"End of the West? Not so Fast"

 The accompanying photo has nothing to do with today’s essay, but I loved the contrast of the snow-covered branches silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“End of the West? Not so Fast.”

January 7, 2026

 

“In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the

predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole.”

                                                                                                                Edmund Burke

                                                                                                                Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies

                                                                                                                March 22, 1775

 

“What we once called the normative West no longer exists in this form.”

                                                                                                                Friedrich Merz, German Chancellor

                                                                                                                Speaking to business leaders in Berlin

                                                                                                                December 9, 2025

 

“My single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe,” stated Barack Obama during his Presidency, a sentiment echoed by his successors, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. But what about their responsibilities to ensure those freedoms cited in our Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by our Constitution? Safety appears to have superseded freedom. Keeping people safe is an important government responsibility, but ensuring individual freedom is its most important duty.

 

In his first inaugural, Thomas Jefferson wrote of the need for “a wise and frugal Government, which will restrain men from injuring one another, [but] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement...” In his letter from Birmingham jail (April 16, 1963), Martin Luther king wrote: “We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.” Ludwig von Mises, in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method, defined what differentiates Western governments: [1] “The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.” One has only to look at the plight of citizens in dozens of nations, from China to Venezuela, to recognize that freedom is our most valuable possession.

 

For many politicians, however the dependency of the people on government is an asset. What politician wants to ask their people to work harder or to save more to help ensure a brighter future. Yet, when the state assumes responsibilities better left to individuals, personal freedom lessens as restraints on choice take over. As the power of the state expands, people may feel safer, but it becomes riskier to speak out in opposition. 

 

Those politicians who prefer safety to freedom cite those places where individual freedom leads to personal choices, which, combined with differences in abilities and diligence, leads to vastly different outcomes. People are not equal in abilities. The best gymnast and the best physicist are masters of their respective crafts, but they could not switch places. Those who prefer freedom to safety have history on their side. Individual freedoms, along with the rule of law, the right to own property, tradition and personal virtue, are fundamental to the foundation on which Western civilization was built.   

 

Of course those who carry the greatest influence, teachers and the media, are overwhelmingly of the left, yet voter registration suggests a more nuanced nation – roughly 37% of voters nationally are registered as Democrats, 31% as Republicans, 28% as Independents, according to BallotPedia. In Connecticut, where I live and where all Congressional seats are held by Democrats, unaffiliated voters represent the largest bloc of registered voters at 42%. However, big government is still the preference of most politicians on the right as well as on the left. Benefits once granted are almost impossible to remove. Nevertheless, expanding welfare states have been accompanied with declines in marriages and births. More welfare spending impedes economic growth as investment dollars get diverted. They have, however, increased debt to a level where the easiest decision for a politician is to cheapen the currency. In this, Republicans have been as guilty as Democrats.

 

It is important to understand that individual freedoms, inherent to democracies and fundamental to our concept of the West, are always at risk, as they confound and hinder those who seek political power for personal purposes. “Freedom,” Ronald Reagan said in a 1961 speech in Phoenix, “is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Even so, as long as thought, debate and speech are not cancelled, the West has a weapon unavailable to tyrants – the power of individuals to speak and act.

 

Twice in my lifetime the West was threatened – in the mid 1930s through 1945 from Nazism and Fascism and from 1945 to 1991 by Soviet Communism. In both cases the West was ultimately triumphant, though at enormous costs in human lives. Today, external threats come from Islamic terrorists, a nuclear-armed Russia, and an aggressive Communist China. The latter seeks to extend her military, technological and economic control throughout the world. As well there are internal threats from those who seek to enlarge the role of government, by providing goodies, citing “fairness” and promising to keep us safe. In his January 1^st inaugural address as New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani spoke for those who see government as the answer to all life’s ills: “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” Contrast his words with those of President Reagan (the greatest proponent of individual freedom in my lifetime) at a 1986 press conference where he cited the languages’ nine most terrifying words: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”  

 

What gives me hope is that there are indications that some in the West are backtracking on the nanny state – an excessively protective state that interferes with personal choice. Some signs: the declining influence of climate tyrants, skepticism regarding men competing against women in sports and “gender-affirming” (sex changes) for minors, expanding acceptance of the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report, which declared that a university is “the home and sponsor of critics but is not itself the critic,” and an acknowledgement that Black Lives Matter (BLM), always a divisive organization in a nation where all lives matter, has lost support. In 2020, when Nancy Pelosi took a knee, along with other publicity seekers, BLM had the support of 67% of the population. Today that is around 45%. The re-emergence of talk, at least in some quarters, of accountability, responsibility, mutual respect, and the celebration of our nation’s semiquincentennial all suggest the early stages of a return to the virtues that propelled Western civilization. 

 

Western civilization is not Utopia, it is not perfect. But it has provided more innovation, better economic and social outcomes, and more individual freedoms than any other. Can the West survive today’s assault on its bulwarks from without and within? The honest answer is no one knows.  But, despite Hollywood’s despicable reimaging of George Orwell’s Animal Farm to be released this spring, I suspect the answer is ‘yes.’ Threats to the West in the past have arisen and fallen. Current ones may worsen, but the call of freedom has echoed through the ages with a clarion tone. It is heard by people around the world.

 

 

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[1]What is referred to as the “West” should not be construed as a geographic term, but as those nations who adhere to the concept of individual freedom, so includes countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.  

"Who Am I?"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Who am I?”

June 3, 2025

 

“Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?”

                                                                                                                                Lear, speaking to the Fool

                                                                                                                                King Lear. Act I, Scene IV, 1606

                                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

Besides satisfying a personal curiosity, the study of one’s ancestry is fascinating in an intellectual sense: First, it personalizes history. How much more interesting it is to read about the American Revolution or the Civil War with knowledge of an ancestor then alive. Second, such a study considers a mathematical paradox –We know that about 75,000 years ago small groups of earliest humans began migrating out of Africa, traveling north, east and west. Those few humans have given us a global population today of over eight billion. But we also know that each of us descend from two parents, four grandparents, and eight great grandparents, a process that doubles with each generation going back. How could so many ancestors be reduced to so few that came out of Africa? How to reconcile that apparent contradiction? The answer – we are all related.  

 

A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking. She was born in England, raised in France, and as a nine-year old crossed the Pyrenes in 1940 on foot with her family to avoid Nazi occupation. In our conversation, she referred to me as a “Real American.” I was prompted to see if I could name all of my four-greats grandparents, most of whom would have been born before the American Revolution, and to discover if all (or most) were born in North America.

 

Starting with the surnames of my four grandparents, I spent many hours researching, working backwards into the past.  I had the invaluable help of a sister who had done most of the preparatory work years ago, and was thankful for the internet, which is a plethora of information, though not always accurate. Ultimately, I was able to name, with relative certainty, sixty of the sixty-four. (I believe I know the names of the other four, but I am not certain.) Of course I also had to come up with names and dates of thirty-two three-greats grandparents, along with sixteen two-greats and eight great grandparents – 120 names in all. Of the sixty four-greats for whom I was able to name and find a birth date, fifty-eight were born before the American Revolution (between 1713 and 1770), one in 1777 and one for which I could find no date. All but two were born in Colonial America. Two were born and died in Ireland – Martha Jackson (1777-1808) and Col. Hugh Hanna (1770-1806). A brother of Martha, James Jackson (1782-1840), brought their orphaned daughter – my three-greats grandmother Mary Jackson Hanna (1801-1843) – to Alabama in 1818, where she married Joseph Lawrence Dawson Smith (1799-1837). More on James later.

 

One of the fun things about studying one’s ancestry is coming across colorful characters; for most of my ancestors, to quote Henry David Thoreau, had to have led lives “of quiet desperation,” in an unsettled country, alive with danger. To name a few of the more interesting ones: James Williams (1741-1826) was a four-greats grandfather who married Susanna Shaw (1744-?). He was captain of a militia unit that marched to  Roxbury, Massachusetts on April 20, 1775 where they met no resistance. While he was not at either Lexington or Concord, he was still considered a “Minute Man.” Asa Messer, senior (1739-1806) and Abiah Whipple (1746-1809) gave birth to Asa Messer, junior (1769-1836) who married Deborah Angell (1776-1862). The younger Asa, a three-greats grandfather, became the third president of Brown College, then known as Rhode Island College. Noah Webster (1758-1843), the lexicographer, and his wife Rebecca Greenleaf (1766-1847) were four-greats grandparents. A seven-greats grandfather was Richard Hunnewell (c.1645-1703) of Scarborough, Maine. He was known as the “Indian killer.” Fittingly, he was killed by Indians, at what is now known as Massacre Pond near Prout’s Neck, on October 6, 1703. 

 

There is a connection to T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) on both my father’s and mother’s side. My grandfather Sydney M. Williams (1873-1963) was a second cousin of the poet, as they shared great grandparents: Thomas Heywood Blood (1775-1848) and Mary Sawyer (c.1775-1850). My grandfather once told me that the only time he met the poet, who was fifteen years younger than he was, Eliot was wearing a sailor’s suit. On my mother’s side, her father Henry Stuart Hotchkiss (1878-1947) descended from his three-greats grandparents, William Greenleaf (1725-1803) and Mary Brown (1728-1807). Those two were one set of T.S. Eliot’s two-greats grandparents. There is also a distant connection to Gideon Welles who was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. He and my two-greats grandmother Isabella Welles Hunnewell were third cousins, sharing a common ancestor in Samuel Welles (1660-1731) who lived in Glastonbury, CT, which was home to Gideon Welles.

 

As for the southern branch of my family, the James Jackson mentioned above emigrated to Tennessee and then to Alabama, where he owned a large cotton farm, “Forks of Cypress.” He was a two-greats grandfather of Alex Haley, author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and Queen: The Story of an American Family. James and Martha Jackson (a four-greats grandmother of mine) were children of Hugh Jackson (1709-1777) and Elinor Gault (c.1710-1791), both of whom lived and died in Ireland. Thus Alex Haley and I – he as the three-greats grandson of Hugh and Elinor, and I as the five-greats grandson of the same couple – are cousins. James Jackson was also the owner of “Peytona,” considered the greatest race horse of the time. His race against the mare “Fashion” on May 13, 1845 at Union Course on Long Island – a race between the north and the south (as well as mare versus stallion) – was the subject of a Currier & Ives print. “Peytona,” who had traveled 1,500 miles, won the race.

 

The most colorful connection, however, is Edward Augustus Silsbee. He was the youngest of eleven children, seven of whom lived into adulthood. My paternal grandmothers’ maternal grandmother (in other words, a two-greats grandmother) was the third oldest, Sarah Ann Silsbee. She was born June 18, 1814 in Salem, MA. He was born on February 19, 1826 in the same town and died on April 5, 1900 in Boston. At age 24 Silsbee commanded the clipper ship Columbia on an 18^th month voyage from Salem to San Francisco, the East Indies, Calcutta and back home. The Log of the voyage is now at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. A copy of it is at the home of our son who was named for Edward Silsbee. Following his career at sea, Silsbee, a life-long bachelor, became, as described in 2017 by Dr. Tim Sommer, a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Houghton Library, “a Shelley enthusiast and ardent collector in pursuit of literary relics.” Silsbee lived in Florence between 1872 and 1879. There, he ingratiated himself with Claire Clairmont and her niece Paulina. Claire had been an intimate companion of Percy Bysshe Shelley who had died in 1822. The story of Silsbee, Clair Clairmont and her niece inspired Henry James’ novella, The Aspern Papers. Ultimately, Silsbee acquired Shelly’s notebooks and donated them to the Houghton Library at Harvard. A charcoal sketch of Edward Silsbee by John Singer Sargent (photo attached) is now at the Bodleian Library at Oxford (donated by him in 1899), with other Shelly artifacts Silsbee had collected. In the portrait, Silsbee’s craggy face is discernable behind his flowing white beard.

 

On my desk I have a photograph of my only great-grandparent who lived to see me born. In the photo, she holds me – at a slight distance, as though I had soiled my clothes. I look happy (see attached photo). Sadly, I do not remember her. She was born Mary Bolling Kemp in Petersburg, VA on January 15, 1861. Her mother died young, in 1867, likely from the effects of the siege of the city, which lasted from June 9, 1864 until March 25, 1865.

 

Marriage among cousins was not unusual at the time. Four sets of three-greats grandparents married cousins: Benjamin Williams (1757-1830) married Lydia Williams (1774-1845) on November 28, 1793. She was his first cousin once removed. John Welles (1764-1855) married his first cousin Abigail Welles (1776-1844) on April 28, 1795. Justus Hotchkiss (1772-1812) married his third cousin Susanna Hotchkiss (1775-1825) on April 27, 1800. And on March 12, 1812 Joseph Washington (1770-1848) married his second cousin once removed, Mary Cheatham (1796-1865).         

 

History comes alive when personalized. We know these people lived. They laughed and they cried; they loved and they argued; most important, they bred and produced descendants. Their lives cause us to behold the miracle of our own birth. It is difficult, with our conveniences, to imagine the lives they led – no paved roads or even trains; no telephone, telegraph, or flush toilets. Leaving home, many expected to never return. Most of my four-greats grandparents lived to see the United States gain its freedom from Britain, yet they all died before slavery ended. Most of their grandchildren (my great grandparents) died before women gained the vote. 

 

Like us, they grew to adulthood. As the 1950s were my generation’s time to grow from child to adult, and the 1920s the decade for my parents and the 1890s for my grandparents, my four-greats grandparents came of age in the years just before, during, or just after the American Revolution. It is sobering to think of the challenges they faced, and one is reminded of these lines from Kipling: “Beyond all outer charting/We sailed where none have sailed.”[1]

 

Yet their values were the ones we espouse: humility, justice, diligence, dignity, responsibility and kindness. “We are,” former Senator Paul Tsongas (D-MA) is quoted, “a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and grandchildren.” When asked why spend so much time looking back to those long dead, I am reminded of Edmund Burke’s quote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790: “People will not look forward to posterity who never looked backward to their ancestors.” Can we derive wisdom from the past? Perhaps. Though Canadian comedian Norm MacDonald once wrote: “The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast.” That it does.

 

I think of the question that titles this essay: Who am I? Unlike Lear’s relationship with Goneril, my daughter loves me. While I have genes from all my ancestors, I am not them. I am my own self, an individual who has tried to do the best he could with the talents he inherited and with the knowledge he acquired. I love my wife and the children we raised together, and the children they, with their chosen spouses, have raised. One’s personal history does provide a sense of belonging, but we are a consequence, not the cause. As for who we are, Dr. Seuss put it well in Happy Birthday to You: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” So, yes, even though not all of my four-greats grandparents were born in North America, I proudly accept the moniker of “Real American.” 

 

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[1] Rudyard Kipling, “The merchantmen,” first published in Pall Mall Budget, May 15, 1893.

"Thoughts on Israel and the Palestinians"

                                                                    Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Thoughts on Israel and the Palestinians”

December 16, 2023

 

“War must be, while we defend ourselves against a destroyer who would devour all;

but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its

swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”

                                                                                                                                J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

                                                                                                                                “The Two Towers,” Part 2

                                                                                                                                The Lord of the Rings, 1954

 

War has been around as long as has man. President Obama said as much in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 2009: “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man.” Efforts to outlaw war, or even to impose rules as to its conduct, have failed. The Kellogg-Briand Pact, an effort to outlaw war, signed on August 27, 1928 did not prevent Japan (a signatory) from invading Manchuria three years later. Nor did it stop Germany (also a signatory) from invading Poland eleven years later. The best means to prevent war is to prepare for it. When I was at the University of New Hampshire, I often drove past Pease Airforce Base with its seemingly oxymoronic, but in fact accurate, sign, “Peace is Our Profession.” The projection of strength is necessary to curtail war. Unfortunately, that air base, and the entire Strategic Air Command was “disestablished” in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union.

 

The conduct of modern war is supposed to follow rules of international humanitarian law established under the Geneva Convention of 1949, as they pertain to non-combatants, the wounded and treatment of prisoners of war. But such good intentions are never followed, as we have seen throughout all subsequent wars, and as Senator John McCain, along with thousands of other servicemen, learned during their years as prisoners of war in North Vietnam. As Carl von Clausewitz noted in On War, “The object of fighting is the destruction or defeat of the enemy.” The Swedish war historian Peter Englund, in his new book November 1942, wrote of a British tail gunner flying over Germany: “The aircrews are not guided by moralistic motives or complex explanations; they are given orders to carry out their missions…”

 

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are not asking for a two-state solution. Their call for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea,” is a call to eradicate Israel. When terrorists hide among civilians it is they who are causing civilian deaths. “Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary,” wrote Edmund Burke, in Reflections on the Revolutions in France, but “just” is in the eyes of the beholder. “Unjust war is to be abhorred,” spoke President Theodore Roosevelt at the University of Berlin on May 12, 1910 (only four years before Europe embarked on a four-year war of devastation), “but,” he added, “woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it.” And woe to the state of Israel now if they do not confront and destroy Hamas.

 

War is never pretty. “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it” wrote Major General William Tecumseh Sherman to Mayor James Calhoun and the Atlanta City Council on September 12, 1864; “and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out.” Hamas brought war into Israel on October 7^th. For Israel, there is no such thing as a disproportionate response. 

 

The land Palestinians claim as their own was part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, until the end of World War I. Does that give Turkey a “right” to that land today? Of course not. Before that, followers of Muhammed, and earlier Byzantines, Jews, Romans, and Christians occupied that land. What we know now as the Middle East was a “cradle of civilization,” whose existence goes back almost 5,000 years. It extends from Egypt in the east to Iran in the west, and from Yemen and Oman in the south to Syria and Iraq in the north. The Middle East gave birth to three of the world’s monotheistic religions. From Judaism emerged Christianity 2,000 years ago, and Islam arrived 600 years later. Members of all three religions are descendants of Abraham, Jews and Christians through his son Isaac, with Muslims descending through his son Ishmael. Despite this common heritage, Middle East Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been at war almost continuously.

 

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British government, supported a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then a region of the Ottoman Empire. In 1948, following the end of World War II during which close to 50% of the world’s Jewish people were exterminated, a Jewish state was created on land that had been their historic home. To consider them oppressors and colonialists because they built a prosperous and democratic society in the desert is absurd. Even after the end of the War, Jews continued to be persecuted in the Middle East. According to the Washington Institute, 150,000 Jews lived in Iraq at the start of the 20^th Century. When the United States invaded the country in 2003 only 35 Jews remained in Baghdad. The problem for diplomats and world leaders is that Palestinians can also trace their ancestry back as far as Jews. But no Arab country, with the exception of Jordan (home to two million Palestinians) has been willing to accommodate them. Qatar, Iran, and Turkey, however, house Hamas terrorist leaders.

 

Bent on annihilating the state of Israel, Palestinians leaders have ignored the welfare of their people. Citizens of Israel, living in a democracy with rule of law and property rights, have greater freedom and higher living standards than those living under the control of the PA or Hamas. Consider the differences in annual GDP per capita between those living under Palestinian rule ($3,500 in the West Bank and Gaza in 2021) versus $53,200 for Israelis. Keep in mind, the PA has controlled about half of the West Bank for almost thirty years, while Hamas, also elected by the people, has controlled the Gaza Strip for fifteen years. 

 

While there is complexity in the religious and cultural heritage of those living in the Middle East, there is nothing complex about the different moral and ethical values between Hamas and the Israelis. This is not a war between oppressor and oppressed. It is a fight about universal values, between good and evil, between right and wrong, between the classically liberal West and those who follow an illiberal, authoritarian path. While the West, of which Israel is an integral part, has never been perfect, in comparison to those states aligned against it – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and their allies – the West is a paragon of righteousness. Its citizens have more freedom and higher standards of living. Israel, like Ukraine and Taiwan, is fighting to defend self-government, rule of law, property rights, and individual freedom, while Hamas, which takes its orders from an authoritarian Iran, represents a people devoid of human rights. Fully supporting Israel, as well as Ukraine and Taiwan, should not be a difficult decision for any Western power.

 

The United States and other Western nations have an obligation to their citizens to preserve the liberal order, whether in Ukraine, Taiwan, or in Israel. That requires, as Tolkien wrote in the rubric above, standing firm on principles of democracy and personal freedoms, while upping defense spending. It is the weak, not the strong, who are attacked and vanquished. To ignore that lesson is to let authoritarianism thrive.

"Superstitions...With a Smile"

 Hard to believe, but tomorrow brings Daylight Savings, which means we lose an hour of sleep as clocks spring ahead. As a morning person, and as one who likes his sleep, this is a practice I do not like.

 

I hope you enjoy today’s short essay and that it brings a smile on what is an overcast day in Connecticut.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essay from Essex

“Superstitions…With a Smile”

March 11, 2023

 

“I had only one superstition. I made sure to

touch all the bases when I hit a home run.”

                                                                                                                           Attributed to Babe Ruth (1895-1948)

 

Edmund Burke (1729-1797), 18^th Century British statesman and philosopher, wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), “Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.” I quote Burke as a warning about this essay, as I have long held superstitions (or some might, kindly, say “habits”).

 

While I don’t meditate each morning or watch the sunrise as I drink a smoothie, I do make sure a towel’s label is to the left when hung. With children and grandchildren flying around the world, I text, “safe flight” before their plane departs. When my wife takes a bath, I say, “be careful getting into and out of the tub.” I “knock on wood” most days and “cross my fingers” almost as often. On the first of the month, I text my children and grandchildren: “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit,” which is supposed to bring good luck for the month. Why rabbits? Their feet, as talismans, date back to early Celtic tribes in Britain. I may be feeble-minded, but I feel better – perhaps because no rabbits had to sacrifice their feet.

 

My Random House Webster’s defines superstition as “an irrational belief in, or notion of, the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, etc.” Indicative of our times, the word has assumed more secular tones over the past 200 years. In 1828, Noah Webster (one of my thirty-two four-great grandfathers) defined the word: “Excessive exactness or rigor in religious opinions or practice; extreme and unnecessary scruples in the observance of religious rites…”

 

A good friend whose husband died a few years ago told her children that every time they saw a shiny penny it meant their father was with them in spirit. I now stay alert for shiny pennies; seeing one, I know that Michael is in the area. My mother-in-law used to say, if you drop a knife a man is coming. She wouldn’t say why, when, where, or who. My wife tells me that if I spill salt to toss a pinch of it over my left shoulder, which is where the devil (temptation) sits. An angel (conscience) resides on my right shoulders. When I fell and tore my rotator cuff last year, it was my right shoulder; so advantage, in my case, to the devil.

 

Superstitions have a long, literary history. They are found in Homer and the Bible. And who can forget the three witches who told MacBeth he would become Thane of Fife and then King. Witches were perceived as evil beings by early Christians. If a battle were lost, crops failed, or the cow got sick, it was the fault of a witch. Superstitions about witches in Salem caused the deaths of twenty-five, mostly older women, in 1692. Because witches were creative and intelligent women, my paternal grandmother once proudly told me that we descend from a witch. I like to think she was right.

 

Superstitions are not the same for everyone. Cracked mirrors distort reflections. Walking under a ladder is ill advised. Groucho Marx once said: “If a black cat crosses your path, it signifies that the animal is going somewhere.” And my wife tells me, as long as you can see the cat’s white teeth, all will be well.

"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.

"The Resilience of Donald J. Trump"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

 “The Resilience of Donald J. Trump”

November 20, 2019

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“The oak fought the wind and was broken; the willow bent when it must and survived.”

                                                                                    The Fires of Heaven

                                                                                    Robert Jordan (1948-2007)

                                                                                    American author

President Trump is an anomaly – an oak that has not broken. Whether one is a fan or a critic of the President, one has to admit that no previous President has been subjected to such pressure by those who simply hate the man, not for his policy choices, but for his character. Yet, to borrow a word from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, he is “antifragile;”[1] he grows stronger under pressure.

Admittedly, there are times when it is difficult, even for one who finds the Left’s tactics offensively offensive, to defend the man – his spontaneous Tweets and his derogatory comments about those who oppose him. But then I think of the heinous treatment he has received by a far-left media and politicians who have abandoned all senses of decency and respect, and I recognize that it is not Mr. Trump who is in the wrong. And I think of the task he has given himself – the draining of Washington’s swamp, a swamp filled with administrators, lobbyists, journalists and elected officials, all members of the “deep state” whose life blood depends on a secretive and expanding bureaucracy. And I remember Senator Chuck Schumer’s warning to him against taking on the intelligence establishment. He did, and he has reaped the whirlwind of their fury. Yet his continued resilience is critical to the continuance of our democratic Republic.

He is called a demagogue, a populist, an authoritarian, a man able to rally people but undeserving of the office and unable to govern. He is compared to Hitler and Stalin. TV and movie celebrities have called for his assassination. Yet, he does not break. Not only is he resilient, but his energy, despite his age, is boundless. Like Abraham Lincoln’s inspired choice of Ulysses Grant, “he fights.”

Despite these constant attacks, consider his accomplishments – think of tax reform, which lowered corporate taxes and lowered personal income taxes, but raised them for the wealthy in high-taxed states, like New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey and Connecticut. Consider the originalist judges he has appointed, including two to the U.S. Supreme Court. He has taken on the over-regulated state. In his first twenty-two months in office, he issued 65% fewer “significant” regulations (those with costs that consume $100 million annually) than did President Obama at the same point and 51% fewer than did President George W. Bush. And he exceeded his goal of rescinding two regulations for every new one introduced.

At the same time, he has overseen an economy that has grown significantly faster than it did under his predecessor who had the advantage of an economy first recovering from a severe recession. On October 4, CNBC reported that there have never been so many Black and Hispanics in the workforce. The jobless rate for all workers, 3.6%, is the lowest on record. He has taken the U.S. out of the worthless Iranian nuclear deal and the toothless Paris Agreement. He has called out the United Nations for their subversive views toward Israel, and he did what every President has promised to do since 1995 when the Jerusalem Embassy Act was signed by President Clinton in 1995, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He forced NATO members to increase spending for their own defense, and, as promised in his campaign, he has brought our soldiers home from wars where they served as police forces. He has directly confronted China’s stealing of our technology and highlighted the border crisis. He has met with the dictator Kim Jong-un, in an attempt to deter nuclear proliferation on the Korean Peninsula. At home, he has fought a culture of wokeness, political correctness and identity politics that threatens our schools and universities with ignorance, a lack of diversity of opinions and renewed segregation. As well, he has addressed the issue of victimization that serves to keep the poor and less fortunate in a perpetual state of dependency and despair.

His resilience is needed, for the media and political left have invested heavily in the narrative they have sold to the American people – an illegal President, a Russian agent and a man who seeks to destroy democracy. Democrats recognize that the best defense is a good offense. They are worried of the fragility of their arguments. It is possible, if not likely, that the forthcoming Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on surveillance abuses by the DOJ and FBI, in regard to the Trump campaign and FISA Court applications in 2016, could implicate some big names, including James Comey, John Brennan, James Clapper, and even Hillary Clinton and President Obama. Attempting to deflect that report, as well as the investigation being conducted by John Durham into possible FBI misconduct, as it pertains to the Russian probe, has caused Democrats to go bonkers, with an impeachment without a crime and a whistle blower who will not appear. Without his resilience, Americans might never learn of the truth as to what transpired during the 2016 campaign.

In contrast to the ‘willows’ on the Left, like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden who change policies as their audiences change, Mr. Trump does not pander to the media or tell selected constituents only what they want to hear, nor does he repeat to whomever will listen what is currently popular. The “fourth estate,” Edmund Burke’s term for an independent and disinterested press that he saw as a wall against corruption and collusion within government, has foregone independence and disinterest to become advocates. In a 2018 survey conducted by Arizona State University and Texas A&M University, and quoted by Kimberley Strassel in her book Resistance, only 4.4% of mainstream journalists described themselves as leaning right. Journalists report only that which accords with their preconceived ideas. Bias, as Ms. Strassel wrote, comes from “insularity.” It is unity of opinion that binds them.

Those who resist Mr. Trump consider themselves knights errant. They see themselves as the chosen ones to remove the man seen as the epitome of evil. In seeking to destroy him, they target all those who work with him and who support him, caring nothing for the effect they have on the individual’s family. Rough politics is nothing new. Congressional sessions leading up to the Civil War were sometimes physically violent. But today’s viciousness and vindictiveness on live TV and on social media are different. It is not just Mr. Trump. Those named or nominated to serve in Mr. Trump’s Administration are railed against on national television. Their families are subjected to personal attack; their homes are picketed. Who can ever forget the insults hurled at Justice Brett Kavanaugh by lying, supercilious and vindictive Senators? The willingness to destroy an individual’s family is new and ugly. It is no wonder that turnover within the Administration has been high.

While the resistance is about stopping Mr. Trump, it is also about protecting the privileged positions of members of the “deep state,” especially those who might be exposed by the Horowitz and Durham reports. And, keep in mind, Oak trees may break, but Willows die from rot. Mr. Trump’s resilience is critical to getting the truth out, then letting the chips fall as they will. Fiat Justitia ruat caelum.

                                               

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[1] Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012