"Is a Middle Way Possible?"

Perhaps it is age, but I have reached a point where the political hatred that rises from both the right and the left is wearing. I yearn for more pleasant times – the path of moderation in Buddhism (photo), or, more relevant to me, the 1984 Presidential campaign commercial of President Reagan: “It’s morning in America!” But, as Thomas Wolfe titled his 1940 novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” The past is the past, and we have changed as has the world. Nevertheless, we can hope. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Is a Middle Way Possible?”

November 10, 2025

 

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

                                                                                                                                Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

                                                                                                                                Mother Night. 1962

 

“Facebook does not favor hatred, but hatred favors Facebook.”

                                                                                                                                Said Vaidhyanathan (1966-)

                                                                                                                                Professor of Media Studies, UVA

                                                                                                                                Antisocial Media, 2018

 

“Why can’t you all get along?” What parents have not expressed such concern? What child has not heard those words from their mother or father?

 

At the 1964 Republican National Convention, Senator and Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater famously said: “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Those uncompromising words about liberty are ones with which all lovers of freedom would agree. Nonetheless, political extremism has become diabolical. Democrats have a far-left problem. Republicans have a far-right problem. Both Parties have taken partisanship to new levels on subjects far less compelling than liberty and justice. Polarization has become the norm. Why has this happened?

 

There are many reasons, but two seem especially relevant: social media and early voting. The use of social media has exploded.  It attracts those wishing to amplify and personally benefit from messaging. It attracts militant followers. Social media is unsuitable for a progressive to accept a conservative view point, or for a conservative to understand a progressive. Today, with an estimated 317 million smart phones in the U.S., being an “influencer” can be profitable. There are an estimated 27 million “paid creators” in the United States. Most promote consumer products, but as The Washington Post reported a year ago: “Political campaigns and their surrogates are pouring millions of dollars into social media influencers with scant regulatory oversight or public transparency.” In a May 22, 2025 article for the Center for Democracy & Technology, Isabel Linzer wrote that “...the shift towards political influencers became apparent in 2020 when Michael Bloomberg’s campaign hired meme accounts on Instagram to promote his candidacy and the Trump campaign paid $1.8 million to influencer marketing groups.”

 

According to studies, the average individual spends over two hours a day on social media. And the average American checks their mobile device 159 times a day – or about every nine minutes. Most people confirm their already-arrived-at opinions, so follow or watch those with whom they already agree. They do not search for contrary opinions, nor are they interested in debating ideas. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on April 14, 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated: “Social media has become a key amplifier to domestic violent extremism.”

 

Influencers know how to game the system. Are left-wing influencers like Hasan Piker and the Young Turks and right-wing influencers like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owen driven by ideological conviction or self-enrichment? In a recent article in City Journal, writing of despicable comments by Nick Fuentes in his interview with Tucker Carlson, Christopher Rufo wrote: “...he [Fuentes] embraces taboos because doing so drives attention and creates a spectacle in digital media that benefits him.” Millions of dollars are at stake. But that does not justify what Fuentes said, nor make understandable why the Heritage Foundation’s president Kevin Roberts felt it necessary to post a video defending Tucker Carlson’s interview with Fuentes. The election of an anti-Semitic and Socialist Mayor in New York was due largely to left-wing influencers on social media, and to the abdication of responsibility from centrist Democrats in Washington and Albany who fear being replaced by left-wing radicals.  

 

A second reason for this hike in extremism has been, in my opinion, the rising popularity of early voting. In 1992, according to the Census Bureau, seven percent of votes were cast early or by absentee ballot. In 2020, amid COVID, 64.04% of all votes cast were either early or by absentee/mail-in. Absent COVID, in 2024, 60% of registered voters voted early. According to The New York Times, the 2025 mayoral election in New York City saw more than 735,000 votes cast early, out of just over two million votes – the highest early in-person turnout ever for a non-Presidential election in New York State history. Politicians love early voting. They speak at a rally late in the election cycle, get followers pumped-up, and send them off to the polls, with emotion, not reflection, driving their decisions.

 

Extended voting was a characteristic of the early days of our Republic, but that was due to the country’s rural nature, and the difficulty many had in getting to the Courthouse on election day. Nevertheless, there are arguments for early and absentee voting: individuals who travel on election day, less congestion at the polls, improved poll worker performance, and convenience for the voter. But the evidence that early voting increases turnout is less convincing. In 1992, 68.2% of all registered voters voted. In 2020 (when early voting became common due to COVID), it was 67.5%, and in 2024 the comparable number was 65.3 percent. While absentee voting is a necessity, voters should be encouraged to wait until election day and base their decisions on all the news. Keep in mind, a vote once cast cannot be recalled.

 

Given the way in which social media dominates our culture, the popularity of early voting, and the personal animosity that infiltrates our politics, is it possible to find a middle waythrough these dangerous waters? I don’t know, but I hope so. In a nation where freedom of expression is fundamental to our values, we cannot re-bottle the social media genie. But we must find ways of better preparing the electorate. Mainstream media – newspapers, magazines, network and cable TV, radio – have taken sides, mostly favoring the left. Perhaps Jeff Bezos ownership of The Washington Post and Bari Weiss now being in charge of CBS News portends a change? 

 

The late political satirist P.J. O’Rourke saw government as a necessary evil. He titled his 2010 book Don’t Vote: It Just Encourages the Bastards. He saw those who ran for office as either self-serving, incompetent, or both. While I would not go that far, the moral quality of our politicians has been on a downward slope for several decades. As to what will stop this slide toward increased polarization, I suspect lies in education.

 

Left-leaning political indoctrination in high schools and universities has abetted progressives, which in turn has radicalized the right in opposition. Teachers should challenge students to think for themselves, to question convention, to debate ideas, to be tolerant and respectful of those with whom they disagree. With so many on social media, it is only through an un-biased education that an individual can discern a charlatan. 

 

As Americans, we are blessed to live in a free country. We come from myriad backgrounds, races, cultures and religions. But we are all Americans. Despite (or perhaps because of) our diversity, we should be able to get along – to appreciate our differences, and to celebrate what we have in common. If we do, a middle way will open.

"Illiberal Liberals"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Illiberal Liberals”

September 19, 2021

 

“The individual is foolish, but the species is wise…We have inherited from the past the instruments

which the wisdom of the species employs to safeguard man against his own passions and appetites.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Russell Kirk (1918-1994)

                                                                                                   The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, 1953  

 

While healthy policy differences separate Republican from Democrat, extremist woke culture, propagated by sanctimonious, illiberal progressive elitists, has infested schools, universities, the arts, churches, banks, large corporations and sports teams. It threatens to transform our Country and do irreparable harm, with emotion replacing reason. It was behind the fatal decisions in Afghanistan, where military leaders had debated single-sex bathrooms and focused on gender identity and white oppression, rather than considering the consequences of an inauspicious withdrawal. Wokeism is a danger to all who love freedom.  

 

……………………………………………………

 

Wokeness is a belief in presentism. It is an ideology endorsed by people ignorant of history and unaware of consequences for the future. It exists under the banner of social justice, embedded in words like diversity, equity and inclusion. It inspires virtue-signaling by privileged whites feigning awareness of “social inequities.” It is a manifestation of the illiberal liberal. Its leaders are intent on uprooting liberal democracy, which cherishes free markets and individual freedom and replacing it with authoritarian socialism, where government’s powers are enhanced, and individual’s rights and liberties are suppressed. The responsible citizen is replaced with the obedient subject. Fear of government too large was important to the founding fathers. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison: “I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” Yet, a 2018 Gallup Poll showed that 57% of Democrats had a positive view of socialism, while only 47% felt the same way toward capitalism.

 

The world of the woke is filled with hypocrites: During the recent California gubernatorial election, a white woman wearing a gorilla mask threw an egg at Republican Larry Elder, an African American who the Los Angeles Times called “The Black face of white supremacy.” There was nary a peep of complaint from mainstream media. To be racist is okay if it is worn under a mantle of wokeness. Last year, California’s Governor Newsome kept public schools closed to in-person learning, while sending his children to private schools where all classes were held in person. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore the words “Tax the Rich,” embroidered in red on her white, designer gown, to a $30,000-a-seat benefit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an annual event where elites outdo one another, to impress the media and the masses, knowing that their wokeness, despite their privilege, exempts them from condemnation as oppressors. Hypocrisy and wokeness are partners among illiberal liberals.

 

A belief in those aspects of character which inspired Martin Luther King and that made the United States an exceptional nation – aspiration, initiative, merit, talent, hard work, tolerance, personal responsibility and adherence to families and churches – have disappeared into a mire of political correctness. Critical race theory, a Marxist view which teaches that racial prejudices and preferences determine academic and economic outcomes, has divided the nation into white supremacists and people-of-color victims. While critical race theory has been around for half a century, with some legitimacy to its tenets, it has been adopted by those on the left to Balkanize the American people. And it is racist, in that it is the group not the individual that is condemned or praised, based on perceptions, not facts.

 

It has been this freedom of the individual, where allegiance is to the law – not to men – that makes Western culture unique: Freedom to express ideas, freedom to pray as one chooses, freedom to own property, freedom to be considered innocent until proven guilty, freedom to have a trial of one’s peers,  freedom to avoid the siren call of presentism, freedom to learn from the past and to profit from its lessons for the future, freedom to believe in colorblind justice, freedom to understand one’s talents, as well as one’s limits – all freedoms that illiberal liberals, with their woke police, would banish.

 

In a 1961 debate with Barry Goldwater, Norman Thomas, a perennial socialist Presidential candidate on the Socialist Party ticket between 1928 and 1948, argued that in a world that consists of an “anarchy of nations” a government of elected officials and administrators is needed to “manage our extraordinary scientific and technological achievements and our resources for the common good.” Has that been true for students in inner-city schools? Wealthy urban, white progressives have options in school choice, while Black and Hispanic parents and children have no choice, except for the few Charter schools where demand exceeds supply. A true liberal would offer inner-city parents a choice and not be hornswoggled by powerful teachers’ unions Have unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, ever “managed” our achievements and resources well? There have been examples of collaborative efforts, like the War Production Board during World War II and Operation Warp Speed set up in 2020. Both were successful because government-imposed regulations were eased. Creativity and Innovation are manifestations of free-market capitalism.  

 

In terms of tax policy, “Pay your fair share” and “Tax the Rich” are empty slogans of illiberal liberals. The proposed tax bill is thousands of pages long, filled with exemptions and exclusions for the very wealthy. If a fair tax was wanted, Congress would enact a flat tax, with no exemptions. But, one suspects, those in the legal and accounting fields would not react well to a bill that deprived them of an income. And what is fairanyway? According to taxorganization.org, in 2020 the top one percent of income earners in the U.S. paid 38.5% of all income taxes. The bottom 90% paid 29.9 percent. 

 

The fumes propelling “wokeism” are expelled by the narrative, not by facts. In Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins lamented that the CDC, with 21,000 employees and an annual budget of $15 billion had been unable to produce detailed research on COVID-19, on the numbers of people with natural immunity, and on breakthrough infections, despite having data on 40 million individuals who have tested positive for COVID-19 and 200 million who have been vaccinated. “This isn’t,” he wrote, “the Manhattan Project. Its epidemiology 101.” Could it be that facts are secondary to the narrative?

 

………………………………………………………..

 

In his book, The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote that he became a conservative because he was liberal. He was open to debate, the free flow of ideas and, surprisingly, to change. In that same book, Mr. Kirk expressed one of the canons of conservative thought: “Science must alter, for prudent change is the means of social preservation; but a statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a stateman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.” In contrast to the woke, true liberals want to preserve the good of the past and learn from mistakes made. They understand reality. They know it is wrong to ban books and tear down statues. Such actions do not change the past; they simply change one’s perception. Real liberals seek equality of opportunity and equality before the law for everyone, regardless of race, religion or gender, not a false promise of equity. Today’s progressives tell us they are liberal, but their policies are illiberal. Barton Swaim ended a recent column in The Wall Street Journal on the loss of liberalism with an appropriate sentence: “You can’t fix the city as long as the souls are a mess.” 

"The Man Who Isn't There"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“The Man Who Isn’t There”

June 25, 2021

 

“Look in his eyes for a dying flare,

Look for the wind in his yellow hair,

And pretend

You see the man

Who isn’t there.”

                                                                                                                                     Oren Lavie (1976-)

                                                                                                                                   “The Man Who Isn’t There.” 2007

 

In a 2006 report, Jonathon R.T. Davidson, Professor (now Emeritus) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University, utilizing biographical sources, wrote about the first thirty-seven U.S. Presidents (Washington through Nixon). His conclusion: eighteen of them had some form of mental illness, from depression and anxiety to bipolar disorders and alcohol abuse/dependence. Given the pressure under which Presidents operate, perhaps such findings are not surprising.

 

In 1964, in response to a group of psychiatrists claiming Barry Goldwater unfit for office the American Psychiatric Association issued a statement, which said in part: “…it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement.” That caveat has not stopped “armchair psychiatrists” from offering unfavorable opinions about Presidents, especially Republican ones, including Ronald Reagan who was called an “idiot savant” and who some said showed signs of early onset Alzheimer’s, and George W. Bush who was called a “puppet of Dick Cheney” and who others said exhibited “deep feelings of inadequacy.”

 

But no President was ever mentally scrutinized as closely as was Donald Trump. Even before the election Representative Karen Bass (D-CA and without a medical degree) launched a petition to have Mr. Trump psychologically examined, claiming he exhibited signs of narcissistic personality disorder. In December 2017, more than a dozen members of Congress invited a Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee to evaluate Trump’s behavior. Without ever meeting him, and in contravention of the 1964 statement issued by the American Psychiatric Association, she was quoted by Politico: “He’s going to unravel, and we are seeing the signs…Trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable with the pressure of the presidency” In response to non-stop attacks on his fitness for office, Donald Trump, in 2020, took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a brief test of about thirty questions. He claimed he “aced” it, though Canadian inventor of the test, Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, said Mr. Trump’s score showed “normal performance.” 

 

Given that Presidents have the “Gold Codes,” which are the launch codes for nuclear weapons, does it not make sense to ensure our Presidents are mentally sound? Jimmy Carter thought so. In the December 1994 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, he wrote: “Many people have called to my attention the continuing danger to our nation from the possibility of a U.S. President becoming disabled, particularly by a neurological illness.”  A commission was considered but never created, thus the sole determinant of a candidate’s mental and physical fitness to serve is the rigor of the campaign.

 

That brings us to President Biden. I am an observer, not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so my opinions carry no authority. Nevertheless, like many others, I worry about the acuity of our 46^th President. Campaigning largely from his Delaware home during last year’s pandemic, the American people were unable to get a sense of his mental fitness. His speeches were and are scripted, as are his press conferences. It is true that he has a stutter, which can be confused with mental lapses. And to give him his due, Mr. Biden’s personal life has been tragic: His wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in an automobile accident in 1972. His son Beau died of brain cancer at age 46 in 2015. His surviving son, Hunter, with his business dealings in China, Ukraine and Russia, his oft-use of the N-word, and his new career in art where his patrons are not identified, are embarrassments or worse.  

 

Some of Mr. Biden’s problems are self-inflicted: His habits of unwelcome hugs, touches and smooches to women are creepy. Some of his verbal transgressions suggest racial condescension and a temper: In 2006, about Americans who had emigrated from India – “You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. And I’m not joking.” About Barack Obama in 2007 – “You’ve got the first sort of mainstream African-American who is articulate, bright and clean.” In 2020 to black radio host Charlemagne The God: “Well, I’m telling you, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” 

 

However, when one watches him on TV, one wonders if he is “the man who isn’t there.” Slurred words, cognitive freezes and vacant eyes mar some speeches and press conferences, even when he has the aid of a teleprompter. Also, even with a friendly media, he seems to lose his temper more often than he did.

 

I do not worry that he will do something rash like launch a nuclear attack, because I am certain his handlers will prevent such action. But that is the source of my greatest concern. Who is in charge? Who is the ‘Oz’ behind the curtain pulling the strings and levers? It is this not knowing who is steering the ship of state that is worrying. Mr. Biden’s forty-seven years in public service would not suggest the progressive policies he now promotes. With the election of Mr. Trump, you may not have liked what you got, but you knew what you were getting. With Mr. Biden, you may have liked what you thought you were getting, but you cannot be sure of what you got. If the Democrat leadership knowingly ran a man for President who was in mental decline that would be a black mark against the concept of free and fair elections.

 

One is reminded of lines by Alfred Joyce Kilmer, the American poet who was killed in France on July 30, 1918:

 

“I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute

And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.”

 

A house now inhabited by a 78-year-old man whose blond hair has turned white, a man who may not be there.

"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.