"Self-doubt"

 What the Durham trial has exposed is not getting the press it and the people deserve. The decision by the Clinton campaign to deliberately instigate a false story of Russian collusion by Donald Trump – no matter what one thought of him – was the dirtiest trick ever played in Presidential politics. It tells us what sort of a President Mrs. Clinton would have been. Why is this not getting more coverage? Can you imagine the headlines if roles were reversed?

 

Sydney M. Williams

30mBokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Self-Doubt”

May 24, 2022

 

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

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

                                                                                                                                Robert Hughes (1938-2012)

                                                                                                                                Art critic

                                                                                                                                Time magazine, June 10, 1996

 

Self-doubt is usually considered a negative. And when it dominates one’s activities it is. In Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare has Lucio speak to Isabella: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might win, by fearing to attempt.” A recent article in National Review, signed by 59 conservatives, was titled “America’s Crisis of Self-Doubt:” “Our traditional values of fair play, free speech and religious liberty are trampled by inflamed ideologies determined to impose their will by force and fear.” That is all true, but the real problem is the over-confidence of the woke who, with religious zeal, see society “as archaic, unfair, and racially biased.” As a governor of impetuous behavior, self-doubt is a positive.

 

Questioning one’s beliefs can lead to changing one’s opinions, or to strengthening one’s resolve. Self-doubt is akin to skepticism; the former is the questioning – not the dismissal – of one’s abilities, while the latter seeks proof of an allegation. Recall the story of Jesus and the Apostle Thomas, known as “Doubting Thomas.” He refused to believe in the resurrected Jesus until he could see and feel Jesus’ crucifixion wounds. As a skeptic, he wanted evidence to justify his belief. Abraham Lincoln was plagued with self-doubt regarding his ability to manage the Civil War, yet doubt caused him to work harder and to achieve a better understanding. John F. Kennedy had self-doubt as to whether he could live up to the expectations of his father and the memory of his dead brother. But he gathered inner strength, as doubts faded and confidence was restored. More recently, Elon Musk’s evolvement from a “moderate Democrat” to a “moderate Republican” was a consequence of doubting his loyalties to a party that hewed too far to the left.

 

Self-doubt, when one is weighing competing political policy options, is healthy, as it allows one to use logic, reason and common sense to overcome skepticism before reaching a conclusion. Extremists, who see no need for self-doubt, have taken over our politics, especially on the left. In an interview with the Claremont Review of Books, Norman Podhoretz was quoted regarding the struggle within our country’s culture: “One side…believes that America is a force for good in itself,” while the other side claims, “America is evil in itself…” As neither party tries to understand the other, compromise is impossible. Quoting Daniel Bell, Barton Swaim wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal: “The tendency to convert concrete issues into ideological problems, to invest them with moral color and emotional charge is to invite conflicts which can only damage a society.” A plethora of moral certitude and a lack of self-doubt is common among those on the left dubbed “virtucrats” by Joseph Epstein – a term he defined in his 2002 book Snobbery: The American Version as “any man or woman who is certain that his or her political views are not merely correct but deeply, morally righteous in the bargain.” – “Often wrong, but never in doubt,” defines the path they follow.

 

Self-doubt would have questioned the claim that on-line radicalization and racism were the sole motivations behind Payton Gendron’s decision to kill ten black people in Buffalo last week. Self-doubt would have asked: Did not mental illness also play a role? Why have politicians left the mentally ill to live on streets in cities like San Francisco, Lon Angeles, New York, St. Louis and Austin? Self-doubt would have been a good thing for members of the media who accepted without question the now debunked Trump Russian collusion story, a story created by the Clinton campaign in 2016. Self-doubt may have prevented the Biden Administration’s embarrassing creation of the Orwellian-named Disinformation Governance Board, which has now, thank God, been abandoned. Media and political leaders could learn from William Butler Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming:” “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”

 

When I was in high school, members of the debate team were assigned which side of the resolution to argue. If assigned the affirmative, the next week we might have to argue the negative. While the purpose was to hone one’s debating skills, these guidelines served to remind us that there are two sides to issues. Being able to see two sides – a trait abetted by self-doubt – plays a vital role in composing intelligent and defensible opinions and may change or reinforce one’s beliefs.

 

My purpose, in this essay, is not to suggest that fervency in one’s beliefs is wrong, but that opinions should be based on empiricism, logic and common sense. Self-doubt plays a role in better understanding the issues we face, and it is always most wanted where it is least exercised. It is the antithesis of self-doubt, the religious-like zealotry of extremists, that is the most dangerous. Mainstream media does a good job of calling out the far-right, but they ignore the self-anointed far-left who see themselves as the rightful determiners as to what to read, speak and believe. That is where danger lurks.

"Personal Responsibility in an Age of CRT"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Personal Responsibility in an Age of CRT[1]”

July 1, 2021

 

“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never

ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.”

                                                                                                                 Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

                                                                                                                 You Learn by Living, 1960

                                                                                                                                Preface

 

As we near our nation’s 245^th birthday, celebrants could do worse than consider the consequences of an increase in government dependency and a decline in personal responsibility.

 

Among truths that underly my beliefs are two relevant to this essay: One, life is not fair. We are born into different circumstances, with different attributes and abilities. A brother was born with Prader-Willi Syndrome, a condition that adversely affected his physical, emotional and mental development. While he and I were born of the same parents, his life, in the challenges he faced, was far more difficult than mine. And two, we are not equal (and never can be) in looks, physical prowess, emotional and social skills, or mental acuity. It is unlikely Michael Jordan could have developed the theory of relativity, and it is equally unimaginable that Albert Einstein could have played shooting guard for the Chicago Bulls.  The attempt to mandate equity, a dream of Progressives, is a Utopian nightmare. In his novel He Knew He was Right, Anthony Trollope put it like this: “Each created animal must live and get its food by the gifts which the Creator has given it…” No amount of government coercion will make life completely fair and make us equal. We must each work with who and what we are. In his 1901 autobiography, Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote: “Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know you trust him.”

 

Politicians love to compartmentalize the electorate. It is easier to serve up government offerings to a group than to argue the benefits of a particular political philosophy. Thus, we drift toward the comfort of government dependency and away from the more difficult adherence of personal responsibility. A Washington Post article from September 18, 2012, reported: “In 2011, about 49% of the population lived in a household where at least one member received a direct benefit from the federal government.” According to an op-ed in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal by John Cogan and Daniel Bell of the Hoover Institute, the American Families Plan, if it were adopted, would add another 21 million Americans to the roles of government assistance programs. Forget what it does to our debt; think of the effect on our national character.

 

Ironically, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is racist, in that it teaches that one race is inherently superior to another, and in its assumption that blacks are incapable of succeeding without government assistance. It promotes victimization rather than encouraging self-reliance. It ignores individual successes of modern black conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Senator Tim Scott, Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens, Jason Riley, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and thousands more. As Martin Luther King taught us, people should be judged by who they are, not the color of their skin. Freedom depends on a responsible individual. Consider the autocracies that demand dependence and obedience and compare that to the Republic whose founding we celebrate Sunday. The Civil Rights activist and founder of the Woodson Institute, Robert Woodson in response to the 1619 Project, created an organization called 1776 Unites, which is designed to highlight “what is best in our national character and what our freedom makes possible even in the most difficult circumstances.” Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) and Frederick Douglass (1817-1895), both believed in personal responsibility. They were born into slavery, yet both became advisors to U.S. Presidents. In what other country would that have been possible? 

 

There is no question that a study of American history should include chapters on slavery and the women’s suffrage movement. But that can be accomplished by reading what has already been written. In 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When President Lincoln met her at the White House nine years later, he is reputed to have said: “So this is the little woman that started this great war.” Keep in mind, Ms. Stowe, as a woman, was never able to vote. Yet she wrote a novel that spoke to the curse of slavery and helped bring about its abolition. Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn (1884) has been removed from many library shelves because some of its words are seen as threatening. Yet it provides modern readers a realistic look at the horrors of slavery, the dignity of the run-away slave Jim, and of the empathy of the uneducated Huck Finn. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Henry James’ The Bostonians (1886) did much the same for the cause of women.

 

It is a desire for power that causes politicians to place us within the confines of race, religion and gender. They ignore how far we have come in the past 250 years. Man has been around for 160,000 years, but civilization as we know it dates back only about 2,500 years. Progress has been steady, but uneven with two steps forward and one back. The founding of the United States, with all its obvious and known faults, was a giant leap forward in the liberation of men and women from the yoke of authoritarian governments. Slavery has been around as long as man, and it has existed on every continent and involved every race and creed. While it was largely abolished in the West in the 19^th Century, it still exists in parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Consider the plight today of China’s Uyghurs. They are real victims, under the Chinese Communist Party’s real oppressors. 

 

Sixty years ago, interracial marriage was illegal in much of the United States. Today, one in seven marriages are couples of mixed races. In 1960, only 3.1% of adult black Americans had graduated from four-year colleges. Today the number is 20 percent. (The comparable numbers for whites were about 18% in 1960 and 35% today.) While much good came from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, they were accompanied by a decline in personal responsibility, which led to a diminution of the family, an increase in out-of-wedlock births and a glut in absent fathers. We see its effects in other aspects of our lives. Universities select students, not on merit but on race or gender identification. We are told it is the weapon, not the behavior of the individual, that is responsible for a plethora of black-on-black shootings in inner cities. 

 

As we prepare to celebrate the 4^th, we should consider the costs to a free people of a nation that abjures personal responsibility for the Eloi-like comfort of dependency. As long as it survives, the mission of the United States will never be complete. It will always be a work-in-progress – “An Experiment in Self-Government,” as Senator J. William Fulbright titled a 1955 article. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “The only title in our democracy superior to that of President is the title citizen.” It is a title that demands the rigors of personal responsibility.