Review - "The War for Middle Earth," Joseph Loconte, PhD

 While familiarity with J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis will add to your appreciation of this book, that is not necessary to realize the pertinence of this story to today’s world where evil still exists in the China, Russia, North Korea and Iran axis.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The War for Middle Earth, Joseph Loconte

March 14, 2026

 

“Societies cannot thrive under conditions of disorder, disorientation and degeneration. The human soul craves

meaning and purpose. The new political religions of the twentieth century promised to deliver the goods.”

                                                                                The War for Middle Earth, 2025, Joseph Loconte, PhD

                                                                                                                                

Following World War I, Europe searched for answers amidst devastation. Civilization suffered and so did religion. Why, people asked, would God permit such suffering? Dictatorships, in Russia, Italy and Germany, rose to meet the challenge, becoming the “new political religions” that Mr. Loconte refers to in the epigraph. Following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, Lenin became the leader of Communist Soviet Russia. The Fascist Mussolini was appointed Prime Minister by King Victor Emmanuel in 1922; eleven years later the Nazi Party leader Adolph Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. All three men used violence in their accession to and maintenance of power. The people of those three countries, devastated by four years of war, were willing to accept totalitarian leadership.

 

It was in that environment – the end of innocence and the end of faith – that two friends, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, both Oxford professors of English literature and both veterans of the Great War, decided a new path was necessary: a path based on the virtues embedded in their Country’s Judeo-Christian heritage and in the individual liberalism inherent to Western civilization, a path that followed ancient tales and myths of heroes and villains, of fights won against great odds. As the Second World War commenced, Loconte writes “There was a savage war of aggression devouring the European continent and threatening the survival of Great Britain. Yet there was also an ideological war: the widespread assault on the classical and Christian ideals that had nourished Western civilization for centuries.” This is the story Joseph Loconte tells.

 

He follows Tolkien and Lewis, and how the rise of tyranny influenced their careers. “They began writing their epic stories (The Lord of the Ring and The Chronicles of Narnia.) when the darkest shadow of modern history was cast over the West and, for a crucial part of that time, over England in particular.”

 

In 1939, the Allies were unprepared: “The failure to imagine the likelihood of this act of aggression (Pearl Harbor), given Japan’s brutal war in China – indeed the reluctance to believe in the capacity for human wickedness on a vast scale – remains one of the enigmas of the Second World War.”

 

By September 1945, the Fascists in Italy, Nazis in Germany and the Japanese Imperialists had been defeated. Forty-five years later the Soviet Union collapsed. Western civilization, which Tolkien and Lewis did so much to preserve during those middle years, prevailed. 

 

His tale is pertinent today. The world is not static. We must ever be mindful that there will always be those whose desire for power threatens the West – our governments, history, culture and lives. While they assume different forms, the world will never be rid of a Sauron or a White Witch. But there will always be individuals, like Frodo and the Pevensie siblings, willing to sacrifice their comforts, and there will always be a Gandolf or Aslan to guide us. This is both a compelling and pertinent read.

"Wherefore Wisdom"

 While I will invade your in-box tomorrow with a book review, it is short (approximately 500 words) and I promise to stay away for the next few days. The below is something to munch on as you prepare your stomach for Thursday.

 

The owl symbolizes all that I wish for our country.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Wherefore Wisdom?”

November 21, 2025

 

“...the most complicated fabric of the most perfect form of government” resulted

from a “great measure of accident” plus “a small ingredient of wisdom and foresight.”[1]

                                                                                                                David Hume (1711-1776)

                                                                                                                Scottish philosopher

                                                                                                                The History of England, 1754

 

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

                                                                                                                Professor George Santayana (1863-1952)

                                                                                                                Reason in Common Sense

                                                                                                                Vol I of The Life of Reason, 1905

 

Across most cultures there are certain values that are ancient, universal and enduring. In the Judeo-Christian world there are the Ten Commandments, especially those that command us to honor our parents, to not kill, steal, bear false witness, commit adultery, or covet our neighbor’s spouse or goods, and there are lessons from Aesop about the value of work, the importance of skepticism, and the detriment of envy – all embedded in his Fables: “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” “The Fox and the Crow,” and “The Fox and the Grapes.” 

 

I have been thinking of these issues as I recently read C.S. Lewis’ 1942 book, The Screwtape Letters and Joseph Ellis’ recent history The Great Contradiction[2].  Lewis’ book is a series of letters from Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, a “novice demon.” It speaks to the temptations of the devil. Ellis discusses the inherent contradiction between the words in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and slavery and the forced removal of Native Americans from their historic lands.  

 

The abolitionist and Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker sermonized in 1853: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one...But from what I see it bends toward justice.” The study of history is important as Professor Santayana makes clear in an epithet that heads this essay, to understand how, despite abiding values embedded in culture, practices change; evil is ubiquitous and often arrives disguised. It is important that we each learn the ancient lessons of the Ten Commandments and the morals of Aesop, so that we behave civilly and accept responsibility. 

 

It may be that every generation judges past ones based on current standards. Certainly, ours does. Feeling smug and complacent, too many of us spend time judging the ethical shortcomings of past generations, rather than focusing on the failings of our own. It explains the popularity of Nicole Hannah-Jones’ The 1619 Project, made worse by a focus on identity – that people are either victims or oppressors. It may make us feel better to cast blame on those long dead, but history, like evolution, is a continuum. And it moves slowly, as Reverend Parker intimated. According to Google’s AI, modern humans first evolved in Africa more than 300,000 years ago. But it was only five to six thousand years ago that humans formed civil societies. And consider how recently it was that women were allowed to vote!

 

Tribal wars and slavery were common in much of the world into the early 19^th Century. Such conflicts, fueled by political power struggles, resources and historical grievances, are still common in places like the Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria and the Central African Republic. If one includes forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage and human trafficking an estimated 50 million people today are slaves. And we cannot forget That the 20^th Century was the bloodiest on record – that it gave rise to both Nazism on the right and Communism on the left. Combined, they enslaved an estimated 50 million people and killed double that number. Even today, according to Freedom House, only about 20% of the world’s population live in countries where political rights and civil liberties are protected. Evil persists. We can point to the civil war in Sudan, the conflicts in Myanmar and Syria, the killing of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Nigeria, the brutal fight in Ukraine, and Israel’s continued existential wars, but individually we would be wise to search our own souls, to cleanse ourselves of the hatred that too often rises to the surface – to consider the words of David Hume in the epithet above. Wisdom has been AWOL.

 

The recent decline in morals that have guided us over many years is not limited to acts of violence. The recent admission by the BBC that they had doctored a January 6, 2021 speech by then President Trump to make it appear he had instigated the attack on the Capitol later that day was a deliberate act of malfeasance. Their decision implied a lack of faith in the ability of their viewers to fairly consider facts and respond appropriately. The same could be said of those who pushed the Russian collusion story of 2016.

 

The values we should return to are simple and ancient ones, ones that have stood the test of time. The world would benefit from a return to those principles laid out in the 10 Commandments, which were delivered over 3,000 years ago. And we would gain from re-reading those tales of the Greek slave Aesop who lived 2,600 years ago. “Wisdom,” Albert Einstein wrote in 1954, “is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

 

Like knowledge of history, the values that have guided us over the millennia sometimes fade from our conscience, yet they persevere. The inherent rights of individuals, rule of law, limited government and free markets are the foundation on which our country was created and built. Wherefore wisdom? Wisdom requires we not forget.

"Living in a Time of 'Institutional' Hatred"

 It may seem odd to leave the serenity of south-eastern Connecticut for the bedlam of the north-Jersey coast, but we have been doing this every August for our sixty-one years of marriage. Growing up in New York City, it is where Caroline spent summers. She describes these couple of weeks as “returning to her playpen.” The photograph depicts us on a cool day last summer at the Seabright Beach Club.

 While I will have my laptop and a portable printer, I am bringing light reading, so don’t expect much in terms of essays. However, in the back of my mind I have been thinking of one on the beauty and grandeur of silence, but we shall see. Also, I have just completed Lynne Olson’s newest book, The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück, which deserves an essay. Perhaps it will be too noisy down there!

 

But cloistering with friends, children and grandchildren and reading mysteries, I hope (and expect) to avoid the ugly ramifications of hatred That has become too common.

 

We expect to return to Essex on Saturday, August 23.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Living in a Time of ‘Institutional’ Hatred”

August 4, 2025

 

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

                                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                                Sermon: “A Knock at Midnight,” 1958

“I hate you!” Who has not screamed that invective, or had it directed at them? It is generally short-lived, an intense, emotional response to an accusation, characterized by anger, contempt and/or disgust.

 

Such words are usually directed toward specific individuals, things, or ideas. In most cases those feelings are ephemeral. But I write about what I call ‘institutional’ (for lack of a better term) hatred, where an individual or group deliberately foments hatred toward a person, race, ethnicity, or nation. Time is a healer, even of ‘institutional’ hatred. Bill Clinton was despised by Republicans during the 1990s, and as Matthew Hennessey wrote in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: “Hate is too mild a word for how Democrats felt about George W. Bush while he was in the Oval Office.” Today, in both cases, hatred has vanished.

 

But such hatred is not always transient. Blacks were hated by many in this Country for decades, culminating in the white-robed Ku Klux Klan, whose remnants still exist. The consequences were the killings – many by lynchings – of tens of thousands of black Americans. For more than ten years, from the mid 1930s through May 1945, Nazis maintained a nation-wide hatred toward Jews and others they classified as undesirable. The consequence was that between fifteen and twenty million civilians were imprisoned, tortured, mutilated and/or murdered, in a network of over 44,000 Concentration Camps scattered across occupied Europe.

 

Hatred clouds reason. Hatred of Jews is what the Nazis employed to get ordinary citizens to go along with their despicable extermination policies. Reason, on the other hand, is what permitted the Allies to ultimately defeat Nazism. Hatred has returned today, in much of the West, in the anti-Semitism that has infiltrated college campuses, in political speech, and in the language of Podcasters. “Open Jew hatred,” wrote Alvin Rosenfeld in last Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “is also politically mainstream, with ‘free Palestine’ and ‘globalize the intifada’ now a key part of the left’s political agenda.” The call by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime minister Keir Starmer, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to have their countries recognize a Palestine state before there is one reflects hatred toward Israel. The meaning of ‘globalize the intifada’ is clear: Kill the Jews. While Israel has been winning militarily, Hamas is winning the public relations war.

 

Here in the U.S., hatred’s most common target today is President Trump, an easy person to demagogue, as his language and actions are often goofy and/or intemperate. This hatred is manifested in opposition to anything he supports or does. In the August 2, 2025 issue of American Greatness, Stephen Soukup wrote: “The left’s hatred [of President Trump] is more powerful than any instinct it might have to do the right thing.” That hatred is displayed by those rallying against the deportation of criminal illegal migrants, and by those opposed to Israel’s war against Hamas. It motivates those who blame man for all climate change and stirs up those who support gender-affirming surgeries. Will Weissert of the Associated Press recently quoted a fifteen-year-old girl from Scotland who was protesting President Trump’s visit to Scotland: “We don’t negotiate with fascists...So many people here loathe him...We’re not divided...We’re just here because we hate him.” One hopes she is instructed on the history of fascism, what its aims, goals and means were. Nevertheless, hatred for Mr. Trump is not new. It began ten years ago when he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in New York City to announce his run for President. It was revealed in the fake accusations by the Clinton campaign about Russian “collusion.” It led to the refusal of the media to acknowledge that Hunter Biden’s lap-top was real. I have friends who, to this today, cannot speak the name Trump without a grimace. He is not my favorite politician, but I do not hate him, and I believe he loves his Country. I experienced hatred nine years ago when I refused to join the cortège of those who wished to bury his nascent political career. But hatred is not the exclusive domain of the Left.  MAGA extremists are equally vituperative. We hear it in the voices of many conservative commentators, and in the expressions of those who rail against all immigrants.  But it is most powerful on the left.

 

Mainstream media, threatened with irrelevance, exploits and encourages this scourge of hatred, falsely seeing it as a means to stay relevant. They know their business models are in trouble. Fifty years ago the daily news viewership of the three main networks – CBS, NBC and ABC – was approximately 70 million people, or roughly 30% of the population. Today combined network and cable news programs capture about 30 million viewers, or less than 10% of the population. Newspapers have suffered similarly. In 1975, approximately 62 million newspapers were printed daily. Today that number is less than 25 million. Now, most get their news from social media accounts, like X, Facebook, Instagram and from Podcasts. People listen to what augments their prejudices and not to what challenges their predilections, so these platforms become breeding grounds for polarization and hatred. It is why Alex Jones on the right and Rachel Maddow on the left remain popular, but only with those who share their views. Ironically, greater choice in news has increased our division.

 

In her novel White Oleander, `Janet Fitch wrote: “Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that’s something you can use...It’s hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you.” I think she is wrong, but her words reflect today’s culture. C.S. Lewis warned in Mere Christianity that there is a tendency among people to cling to bad stories of people they detest, to “wish that black was a little blacker, [then] we shall see grey as black...Finally we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad.” I suspect he is right; it is something to guard against.

 

Can we return to a time when respect and tolerance were common? Thirty-six years after he had been freed from slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote in his autobiographical story, Up from Slavery, a remarkable sentiment we should all feel – and one that anticipated by fifty years Martin Luther King’s words in the epigraph that heads this essay: “I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” While the Bible advises us to abhor what is evil, it warns against harboring hatred in one’s heart. It tells us to hold fast to what is good. Two and a half years ago I wrote an essay titled, “Hatred and the Curse of Identity Politics: “Man is perhaps the only species that kills and destroys its own kind out of pure hatred.” Man is also the only creature capable of reason and love, so perhaps there is hope.

 

The goal of ‘institutional’ hatred is power, to be rid of those who stand in their way. The consequences are alienation, division, distrust and polarization. As humans, we have been endowed with emotions and with the ability to reason. In our polarized environment, we run the risk that the emotional response of ‘institutional’ hatred supersedes our willingness to listen, to debate – to reason. We must not let that happen.

"Freedom versus Dependency in a Polarized World"

 

Today’s essay covers a subject that I have written on before, one that, in my opinion, represents the biggest threat to democracy we have ever faced – Like a frog placed in water that is gradually heated to boiling, we are experiencing the piecemeal encroachment on individual freedom by a government determined to play a more ubiquitous role in our lives. I do not believe it is malevolence on the part of politicians, but the inevitable consequence of unrestrained government.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Freedom versus Dependency in a Polarized World”

March 7, 2023

 

“The call of the tribe…clearly touches chords deep within the human heart.”

                                                                                                                                Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-)

                                                                                                                                The Call of the Tribe, 2023

 

Two conflicting yearnings embody all men and women – the desire to be free and the desire to be a part of a tribe: family, club, group, community, nation, etc. At their extremes, the two result in either anarchy or dependency. Anarchy can lead to the emergence of a strong, unscrupulous leader, a tyrant. Statism can lead to a loss of independence, the abandonment of personal responsibility and the rise of authoritarianism. 

 

It is to mitigate the worst outcomes of either extreme – to live together as individuals, civilly and productively – that governments were created. Throughout history, most governments minimized individual freedom, while emphasizing security. The United States was (and is) different. In 1776, the Founders met in Philadelphia to address independence from Great Britain. The final paragraph of the Declaration of Independence speaks of the “Representatives of the united States of America,” with the “u” in united not capitalized. To reduce the threat of autocracy, the Constitution established a federal government of three separate but equal branches. It created a representative government – “of the people, by the people, for the people” – that provided freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, the press, and petitions, all to ensure individuals remained free. It was (and is) a government based on the rule of law, on equal rights, and one that recognizes the private ownership of property. (And the “u” in United States was capitalized in 1781).

 

Nevertheless, “the call of the tribe” (to use Mario Vargas Llosa’s title) is strong; it has been deployed by both the right and the left to attract disaffected members of the political public – groups like the Tea Party and Proud Boys on the right and Antifa and Black Lives Matter on the left. However, extremist groups, while they should be monitored for violence, are generally small and do not represent real threats to democracy. The real threat to the United States is more subtle. It is (and has been) the gradual usurpation of regulatory power by non-elected bureaucrats, and the seduction of American voters through financial inducements – “the call of the tribe” – creating dependency on “compassionate” government.

 

Politically, Americans are divided along ideological lines, which should allow for debate and compromise. For example: How big and how accountable should government be? What responsibilities should it bear and what should be the responsibilities of individuals? At what point will government’s debt obligations infringe on economic growth? How can we tame inflation while expanding deficits? At what point does dependency on government largesse overwhelm a sense of individual freedom? These questions have been sidelined, however, by the rise of identity politics (another “call of the tribe”) – racial, gender, ethnicity – which create a sense of victimhood – us versus them – that only “omniscient” government can resolve. 

 

As well, identity politics divert attention from compelling problems: urban crime; an open border; declining education standards; infrastructure; run-away debt and deficits; inflation; changes wrought by new technologies; a simmering Middle East; a grasping, gasping Russia; the Thucydides Trap of a rising China and a faltering United States, and the struggle between advocates of an ever-expanding government, with its increasingly unaccountable administrators and regulators, and those who believe democracy and individual freedom are at risk. Keep in mind, what enticed immigrants was the promise of freedom – that one could rise as far as her or his aspiration, diligence, and talents could take them – not the assurance and comfort of a welfare state.

 

At the same time, we are more polarized than at any time since 1861. Conservatives are labeled misogynists, xenophobes, and racists. Progressives are presumed to be radicals, socialists, and communists. A few conservatives and progressives deserve those adjectives, but for most the labels are hyperbole, adding to the societal dysfunction that already exists. False accusations have become ubiquitous, denying debate, making civil discussion difficult, and negatively effecting civic behavior. However, polarization is not necessarily unhealthy. In his 1945 novel, That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis wrote: “Isn’t it absolutely essential to keep a fierce left and fierce right, both on their toes and each terrified of the other? That’s how we get things done.”  In a talk with the editors of The New York Magazine on February 1, 2007, Ayaan Ali Hirsi said: “There is peacetime and there is wartime, and you don’t need polarization on wartime issues. You need polarization on all other issues.” In her 2020 book Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, Anne Applebaum wrote: “Unity is an anomaly. Polarization is normal.” While I am not sure that each side need be “terrified of the other,” polarization of ideas is natural and healthy, as long as reason governs discussions and debates, and pushes us toward the “anomaly” of compromise and unity.

 

But tribalism is not all bad. Families are the backbone of a successful society. Religious organizations provide a moral sense. Civic organizations give opportunities for individuals to come together in their communities. Alumni groups assure a solid future for schools and colleges, where students should be taught subjects that help them succeed in life, to learn self-reliance, and to be good citizens, not to succumb to “the call of the tribe” of race, gender, and ethnicity. We need government in multiple ways – security, infrastructure, education, to care for the needy and those unable to care for themselves. But we must ensure that dependency on government does not smother initiative; that the focus is on opportunities, not outcomes; that merit is not replaced with equity; that upward mobility is available to all, without regard to race, gender, or economic class. We must not sacrifice individual independence on the altar of “benevolent” government. 

 

Government is a hard beast to tame. Its appetite grows larger every year. The administrative state is almost impossible to shrink. Bureaucrats, aided and abetted by public sector unions, find more things to do, more ways to spend the public’s money, more ways to make more people dependent. Political power is an aphrodisiac. But nothing in life is free. As dependency on government waxes, personal freedom wanes. You cannot have it both ways.

"It's Still the Culture, Stupid"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

                                                        30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314 

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“It’s Still the Culture, Stupid”

February 9, 2022

 

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised

for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

                                                                                                                C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

                                                                                                                God in the Dock: Essays on Theology, 1948

 

Just over a year and a half ago, June 8, 2020, I wrote a TOTD, “It’s the Culture Stupid.” It was two weeks after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. I wrote: “…the permitting of protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s killing was right. The failure to confront and arrest violent rioters and looters was wrong.” It is that failure to distinguish between right and wrong – a failure to punish wrongdoers and to reward virtue – that haunts our nation and its people. Driven by a sanctimonious and intolerant “woke” community, the situation has worsened over the past twenty months.

 

In 1992, while advising Bill Clinton on his Presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush, James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The economy had entered recession in July-August 1990 but had recovered by the end of the first quarter of 1991. However, job creation lagged, so the recovery became known as the “jobless recovery.” Unemployment continued to rise into mid-year 1992, which provided Mr. Carville the opportunity to conceive a phrase recalled thirty years later.

 

What we face is more onerous. Economies go through booms and busts, while cultures are fundamental to who we are. A self-important, moralizing wokeism offers a new and different threat. Traditionally, our culture has been embedded in families – passed down from one generation to the next. It is confirmed in civil behavior, in our schools, churches and communities. It is institutionalized in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and reflected in Constitutional amendments. It has been enhanced as our country absorbed immigrants from all over the world. But the underlying rules and customs that allowed this country to survive and to thrive should persist – that we are all, no matter our race, ethnicity or gender, created equal and have equal protection under the law, that private property is protected, that we live in a nation of laws not men, that we should be judged by our character, not the color of our skin or gender, and that success is a function of merit, ability, effort and diligence, and that civility, respect and tolerance are necessary for a free, civil and democratic society to exist. 

 

Wokeism threatens to undo this glue that has bound our nation. In schools, universities, museums, charities, businesses and even selections for the Supreme Court, wokeism makes judgements based on identity – racial, gender, ethnic – not merit or character. Its goal is to destroy traditional American culture. It claims that our nation is fundamentally racist, that its people are either victims or victimizers. It says that our founding was in 1619, when these colonies were part of the British Empire. It dismisses the concept of the nuclear family. It has led to lawlessness and the destruction of private property. It asserts that our planet is doomed unless we obey the liturgy of climate zealots. It ignores biological distinctions between men and women. It promotes equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities. It argues that traits like hard work and adherence to the Golden Rule, are characteristics of white, male oppressors, so should be abandoned. It feeds on social media. Like totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Communism to Nazism, wokeism “is,” as Thomas Klingenstein wrote recently in The American Mind, “self-righteous and intolerant, built on lies and the silencing of those who challenge the lies.” 

 

Today, we face many problems: We know that fatherless children are disadvantaged and that crime-infested cities make life more difficult, especially for the poor, yet little is done to address the former or to fix the latter. The nation’s debt is $30 trillion, or $90,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States, a number that does not include even larger unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Low interest rates have mitigated the cost of that debt. But the inflation we experience will be addressed with higher interest rates, which will impact the cost of all debt – personal, corporate and government – thereby adding to the nation’s deficits. According to an October 22, 2021 article in The New York Times, illegal immigration in 2021 was the highest since at least 1960. A country that cannot, or will not, control its border is no longer a sovereign nation. We need immigrants to grow. We need their youth, their brains, their energy and enthusiasm, their desire to make a better life for themselves, their children, and their children’s children. But we need immigrants to enter the country legally. When undocumented, unvaccinated hordes enter, legal immigration is reduced.  

 

Our future rests on the young, yet American public schools are failing in international tests. While dollars spent per public school student in the U.S. are second only to Luxembourg, the nation ranks 13^th in reading and 38^th in math, among 79 countries surveyed. A focus on identity studies has meant less time devoted to the basics, and to understanding our unique history and government. Wokeism has co-opted teachers’ unions, depriving poor and middle-class families of school choice. Violent crime, especially in inner cities, has been on the rise, and it cannot be solely blamed on COVID restrictions and mandates, though those have not helped. Following George Floyd’s death, protests turned violent. In Seattle, Antifa-affiliated activists seized control of a city neighborhood and, once the police withdrew, declared an “autonomous zone.” U.S. murder rates in 2020 were up 30% and rose further in 2021. Over 300 people are killed or wounded every day by firearms. The left sees the culprit in a proliferation of guns and in a culture that permits the owning of weapons. The right sees the culprit in a culture of disrespect, incivility and intolerance, in a failure to enforce rules of behavior, whether at home, in schools, or on the street – that the problem lies not with the weapon but with he or she who pulls the trigger. 

 

This attack on our culture by those who foster “diversity, equity and inclusion” is an insidious undermining of the values that allowed this country to become the freest, most productive, richest nation on earth. It recalls the quote by C.S. Lewis, which heads this essay – that totalitarianism often rises from those who profess to do good, but who are intent on showing their virtue and empowering themselves. Respecting and protecting our culture should be our priority, lest we fall victim to this totalitarianism of do-gooders. 

 

The inability to distinguish truth reflects poorly on today’s molders of character – teachers, community leaders, ministers, journalists, politicians, but especially parents. We are a multicultural society, but that does not mean each race, ethnicity, creed or individual can define right and wrong according to their personal beliefs. Words like honor, respect, tolerance and civility have universally accepted definitions. They cannot be defined according to a claimed cultural tradition, else anarchy rules. The killing of a young girl for the shame brought to her family is not an “honor killing.” It is murder. Looters rampaging through a suburban Minneapolis Best Buy store is not “redistribution.” It is theft. Chaos has become the new normal. As Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote: “A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land.”

"Imagination"

 A cold, rainy Saturday allowed me to finish this essay – a diversion from the pervasive divisiveness of the political scene and the scare of the pandemic, neither of which we can ignore or from which we can escape. But we can temper their rough edges by letting loose our imaginations, in order we might see the world of tomorrow in a more favorable light.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Essay from Essex

“Imagination”

December 6, 2020

 

“But real life is only one kind of life –

there is also the life of the imagination.”

                                                                                                            E.B. White (1899-1985)

                                                                                                            Letter, E.B. White to readers of Charlotte’s Web

                                                                                                            1952

 

Within each of us there lies a bit of Walter Mitty. One does not have to be a milquetoast with a demanding spouse to lapse into daydreams, to imagine impossible deeds. It is the creative urge in each of us to reach for something higher, bolder.

 

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll had Alice, laughing, say to the White Queen: “…one can’t believe in impossible things.” The Queen replies: “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Many of yesterday’s impossible dreams are today’s realities, thanks to creative and inventive minds.

 

Watch children when they play alone or with a friend. They make up characters, have them speak and they act out fantasies. It is a learning process that breeds creativity. When my siblings and I were children, besides believing in Santa Claus, my mother told us – and we had no reason to disbelieve her – that the barn animals would converse in English at midnight on Christmas Eve. We never were able to stay awake long enough to discover if she was right, but I have no reason today to believe she fibbed. In The Horse and His Boy, C.S. Lewis wrote: “Shasta stroked its smooth-as-silk nose and said, ‘I wish you could talk, old fellow.’ And then for a second he thought he was dreaming, for quite distinctly, though in a low voice, the Horse said, ‘But I can’” And a friendship was born. In Through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in the “Garden of Live Flowers”: “’O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice, addressing herself to one that was waving gracefully about in the wind, ‘I wish you could talk.’ ‘We can talk,’ said the Tiger-lily, ‘when there is anybody worth talking to.’” Alice passed the test. Children’s imagination has been abetted by authors like Beatrix Potter, Thornton W. Burgess, Kenneth Grahame and E.B. White who anthropomorphized the animals they created. None of us should grow so old or so cynical as not to be touched by Peter Rabbit, Paddy the Beaver, Mr. Toad or Stuart Little.    

 

Writers of fiction, like my daughter-in-law Beatriz Williams, have great doses of imagination that allow them to create believable characters and situations. Their imagination keeps us on edge as their stories unravel. A few go to greater lengths. J.R.R. Tolkien, CS. Lewis and J.K Rowling created whole worlds for their characters – Middle-earth, Narnia and the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Miltiades Peterkin Paul, the creation of Charles Remington Talbot (writing as John Brownjohn), lived in his own world, where he performed deeds that finally won him his spurs…and a kiss from his sister Abiathar Ann. 

 

Imagination extends beyond the literary. When I was growing up on a rocky farm in New Hampshire, I often imagined myself as someone I was not. As this was in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, I might be the hero of a U.S. Army raiding party against the Nazis, assaulting a pillbox filled with Japanese soldiers, or a pilot flying through shrapnel to my target in Hamburg. Or, since we had horses and political correctness was not yet discovered, my brother and I would saddle up and hunt Indians or rustlers. We did that, even though we rode “English.” On other occasions, I envied birds, free of gravity’s pull, flying high above, with a vista to me visible inly in my imagination. A call to supper or a reminder of chores awakened us to reality. In Greenwich, while nodding off on a home-bound commuter train, I would imagine I was riding alone in my own private rail carriage, awakening, of course, when someone elbowed me in the ribs. Years later, sculling the marsh rivers of Old Lyme, where all signs of civilization were obscured by the aggressive (and non-native) Phragmite, I would imagine myself a Seventeenth Century explorer, the first to penetrate these waters and this land, until the sound of the Acela crossing the Connecticut River brought me out of my reverie. Even today, when returning to our apartment from the mail room, I walk home along two corridors, imagining this building to be ours, each doorway an apartment where friends have been invited to stay. 

 

It is imagination that led to great works of music and art. Think of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, Handel’s “Messiah,” Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” and Picasso’s “Guernica.” Michelangelo once said: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Imagination, as well, can be sobering. Oscar Wilde, in an 1891 essay “The Critic as Artist,” wrote: “Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” In science, it is imagination that leads to discovery. “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” wrote Albert Einstein, “Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Video games are examples of imagination converted to commercial products, which appeal to the imaginative instincts of teenagers. Walt Disney’s Imagineering Department designs and builds their theme park attractions, resorts and games. Almost two hundred years ago, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau told us: “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”

 

Most people are bound by the realities of life – a job, a place to live, the raising of a family, acquiring the necessities to make life bearable. Logic and reason dominate our lives. But we should not forget, as E.B. White reminded us, that there is also the life of the imagination and it is that which fuels our creative juices. We should not keep hidden our Walter Mitty, yearning to be released. It is the imagination that turns a dream into an accomplishment. It is a dream of a better future that drives the immigrant, that causes a student to strive a little harder for that ‘A,’ and that guides the entrepreneur in a search for a new product or service. Dream on!