) a nation unlike any other on Earth.

As well, the composition of our political parties has changed. It was in 1860 that the first presidential election pitted a Democrat against a Republican. The 2020 election will the 40^th such election where those two main parties represent the myriad views of millions of voters.  Today’s population is eleven times bigger than it was in 1860. A microcosm of the change that has taken place in political parties over the past sixty years could be seen in Connecticut’s 2018 gubernatorial election. The Democrat Ned Lamont is the great grandson of J.P Morgan’s partner Thomas W. Lamont. He grew up in Laurel Hollow, Long Island and attended Phillips Exeter and Harvard. His father worked in the Nixon Administration. The Republican Bob Stefanowski grew up in a working-class family in North Haven, CT. His father was a scoreboard assistant at the Yale Bowl. He is a graduate of North Haven High School and Fairfield University. Sixty years ago, Lamont would have been the Republican and Stefanowski the Democrat.

Privileged is a word tossed around carelessly today. Those of us fortunate to live in the United States are all privileged. We live in a nation without aristocracies, where backgrounds account for less than talent and aspiration. We live in a nation of laws that protect private property. We have abundant resources and no enemies on our borders. We come from all corners of the globe. According to the Census Bureau, over three hundred and fifty languages are spoken in this country. Success is a function of desire, ability and a willingness to work hard. Yet, all of us do not accept the opportunities our privileges permit.

Contradictions abound in today’s political environment. Extreme right-wing Republicans push nativist policies, incompatible with our multicultural country. Progressive Democrats, push dependency on government, to reassure their re-elections. Dependency is necessary, when individuals cannot care for themselves, but in other cases dependency deprives the capable and aspirant from realizing their hopes and dreams. What makes this ironic is that technology, particularly the internet, has boosted opportunities for innovative entrepreneurs. What Joseph Schumpeter described as “creative destruction” has hit our economy, destroying old industries – some known for lifetime employment – but creating new ones, which offer risk and opportunity. The taxi industry is a good example. Collusion between politicians and medallion owners limited competition in cities like New York. When Uber and Lyft entered the market, they felt the wrath of government, even as consumers benefitted. Creative destruction is not a new phenomenon. It is the way economies and societies advance. Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer prize winning novel The Magnificent Ambersons – subsequently made into a movie directed by Orson Welles – described the horse-carriage businesses bankrupted by the new automobile industry. Without adapting, businesses die. Retail, communication, entertainment industries and others are undergoing “destructive” change, with positive consequences for consumers and opportunities for risk takers. In many sexual abuse cases, presumption of innocence has too often become assumption of guilt. News programs have given up a search for truth and become advocates for policy preferences. Families have been subordinated to “villages,” in terms of raising a child, yet where else than from a family does a child receive unconditional love?

Ironies abound. There is irony, as Victor Davis Hanson recently noted in National Review, in universities that have achieved record endowments, while their students are burdened with record levels of debt. What allowed this to happen? If colleges and universities, not just U.S. taxpayers, had assumed some of the financial risk of student loan default, would tuition prices have risen as rapidly as they did? Colleges and universities took no risk. They knew they would be paid, so lifted prices and competed on the basis of physical plant and administrative help in non-educational endeavors. Attitudes toward government have changed. The call of duty, so famously echoed by John F. Kennedy, has been replaced by a demand for entitlements. Vulnerable children from troubled and impoverished families are no longer called “at risk.” They are now “at promise.” Is there not a difference between a child at risk, and a child who, given his or her untapped talent, has a promising future? In mass shootings, we blame the weapon but place no responsibility or accountability on he who pulled the trigger. We have entered an Orwellian world where universities, places that light the flame of curiosity, have banned books considered offensive to a few. That such actions are similar to those taken by tyrants in despotic states seem to be of no relevance to today’s college administrators.

Why are we in this place? We are wealthy. GDP is at record levels and unemployment at record lows. We are free, privileged to live in a democracy. We are engaged in no major wars. Despite climate-scaremongers, our carbon emissions are lower than they were ten years ago, and our rivers, lakes and beaches are cleaner than ever before. Can we do more, and should we not help developing nations? Of course, but celebrate what has been done. Blacks and Hispanics are repeatedly told that the economy and politics are not working for them, that they are victims of white oppression. Yet their unemployment is at record low levels and their real wages have begun to rise for the first time in years. President Trump is accused of being crude (which he is), yet his accusers talk of assassination without condemnation or even comment. He is accused of authoritarian tendencies, yet he has reduced regulations. Which President weaponized the IRS in 2013 to go after conservative organizations? And which political party colluded with the Justice Department and the CIA to publish false information on Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2017, first the candidate and later the nominee? Why has hatred for Mr. Trump so infested mainstream media and members of the Washington elite, that reason is no longer an arrow in their quivers? Cannot bureaucrats in Washington and elites in Hollywood, the media and in cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston and Austin understand that is a lack of consideration of some of these facts and a failure to respond to unanswered questions that led to the election three and a half years ago of Donald Trump, and which will likely lead to his re-election this November?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote: “It’s a universal law – intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impertinence, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” What ails us is a sense of arrogance that there is only one side to an argument – the one we profess, that those who disagree with us are stupid, elitist, blind or deplorable. As Mark Twain suggested, when you find yourself among only those who think like you, it may be time to regroup. Would not teachers in schools and colleges be wise to require students to debate issuess from a position opposite from what they believe? Would not that help them formulate their own ideas, as well as to help them learn something of the opinions of their opponents? Should not college be a time to be skeptical and a place to delve into the murkiness of history, to learn from the wisdom of those who came before?

"A Look Back to the Past Decade"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“A Look Back to the Past Decade”

January 14, 2020

“Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does

will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.”

                                                                                    Attributed to Jean-Francois Revel (1924-2006)

                                                                                    French journalist and philosopher

                                                                                                 

In his 1961 work, A Study of History (a study of the rise and fall of twenty-three civilizations), Arnold Toynbee concluded that civilizations die from suicide, not by murder, brought on by a decline in the moral fiber of society. When a New York Times reporter compared the killing of Qassim Soleimani to the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Left never blinked, despite the implied insult to the Reverend King, his family and followers. When the West fails to defend the genocide of Christians in Africa, but are supplicant to Muslims who murder them, does that reflect a moral stance or a fear of retaliation? “A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage,” spoke Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at the Harvard commencement in 1978. The decline in moral courage has worsened over the past forty-two years. We in the West are more prosperous than ever before, yet we are filled with discontent: If we are black, we are victims; if we are white, we are supremacists; if we are Jews, we are subject to anti-Semitism; if we are Asian, we suffer from reverse discrimination. Unemployment, including minority unemployment, is the lowest in fifty years, and 2019 year-over-year wage growth was the highest for low-wage earners. Yet few of us seem happy with who we are. Perhaps because family has been subordinated to the village and the state?

There were, during the past decade, trends that might be a cause of this despair. While none began in the Twenty-teens, they accelerated over the past ten years. All stem from a desire for power, a sense of political correctness and identity politics coated in hypocrisy, and a belief we should apologize for the success we have had, individually and collectively. We were told we didn’t build the business we built. We tear down statues that represent our history. Hashtags rule and victimization reigns. In colleges and universities, the humanities have been attacked as representing only dead white males who promoted exclusivity. We are told to be inclusive, but not when it comes to political opinions. Where, for example, is the diversity of ideas promoted by a racially and sexually diverse slate of Democrat candidates for President?

Four trends come to mind: The increasing estrangement between bureaucratic global institutions like the United Nations and the European Union and the nation states that compose them; the aging of populations, especially in Western nations and Japan; the decline of participation in organized religion, and the curtailment of free speech. The consequence has been disillusionment and partisanship, fueled by supercilious entertainers and journalists whose readership and viewership are in decline.

Our democracy is predicated on the principle of representative self-government. A concerned and knowledgeable voter is assumed. When America’s Constitution was written in 1787, it was a revolutionary document, even though democracy had been invented in Athens in the Fifth Century BC by the statesman Cleisthenes. The idea that people could govern themselves was, nevertheless, a radical concept in the 18^th Century, as Athenian democracy barely survived a century before morphing into rule by the elite.

Today there are those, including me, who fear a similar fate for our democracy. We see the rise of non-representative global institutions like the United Nations and the European Union, both staffed with appointed bureaucrats, unaccountable to the people of the nations they represent. This Orwellian world was anticipated by Margaret Thatcher in May1992. A few months after the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, she wrote an article for The European: “Experience has taught us that the best system under which to live is a democracy where members of parliament are seen to be accountable to the electorate.” She assured her readers that she was as idealistic about Europe as federalists: “We are,” she wrote, “just less federal.” Today, the European Commission and Parliament employ over 55,000 people in Brussels, Luxembourg City, Strasburg and Frankfurt. Parliamentarians from the twenty-eighty countries in the EU impose taxes and write laws, which affect the domestic affairs of individual states. So, the question arises: Will bureaucrats in Brussels preserve democracy in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Vienna, Budapest and Warsaw, or will they drift, as they have, toward rule by non-elected elitists?

The United Nations has expanded its responsibilities beyond its Charter, signed in June 1945. Its original purpose was to be responsible for maintaining peace, developing friendly relations and achieving international cooperation among nations. It has grown from 51 nations, with a staff of 300 in 1945, to 193 nations and a staff of 44,000 today. It has instituted campaigns for issues like “sustainable development goals,” “climate change,” “sexual violence in conflict and “preventing sexual exploitation and abuse” – all worthy goals, but should misogynist autocrats in Syria tell Danes how to behave toward women? Should Muslim clerics in Iran preach religious tolerance to Israelis? Should Chinese dictators educate Americans on environmentalism? Should Macau and Luxembourg lecture Mali and Burundi on agriculture and water rights? Bureaucrats, justifying their jobs, have created a quagmire that mocks its original purpose. Departments like the Human Rights Council, with a membership that includes representatives from Libya, Venezuela, Somalia and Pakistan – all violators of human rights – are more concerned with equality in representation than with the promotion of human rights.

“Demography is destiny” is a quote generally attributed to the 19^th Century French philosopher of positivism Auguste Comte (1798-1857). It holds that the future well-being of a nation is dictated by births and deaths, immigration and emigration – that a shrinking and aging population leads to economic stagnation and eventual decline. The example of Japan suggests those trends can be mitigated – at least for a while – by the use of debt. But ultimately such a nation is left with fewer and older people to pay off ever-increasing financial obligations. The CIA, in their The World Fact Book for 2017, lists 224 countries by total fertility rate (TFR) – the average number of live births to a woman over her lifetime. For a population to show an increase, a number of 2.1 is needed. Of those countries listed, 106 show a TFR of below 2.1. With the exception of Israel, no Western, wealthy or democratic nation is replacing its population through births. This is a worrying trend for anyone who believes that it has been the liberal ideals and ideas of the West that have given mankind democratic governments, individual liberty and sustained rises in standards of living. TFRs in Europe and the U.S., for example, were about 3.8 in 1950; today, they are 1.6 and 1.7 respectively. The median age in Europe in 1960 was about thirty-three. Today, it is forty-three. In the U.S., the numbers have gone from twenty-nine and a half to thirty-eight. Lyman Stone, writing in the January 2020 issue of National Review, wrote that the global decline in births over the past decade is a function of concern over wealth and housing. Low birthrates suggest pessimism for the future. The consequences will be felt not only in terms of slower economic growth, but in rising risks to the preservation of democratic institutions and, in fact, the physical safety of the people.

A Pew Research survey in June 2018 equated more education and greater wealth with lower church attendance. Ironically, the greater the income inequality in a nation the higher the church attendance, which explains why nations in Africa, South America and parts of Asia have greater church attendance than those in Europe and the United States. The wealthier we are and the more we know (or think we know), the less our need for God. A 2010 Eurobarometer survey showed that only 51% of Europeans believed in God. It is difficult to imagine that that trend reversed in the past ten years. In the twenty-five years between 1980 and 2005, church attendance in England declined by 40%. In France, the number of churches vandalized in 2018 was 1063 – almost three a day. While Christianity is in decline, Islam has been ascendant. According to Giuliu Meotti, cultural editor of Il Folgio, over the past thirty years more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in France than all Catholic churches in the past century. While Muslims represent only 9% of France’s population (the largest percentage in Europe), more of them attend weekly religious services than do Christians. TFRs for Muslim women in Europe is about twice that of Christians and Jews. In the U.S., statistics are similar. A Pew Research survey done in October 2019 showed that 65% of Americans describe themselves as Christian, down twelve percentage points in the past decade. The losses have been evenly divided between Protestants and Catholics. What makes these figures more troubling (at least to those of us who feel that, on balance, religion has been a force for good) is the combination of declining religious beliefs with an aging population, not what one would have expected.

The First Amendment of our Constitution provides our right to free speech, along with freedom to assemble and to practice the religion of our choice. It was a revolutionary concept in 1787. Those rights have been challenged and, in times of war, abrogated. We are now living through such a period, with conservatives being denied opportunities to speak on campuses, with “hate” speech being defined as anything uncomfortable to whomever deems it so, and with ubiquitous, private technology companies imposing their own views as to what is acceptable in terms of speech and what is not. There is no question that decency and respect help society be more livable. But the risk of imposing any limitation – whether it is the Right’s concern about big tech’s preference for Leftist politics, or the Left’s refusal to allow conservatives to speak on campuses – is that it is akin to a camel getting its nose under the proverbial tent. A restriction based on a dislike for “hate” speech will lead to restrictions on other speech at odds with which ever Party is in power. We should never forget that we have the right not to listen to and not to read those with whom we disagree. Civilized people recognize that opinions differ and that it is through reasoned and respectful debate that solutions are found. The Golden Rule had its origins in the Bible, when Jesus described it as the second great commandment: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Words to live by, even though a strict obeisance might have denied comedians like Don Rickles or Rodney Dangerfield. That would have been unfortunate, as I believe the world would be the poorer for their absence. Nevertheless, for those who find their humor repulsive, listening is not mandatory. But the ability to laugh at one’s self is healthy in a complex, racially and religious-mixed society where humor and tolerance are needed.

Some will disagree with the list: On both sides of the aisle there are those, like me, worried about the size of our deficit – who recognize debt is an obligation, both financially and morally. Some on the Right might say that Trump Hate Syndrome has despoiled our politics. Others on the Left might claim that it has been Mr. Trump who is putting at risk our democratic institutions, including the Presidency and the Judiciary. Still others on the Left would include climate change, saying that mankind is destroying the Earth and that our time is limited, while the Right could point to the legions of Cassandras who wrongly predicted that mega-droughts and rising sea levels would bring famine and pestilence. But, in my opinion Trump is not the risk claimed, and hatred blinds the assessment of his opponents. As for those doomsayers, they have been hoisted on their own petard – the world has improved over the decade, in terms of poverty and the environment, at least in developed countries, which offer a map for developing countries.  

Nevertheless, what is troubling about these trends, if in fact they are trends, is that they offer bleak prospects for those of us – and our children and grandchildren – brought up within the wisdom from the Enlightenment that allowed freedom and democracy to blossom, which abetted economic growth that bettered standards of living, that provided moral teachings and the courage and certitude to differentiate right from wrong, good from evil – to defend the one and combat the other. Nevertheless, and to conclude on a positive note, the recent election in Taiwan and last weekend’s protests against the mullahs in Iran suggest that the desire for freedom is inherent, universal, alive and well.