"Are We What We Read?"

Neatniks will look at the photo of our library here at Essex Meadows and despair. But I find comfort amid the books, photos and pictures – as familiar to me as a pair of old shoes.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Are We What We Read?”

September 20, 2025

 

“We are what we read – and the power of books to transform the minds and

personalities of their readers can give cause for anxiety as well as for celebration.”

                                                                                                                Prof. Richard Kieckhefer (1946-)

                                                                                                                Northwestern University

                                                                                                                Introduction – Forbidden Rites, 1997

 

We have oft heard the expression that we are what we read. But are we? That I enjoy books is no secret to my family or friends. At our home in Old Lyme we had a library of 5,000 volumes. Even in our apartment at Essex Meadows, some 700-plus books keep me company, on shelves, furniture and the floor.

 

In the March 16-18, 1709 issue of The Tatler, a British literary journal founded that year, Joseph Addison wrote: “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” I hope he is right, as fear of dementia haunts many my age. In Between the Acts, her last novel, Virginia Woolf wrote: “Books are the mirrors of the soul.” If she is right, we must be cautious in our speech, and I must be careful in what I write.

 

However, reading may have limits. Albert Einstein – no slouch when it comes to brain power – is alleged to have said or written: “Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.” As Einstein had a first class mind, we cannot dismiss his words as balderdash when we browse our local bookstore.

 

For the past twenty-five years I have kept a record of what I have read. The total comes to 849 books, with approximately two-thirds being fiction and one-third non-fiction. While that may seem a lot, keep in mind that according to a Google Search there are thirty-nine million books in the Library of Congress. With the choices we have, we should be selective in choosing what to read. 

 

While many of my men friends prefer non-fiction, I have always felt that good fiction is better at expressing eternal truths. Gerard Baker, in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal, wrote “The good novel exploits the virtue of storytelling to capture a truth.” While he was writing specifically of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, I could add Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, both of which I have read this year. It is from great writers of fiction that we amass an understanding of myriad character traits: honesty, bravery, loyalty, empathy, patience and integrity, but also jealousy, pride, prejudice, arrogance, laziness and deceit.  Perceptive novelists write of immutable values and add perspective to historical events and people. They help us better understand the people and world around us.

 

So, are we what we read? Certainly, we are formed by what we read, but we are also molded by people around us, our families, friends, those we interact with, by travel, and by jobs and experiences. However and in my opinion(and in contradiction to Einstein), reading and re-reading, done for pleasure and/or instruction, can be creative. We come to understand the vanity of Lear, appreciate village life in Middlemarch, and sympathize with the social aspirations of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

 

Worry not about the question and worry not about what you read. Just continue to read.

"Power is Their Goal"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Power is Their Goal”

June 24, 2024

 

“Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture

political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the

market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

                                                                                                                                Henry Wallace

                                                                                                                                “The Danger of American Fascism”

                                                                                                                                Essay, The New York Times

                         April 9, 1944

 

While Wallace, then Vice President of the United States, was writing of the dangers of Fascism, his words apply today to extremists on both sides of the political aisle – Progressive/Marxists on the left and Neo-Fascists on the right – those who campaign under the mantle of service but who, in reality, seek power for themselves and the state. Keep in mind, at the time Wallace wrote, the Soviet Union, with its Communist ideology and its totalitarian practices, was our ally in the fight against Germany’s Nazis. Because his socialist leanings were not broadly popular, Wallace was dropped by FDR as his choice for Vice President in favor of Harry Truman in the 1944 election. In 1946, in the early days of the Cold War, Wallace left the Democrat Party over Truman’s hard line with the Soviet Union and joined the Progressive Party. 

 

…………………………………………………………..

 

Power is an aphrodisiac, whether exercised by an individual, a cabal, or a mob. It has always existed in politics, in varying degrees. In a letter to Anglican bishop Mandell Creighton on April 5, 1887, Lord Acton (1835-1902) wrote: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” High political office carries enormous influence – the ability to financially reward backers (as well as oneself) – that many find irresistible. While there are principled individuals who run for office for the purpose of “giving back,” we live in a time of career politicians, those who have spent their careers either in elected or appointed office. We also live in a time of polarization where slogans substitute for reason and violent protests for debate.

 

Power and the corruption that often accompanies it are not limited to one party. But single party states and cities, with an absence of competition, are more likely to attract corrupt individuals. A Wikipedia map of the U.S. shows twenty red states, twenty blue states, with seven others either leaning red or blue, and three that are purple. Of the five most populous states, three are blue – California, New York and Pennsylvania – one is red – Texas – and one is purple – Florida. BallotPedia notes that seventeen of the country’s twenty largest cities are Democrat-run. Corporate monopolies are not good for consumers, and government monopolies are not good for citizens.

 

Every ten years Congressional district maps are re-drawn. They must be contiguous and they are supposed to comply with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Nevertheless, Sam Levine writing in the February 17, 2022 issue of The Guardian claimed that only 27 of the 335 [out of 435] congressional districts that had been drawn thus far were considered competitive. The Cook Political Report, in looking at 2024 races, confirms that report, as they showed only 22 [out of 435] seats as being tossups. An earlier study – June 25, 2021 – from Yale University argued that the rise in safe seats has led to political polarization. Whatever the cause, single-party cities and states are unhealthy, as they lead to power and corruption. And our very size has made governing less personal. With a U.S. population of just under four million in 1790, the House of Representatives was comprised of 105 members. The Reapportionate Act of 1929 capped the size of the House at 435 members. Today, despite the addition of Alaska and Hawaii as states in 1959, and a population almost tripling in the past 95 years, the number of House seats remains 435. 

 

This concern for the power of the state is not new. George Orwell’s two masterpieces Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949) warned of totalitarianism. Like all those of his generation, he had seen despotism come from the right by way of Fascism and Nazism and from the left via Communism. He was a self-described democrat-socialist, but his alertness to the excesses of political power informed the books he wrote. 

 

America’s founding fathers were well aware of the threat of tyranny, which is why they designed a government with three co-equal branches – executive, judicial and legislative. The purpose – to avoid a concentration of power. The Founders had considered the risk of what John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) later called in his 1859 essay On Liberty a “tyranny by the majority,” where the many can oppress the few. To address that concern, the legislative branch – the most important as it is the branch closest to the people – was divided into two bodies: a Senate, with two per state, and a House whose membership is proportionate to population, and they created an Electoral College to elect the President. (Keep in mind, Virginia, from which four of the first five Presidents came, was the largest state in 1789, so that was a selfless act.)

 

In our country, power is supposed to be reserved for the people. Free speech is integral to our individual freedom – not the freedom to falsely call out “fire!” in a crowded theater, but the ability to express opinions without being censored by “thought police” for not conforming to the “right” political ideology. Today, sadly, differences of opinions can be a mark of infamy. When I once criticized President Obama for some policy decision, I was labeled a racist. Can we not criticize women without being called a misogynist? Or a Muslim without being called out as Islamophobic? Or a Black without being termed a racist? In a November 29, 1947 letter to the New York Herald Tribune, E.B. White wrote: “One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly or wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.”

 

Nevertheless, and in spite of my concerns, most people in the United States remain, in my opinion, centrist. Certainly, there are those with extreme opinions; they exist on both sides of the political divide. Agitators abound, and identity politics has driven us into corners where we are only comfortable with those like us, whether an identity is based on nationality, gender, race, religion, or ideology. Politicians favor compartmentalization, perhaps because it is easier to appeal to specific issues rather than to speak broadly to the opportunities available to those with aspiration, drive and ability. For the nation to succeed, it needs people from all backgrounds and with myriad specialties, and it needs to ensure that all young people are given a good education, one that teaches them to think independently, not conform to a preferred ideology.

 

Democracy is collaborative, not efficient. It is all right when legislation does not get passed. A smaller, less intrusive government is preferable to a large one. The buildup in debt has been ignored by both parties, a possible pending calamity. Still, I recognize there is much good government does, that we could not exist without it. But I also know that individual freedom is placed at risk by those desiring power, a risk ignored by leaders in Washington today. Personal power and wealth are the goals of too many who run for high office. And bureaucrats are their silent abettors, as they thrive on an ever-expanding government.

 

Our current choices for President – two aging men, both seduced by the prospect for power and buoyed by mindless, uncritical followers and partisan media. Together they reflect a sad picture of today’s politics: A Hobson’s Choice for a center-based electorate. As Gerard Baker wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal “…we suspend our doubts, swallow hard and make our imperfect choice.”  

 Last night’s debate, in my opinion, was an improvement on the first. There was less in-fighting, while Trump was denounced for not being there. This was especially true of Christie and DeSantis, with the former calling him Donald Duck. Despite recent polls showing Trump beating Biden, there was a sense that for Republicans to prevail next year they must return to conservative principles, which means a Party without Trump at the head of the ticket. For the most part, they targeted their real opponent, President Biden. The focus was on issues: the border, the economy, rule of law, crime, energy, education, family, China, and Ukraine. I thought they all did well. A Poignant moment came when Senator Scott spoke of how black families have survived slavery and discrimination. He credited the values on which the country was founded and family. He said the United States was not a racist country.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Migration”

September 28, 2023

 

“No nation in history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered

no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.”

                                                                                                                          Victor Davis Hanson (1953-)

                                                                                                                          Classicist and military historian

                                                                                                                           Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute

                                                                                                                           American Greatness, Sep. 21, 2023

 

Over two and a half million illegal migrants have crossed our southern border this fiscal year. Last week, 10,000 crossed into Eagle Pass, Texas, a city of fewer than 30,000. The United States is not alone in being inundated by swarms of migrants. On Italy’s island of Lampedusa, where 6,000 locals reside, 11,000 migrants arrived in five days last week. In the UK’s The Spectator, on the same date, Douglas Murray wrote: “Keep allowing people with no discernible asylum claims to land by the thousands, from a continent with hundreds of millions more to come, and you will be fêted. Stop the law-breaking and you will find yourself prosecuted.” Today, the problem of illegal immigration appears insoluble. It seems to be, as Churchill once said about Russia: “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It is neither a mystery nor insoluble. But it is a problem political leaders in Washington and Brussels refuse to address honestly.

 

On one side, there are those who despair a humanitarian crisis – people living in utter poverty and under dictatorial regimes. These people are willing to accommodate victims (perceived or real) without reserve. On the other side are those willing to exercise any measure to keep out all illegal immigrants – a wall, armed guards, barbed wire, refusals to let over-crowded boats dock. It is a problem in need of the common sense of a Jeeves, when too much of the West is led by well-intentioned, feeble-minded Bertie Woosters. 

 

Migration has been a factor in human evolution for at least 200,000 years – since homo sapiens began leaving Africa. For the first 180,000-190,000 years our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, migrating from one area to another, depending on weather and food availability. They first populated the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Around 15,000 years ago they sailed to Australia, and crossed the Bering Sea to the Americas, Sometime about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago our ancestors began to transition from nomads to farmers, raising crops and animals for food, and around 3,000 BCE city states were created, to satisfy a need for laws to govern society and commerce.

 

Political and religious persecution, along with economic opportunity, are the principal reasons people leave homelands for other places. But demographics also plays a role. In some places, population growth outstrips food resources. The developed world has the opposite problem – shrinking populations, which can be offset with increased in-migration. In Europe, according to Christopher Caldwell writing in the September 21, 2023 issue of The Spectator, “each native generation is only about two-thirds the size of the last.” The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in the European Union is 1.5, while that of sub-Saharan Africa is 4.6. (A TFR of 2.1 is needed to replace the population.) Based on current trends, sub-Saharan Africa’s population would expand ten-fold between 1950 and 2050. (In contrast, the United States’ population grew just over three fold from 1920 to 2020.) With these dynamics – a Europe that eschews child-bearing, an Africa birthing more children than can be accommodated, and a Middle East in turmoil – it is unsurprising that Europe faces a migration crisis. Nor is it surprising that the U.S., with a TFR of 1.6, has need of more immigrants. Political parties on the Continent and in the U.S. must set aside partisan differences and address a reality that cannot be wished away. 

 

Italy, with a TFR of 1.24, has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe. The Italian National Institute of Statistics estimates that the population of Italy by 2070 will have declined by 12 million to 47.7 million, while the median age will have increased from 47 to 54. Have government officials thought about the costs and ramifications of this self-induced crisis, of the ratio of workers to retirees? Is Italy willing to assimilate enough migrants to offset the decline in their native population? How will an influx of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East affect a culture that reaches back more than two thousand years?

 

The United States processes roughly a million legal immigrants each year. Illegal crossings have been a problem for decades but have grown noticeably worse over the past three years. Illegal border crossings in 2020 were less than 500,000. This year, they will exceed 2.5 million, more than double legal immigration. The border with Mexico extends two thousand miles and intersects with four states – California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Obviously, those states are under the greatest pressure, but with immigrants being bussed out of those states, northern cities are feeling the effects. Before his election in 2021, New York’s Democrat Mayor Eric Adams declared: “We should protect our immigrants. Period. Yes, New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration.” Less than two years later, on August 9, 2023, Mr. Adams’ tone changed: “The City is in an unprecedented state of emergency…we are past our breaking point. For each family seeking asylum through the City’s care, we spend an average of $383.00 per night to provide shelter, food, medical care, and social services. With more than 57,300 individuals currently in our care, it amounts to $9.8 million a day…nearly $3.6 billion a year.”

 

As well, there are humanitarian issues. Traffickers who bring migrants to the southern border extort thousands of dollars from those in their care. Women and children are sexually abused. The amount of fentanyl seized at the border has increased six-fold, but even more has made its way into the country. The number of fentanyl-related deaths in the U.S. have risen five-fold in the past three years. Keep in mind, the precursor chemicals that comprise the essential ingredients of fentanyl come from China. They are shipped to Mexico where they are made into tablets, and then enter the U.S. via drug traffickers.

 

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman spoke to the American Enterprise Institute this week. In her speech she warned that the threshold for asylum claims under the United Nations Refugee Convention has been lowered, creating huge incentives for illegal immigration – “that simply being gay, a woman, or fearful of discrimination is now effectively enough to qualify for protection and, as a result, as many as 780 million people will be eligible to claim asylum.” Perhaps she exaggerated, but directionally she was correct.

 

Do western leaders fully comprehend what they have unleashed, as they move toward open borders, even as they deny doing so? In Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker wrote: “The demographic tsunami from the global South, as the North’s population shrinks, is in its early stages, and most people can see clearly what happens when leaders insist on a moral code that suggests our obligations to indigent foreigners are as great as to our own citizens.” There have been times in the past when we should have taken in more asylum seekers than we did. For example, Jews trying to leave Europe in the late 1930s. We failed thousands of them. But that does not mean our borders should be open now.

 

Flight attendants instruct passengers traveling with small children, in the event of a drop in air pressure, to first secure your own oxygen mask, then the child’s. Similarly, before we let more illegal migrants overwhelm our cities and towns, we must ensure that our citizens are secure, our laws enforced, and that the values that helped mold this Nation remain intact. 

 

We are told that democracy dies in darkness. It does not. It dies in sunlight. It dies with the assumption of power by unelected bureaucrats. It dies when people abandon accountability and responsibility. It dies in the censorship of ideas and opinions that do not accord to an accepted narrative. It dies when mandates replace debate and compromise. It dies when the media equates opinion with news. It dies when we no longer see ourselves as the global standard for individual liberty. It dies when we lose the ability to defend ourselves and freedom-loving people around the world. It dies under the unintended results of foolish and unwise policies. Migration is almost as old as mankind, but the advent of the modern nation-state, after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, limited the freedom to migrate at will. Borders came to mean something. Today, if respect for borders continues to be ignored by political leaders and migrants, we run the risk of unleashing a backlash with potentially devastating consequences.  

"Is Goldilocks Dead Politically?"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Is Goldilocks Dead Politically?”

October 7, 2022

 

“Goldilocks was very tired by this time; she went upstairs to the bedroom. She lay down

on the first bed, but it was too hard. Then she lay on the second bed, but it was too soft. 

Then she lay down on the third bed and it was just right. Goldilocks fell asleep.”

                                                                                                                Robert Southey (1774-1843)

                                                                                                                The Three Bears, 1837

 

It is the Goldilocks search for the right balance between too much government and individual freedom that foments so much political division: Have Washington’s entitlements and its marriage with social media made government intrusive? Has defunding the police, and the subsequent rising street crime, caused us to become anarchial?

   

No matter one’s political leanings, we all recognize the importance of federal government: to provide defense against foreign enemies; to maintain civil order at home; to care for those unable to care for themselves; to permit and encourage interstate commerce and transportation; to provide an agency to collect taxes and fees; to have a legislature to enact laws, an executive to carry them out, and a court system to adjudicate differences. At the same time, we believe in the ideals of independence and self-reliance, that we are individuals, free to think, speak, write, assemble, and pray as we will. Our differences are where we place ourselves along those dual (and sometimes dueling) spectrums, of government dependency and individual freedom. As government expands, freedom shrinks.

 

Political differences, driven by identity politics and ad hominem attacks, have become so venomous that a Cato Institute poll in July 2020 showed that 62% of Americans feel they cannot freely express their political preferences. Would anyone argue that number has lessened in the last two years? Most affected are conservatives (77%), then moderates (64%), and liberals (52%). The only group willing to freely express itself are “staunch” liberals, at 58 percent, not a surprise given their support from mainstream media. However, a New York Times/Sienna College poll taken last March found that 84% of Americans said being afraid to exercise freedom of speech is a “serious problem.” 

 

Unfortunately, it is natural for government to get bigger. A federal bureaucrat knows she will personally benefit as her department expands. An op-ed in last Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal compared the inevitable growth of government to the ratchet – a tool that allows movement in only one direction. Gerard Baker wrote that government expansion is abetted by the media where the “dominant voices … [believe] publicly funded services are morally superior to private sector activity...” Nevertheless, both parties have been guilty of government expansion, but it has been the Left that has been most aggressive. Ironically, it has also been Democrats – the party of “big” government – that has been using the slogan “Our democracy is under threat” for the 2022 midterms. 

 

Conservatives prefer less government, progressives more. While those differences have been exaggerated by political parties who see job security in running attack ads and damning opponents, and by a media that sees revenue increases in partisan reporting, what is needed is compromise. “Without cooperation,” wrote Micah Mattix, in a review of The Death of Learning in last week’s National Review, “there is no civilization.” The risk is we fall deeper into the abyss of prejudicial political hatred. Keep in mind, authoritarianism, whether Fascism or Communism, comes from more government, not less. 

 

An increase in government means an increase in spending. Since FDR and the Depression days of the 1930s, augmented by Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s and added to by both Parties over the past several decades, the federal government has assumed more and more responsibility for our health and welfare. Now, via indoctrination in our schools about critical race theory and gender identification, they are molding our children’s moral characters. What is taught in school in one generation becomes political ideology in the next.

 

Yet, since capital markets have done well over the past eight and nine decades, have we not been living in a Goldilocks moment? Perhaps, but questions need be asked. Has the quest for “clean” energy sources hindered long term economic growth? Has the financial band of borrowing been stretched too taut? Has government intrusion gone too far, stripping away our independence? Are too many of us too dependent on government largesse? Would Lee Childs’ Jack Reacher be possible in today’s continuously connected world, with ‘Big Brother’ keeping constant watch? Are not proposals to do away with the filibuster and “pack” the Supreme Court actual threats to democracy? 

 

Has our national debt become unsustainable? Since 1947 and through the first decade of the 21^st Century, the national debt to GDP ratio ran between the mid 40’s and high 60s. In 2014, it exceeded a hundred percent of GDP for the first time since World War II and has been increasing as a percent ever since. But the Federal Reserve kept interest rates abnormally low for the past dozen years, so the effect of higher debt has not been fully felt by the American taxpayer. Interest expense in the fiscal year ending September is expected to account for about 7% of the federal budget. Next year, the number is likely to be substantially higher. Will the defense budget be cut? Will transfer payments be reduced? Or will we just borrow more, passing on obligations to future generations?

 

Externally and internally, there have been a growing number of attacks on capitalism and Western culture. A 2018 poll showed that only 45% of young Americans (ages 18-29) have a positive view of capitalism. Will today’s anti-capitalist youths become tomorrow’s budding entrepreneurs? High school and elementary school courses, like the 1619 Project that offers a distorted view of U.S. history and gender identification studies in grade school, have been accompanied by a decline in traditional reading and math scores. Family and faith have given way to globalization and multiculturalism. Have we slayed the goose that laid the golden egg?

 

In this tug-a-war between government dependency and personal independence, Goldilocks’ porridge is not “just right.”

"It Can Happen Here, But Not for the Reasons You Might Think"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“It Can Happen Here, But Not for the Reasons You Might Think”

January 13. 2022

 

“History balances the frustration of ‘how far we have to go,’ with the satisfaction

of ‘how far we have to come.’ It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings

and imperfections, which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.”

                                                                                                                Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1907-1998)

                                                                                                               Associate Justice, Supreme Court, 1971-1987

 

In 1935, while Nazism and Fascism swept across Europe, Sinclair Lewis published a novel, “It Can’t Happen Here.” The story was based on Huey Long, then governor of Louisiana. It tells the story of how “Buzz” Windrip, running on a populist platform and portraying himself as a champion of traditional values, defeats FDR at the Democratic convention and then goes on to win the 1936 election for President. He soon takes complete control of government and, with a paramilitary force, like that of Hitler’s and Mussolini’s, he imposes totalitarian rule.

 

Is Lewis’ story a lesson for today? Despite accusations from Democrats, I suspect the threat to democracy is more likely to emerge from left field. As Gerard Baker put it in Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal, regarding Democrats’ desire to preserve political power as we head toward the mid-terms: “…the identification of the domestic opposition as a seditious enemy may be their last, best hope of salvaging something.” After a failed start to his Presidency, it is all Mr. Biden has left.

 

There is a natural tendency to look to the past as a guide for dealing with today and tomorrow. Professor George Santayana (1863-1952), in his 1905 book Reason in Common Sense, warned: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Wise advice, but perspective is also needed. Politics is a competitive sport, appealing to many who make it their life’s work. Power, prestige and money are on the line. It was unsurprising when outsider Donald Trump, acting as a populist and portraying himself as a patriot and champion of middle-American values, was deemed a threat to democracy. He was narcissistic and loose with facts, and he fed off the resentment of many middle-Americans toward coastal elitists who dominate Washington’s bureaucracies, especially its intelligence agencies, run universities, manage media and entertainment companies, professional sports, Wall Street and Silicon Valley. But was Trump a threat to our democratic system? I think not. Too many forces were assembled against him.

 

While history teaches us what did happen, it is not a fool-proof forecaster of what is to come. Evil does not always appear in the same guise or enter through the same gate. Threats to democracy can come from other directions. An (unintended?) consequence of today’s schools and colleges emphasis on pedagogy, rather than creating a foundation for students based on the classics, civics, literature and history, is that teachers, professors and administrators have actively censored conservative thought, while they have instilled left-wing propaganda. Democracy is best defended when schools and universities encourage open debate, sprinkled with skepticism while encouraging individual thought. “Blind belief in authority,” wrote Albert Einstein in a 1901 letter, “is the greatest enemy of truth.”

 

Ours is the world’s oldest constitutional democracy. We have lasted because diversity of opinions had been allowed in our schools, colleges and legislative bodies. We remained strong because of the founders’ emphasis on debate and restraint, rather than on mandates and self-indulgence. We became wealthy because free markets rewarded merit, rather than connections. Today, with conformity in and disagreements out, opinions that do not hew to a prescribed agenda are denied. Merit has been replaced with quotas. The use of Executive Orders has surged, with the pandemic as justification, and some Democrats want to kill the filibuster, do away with the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court and they question the Constitutional requirement that all states, regardless of size, have an equal number of U.S. Senators. In the lexicon of the woke, diversity is defined as race, ethnicity and gender. Equity refers to equivalence in outcomes, not opportunities, and inclusion means racial and gender balance. 

 

Democrat leadership have been telling us that the Republican Party has become radicalized against democracy, yet the ramparts are well-manned against right-wing uprisings – by our Constitution, the military and mainstream media. Instead, real risks to democracy are more subtle. They stem from the growth of the administrative state, where Congress has delegated legislative powers to agencies populated with unelected bureaucrats. Risks are fueled by social media platforms that cancel the accounts of those they dislike and result from military officers who, against convention and rules, side with political parties. Risks come from open borders that let in those who come not for opportunity, but for the freebies the U.S. offers. Risks to democracy come from the erosion of individual rights and from the tribal desire to segregate people by race and gender, and from a growing dependency on the state. It is this doctrinal, religious-like allegiance to woke beliefs that threatens our democracy. And mainstream media is silent.

 

Democracy assumes a belief in the collective wisdom of the people, that they are capable of self-government. The United States has the most diverse population, in terms of race and ethnicities, of any country on Earth, with between 350 and 420 languages spoken. Yet, the country has been a melting pot, as millions of immigrants from myriad backgrounds who came her, learned English, assimilated, intermarried and became Americanized. They emigrated to the U.S. because of the freedom and opportunity to better themselves, not to be compartmentalized by racial, ethnic or sexual identity. While they had pride in their heritages, it was their desire to become proud citizens of the most successful country the world has ever seen that made the United States what it is. This we must preserve if we want to save our democracy. Democracy is not meant to be efficient; it is meant to be fair, to offer opportunity to those willing to make the effort and to reward merit. It is a system where character is more important than race. 

 

President Reagan used to warn about the fragility of democracy – of how it could be lost in a generation. And that remains possible, but I believe our democracy is resilient. It has withstood difficult challenges over the course of its first 233 years – from tax rebellions in its early years, to a Civil War, bank runs, two World Wars, the Depression and an attack on its homeland by Muslim Extremists. But that does not mean we can rest on our laurels. Given the woke orthodoxy of Progressives, we must be vigilant. The foundation of our democracy is a universal liberal public-school education that is open to competition and to all opinions. Democracy demands the freedom and self-reliance of the individual, along with the acknowledgement of his God-given rights – it is a system we should cherish, must never forget and certainly not lose.

"Missing the Forest for the Tree"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Missing the Forest for the Tree”

May 19, 2021

 

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

                                                                                Attributed to Albert Einstein, but also to Mark Twain and others.

 

A principled stand by a politician is admirable. Too often, politicians follow the road of least resistance (or the one with the most voters). But when a principled stand evolves into stubbornness, the forest can be lost in concentration on a single tree. That, in my opinion, is the problem of Elizabeth Cheney (R-WY).

 

Most Republicans do not want to denigrate President Trump, but neither do they want to elevate him. Benign neglect is the preferred path. The good of what he did – freeing up the economy from restrictive regulations and confining taxes, repatriating more than a trillion dollars in corporate cash, raising wages for the lowest income workers, and creating the most jobs ever for Black and Hispanic; taking real steps to resolve the border crisis; addressing the bureaucratic morass in Washington; calling out international governmental bodies for their undemocratic ways; getting NATO nations to pay a greater share of their defense; confronting enemies of freedom like Communist China, Russia and North Korea; signing the Abraham Accords and instigating Operation Warp Speed to get a COVOD-19 vaccine out in record time – was overshadowed by a supersized ego and mean-spirited, feckless Tweets.

 

Democrats, on the other hand, would like to keep the spirit of Donald Trump front and center. While it is true that his ardent Republican supporters do not want to give up on him, neither do Democrat leaders who see him as someone around whom they can rally their troops. Trump Derangement Syndrome helped Mr. Trump with the public when he was President because complaints about him were so outrageous. But it hurts the Republican Party and their chances today when anti-Trump opinions are voiced by other Republicans. “Prudent Republicans,” wrote Andrew McCarthy in the May 15^th issue of National Review, “perceive that the best way to move on from Trump is to stop talking about him.” I agree.

 

If Republicans want to take control of the House and Senate in 2022, they will have to focus on issues, not on the personality of the former President. Single issue politicians detract from legitimate policy debates. In refusing to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump has done no more than what Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In all three cases (2000, 2016, 2020), there were certainly electoral irregularities, but there always have been. However, from what we now know, none of those elections would have been reversed. “If questioning the results of a particular election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath,” writes Mollie Hemingway in her forthcoming book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, “nearly the entire Democratic Party and media establishment would have been incarcerated following the 2016 election.” It is not that Mr. Trump’s character should be ignored, but that it must be kept in perspective.

 

As for the January 6 protests that culminated with a number of people making their way past security into the Capitol, an independent commission has been created to investigate exactly what happened. But to call the event an “insurrection” is argumentative and misleading. More than 400 individuals have been arrested, with dozens incarcerated without trial. What ever happened to one of the most sacred principles in American justice, the presumption of innocence? None of those entering the capitol that day, according to reports, carried a firearm. The only individual shot and killed was a thirty-five-year-old female protester, Ashli Babbitt, from California. She was shot by a police officer who has been cleared of any wrongdoing and has never been identified. Would media silence have reigned were roles reversed and had the protester been a Democrat? Nevertheless, we should await the finding of the commission, and trust it will be as non-partisan as possible – a difficult, if not impossible, task in this factional age.

 

While it is still too early to claim the Biden Administration a success or failure, its start has certainly done little to heal a fractured nation, despite promises in his Inaugural. On the other hand, his Administration’s policies have offered opportunities for his opponents. His positive ratings have slipped, while his negative ones have risen. As Gerard Baker wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal, this is what happens “when you construct an ideological dreamscape made up of impossible promises, implausible assertions and dishonest propositions.” A few of the Biden policies that offer opportunity to Republicans: The crisis on the southern border, with children being smuggled in by paid “coyotes,” and sometimes abandoned on remote desert ranches; a rise in urban crime amid continued calls to defund the police; an education system that looks to end meritocracy and free speech, while promoting racial differences rather than encouraging melting pot commonalities; urging schools to adopt the segregationist and Marxist views embedded in Critical Race Theory, and the simultaneous “cancellation” of our history and literature; threatening economic expansion by paying people not to work; a continued rise in federal debt to historic levels; a federal budget that proposes a 16% increase in non-defense, domestic discretionary spending, with only a 1.6% increase in defense spending; a Federal Reserve that seems unconcerned regarding the inflationary consequences of an expansive monetary policy; sharply higher gasoline prices and shortages in six states; abandonment of the Abraham Accords and a rise in Middle East violence; an aggressive China, which threatens Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Russia, with increased troops on Ukraine’s eastern border. 

 

With the “forest” so ripe with issues beneficial to Republicans, it would be a shame to let the “tree” that is former President Trump be the focus of Republicans looking to take back the Senate and the House in 2022. While Republican leadership must understand the reasons for Mr. Trump’s popularity (and they must appeal to his supporters), they must also highlight and concentrate on all that which has gone wrong in the first few months of Mr. Biden’s Administration. For Republicans, to repeatedly bang on the anti-Trump drum is a form of insanity that will surely lead to political losses.  On the other hand, the misdeeds and errors of the Biden Administration would be, as Rahm Emanuel might say, a terrible thing to waste.

"Will Cooler Heads Prevail?"

                                                                 Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Will Cooler Heads Prevail?”

January 13, 2021

 

“Traditional American democracy is ‘deliberative democracy,’ a process by which elected

representatives use reason and debate to shape public policy. Participatory democracy

tells the aggrieved: Never mind the legislature. Go to the streets to get what you want.”

                                                                                                                                Mary Anastasia O’Grady

                                                                                                                                Wall Street Journal

                                                                                                                                January 11, 2021

 

Sadly, we have moved away from the concept of a legislature deliberating, and respectively (and reflectively) debating what is in the best interest of Americans. The metaphor of the squeaky wheel getting the grease is more fitting in an atmosphere where the disenchanted or ‘victims’ take to the streets. This past summer’s Antifa and BLM protests turned into destructive and lethal riots in cities across the country. Last week’s riot, which emanated from a giant Trump rally, reached a crescendo when dozens of Trump supporters (and perhaps others) stormed the U.S. Capitol.

 

Why has this happened? In August 2014, Ashley Parker, writing on the front page of the New York Times, noted: “A generation ago, here in the Senate Dining Room, Mike Mansfield, a Democrat of Montana and majority leader, and George Aiken, a Republican of Vermont, met most mornings to have breakfast together, a scene almost unimaginable in today’s polarized climate.” Now, six and a half years later, polarization has worsened into a hyper-partisanship that is probably the worse since the pre-Civil War days. It is not only politicians and extremists who face diametrical opposition, families and friends have become isolated because of political differences.

 

The question is why? The United States has never been wealthier or militarily more powerful. Soldiers have been brought home from, seemingly endless, overseas wars. More young people are in college than ever before and now women outnumber men on campuses. Poverty has declined. Employment and incomes for minorities reached record levels a year ago, and the segregation of the 1950s is a distant memory.  The nation has become energy independent for the first time since 1957, according to the Institute for Energy Independence. Government and industry, working together created a vaccine in record time. Why is there no effort to look at what has been done correctly, and then build on mutual successes, rather than focusing on grievances? Perhaps it is an excess of leisure time? Perhaps the ubiquity of the internet, social media, C-SPAN and 24-hour-news no longer allow time for reflection.

 

As partisanship intensifies, hope for reconciliation fades. Calls for unity and healing are offset by acts of retribution and division. We see it in Washington, and I see it in responses to my essays. Democrats have used identity politics, as a means to reach out to minorities and women. However, by their nature, identity politics, which serve to divide, are racist and sexist. Universities, media and big tech companies have exorcised conservative speech.

 

Amidst this maelstrom, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced their theme, one badly needed: America United. We can only hope this time unity takes traction. Every president’s inaugural has made similar requests, including President Trump’s, yet disunity continues to rise. Mr. Biden faces opposition to unity from his own party. Both Senator Chuck Schumer and House Leader Nancy Pelosi have called for the invocation of the 25^th Amendment or the impeachment of Mr. Trump. Do they believe that such actions will help unify the nation, when there is a week to Inaugural? Mr. Trump will be gone on January 20. It was his acts of self-destruction that caused Republicans to lose the Senate and that will tarnish his legacy. The small number of rioters who invaded the Capitol did more harm to Mr. Trump and the Republican Party than did four years of persistent Democrat opposition. Kimberly Strassel put it well in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal: “The pity is that Mr. Trump’s conflagration will mostly harm the Americans he went to Washington to help. They will bear the higher taxes, the higher costs of regulation, the higher unemployment, the loss of freedoms.” Is piling on in his last days the way to mollify the 74 million Americans who voted for him in November? 

 

A few readers have told me that they are so incensed by Mr. Trump’s behavior that he belongs in jail. But they were not so outraged by the behavior of the Obama Administration four years ago when agents from the FBI and the Justice Department used a phony dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and that alleged Russian intervention in the 2016 election, to harass and intimidate Mr. Trump and his incoming Administration. Most were silent during this past summer when thugs from Antifa and BLM killed people and destroyed property, including minority-owned businesses. We don’t need condescending hypocrites. We need people to take responsibility for their actions, and we need an honest accounting of events.

 

As conservatives, we must not descend into the rabbit hole of immoral equivalence. Just because Democrats behaved badly is no excuse for Republicans to up the ante. With Trump, because of the swamp that had become Washington, we willingly (and knowingly) made a pact with the Devil. In my opinion, Mr. Trump is not a bad man. He is flawed, but who amongst us is not? Conservatives pride themselves in a belief that morality is absolute, not relative. Gerard Baker, in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, wrote: “The path for a reinvigorated conservative movement is a narrow but fruitful one. It must articulate and address the legitimate grievances of Americans, while resisting the temptation to win them over with simplistic fictions.” Extreme partisanship sees the world as black or white, but grey is the dominant color.

 

Special moments bring opportunities. This is such a time. By the end of the day on January 6, with two weeks to go to inauguration, Mr. Trump was finished as a politician and his legacy was impaired if not destroyed. I write that even though Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and a distinguished civil rights lawyer, wrote of Mr. Trump’s speech to protesters: It [the speech] “was misguided and wrong but completely protected by the First Amendment.” No matter how culpable Mr. Biden may feel Mr. Trump to be for last Wednesday’s invasion of the Capitol, he should not remain silent. He should try conciliation rather than accusation. The late Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli once wrote words that speak to us today: “Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.” Mr. Biden has a unique opportunity, not to forgive Mr. Trump, but to reach out to the millions who voted for him. This will not be easy, as hatred for Mr. Trump has been a unifying factor among Democrats. But this moment will pass once Mr. Biden is inaugurated, and more pressing matters face him, and intolerance, once again, rules the way forward. 

 

Will cooler heads prevail? The odds would say no, but surprising things happen. One of the better comments I have read about that fateful afternoon of January 6 was from First Lady Melania Trump, a woman whom the media has largely ignored: “It is inspiring to see that so many have found a passion and enthusiasm in participating in an election, but we must not allow that passion to turn to violence.” Words that cool in an over-heated time.