"The Light of Battle," Michel Paradis

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Light of Battle, Michel Paradis

September 28, 2024

 

“He had wanted to be a general since he was a little boy…”

 

“He wore ambition lightly.”

 

The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower, 2024

                                                                                                                                Michel Paradis

 

The two quotes appear contradictory, and to an extent they are – the first appears on page 15, and the second in the “Author’s Note” on page 410. But they help explain the boy raised on a Kansas farm, in the last decade of the 19^th Century – a boy who became Supreme Commander of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy in June 1944.

 

In this deeply-researched book, Mr. Paradis tells the story of the preparation for Overlord, from the Cairo Conference in early December 1943 when President Roosevelt informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill of his decision to name General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of Allied forces, to June 6, 1944. Eisenhower, not George Marshall, was the perfect choice, in part because of his experience in Washington and North Africa, but mostly because his modesty permitted him to deal with talented prima donnas like Montgomery and Patton, as well as with FDR, Churchill, and even Stalin and de Gaulle. He was allowed to build his own team. In Paradis’ words: “Looking forward to Operation Overlord, Eisenhower’s priority was building the right team because if he had learned anything over the past year, it was that putting the right people in the right positions was the most important decision he made.”

 

But it wasn’t just people who made this job challenging. He had to coordinate the different armed forces – army, navy and air – from two different countries. He had to get the number of ships needed to land 150,000 troops, thousands of vehicles, including tanks and minesweepers, as well as food, water and medical supplies on D-Day. He had to consider civilian casualties and whether to use white phosphorus munitions. Weather was a worry, as were the delays it might cause, as the British had learned at Dieppe. Churchill wanted a simultaneous landing on the south of France, which complicated the movement of LSTs. Keep in mind, at the same time Eisenhower was planning the invasion, German resistance In Italy had intensified. Allied forces, north of Anzio, were bogged down. After advancing the approximately four hundred miles from Sicily to Naples in four months, it took four more months for the Allies to press on the last forty miles from Anzio to Rome, which was finally reached in early June 1944.  

 

As readers, we are guided through this maze of logistic and bureaucratic threats and objections that Eisenhower faced. But we are also offered snippets of his early life, his family, and his personal life, including his relationship with Kay Summersby. In answer to the question of why another book on Eisenhower and D-Day, Mr. Paradis answers by noting that one effect of World War II was that the U.S. displaced the British Empire as the unrivaled leader of the West, and of the consequential role played by General Eisenhower in becoming the first U.S. President to be called “Leader of the Free World.”

 

Thousands of books have been written about Eisenhower and D-Day. This one deserves a spot near the head of the list. 

"Freedom"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Freedom”

August 28, 2024

 

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person

who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.”

                                                                                                Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)

                                                                                                You learn by Living: Eleven Keys to a More Fulfilling Life, 1960

 

The word freedom is inherent to our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It is ingrained in what it means to be an American: “And so let freedom ring,” spoke Martin Luther King on August 28, 1963, “from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire…” The Oxford English Dictionarydefines the word: “The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint,” which is not too different from the definition Noah Webster assigned the word in his 1828 Webster’s Dictionary: “A state of exemption from the power or control of another.” Freedom from fear and freedom from want (two of FDR’s “Four Freedoms”) are offerings of the state, but they do not meet the classical definition of freedom.

 

Democrats see the state as providing the conditions, through rules, laws, and regulations, that allow individuals opportunities – what are now called “positive” freedoms. The Swiss-French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that men are born free but “everywhere he is in chains.” So the state exists to guarantee his liberty and freedom from the restraints of society. Without the state, he believed, there is no freedom. Voltaire disagreed. The state can be a trap: “It is difficult to free fools from chains they revere.” 

 

Republicans define freedom, in accordance with John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, as natural rights, characterized by the absence of external (the state) constraints on individual freedoms. These freedoms are now referred to as “negative” freedoms. Locke, two generations earlier than Rousseau, had argued that people are naturally free and equal, and have a right to life, liberty and property that are independent of society’s laws, ideas borrowed by Thomas Jefferson in 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” The Bill of Rights, adopted in December 1791, exemplified individual freedom. The colonists had lived under a tyrannical king. Fearful of autocracy that could stem from a strong central government, they desired a limited, federalist government, one composed, as Lincoln later said, “of, by and for the people.”  In a September 25^th, 1961 address to the United Nations’ General Assembly, President Kennedy warned: “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” 

 

No matter one’s definition, we should all agree that the freedoms to think, to pray, to write and to speak as one chooses are natural rights – gifts to us from God, inherent to us as Americans. We should also all agree that living in a community means that we must respect the rights and freedoms of others, that one person’s freedom to walk where he pleases may violate another’s right to privacy, so that government is necessary to adjudicate differences. The Constitution may give a person the right “to bear arms,” but that does not give that individual the right to kill his neighbor. Some freedoms, such as the right to abortion, are complex, as it contradicts the right to life. The decision to have an abortion, in my opinion, is best decided between the mother, the father, her doctor, her parents and perhaps a spiritual advisor. President Clinton came closest to my own belief: abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” While we all know that government is necessary for society to function, we should also realize that rules, regulations and taxes, while imperative to civil society, are inhibitors to free expression. Arriving at a consensus means that, individually, we forego some freedoms in the interest of the greater good. We are fortunate to live in a country in which our democratic form of government allows for differences to be debated so as to find common solutions. Even so, as government swells in size, individual freedoms shrink.

 

There will always be areas of conflict between your freedom and mine. Taxpayers pay the salaries of public-school teachers. Teachers should have the freedom to unionize, but that should not prevent parent’s from having the freedom to choose which education system best fits their children – traditional schools, vouchers, or non-unionized charter schools. University professors and high school teachers have the freedom to think and speak as they wish, but they also have a responsibility to instruct students to think independently, to perhaps come to conclusions different from their own. Censorship, “harmful words” and “safe places” are antithetical to the concept of free expression. In a March 15, 1783 address to the officers of the Continental Army, George Washington spoke: “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to slaughter.”

 

Democrats, at their Chicago convention, adopted freedom (along with “joy”) as their theme. According to a New York Times word-count, the word “freedom” was used 227 times in speeches over their four-day convention. I was happy that they did. But there is irony, hypocrisy and perhaps a touch of deviousness in a Party that talks up freedom but which defenestrated its sitting President, nominated Vice President Harris without a single primary delegate vote, wants to mandate EVs, prohibit gas stoves, limit school choice, and that weaponized federal agencies. This is the Party that uses the excuse of “disinformation” to censor political speech, that has done away with the concept of separation of powers by embracing the administrative state; it is the Party which would like to have the Supreme Court come under the purview of Congress. Yet they waved a banner of freedom at their convention. As a skeptic one is forced to ask: What freedom do they mean? Freedom for the state to do as it pleases? Freedom for me, or freedom for thou?

 

As the United States’ government grows larger and more complex, individual freedom, definitionally, lessens. According to the Office of the Federal Register, the number of final rules published each year ranges between 3,000 and 4,500. Wikipedia claims that approximately 200 new federal statutes are enacted each year. Most of these rules and laws are designed to benefit the people. But we should never ignore the fact that every new law and each new regulation has an impact – perhaps minor – on individual freedoms. Freedom is more than a slogan for conventioneers. It is why migrants come to these shores, even as most of us take freedom for granted. Freedom is not dependent on forgiveness of student debt, or dollars spent on entitlements. It comes with responsibilities, as Eleanor Roosevelt reminded us sixty-four years ago. It is an attitude, a belief. It is a gift from God. “Freedom isn’t free,” as the song goes.  It is rare, must be defended and should be treated as endangered. Fifty-seven years ago, in his first inaugural address as California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the blood stream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” Amen.

"'New Deal Rebels' by Amith Shlaes - Random Thoughts and Questions"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“New Deal Rebels by Amity Shlaes – Random Thoughts and Questions”

August 18, 2023

 

“…it is neither humanitarian nor Democratic nor American to indoctrinate the people

of the United States with the idea that it is the duty of the government to

support the citizen, rather than the duty of the citizen to support the government.”

Speech by John W. Davis, October 21, 1936

Democrat Presidential candidate 1924

 

Davis’ words in 1936 anticipated the penultimate sentence in President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address twenty-five years later: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

 

Davis’s and Kennedy’s words expressed a longing for a time when government was limited and the individual paramount, when Horatio Alger was honored, and when children were told success was up to them, that they could become whatever they wanted, as long as they were aspirant, focused, and diligent.

 

While the immediate aim of the policies and agencies created by FDR’s New Deal was to alleviate the suffering brought on by the Depression, the long-term consequence was to empower the State at the cost of personal freedom and choice. The result was the birth of the “nanny” State, where government is viewed as overprotective and interferes unduly with individual choice. Kennedy’s call in 1961 was for greater individual self-reliance. But his words went unheeded; LBJ’s “Great Society” boosted the role of government, offering more entitlements. The 1980s and ‘90s provided a respite in the rate of change, but the momentum toward bigger government persisted. Progressive candidate Barack Obama spoke in late October 2008: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Just as the stock market crash of 1929, provided the impetus for a more heavy-handed government response, the credit crisis of 2008 gave Mr. Obama the same excuse. As Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s future White House Chief of Staff, exclaimed after the election: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” 

 

When Roosevelt was inaugurated on March 3, 1933, the country was in the depths of the Great Depression. While the Dow Jones Industrial Averages were 30% higher than the summer of 1932, they were down 85% from their peak in 1929. Unemployment was close to 25% and real GDP was 26% lower than four years earlier. The Country was looking for a savior, and FDR appeared.

 

Once inaugurated in March 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took dramatic action. He declared a bank holiday, which shut down banks and the New York Stock Exchange for a week. In the interim, Congress passed a series of measures to ensure the integrity of the banks, including deposit insurance. When banks re-opened the immediate crisis passed. People re-deposited funds they had withdrawn, and the stock market opened higher. Over the next few years (like his successor seventy-six later with his “pen and phone”) FDR amassed power. In doing so, he created a plethora of agencies – “alphabet agencies,” as they were known. Among them: AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration), CCC (Civil Conservation Corporation), ERA (Emergency Relief Act), FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), NRA (National Recovery Act), PWA (Public Works Administration), REA (Rural Electrification Administration, TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority), and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) – all reporting to the Executive. 

 

In 302 pages and over four dozen chapters, using material from dozens of politicians, economists, commentators, judges, and academics of the era, Amity Shlaes chronicles those who rebelled against Mr. Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression. While some of the programs then created are still with us, like the FDIC and Social Security, others like the NRA inhibited free market forces, so delayed a return to pre-crash growth. Thus in 1938, nine years after the stock market crash that ignited the Great Depression, unemployment still stood at 19%, with real GDP only 2% higher than in 1929. Escape from the Depression came with providing armaments to the Allies (and our own preparation for war). 

 

Quoting newspaper and magazine articles, texts of speeches, the Congressional Record, letters, Supreme Court concurrences and dissents, Amity Shlaes lets her New Deal rebels speak for themselves. Among the contributors are John W. Davis, Democrat New York Governor Al Smith (1923-1928), Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo, Wendell Willkie (Republican nominee for President in 1940), Senators Joseph Bailey (R-NC) and Carter Glass (R-VA), John Maynard Keynes, Winston Churchill, Friedrich Hayek, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth. Ms. Shlaes writes in the introduction: “To travel with these critics through their time is to understand first of all there was nothing inevitable about the duration of the Great Depression.” The key word is “duration,” by which she meant ten years.

 

In the afterword of New Deal Rebels, William P. Ruger, president of the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) which published this book, quotes Edward Crosby Harwood (1900-1980), economist and founder of the AIER: “It is never too late to substitute a realistic viewpoint and wisdom for muddling good intentions, and it is surely in the interest of the Country that this be done at the earliest possible date.”

 

But is it too late for us? As a country, we have piled on debt with little concern as to how it will be repaid. In the interest of centralizing and justifying power, we manufacture or exaggerate crises: climate change, accusations of racism and homophobia, pandemics, and perceived inequities. In the meantime, we must ask ourselves: Do we have the means and, more important, do we have the will to confront our true existential threat: Communist China and its pursuit of global hegemony? Progressives market themselves as guardians of democracy and the common man. Yet they employ undemocratic methods, like kangaroo courts to legally tie up opponents, and they use (and have used) public office for private gain, i.e., the Clintons, the Obamas, and the Bidens. Questions arise: Will our debts force a devaluation of the dollar? Will increases in productivity offset declining fertility rates? Will tried and true moral standards ever return? For two centuries the United States, has stood as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to the world’s oppressed. Is that still possible, without the freedom to speak out and the tolerance embedded in a Judeo-Christian ethic? 

 

Appealing about the New Deal Rebels is its relevance, providing perspective for the optimist that past may be prologue, that we have been here before. But doubt remains: We have been divided into victims and oppressors. We are told our nation is inherently unfair, that racism dominates our history, and that answers lie with a benevolent government, run by Progressives who work to ensure fair and equitable outcomes.

 

Our Founders gave us a limited government, with three separate but equal branches, established of, by, and for the people – a government to serve the people, not the other way around. Yet today we have bureaucrats and lobbyists who move back and forth between the public and private sectors, so that three of the five wealthiest counties in the nation (Loudon, Falls Church, and Fairfax) are in the Washington metropolitan area. Harwood’s words, quoted above and published eighty-nine years ago in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune (and re-printed in Ms. Shlaes book) are as relevant today as when written. If only someone is listening.

"Humor - Where Has It Gone?"

 Yesterday, London’s The Telegraph, among the English-speaking world’s better newspapers, reported that Penguin, in re-issuing some of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster stories, are removing prose that sensitivity readers deem unacceptable. Since, in the first paragraph of the attached essay, I quote Bertie Wooster perhaps this piece should carry a trigger warning. But it won’t, as I assume you are all adults.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Humor – Where Has It Gone?”

April 16, 2023

 

“Humor is your own unconscious therapy. Like a welcome summer

rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”

                                                                                                                                Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

                                                                                                                                American poet, playwright, novelist

                                                                                                                                The Book of Negro Humor, 1967

 

There is a sentence in P.G. Wodehouse’s The Inimitable Jeeves, in which Bertie Wooster speaks to Jeeves, that reminds me of today’s listening-challenged politicians and pundits: “On the occasion when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across the primaeval swamp…the clan has a tendency to ignore me.” Like Wodehouse’s Aunt Agatha, today’s politicians bellow and do not listen; so, concerns, if they are not of the woke variety, are ignored. 

 

What have we become? Today’s transgender movement, with a biological male winning ‘woman of the year’ and with trans women athletes competing against biological females, is like watching a 1950s Hasty Pudding show. John Kerry and his crowd, in preaching of an impending climate apocalypse, remind us of a mythological Zeus hurling lightning bolts from atop Mount Olympus. Diversity, equity, and inclusion pronouncements could have been taken from Mad Magazine. Separate and segregated college graduation ceremonies are reminiscent of Jim Crow days: Dean Karayanis of The New York Sun recently wrote “that three dozen institutions from Yale to Ohio State are returning us to the days when ‘mixing the races’ was a secular sin, implementing policies that would make the most avowed Confederate grin.” Race and gender outrank merit in college selection and corporate advancement. Minorities, women, and the LBGTQ communities are told they are victims, and that they cannot rise above that appellation. 

 

Political arrests and prosecutions remind us of Stalin’s Lavrentiy Beria: “Show me the man, and I will show you the crime.” Mass shootings elicit the expected response from the usual suspects: a Second Amendment defense from the right and more regulated sales of guns from the left. Ignored are the estimated 450 million guns already out there, many of them illegally acquired; gun safety rules, which in my youth came with the ownership of a firearm, are never mentioned by elected officials, and neither is the disturbing emotional behavior of most shooters as a possible cause. Declining birthrates will bring future demographic challenges, as the work force shrinks and the ranks of retirees expand. But progressives are focused on the right to abortion, at any time and any place. School choice is “fine for me but not for thee.” Families have disappeared into the maws of politicized governmental ‘communities,’ which encourage a lack of individual responsibility and accountability and that discourage the dignity of work and the benefits of personal independence. Future generations will wonder at today’s absurdities when preferred progressives’ ends were used to justify regressive means. In this overly sensitive world, there is no laughter. 

 

Is there not absurdity in the idiocy of releasing criminals into poverty-stricken inner cities and then complain about an increase in crime? Do we help the nation’s most impoverished when we deny them choice in education and when we open the border to increased demand for welfare assistance? Where are the leaders who could offer perspective? Humor served Lincoln during the dark days of the Civil War. Franklin Roosevelt reassured the American people through fireside chats during the Depression, and he reminded them of their commitment, as citizens, to personal honor and national service during the Second World War. Forty years later, Reagan used humor, as the country emerged from a decade of antiwar demonstrations, a prolonged recession, and crippling inflation.

 

Victory in the Cold War brought an end to the USSR, which as an enemy had united both sides of the political aisle. Now “the enemy,” as Walt Kelly once wrote in a different context, “was us.” Polarization, which began in the Clinton years, added fuel during George W. Bush’s tenure (with about a one-year hiatus following 9/11), gained steam under Obama’s time, got out of control during Trump’s four-years, and has derailed under Biden. Under all five Presidents, humor dissipated while anger intensified. 

 

There was a time when the media was trusted to offer a balanced view. We remember William Shrirer, Edward R. Murrow, Lowell Thomas, and Walter Cronkite. They spoke to all America, and we trusted them to provide a balanced offering of the news, which for the most part they did. On January 16, 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then in Paris, wrote Edward Carrington of Virginia that, since America’s new government is based “on the opinions of the people,” that if he had “to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”  Today’s press is a far cry from Jefferson’s ideals or from the news we were offered seventy years ago, which allowed individuals to form their own opinions. Today’s news is presented in soundbites and thrives on exaggeration. Some wag recently wrote that if a conservative pundit has not been called a fascist it means she or he is not effective. And if a progressive is not called a socialist, it means he or she is failing at their job. It is unsurprising that Tucker Carlson and Rachel Maddow have some of the highest-ranked TV news shows because both substitute opinions for news. Neither one smiles and both exude self-righteousness. In the early 20^thCentury, Oscar Wilde, in a Critic in Pall Mall, wrote: “It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.” How pertinent are his words today.  

 

When radicals dominate both ends of the political spectrum, it is hard to smile. As America grew wealthy, left-wing politicians, to stay relevant, focused on racial and gender inequities. They united their followers behind veils of extremism, as they divided the rest of us by age, race, gender, and ethnicity. They became intolerant of ideas that did not conform to theirs’. Yet there are a few who see humor’s value. Senator John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) is one who effectively uses it. Still, there is concern; Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), who lost one eye in Afghanistan and suffered a detached retina in the other, wrote in Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage: “I fear we are losing this ability to laugh off the small stuff, and we are even closer to losing the ability to laugh at the big stuff…Comedians are worried they’ll offend an overly sensitive generation of students looking for any reason to be offended. This is deeply unfortunate…”

 

For this octogenarian, this lack of humor is sad. Still, it is fun to watch politicians wriggle out from uncomfortable positions, a talent necessary for political success. A hundred years ago, Ambrose Bierce amusingly defined the word politician in his The Devil’s Dictionary: “politician, n. An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice.” Today’s politicians have also mastered the art of saying nothing in a thirty-minute speech. But, sorrowfully, it is rare to witness the self-deprecating humor used so effectively by Lincoln and Reagan, to deflect criticism, and to put a smile on the face of listeners. Not only did it cause their opponents to laugh, it lightened the nation’s mood.

"Anger"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Anger”

June 28, 2022

 

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in

which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Mark Twain (1835-1910)

                                                                

The essayist and author Lance Morrow recently penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal: “Could this be an Antebellum Age?” It certainly seems that way, though with luck a Civil War will not break out as it did in 1861. Nevertheless, anger dominates our politics, media and our culture. It separates friends and divides families. It affects judgements and makes impossible civilized debate. It permeates school board meetings, clouds differences regarding climate change, denies respectful discussion of gender politics; it was the impetus behind the January 6 riots and the subsequent, eponymous Congressional commission, and it has distorted the meaning of the Supreme Court’s decision rescinding Roe v. Wade. 

 

It is through the airing of differences that a consensus is found. Debate is integral to our government and our way of life. In his 1990 autobiography, An American Life, Ronald Reagan, wrote that when he became president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1947, he “learned while negotiating contracts you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: ‘I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.’ If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later...” 

 

In a country as large and as diverse as ours there will always be differences in terms of what constitutes the best way forward. It is why we have elections, and it is why, at least nationally, power ricochets back and forth between the two political parties. Compromise has worked in the past, Consider the relationship between two politicians who had in common only their Irish American heritage, Republican President Reagan and Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neill. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was based on mutual trust and compromise. Similarly, a decade and a half later, Democrat President Bill Clinton reached out to Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and the result was the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Yet, similar discussions between President Biden and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy are as impossible to imagine as President Trump inviting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for a quiet sherry and constructive talk.

 

The “woke” left pontificates about diversity, yet they disrespect those whose opinions diverge from their own; they speak of equity, yet they call those with whom they disagree “deplorables;” they urge inclusion but are intolerant of those who express views contrary to their own. We, who once had the ability to laugh, have grown fearful of provoking offense.

 

Why have we become so divided, so angry? Politicians find it useful to incite their bases, but why does the media not provide perspective instead of fanning the flames of hatred? Is it because profits come before civility? Why did Speaker Pelosi not allow the minority party to appoint members to the January 6 Commission, as had been done with all former such investigating bodies? Was she trying to hide her role regarding security for the Capitol on January 6? Why do some people choose to believe that nine un-elected judges make better decisions than a free, self-determining people through their elected state legislatures? In truth, the decision regarding Roe v. Wade will have little impact on the lives of most people. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in dissent: “States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so.” In seventeen states, the right to abortion on demand is protected by state law. In most others, it is permitted through the first trimester. More states will pass laws protecting abortion rights. Sadly, some will not. But the world will not end.

 

We should not let anger destroy the fabric of this special nation. Joseph Joubert (1754-1854), the French essayist and moralist, once wrote: “The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.” His words were true when he wrote them and are true today. Turn off the TV; shut down your computer, silence your cell phone, place The New York Times on the floor of the bird cage, take your loved one by the hand and go for a long walk. Let nature blossom, not your anger.

"A Middle Way - Is It Possible?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“A Middle Way – Is It Possible?”

December 18, 2019

“Medio tutissimus ibis”

(You will go most safely by the middle way)

                                                                                                Ovid (43BC-c.17AD)

                                                                                                Metamorphoses

In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (“I’m Partial to Impartiality,” December 12, 2019) Joseph Epstein wrote, “I happen to be someone who, in politics, yearns for impartiality.” I suspect that that desire for impartiality is common to most Americans – in the current environment, it “is a consummation devoutly to be wished,” as Hamlet would say. Most recognize we live in a pluralistic society, comprised of people from every nation on earth, representing all religions and races. In our homes, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, we speak 350 languages. Nevertheless, we have in common a love of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We favor a middle road, which accommodates all travelers. But, in recent times, with our biases, real and imagined, we struggle for a common purpose and a common morality. Where I disagree with Mr. Epstein, whose mind and writing style I admire and envy, is that he puts principal blame on Donald Trump for the discord that has disrupted our lives. I would certainly agree that Mr. Trump has accentuated the divide, but real blame is more widely distributed.

Politicians have compartmentalized the electorate – youth versus age, urban versus rural, rich versus poor, people of color versus Caucasians, immigrants versus nativists, gays versus straight, globalists versus nationalists. As well, there are those in the industrialized (and former industrialized) parts of the Country who have seen coastal elites become wealthy, while their incomes have fallen or grown stagnant. There are a few immigrants who have chosen not to adapt to the culture of their adopted country, and there are people who have been here for generations who fear a breakdown in the social unity they have enjoyed. A culture of victimization, identity politics and moral relativism accentuates these divides. There are secularized elites on the coasts who cannot understand why folk in rural areas cling to religion and guns. There are those who have hated Mr. Trump from when he first ran for the Presidency, people who will do anything to remove him from office. (Last week, Nancy Pelosi, in a slip-of-the-tongue, said she had been working on impeachment for two-and-a-half years. Yet, hypocritically, she claims it is with great sadness she has advanced articles of impeachment.) And, of course, social media allows factions to gather in greater numbers, with more intense focus. And there are those like me who fear that the decades-long tilt in Washington toward statism, with the acquiescence of mainstream media, risks the fundamentals of personal liberty and economic liberty on which this nation was founded. In good conscience, I cannot remain silent.

So, how do those of us who fear the loss of individual liberty compromise with opponents’ intent on subjecting the people to greater regulation and governance by the State? How do we stay midstream? If we do not, will we rip the nation apart? We recognize that the natural path of government is toward more regulation, greater power and, of course, higher taxes to support its bigger size. And what should the role of government be? We wonder, are we correct to worry? Illumination is found in a 1787 letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison: “I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

The process of governing is never as smooth as it seems in retrospect. Violence erupted on the floor of the House in pre-Civil War days. Reconstruction wasn’t much easier. Roosevelt’s New Deal created anguish, among conservatives, as did the Civil Rights riots in the 1960s and among progressives during the Reagan years. Differences are a hallmark of a democratic system. Most people prefer a centrist approach to the extremism of today. But that requires political objectivity, a characteristic foreign to most of us, including many of those in government.

Recent events have given confirmation that fears of an imperious government are justified. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in a report written by Clayton Thomas of the Congressional Research Service, claimed that American military and national security leaders have been lying about progress in Afghanistan for eighteen years and across three Administrations. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report showed that FBI agents methodically lied about the Russian collusion, asserting, as Newt Gingrich recently wrote, “…that everything Congressman Devin Nunes had reported about the FBI’s activity was true, and everything Adam Schiff had said was a lie.” While Mr. Horowitz’s report suffers from double-speak and government gobbledygook and could use Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for clarity, he ends his section on the four FISA applications: “We concluded that the failures described above and in this report represent serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications.”  And we have yet to hear from John Durham, the special prosecutor appointed to look into the origins of the Russian investigation. Richard Jewell’s lawyer’s summation, in the eponymous movie directed by Clint Eastwood, tells the jurors a truth, that his client’s accusers were “two of the most powerful forces in the world, the United States government and the media.” It is the willful use of government power for personal or Party purposes that we should fear. On the flip side, the UK elections last Thursday saw a democratic expression of the will of people. In Boris Johnson’s election, socialist and anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn lost, and the electorate voted for Brexit – the nation state of Britain was deemed to be a greater protector of individual sovereignty than the multinational European Union.  

The challenge for republican democracy is accommodation – how do we access the middle way – without abandoning principles. The United States is a hundred times larger, in terms of population, than it was in 1776 and far more diverse; yet the principles embedded in our founding documents are ageless. Democracy is hard work and includes an acceptance of accountability. We are a nation where the people – not elected leaders, bureaucrats or military leaders – are sovereign. Sovereignty is a privilege that presumes responsibility and requires an educated electorate. It feeds on free markets. It demands impartiality on the part of government servants. It calls for unbiased reporting by the media. Yet, both government leaders and the media have failed. We have seen their bias and how they have been used – both bureaucrats and reporters – to try to unseat a duly elected President. We need government to provide communal services like schools and roads; we need a government of laws that is a guarantor of property and human rights; one that is an arbiter of disputes and that protects the cultural cohesion of society. We need a government that is accountable to a sovereign people, people who must be responsible and accountable citizens. E Pluribus Unum tells us a middle way is possible. But we cannot abandon liberty.

It is easy to slip, Eloi-like, into the comfort of permitting the state to assume responsibility for more and more aspects of our lives. That is the promise of socialism, which is sold most easily to those forgoing the dignity that comes with hard work, who lack aspiration and personal responsibility, to those without knowledge of our civic structures and economic history. The dream of socialism may sound enticing, but the reality is servitude. A middle way, even when deemed safe, only works when we understand the stakes.