"Desperate Democrats"

 Everyone wants us to vote early. Resist the urge if possible, unless external factors make that your only choice. While there are only eight days to go, much can happen. Besides, there is a sense of community in going to the Polls on election day. Voting is a privilege limited to democracies and a responsibility of all eligible citizens.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Desperate Democrats”

October 28, 2024

 

“When a man has reached a condition in which he believes that a thing must happen because he does

not wish it, and that what he wishes to happen never will be, this is really the state called desperation.”

                                                                                           Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

                                                                                           Studies in Pessimism

                                                                                           Translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders, 1913

 

Polls tell us the election is too close to call, and I am not going to argue with those who make their living predicting what people will do. Nevertheless, Democrats act desperate; they act as though they expect to lose. They know they have played badly the hand they were dealt. That President Biden had been in mental decline was known by all who have watched his appearances over the past few years. Yet Democrats played Sergeant Schultz – “I know nothing” – and re-nominated him anyway. It was only after his disastrous debate with former President Trump on June 27, when his decline could no longer be denied, that he was unceremoniously dumped.

 

That gave Democrats less than two months to consider candidates who would appeal to a majority of delegates at an open convention to be held in Chicago from August 19 to the 24^th. Instead they chose to coronate Vice President Kamala Harris who had only once visited the border for which Mr. Biden had given her responsibility – about her only real responsibility. Previously, she spent four years in the U.S. Senate, where The Hill, based on roll-call votes, placed her as the second most liberal Democratic senator to serve in the U.S. Senate in the 21^st century, second behind Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Prior to the Senate, she had served thirteen years as an Attorney General, first of San Francisco and then of California. 

 

A few weeks of “joy” accompanied her selection, but with her refusal to hold a news conference, to submit to other than “friendly” interviews, or to explain her change of opinions on policies, the bloom of excitement over her selection wilted. 

 

Her campaign has struggled to focus. She has been the Vice President for almost four years, but she cannot defend an economy, which brought the highest inflation since the 1970s. We have had unprecedented border crossings, which brought fentanyl and crime into the country, and that changed the composition of towns across the land. The Biden-Harris foreign policy has given us a revanchist Russia; a destabilizing, militaristic China; a North Korea sending troops to Russia; and an Iran intent on securing a nuclear bomb, while using proxies to eradicate Israel. As well, anti-Semitism has been on the rise on college campuses by students whose loans Mr. Biden would like to forgive – in other words, to have taxpayers assume the burden of repayment. Unsurprisingly, public trust in government is half what it was twenty years ago. Ms. Harris no longer talks about climate change, wind power or EVs, as they are associated with elites, those whom she claims to disdain. The abortion issue (her only issue) has been tempered with reasonable responses from both Trump and Vance. She has been left with bashing Trump as a would-be dictator, a Fascist, even though she does not seem to know the word’s socialist origins. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized last Friday: “But the climb up the rhetorical dictator chain in the final stages of this election looks like a last-ditch Democratic strategy to save Ms. Harris from defeat.” In comparing Mr. Trump to Hitler, her handlers are insulting fifty million or so Trump supporters. And, as Daniel Henninger pointed out in his recent Wall Street Journalop-ed, at the same time moderate Democrat Senators Baldwin, Casey, Slotkin, Tester – all up for re-election – have adopted Trump-like positions on energy, tariffs, and U.S. manufacturing. Leaders of the Democratic Party are looking desperate as they attempt to preserve a progressive, out-of-touch candidate, but many of their down-ballot candidates are acting pragmatically.   

 

It is not just the choice of a bad candidate, or the fact that Biden’s mental decline was kept hidden. Over the past several years, Democrats have abandoned their middle-class roots, as they adopted a bar-bell approach toward the electorate. On the one hand, the sanctimonious, cultural and economic elites who believe their self-proclaimed moral superiority justifies calling political opponents low-IQ “deplorables” – misogynist, racist, homophobic and xenophobic. On the other end of Democrat supporters are those who feed off government largesse – “green” companies, government employees, university administrators and professors who feed off the government teat, union leaders (but not all union members), indebted students, and illegal immigrants. Independent voters, however, do not vote in blocs. They are individuals. Contrary to President Obama’s harangue, Black men who do not support Ms. Harris are not misogynists. They simply believe her policies are not in their best interests. Progressive Democrats, who control the Party, have no tolerance for those who question why biological men should be able to compete against women in sports. They have little forbearance for those who live by Christian values, or those who support legal immigration but not its illegal cousin. “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” is a 500-year-old proverb that is applicable to millions of American voters.  

 

Most Americans are not happy with our choices for President. Most of us believe that the first five Presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, men who helped found this nation – would be appalled that we must choose between Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. But now, Democrats feel that desperate times call for desperate measures. But whether name-calling will work is anyone’s guess. The polls have the race too close to call. But I wonder. Thirty-seven years ago, Random House published Donald Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal. It reached number one on The New York Times best sellers list and stayed there for thirteen weeks. In it he wrote: “The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.” Will his words prove prophetic? In Walden, Henry David Thoreau offered sensible advice: “It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” In The Art of the Deal, Trump was writing of business deals; nevertheless, his words are applicable in today’s rancorous political environment: Caveat candidatus!

"So, Who's the Liberal?"

 

Despite headlines of portending doom and schadenfreude-laden Cassandras who thrive on tales of woe, 2023 has had a decent first ten days. While internal squabbling has made House Republicans look amateurish, we should never forget that our Representatives are not expected to always march together in sync. Stocks are up about a percent and a half, the yield on the Ten-year has declined about 25 basis points, the VIX has declined modestly, and the Dollar has retained its strength. On Monday, the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization issued a report in which they found a “significant thickening” of the ozone layer (“a bit of good news for the planet”), suggesting that perhaps our grandchildren will have a world in which they can live. Topping things off, the January 2023 issue of The Spectator published an article, “The great anti-ESG backlash,” foretelling the end of a policy that has brought political correctness to investing and bank lending, a policy that Warren Buffett has called “asinine.” And, at least for a few months, we will be rid (or mostly rid) of politicians politicking. 

 

Onward, as Charon was wont to say, as his ferry slipped its mooring on the river Hades.

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“So, Who’s the Liberal?”

January 11, 2023

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, 

“it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

 

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

 

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”

                                                                                                                                Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

                                                                                                                                Through the Looking Glass, 1871

 

The word liberal reminds one of Humpty Dumpty’s proclamation. It means different things to different people. The word is polysemous. To the Left it means big government, which actively supports social change. To the Right it refers to less government interference, the endorsement of individual rights, civil liberties, and free markets. The word stems from the Latin, liber, meaning free or unimpeded. In Lewis Carroll’s story, the word that caused the skirmish was glory, when used as a verb. “They’ve a temper – some of them, particularly verbs,” Humpty Dumpty says to a puzzled Alice. The word liberal is not temperamental (at least as far as I know), but it can self-camouflage, to ambush the unsuspecting. 

 

Over the years, the Left has usurped the word. so that for most the word refers to those who prefer a large role for government in their lives, while conservatives have become deplorables, birthers, conspirators, or just plain racists or right-wing nuts. We on the right should seize the word back. In his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk wrote of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), of how he defended the liberties of Englishmen against their king and of Americans against king and parliament. He defended those liberties not because they were innovations, “…but because they were ancient prerogatives, guaranteed by immemorial usage. Burke was liberal because he was conservative.” (Highlights mine.)

 

It is amusing to consider how the definition of liberal has morphed over time, so that today’s social liberals consider themselves the sole owners of the word, “even as,” Daniel Henninger wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “they surrender to the state an array of long assumed freedoms – of opinion, speech, and privacy.” Classical liberals believe that such rights, along with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” are natural; they are God-given. The purpose of government is to secure and ensure those rights, not to dictate social behavior.  

 

While classical (conservative) liberals emphasize the freedom of the individual to achieve his or her goals, they recognize the necessity of government in maintaining order, in protecting us from enemies, in providing a quality high school education, in ensuring a sound currency, in adjudicating differences, and in making sure that the sick and the elderly – those who cannot care for themselves – live comfortable lives. At the same time, they emphasize the dignity of work, personal independence, self-determination, personal responsibility and accountability, and the importance of thinking for oneself.

 

On the Left there are social liberals who see the state’s role as being ubiquitous, that equality should include outcomes as well as opportunities, that ease of voting should trump security of the polls (they are equally important), and that healthcare should be free for all. Their efforts have encouraged the growth of the administrative state, creating agencies with expansive legislative, regulatory, and judicial powers. Have they pushed liberalism too far? In Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Andy Kessler wrote: “Liberals, implied in the name, say they are for freedom, but are they? The progressive wing is full of authoritarians telling others what to do or how to think: America is a racist country. Wear a mask. Limit charter schools. Bees are fish (in California.)” Regulatory bodies, created by Congress and managed by unelected bureaucrats, are not accountable to the people. Their powers, however, can be unleashed – or restrained – by whomever is President. Recently courts have begun to push back, questioning, for example, the doctrine of “deference to regulators.” It is the Left that comprises the bulk of college professors and administrators, and they decide what speech and which speakers are acceptable. Social liberals control the teachers’ unions and most of mainstream and social media. In Up from Liberalism (1959), Williams Buckley (1925-2008) wrote: “Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them that there are other points of view.” Are liberals open to contrary opinions? Am I? I hope so.

 

Is it liberal to call those who question the efficacy of a vaccine anti-vaxxers? Is it liberal to denounce as deniers those who question the contention that man is the primary (or sole) reason for climate change? Is it liberal for a university liberal arts professor to deny a speaker who does not hew to a preferred political ideology? Can a liberal believe in tradition and custom? I am not sure about a social liberal, but a classical liberal would answer yes, when the question refers to long-established modes of behavior: accepted manners, respect for others, humility, and charity. But he or she would not if it meant providing advantages to preferred groups – racial, national, or ethnic – whether it is America in the 1950s or in the 2020s. Is it liberal to replace merit and achievement with identity essentialism? I think not.

 

Who is a liberal? It depends, as Lewis Carroll wrote, on who is using the word. But well-intentioned authoritarianism, whether from the Right or the Left, is not liberalism. A school friend, now living in Denver and with whom I reconnected fourteen years ago at our fiftieth reunion, writes a clever, satirical piece, The Apocryphal Press. He puts to rest the old belief among conservatives that the Left is devoid of humor. Today, we are good friends, yet we stand at opposite ends of the political spectrum. We both describe ourselves as liberals. And yet, while I believe my friend when he professes to be liberal, I see nothing liberal about policies his side backs: universities that deny conservatives the right to be heard, schools that teach gender identification to pre-teens, biased media organizations, corporations that require adherence to woke dogma, social policies that disrupt or discourage family formations, and an administration that demands social media companies comply with demands regarding vaccinations and that still fails to enforce immigration laws at the border. And I see nothing liberal about politicians – on both sides of the aisle – who lie about their backgrounds.

 

So, who is a liberal? Perhaps they have become endangered, at least in Washington.

"Know Thyself"

 Welcome to the post-Labor Day period, traditionally, the beginning of the fall political campaign season, though in today’s world that season has no beginning and no end.

 

A few words on Donald Trump. As we all know, he is not a saint. But neither is he a semi-fascist, as President Biden claimed, nor is he a lunatic, as National Review recently wrote. His super-sized ego and bombastic language are offensive. But lost in the polarization of feelings he engenders, it is worth remembering why he decided to run for President. He went to Washington for at least two reasons: He went selfishly, to raise his profile, and he went magnanimously to drain Washington’s swamp. His profile has risen, but not in ways he would have wished. Keep in mind, his net worth declined by about a billion dollars while he was President. The swamp, however, remains dense and dark. Establishment politicians of both Parties, with their enablers in Washington’s bureaucracy, banded to destroy the threat he posed to their comfortable way of life, which in hundreds of cases have converted public service to private gains.

 

The swamp remains – at an enormous cost to taxpayers – as does the job to drain it. Is there another politician from either Party willing to take on this unpopular and Herculean task, or will the swamp grow danker, deeper, and darker?

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Know Thyself”

September 6, 2022

 

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself

can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

                                                                                                George Goodman as Adam Smith (1930-2014)

                                                                                                The Money Game, 1968

 

The words “Know thyself” were, according to legend, engraved above the forecourt in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on Mount Parnassus in central Greece. A search for self-knowledge is common, and its importance has been lauded by many, from Benjamin Franklin to Lao Tzu to Pythagoras. To fatalist Greeks the saying meant that one should accept the role nature assigned one. But for those of us today who believe we are also nurtured by our environment. self-examination should be an ongoing process.

 

There are those who dismiss the concept, because we change. Andre Gide wrote in Autumn Leaves: “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” But a search for self-understanding is not seeking perfection in the here and now; it seeks to understand; it recognizes that change is given: We have new experiences; we meet different people, and we read. Life does not stand still and neither do we. What if Gide’s caterpillar wanted to become a butterfly? Some conflate self-knowledge with hubris – that in claiming to know ourselves we admit to knowing what we do not know. That, to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favorite expressions, is malarkey. It’s an argument used by woke philosophy professors to confuse young, impressionable minds. It is impossible to know what we do not know. 

 

Self-understanding is important in an ever-changing world. In a recent interview in The Wall Street Journal, American tennis player Danielle Collins spoke “of how to use your strengths and how to work around your weaknesses” to win matches. She understands that her weaknesses will improve with practice, and that her strengths can be harbored and utilized. It was Heraclitus (c.535BC-c.475BC) who is credited with the saying: “Change is the only constant in life.” Knowing oneself is acknowledging that truth.

 

Knowing oneself is especially important in this age of political polarization that has tipped into extremism. It is easy to get carried away by the swift-moving current of political correctness. Those of us who still believe in the premise of classical liberalism face a political mindset that invokes moral equivalence to justify a belief that the United States is inherently evil, founded on the backs of slaves – that we are no better than other despotic nations. Today, amidst a torrent of “wokeness,” we face a crisis in education, where equity trumps excellence, where conformity reigns due to a lack of diversity of ideas, and where history incorporates “presentism,” promoting ignorance of earlier eras and cultures. The consequence has been high school and college graduates who know little of our history and civic affairs, and where persistently low scores on international tests have become common. The Department of Education (DOE) recently released fourth grade test scores that show the effects of Covid-related shutdowns. But shutdowns were not solely to blame, as charts show declines in math and reading scores began ten years ago.

 

We face a border crisis that is unfair to immigrants and to American citizens, where the only beneficiaries have been human and drug smugglers. We have created a national debt that has reached a size that a normalization of interest rates is no longer a viable alternative. We no longer celebrate the two-parent family, value the moral teachings of religion, or appreciate the dignity of work. We have a “semi-Socialist and semi-authoritarian” President (to borrow from Daniel Henninger) who promised to unify the nation, but who recently called his 2020 competitor a “semi-fascist.”

 

Except for the Reagan years, for over eight decades an expanding and “compassionate” government has been seen as the answer to problems we individually face. On January 6, 1941, in his State of the Union, President Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four freedoms: The first two were lifted from the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech and freedom to worship. The next two involved government, in a way unintended by the Constitution – freedom from want and freedom from fear. After a dozen years of depression and a European war underway, it is understandable why his words were so well received and are so fondly remembered. But all the ills of the world cannot be resolved by a pen and a phone. Want has persisted as has fear. Sadly, there will always be poverty, illness, and accidents. But, keep in mind, no political system yet devised has been better at reducing poverty and alleviating fears than a democratic-republic and free-market capitalism. 

 

As we head toward the midterm elections, we should each take stock of our own political beliefs. I can only speak for myself: I want constrained, self-paying government, with separation of powers, a fair judiciary. a government which functions under the rule of law, guarantees our enumerated rights and our borders, provides for defense – a government that allows us to freely have options, which fit individual needs. I want a vibrant, competitive, free-market economy that responds to millions of people making thousands of choices every day, not one directed by bureaucrats in Washington. We have seen the unfortunate consequences of government-managed economies, in an earlier period of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe and today in places like China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Paraguay, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, among others.

 

Knowing oneself involves soul-searching and asking difficult questions. Do we like what we have become? The President has called Mr. Trump and his followers “semi-fascists.” Democratic advisor Kurt Bardella, speaking on MSNBC last week, said that modern Republican ‘playbook’ was like that of Nazi Germany: “We are watching right now a very radical and extreme Republican Party mirror what we have seen in other places like Nazi Germany, like other people, like the Bolsheviks. We have seen this playbook before.”

 

Really? Which Party weaponized the IRS in 2012 to slow-walk non-profit status for groups whose ideology was deemed unhelpful? Which Party colluded with the FBI to find dirt on their political opponents in 2016? Which Party referred to parents as terrorists in 2020? Which Party in 2022 authorized an unprecedented FBI invasion of the home of a former President? Which Party has most expanded the state and constricted the private sector, with restrictive rules and regulations? Both Parties are guilty of extremism, but the sanctimonious left, “the anointed” as Thomas Sowell calls them, has been guilty of undemocratic actions.

 

Politics historically, through debate and vote, have been used to resolve controversial issues. But we live in an age of extremism. Donald Trump, if he cares for conservative values, should remove himself, as he has become Democrats’ principal asset and Republicans’ biggest liability. But it is Democrats, with their sycophants in Washington’s bureaucracies, media and social media, universities, big corporations, and the entertainment industry who are stifling freedom and destroying democracy, not Republicans. I urge my Democrat friends to consider the rhetoric and vendettas of their Party. It has been their words and actions, plus censorship in schools and colleges, and a politicization of climate change, which imperil the freedom and prospects of the citizens of this exceptional nation. Socrates said that to know oneself is the beginning of wisdom. There is no need to navel gaze, but we should take a few moments to consider our history, to think of who we are and what we want, and to ask: What has happened? Why has so much gone wrong?

 

We are better than what we have become.

"The Election - Trump, A Man for this Season"

                                                                 Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Election – Trump, A Man for this Season”

October 24, 2020

 

“This suggests one way to frame the coming election: as a contest between a man, Trump

who believes America is good and a man, Biden who is controlled by a movement that 

believes America is bad. I do not think it is any more complicated than that.”

                                                                                                                                Thomas Klingenstein

                                                                                                                                Chairman, Claremont Institute

                                                                                                                                Speech, October 13, 2020

 

Robert Bolt’s play A Man for all Seasons premiered in London on July 1, 1960. It was based on the life of Sir Thomas More, who is remembered for his fealty to his conscience at the cost of his life. More, as Lord High Chancellor of England, opposed the Protestant Reformation; so, when Henry VIII wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who failed to deliver him a son, annulled so he could marry Anne Boleyn, Sir Thomas More refused to grant the annulment. Bolt saw More as the ultimate man of conscience, a man who remained true to himself and his beliefs. The title of the play came from the writings of one of More’s contemporaries, Robert Whittington, who described More as a “man of an angel’s wit and singular learning…a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes…A man for all seasons.”

 

Donald Trump is not a man “for all seasons,” but he is, in my opinion, a man for this season, at this point in our history. We know his negatives: His character is faulty. He is an egoist, braggart and often vengeful. He is overly sensitive to insults and has little patience. His speech makes one wince. But Mr. Trump is an unabashed patriot who believes that, fundamentally, America is good, while his opponents are equally vocal, in emphasizing how America has been a force for evil. He, alone among Washington’s smug political class, has had the fortitude to stand up to what has become Washington’s “swamp,” a quagmire that has lured those that want the security of a federally funded job, with an income above the national average and the influence and power that accompanies such jobs. As well, too many elected officials have gone to Washington, not to serve the public’s interest but to gain the notoriety to profit from a book or to make contacts that allow them to join a lobbyist firm upon retirement – in short, to become rich. Nobody wants a system where a poor person cannot run for political office, but the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. A Senator or Representative makes more than double the median household income in the Washington metropolitan area, which itself is 25% above the national average. The median net worth of a member of Congress is more than ten times the median net worth of the typical American. Healthcare and retirement benefits are substantially higher than those received by average Americans. And a compromised politician cannot serve the best interests of the American people.

 

Is it any wonder that Mr. Trump has raised the ire of so many whose livelihoods could be at risk? If Mr. Trump has his way some government agencies could be shut down and others moved out of the D. C. metropolitan area. Abroad, Mr. Trump achieved a rapprochement in the Middle East that had evaded professional policy experts for decades. He moved our embassy to Jerusalem, caused our NATO partners to up their share of defense spending and withdrew the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council, which “makes a mockery of human rights,” as Ambassador Nikki Haley said. He took on China, imposed sanctions on Russian leaders, released the U.S. from the Iranian nuclear deal and removed the U.S. from the toothless and expensive Paris Accord. He came to Washington as a political outsider. Despite almost four years in the White House, he remains an outsider, which threatens those who see Washington as their own private feeding trough, a place where they can exercise political, economic and personal power. Donald Trump is like the little boy who saw that the emperor was naked, that corruption was rampant. The most recent example has been the Biden revelations – trading access for dollars. But Mr. Trump loves his country and he recognizes that its institutions of family, church, history and tradition are under attack. There are numerous issues over which reasonable people can disagree – the economy, COVID-19, the judiciary, education, taxes, regulation, national defense, healthcare, climate, the environment, immigration, foreign policy, guns, right-to-life – but we should be united on the issue of liberty, freedoms to speak, write and assemble, and of the right to live freely within the confines of a just society based on the rule of law. And, we should be able to trust those who run our government.

 

Democrats and others on the left have raised the specter of an imperial Trump Presidency. They have reported on his canoodling with dictators and tyrants, cited his waving from the balcony of the White House, upon his release from Walter Read Hospital. (Of course, no mention was made of the fact that every President has been photographed from that same spot.) Yet, as Mollie Hemingway recently wrote: “Donald Trump is one of the very few executives in the entire world who has not taken advantage of the latest global pandemic as an excuse to seize control.” Mr. Trump, as a true federalist, left most decisions to the states. It has been governors, usually Democrat governors, who have violated Americans’ Constitutional rights, in closing schools and businesses for weeks and months, banning family gatherings at weddings and funerals, inciting fear and destroying opportunities for those unable to work from home.

 

Every four years we are told that this election is the most critical of our lifetimes – “destined to change the shape of our nation,” as Chris Wallace proclaims in an ad. This one, however, is unique: Intersectionality, identity politics, victimization, racial grievance, political correctness, multiculturalism and sanctuary cities have come to define the Democratic Party. They have encompassed the radical views of academics, TV talking heads and opinion writers, all of whom are removed, by their jobs and lifestyles, from the hardships of everyday life for middleclass Americans. “Mr. Biden,” as Daniel Henninger wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “has made a Faustian bargain with his party’s activist left…putting the U.S. on a fast track toward income confiscation and ‘distributive justice’.”  The Democratic Party has recruited wealthy, “woke” apologists from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall street. In so doing, they abandoned working people who had comprised their ranks, people with ‘bourgeoise values’ that do not comport with today’s “wokeness.” If black lives really mattered to Progressives, would not school choice be encouraged in inner cities? In an interview with Tunku Varadarajan of the Wall Street Journal a week ago, Fred Siegel of the Manhattan Institute said: “Wokeness is a force that undermines the middle class, and you couldn’t have had wokeness without an elite contempt for values of the middle class.”

 

On October 13, Thomas Klingenstein gave a speech at the Claremont Institute, titled “A Man versus A Movement.” He explained why he believes this election to be the most consequential since 1860 and why President Trump is the man most uniquely suited to the moment. He spoke of how this is an election between a man who believes America to be inherently good and a movement based on the idea that America is intrinsically bad. It is the difference between those who believe our founding was in 1776 and those who place our founding in 1619. “Our way of life,” spoke Mr. Klingenstein, “…is based on individual rights, the rule of law, and a shared understanding of the common good. This way of life values hard work, self-reliance, volunteerism, patriotism and so on. In this way of life there are no hyphenated Americans. We are all just Americans. Colorblindness is our aspiration.” In dividing people between black and white, privileged and disadvantaged, oppressors and oppressed, those on the Left sound like Old Testament evangelists preaching that the iniquity of the fathers will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations.

 

To the extent that systemic racism exists, it is in those institutions, universities and workplaces that abide by actions that favor one group over another – Asian over Hispanic, Black over White, Hispanic over Black, Black over Asian or White over all others. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, in Parents v. Seattle School District 1: “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In his speech, Mr. Klingenstein added: “If Americans are systemically anything, it is a systemic commitment to freedom and equal rights for all.”

 

The United States has not served as a beacon for the world’s poor and oppressed because it is inherently evil. Anyone who has studied history knows that no nation has done more than the U.S. to spread freedom, give people hope and lift them from poverty. As well, the U.S. does not sit on its laurels; it constantly strives to improve itself. The history of the United States is one of a nation never satisfied, but it is one that honors its families, history and traditions. Differences of opinion are healthy. Debate and discussion help us move forward. When debate is stifled, as it has been in some of our colleges and universities, we suffer. When media only tells one side of the side of a story, we suffer. On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln spoke before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring from amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot., we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Following his election victory in 2016, Donald Trump was not accorded respect by those he defeated. A few members of Congress boycotted his inaugural. Attempts were made to undermine his administration by way of an investigation into an alleged collusion with his campaign and Russia, a collusion that, in fact, originated in the Clinton Camp and was abetted by the Obama Administration, the FBI and the CIA. A three-year investigation by Robert Mueller found no collusion. The Speaker of the House tore up her State of the Union message on live TV. Mr. Trump was impeached for a phone call with the Ukrainian President when, in fact, the real corruption had been between the Biden family and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Opposing parties are healthy, but political corruption is a rot that must be eviscerated.

 

Suspicions that Joe Biden’s son Hunter had leveraged his father’s name gained credibility when Tony Bobulinski, a former Navy veteran, institutional investor and business partner of Hunter Biden, disclosed details of Sinohawk Holdings, a venture between the Biden family and CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based conglomerate, since gone bankrupt. Bobulinski had been hired as CEO of Sinohawk Holdings. Mr. Bobulinski, in a televised news conference last Thursday, said he had had an hour-long meeting with Mr. Biden on May 2, 2017, which is at odds with Joe Biden’s claim he knew nothing of his son’s business involvements. The FBI has brought Bobulinski in for questioning. Will they pressure him into not testifying before Senator Ron Johnson’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee?

 

Elections do not provide the voter a choice between the perfect and the imperfect, so voters seek the candidate and policies that best align with their opinions. Both candidates have character flaws – Trump, in ways we all know and that have been widely publicized by a media that detests him; Biden, in ways we have come to know more recently: the Biden family, leveraging access in exchange for financial gain, which could certainly affect foreign policy, and the gradual, but obvious, mental decline, which means his time in office may be shorter than that of William Henry Harrison. Mainstream media blames his periodic verbal incoherence on a childhood stutter, something not noticeable during his years in the Senate and as Vice President. Voters who pull the lever for Biden will actually be voting for Kamala Harris, who in 2019 had the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. One cannot help but suspect that the Democratic National Committee is using Biden as a Trojan Horse to get Harris into the White House. Is the country ready for the radicalization of its economy and government? I think not. Is Mr. Trump a man for all seasons? I also think not. But I do believe he is the man for this season, for this time, which is why he will receive my vote on November 3.

"November's Election - None of the Above?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“November’s Election – None of the Above?”

July 4, 2020

“A wise man makes his own decisions.

An ignorant man follows public opinion.”

                                                                                                Chinese Proverb

On a multiple-choice test “none of the above’ may be a legitimate response. But no matter how tempting that answer may seem to voters sick and tired of politics, such a response on November 3, 2020 is not acceptable. As we celebrate our country’s 244^th birthday, we should consider the critical importance of the election four months out.

While no politician is the paragon of virtue drawn by Parson Weems of an idealized George Washington, character has slipped down the scale of traits we treasure when electing leaders. In 2020, we will be offered a choice between a man whose thin skin exposes a large ego, and a man whose intellectual capacity wanes as his defects wax. Mr. Trump’s flaws are well publicized – orange hair, ungrammatical speech, his volatility and personal insecurity seen in his untempered Tweets and his apparent admiration for dictators. But they are all superficial. No matter his appeasing words about Putin and Xi Jinping, he has been tougher on Russia and China than his predecessors. His dyed hair and manner of speaking may offend those raised in coastal, elitist families, but they are far less damaging to democracy than was the misuse of intelligence services by the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration in undermining a freely elected President. Charges of corruption against Mr. Trump have been investigated for four years by a zealous press, a partisan House, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a complicit FBI. They came to naught. On the other hand, mainstream media has been largely silent on financial favors sought by Mr. Biden for his son in Ukraine and China and on his alleged sexual assault on a staff member.

Nevertheless, and despite the impurity of both candidates, the single most important factor in this election has been the hijacking of the Democrat Party by illiberal, so-called “progressives.” Professor Wilfred McClay of the University of Oklahoma described the random and willful destruction of statues, acts condoned by many city mayors: “…these acts of destruction are acts of pure, unmitigated hate…,” hatred not dissimilar in its intensity to that levied against President Trump by the New York Times and the Washington Post. “Unless new leaders come forth,” wrote Heather MacDonald in City Journal this past week, “who understand their duty to maintain the rule of law, the country will not pull back from disaster.”

This wanton destruction reflects George Orwell’s third slogan, “Ignorance is Strength,” that the past is what our leaders tell us it is, not historical facts. Such ignorance ignores the truth in what Thomas Sowell wrote two days ago: “History is what happened, not what we wished had happened.” This nescience reflects abandonment of the humanities by our universities and the life lessons taught therein. The recent anarchy and deaths in Seattle’s Capitol Hill area would not have surprised those familiar with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and those who had studied Robespierre and his Jacobin Reign of Terror in 1793 Paris. 

Polarization has become the norm, but in an election year it is exaggerated. Common sense about distancing, hygiene and the wearing of masks has given way to political diktats. While mainstream media has been filled with scare stories of rising new infections in states that did not lockdown sufficiently or opened prematurely, they have back-paged declining deaths from the virus across the country. Protesters of draconian lockdown rules have been blamed for infecting fellow citizens, yet those who march mask-less with Black Lives Matter (BLM) are exempted. It is okay to spread the virus if you are marching for “social justice,” but not if you are marching for your rights as a citizen. Despite ominous headlines about the virus, there has been some good news. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Dr. Joseph Ladapo of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine wrote “…there has not been a single confirmed case of reinfection among the 10 million cases of Covid-19 world-wide, according to a May report in the Journal of the American Medical Association” – a positive piece of news, supporting herd immunity, that has largely gone unreported.

The campaigns must deal with the fact that we are in the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression – bad for the President but opportunity for his opponent. The media, urban and suburban elitists – those with little concept of what the recession and closing of schools have done to average families – have greeted the news with schadenfreude-like glee. Most continue to work from home offices, inconvenienced but not economically deprived. History-challenged politicians, university and school heads and business CEOs have agreed to the assertion that the U.S. is systemically racist. Millions of dollars have flowed into the coffers of BLM, which calls for the defunding of police and whose website (since removed) described the U.S. as a “corrupt democracy originally built on indigenous genocide and chattel slavery [that] thrives today on the brutal exploitation of people of color.”  This mob of ignoramuses have no knowledge of history; they ignore failing schools and Black-on-Black killings in inner cities; they have forgotten (or never knew of) advances in civil rights over the past half century and are blind to the economic gains made by Blacks in the last two years of the Trump Administration. “They are,” as Communist expert and author Trevor Loudon wrote about BLM, “following the line of the Chinese Cultural Revolution… that toppled statues and desecrated monuments.” “It’s hard to find precedents for a civilization turning on itself with such fury,” said Heather MacDonald in an interview with The Epoch Times.

And yet, and yet, there may be a reaction to this madness – perhaps an over-reaction. Leaders at BLM may have over-played their hand. Just as Extinction Rebellion’s shutting down of London in October 2019 was an over-reach by extremists in the climate wars, the lack of wisdom shown by officials in Seattle to CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest) may come to signify the height of political idiocy. The London episode led to Michael Shellenberger’s writing Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, a commonsensical look at our changing climate. It is too early to say if some member of the “progressive” Left will, likewise, exchange advocacy and propaganda for reason and facts, as they pertain to the issue of race. Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. “Jim Crow” laws were enacted by white, southern Democrats in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries in excessive response to North-imposed Reconstruction, which provided needed assistance to former slaves but humiliated whites. When a pendulum is moved beyond its usual arc, it does not revert to its normal, central position. It Can’t Happen Here was a satirical play written by Sinclair Lewis in 1935. It was based on the rise of National Socialism in Europe. To believe that America today could not fall victim to authoritarian terrorist groups like BLM and Antifa is to be blind to the fact that schools, universities, media and corporations have already acquiesced to their demands. Democracy shuts down one door at a time.

The election is four months out. With the choice being an undisciplined Mr. Trump or a cognitively impaired Mr. Biden, the temptation may be to check off None of the Above. Such a decision is okay if one is offered a rotten apple or a spoiled banana, but that is never the right verdict in an election. Sometimes we must vote for the least bad candidate but choose we must. This time the choice should be easy. It is the Party, not the candidate. Democrats have become radicalized to a degree unthinkable a few months ago. Daniel Henninger wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal that “this will be a revolutionary election.” Perhaps, but not revolutionary in the spirit of 1776. This time the “revolutionaries” are more interested in destruction than creation. Gone is the land of opportunity; the future they offer is nihilistic.

"Chameleons Who Masquerade as the Media"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Chameleons Who Masquerade as the Media”

May 1, 2020

“I was always an unusual girl.

My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north,

no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.”

                                                                                                            “Ride Monologue”

Linda Del Rey (1985-)

American singer, songwriter

Mainstream media spent the last three and a half years trying to destroy President Trump, or, if not him personally, his Presidency. He was accused of having had Russia interfere in the 2016 election on his behalf; a two-year, $35 million investigation by Robert Mueller exonerated him. Second, he was impeached and tried in the press for abuse of power and obstruction of justice. He was found innocent. Then, he was said to be responsible for thousands of deaths because of his slow response to COVID-19. One snarky reporter asked him if he deserved another term, as more people had died from the virus than had died in the Vietnam War. No mention was made of the 100,000 Americans who died in 1968 of the H3N2 virus. Mr. Trump has been accused of racism, misogyny and xenophobia. He is said to be scientifically illiterate with demagogic tendencies. Yet none of the charges have proved legitimate and none of them have caused him to change his behavior. The media remains undeterred. In Ground Hog Day fashion, they persist in their assassination of his character. Like chameleons, they change to suit the goal.

By the end of June, other concerns will face Mr. Trump’s opponents, among which will be the Durham report. His critics will be looking for other ways to expose his weaknesses. By the end of July, second quarter preliminary GDP estimates will be out and his critics will accuse him of causing a second Great Depression. The preliminary estimate for the first quarter, reported on Wednesday, showed an annualized decline of 4.8%, a quarter that included only two weeks of lockdown. Early estimates for the second quarter range from –20% to –30% by Kevin Hassett, former economic advisor to the President, to –40% by J.P. Morgan, with unemployment expected at 20%. In fact, in the past six weeks 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment, almost 20% of the 160 million labor force. These numbers rival or exceed what happened during the Great Depression. During that time, U.S. GDP declined 15% between 1929 and 1932 and unemployment reached 25 percent. For political purposes, the economy will supplant COVID-19 as the focus of the media. And who will be deemed responsible for that decline? Why, Mr. Trump, of course.

Mr. Trump is not a man without faults. But his critics are unprincipled. Consider the Steele dossier, paid for by the Clinton campaign in 2016, the politization of the IRS, FBI and the CIA by the Obama Administration, or the abuse of power by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) in his futile impeachment of the President. Consider the financial ties of the Bidens’ to Ukraine and China, and the Clinton’s financial dealings with Russia. Politics is a rough game, often played by the unprincipled whose sole goal is to win. With power as the objective, patronage is the lubricant with which loyalties are formed and votes are secured. The bureaucracy of the administrative state wields enormous influence and Trump, an outsider, was always a threat to the comfortable way of life of those who reside inside the beltway.

As for COVID-19, facts about death rates have been manipulated and used to justify lockdowns: According to NPR on April 20, 58% of deaths in New York State from COVID-19 occurred in nursing homes in New York City. The CDC says that 80% of deaths occur in those over age 65; other organizations put that number higher. According to broadcaster WBEZ, 81% of deaths in Chicago are individuals with hypertension, high blood pressure or diabetes. The total number of deaths has been exaggerated: On April 8, Dr. Deborah Birx said: “…if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.” Perspective is needed. While COVID-19 is a novel virus, we still have been fed a diet of misinformation with a sauce of fear. A rational policy reaction that protected the vulnerable, practiced commonsensical health practices, like social distancing, masks where needed and scrubbing one’s hands would have allowed the economy to adjust naturally. The assumption that people are irresponsible – that they need to be under the tutelage of government officials – is the way of dictators to justify a totalitarian state.

The result is the economic downturn we have been in for the past several weeks. As George Gilder, Senior Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote recently: “President Trump had better take notice. He will soon own this gigantic botch of policy and leadership. No one will notice that his opponents urged even more policy blunders.” This recession (depression) will become the story over the next several weeks, one even “blue-state” governors will be unable to ignore. Connecticut, for example, is a small state of 3.5 million people, but it includes 8500 restaurants with 160,000 employees. Ninety percent of them are out of work. Most of the restaurants are small, family-owned places. Many will go bankrupt. Restoring the economy must be Mr. Trump’s priority.

President Trump must pivot to the economy. He had better understand the risk if he does not, and I suspect he does. He cares, I believe, for what has happened to out-of-work families. He is anxious to set the economy free, or, at least, freer than it has been. He has had a surfeit of advisors, not all with good advice. As for the public, misinformation has been the common experience. When models, which were proved inaccurate, showed devastating consequences, stringent measures were imposed, like shutting off flights from and to Europe and the UK and shutdowns of businesses, sports venues and schools. Throughout January and into March, the media never questioned the models and/or the conflicting assumptions made by medical experts and scientists. They took on faith what China said. Their interest was Trump destruction, not truth. The media has, as the song goes, “a chameleon soul” with no moral compass to drive their opinions. As a result, Americans never received a true picture of the virus.

While the press is filled with tragic stories of loss and happy stories of survival, at least two aspects of our three-and-a-half-month experience with COVID-19 do not show us in a good light: one is the willingness of people to obey without question those in positions of authority; the second is an on-going pessimism for the future, already reflected in declining marriages and birthrates. Both are in contrast to traits that helped create the American nation. We are told to wear masks, for example. So, people wear them, even outdoors when alone where the mask interferes with healthy air breezes. The optimism embedded in the image of a “city on the hill,” memorialized by John Winthrop in 1630 and then by Ronald Reagan in 1989, has become what Daniel Henninger called a “mind-set whose instinct is to diminish hope.”

Yet there are those who look at the facts and see promise. Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University, recently sent a letter, “sober about the certain problems COVID-19 virus represents,” but welcoming students in August. Other voices of optimism are governors and those who plan to open, under guidelines, their businesses. It would be good to hear President Trump give one of his speeches – not a bickering exchange with the press – but one like those he gave in Warsaw, London and Davos, where, in grandiloquent terms, he elevated hope, not away from reason but toward a way out of the mire of negativity into which we have fallen, with COVID-19 and our excessive response. With a “can-do” attitude, the economy just might come back, perhaps stronger than ever.