"Watch What They Do"

 What sort of a moral sense inhabits the souls of presidents and trustees of some of the nation’s most elite colleges and universities where anti-Semitic student protestors have been allowed to terrify and physically harm Jewish students, block entrances to university buildings, and chant for the annihilation of Israel? These people head institutions that are supposed to help form future leaders. God help us if they do not uphold the values for which they claim to stand.

 

On the other hand, my normal cynicism toward Washington politicians was tempered this past weekend, when the House, under Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) passed three separate bills to support Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and a fourth bill that would seize frozen Russian assets and force a sale of Chinese-owned TikTok. Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) deserves congratulations for his help in this bi-partisan show of support for these important pieces of legislation. The United States has been singularly positioned as the leader of the free world for more than a century. With size comes responsibility – not to impose our way of life on others, but to provide a vision of what is possible when the individual is the basis of a “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” If we relinquish that role, the world will be worse off.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Watch What They Do”

April 24, 2024

 

“Don’t listen to what people say; watch what they do.”

                                                                                                                Think Like a Freak, 2014

                                                                                                                Steven D. Levitt (1967-)

                                                                                                                Stephen J. Dubner (1963-)

 

It is said that Diogenes, an obviously odd but intelligent man who lived around 400BC, went about Athens’ marketplace with a lamp during the daytime. He claimed to be looking for an honest man. Apparently, he had little luck. We might well assume that a similarly futile search could be made in the nation’s Capital at any time of day. Politicians lie. So it is what they do that should galvanize our attention.

 

Lying is endemic and not limited to politicians. We all tell lies, or “white” lies as we euphemistically call them. Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf warned that when persistent liars do tell the truth, no one believes them – a lesson that politicians, reporters and others should learn. In the 19^th Century, Carlo Collodi of Florence, the pen name for Carlo Lorenzini, gave us the story of the sentient wooden puppet Pinocchio whose nose grew longer when he lied. Sadly, lying noses do not lengthen among those in Washington today. Rather, they believe Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister who said that if a lie is repeated often enough it is perceived as truth – like telling the public that only adherence to a Democrat-led agenda will save the planet from destruction. Climate change is a fact. The planet’s climate has changed thousands of times over millions of years. It will continue to do so. But people’s behavior is just one cause. 

 

While the media has been filled with Donald Trump’s lies, exaggerations and transgressions – and, certainly, Trump is a notorious liar – lying comes naturally to most of those who become politicians. It was Joe Biden who told the world he was arrested when visiting a jailed Nelson Mandela, that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in the Pacific during the Second World War, that he visited “Ground Zero” on September 12, 2001, and, to a Teamsters meeting, that he once drove tractor trailers. Mr. Biden, of course, has the excuse that he is “an elderly man with a poor memory.”

 

There have been other colorful examples: Nine months before he resigned on August 7, 1974 over the Watergate break-in, President Nixon told a group of reporters: “I am not a crook.” President Clinton on January 26, 1998, referring to White House intern Monica Lewinsky, declared: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” On September 5, 2002, President Bush told the American people that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.” And President Obama, on June 6, 2009, said, referring to his proposed federal takeover of healthcare: “If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor too. The only change you’ll see are falling costs as reforms take hold.” 

 

But consider some of what they did: One of the five “plumbers” (James W. McCord) who broke into the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972 was a member of Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President. Stains on the blue dress worn by Ms. Lewinsky suggested a definitional difference in the words “sexual relations.” Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. And, according to the Peterson Center on Healthcare, the cost for medical care services has risen 49.6% since June 2009, double the rate of consumer prices.

 

Today, we are told that the southern border is secure, yet according to The Washington Post “illegal border crossings have averaged 2 million per year since 2021, the highest level ever.” We are told of extraordinary job creations in the past three years, yet part of the rise has been an increase in part-time employment, as the ratio between full-time and part-time has narrowed since mid-2023. As well, part of the job increases are due to growth in government jobs. J.P. Morgan reported that government jobs gained 56,000 per month in 2023, more than double the monthly gain of 23,000 in 2022. On April 10, President Biden was quoted: “…inflation has fallen more than 60% from its peak…” While that was true, it is also true that in March of this year, the CPI came in at 0.4%, double the Federal Reserve’s benchmark.

 

On September 29, 2023, speaking at the Atlantic Festival in Washington, D.C., Jake Sullivan, America’s National Security Advisor, rattled off a list of positive developments in the Middle East, a result of Biden’s policies: “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” Eight days later Iran’s proxy Hamas, headquartered in Gaza, launched an unprovoked attack on Israeli citizens, raping, mutilating and killing 1,200 civilians. Mr. Sullivan, in his comments, conveniently ignored the devastating withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the pursuit of Obama’s Iran Deal, which has allowed Iran to pursue their atomic program, and the reluctance to pursue the Abraham Accords, which had been leading to Sunni Muslims’ recognition of Israel.  

 

We are told that democracy is at risk, if the despised Donald Trump is re-elected. No one doubts that the continuation of our democratic republic is vital to all Americans. But does the much-watched Trump represent the sole risk to democracy? Is there not a risk from those who have gradually (and insidiously) strengthened the Executive branch, especially from those who believe that government knows best? Democracy has proven to be the most equitable political system ever contrived, largely because it incorporates free market capitalism, which provides the economic growth necessary for a nation’s operations, defense, and its social welfare programs. But markets work most efficiently when regulations do not impede innovation and when taxes do not limit investment. Consider what has been done and what is proposed: Forbes reported on December 29 that 2023 that the Federal Register, the daily depository of rules and regulations, wrapped up 2023 with 90,402 pages, “…the second highest tally of all time.” On March 11, President Biden sent Congress his proposed 2025 budget, which calls for a $5 trillion increase in taxes, to come from corporations and individuals making over $400,000 per annum. Barriers to economic growth, whether from regulations or taxes, have unfavorable consequences for all citizens.

 

Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that lies are sometimes necessary. For example, in time of war lies can deceive the enemy, or they can be used to withhold the truth from those near death and who are emotionally fragile. It may be more ethical to lie to help a friend save face in public; and secrets, whether corporate, institutional or government, to remain secret may involve fabrications or even, God forbid, fake news. There have been times when Presidents have had to lie to the public in the interest of national security.

 

But none of these examples exonerate politicians who lie to curry favor, to harvest votes, to further political careers, or to those in the media who aid their ignoble political friends by obscuring facts. Hannah Arendt, a refugee from the deadliest of European lies, once wrote that perhaps political deception is the greatest threat. In a recent Wall Street Journal review of Richard Sennett’s new book, The Performer, Barton Swaim quoted from Yuval Levin’s 2020 book, A Time to Build: “…the presidency and Congress are just stages for political performance art; when a university becomes a venue for vain virtue signaling, when journalism is indistinguishable from activism – they become harder to trust. They aren’t really asking for our confidence, just for our attention.” Sadly, that seems to be true.

 

In 1969, Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell said: “Watch what we do, not what we say.” We did. You know the rest.

"Fear"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Fear”

October 6, 2021

 

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas,

alien philosophies, and competitive values; for a nation that is afraid to let its people

judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        President John F. Kennedy

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          February 26, 1962

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Speech at HEW

 

How far ago it was when a Democrat President could speak of open markets and of trusting the American people. Fear has become a tool of American politicians, especially those on the left, to help control the people they are supposed to serve. In a recent issue of The Spectator, regarding the United States’ handling of the COVID-19 virus, Karol Markowicz wrote: “We are in a moment of profound fear in the U.S…We cannot continue to succumb to a fear of life. We must not continue to be scared of each other.” Yet, politicians used fear to place the sick in nursing homes, and to close places of worship, schools and businesses, and to issue mask and vaccine mandates. 

 

As well, fear of climate change infects our youth. Writing in February 2020 in The Washington Post, Jason Plautz wrote: “Kids are terrified, anxious and depressed about climate change,” while academics, politicians and certain businesses thrive on this fear. Michael Moore and Al Gore made millions out of scaring people about climate change. Thomas P. Gloria, managing director of Industrial Ecology Solutions and Program Director, Sustainability, Harvard Extension School, wrote in the April 22, 2020, edition of the Harvard Gazette: “My fear is, despite the science and the early warning signals that we bear witness to – record temperatures, 1000-year storms, glacial retreat, coral reefs dying on a continental scale – global society may finally wake up, but it may be too late.” 

 

Fear of expressing non-conventional ideas has become pervasive. Many will not speak out for fear of financial retaliation. Ted Rall, author of The Stringer, wrote in Monday’s Wall Street Journal: “What meaningful difference is there between an authoritarian state, where saying the wrong thing can get you arrested, and a regime of economic censorship, in which the consequence of unpopular expression results in unemployment, potentially followed by eviction and destitution?” A culture that cancels history and opinions is one that denies free speech. How many students fear expressing opinions that depart from a progressive narrative that has become ubiquitous? How many junior executives question their senior managers? Do members of Congress let demands of Party out-weigh their own consciences? Fear of failing grades, loss of job and political retribution are used to suppress speech and control people. 

 

Yet is this fear justified? COVID-19, is likely to soon become endemic, as Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease physician and professor at the University of California San Francisco, wrote a week ago in a Wall Street Journal op-ed: “…no virus in history has ever continued to evolve to higher pathogenicity…An endemic virus doesn’t require continuing isolation and other restrictions.” And was Mr. Gloria injecting fear of climate change to encourage funding for his management consulting firm? Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Danish think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center, spoke in March of this year on Fox News: “Yes, climate change is a real problem. However, it is typically vastly exaggerated, and the resulting alarmism is exploited to justify the spending of trillions.” He added: “They claim that ‘countless lives’ are being lost to climate related disasters worldwide. Yet, the International Data Base (maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau) shows that in the 2010s 18,357 people died each year (on average) from climate-related impacts such as floods, droughts, storms, wildfire and extreme temperatures. That is the lowest count in the past century, a 96% decline from the 1920s, despite a larger global population. And 2020 had an even lower death count of 8,086.” As for fear of speaking out, Ted Rall concluded his op-ed referenced above: “When two-thirds of self-identified moderates are scared to express their views in public for fear of losing their jobs, America has ceased to be a free society.” It is this fear that should be our primary concern.

 

Fear is a natural human emotion, which alerts us to the presence of danger. It helps us prepare for, avoid, or survive threats to our safety. But the instillation of fear is also a weapon long used by governments to control their citizens. In her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt wrote of how quickly – less than ten years – Germany went from a functioning democracy to operating concentration camps. Fear is what keeps such movements alive, where lies are claimed as gospel, where history is changed to suit the narrative, where the line between truth and falsehoods becomes blurred, and where opinions are expressed as empirical facts. 

 

In such an environment, independent thinkers are excised, and bureaucracies are expanded. It is not necessarily the rise of new totalitarian governments that concerned Ms. Arendt. She wrote: “Totalitarian solutions may well survive the fall of totalitarian regimes in the form of strong temptations, which will come up whenever it seems impossible to alleviate political, social, or economic misery in a manner worthy of man.” We, as a people, should worry when government harnesses fear to perpetuate itself through special powers. We should be concerned when people fear expressing opinions contrary to convention – conventional dogmas, institutionalized by progressive politicians and bureaucrats and abetted by a sycophantic press and monopoly-like social media companies. 

 

COVID-19 has been a threat, which is being addressed by drugs and vaccines. Climate change is real, but it always has been and is also being addressed. What should concern us most are infringements on free speech, the cancellation of history and censorship. We should be alert to ubiquitous government and monopolistic social media companies. Facebook and Twitter have powers that Hitler, Stalin and Mao could only dream of. According to Statista, Facebook has over 200 million users in the United States and 1.7 billion worldwide. Twitter has an estimated 77 million American users and over 200 million worldwide. The ability to manipulate people, which these companies possess, is something that the world has never-before faced. And now they have become platforms for political advocacy, and they censor people and ideas that do not conform to their preferred narrative.

 

Warren Buffett once said that no one should bet against the United States. But the challenge we face today is unlike any we faced before – a cultural war, which divides people by race, gender and religion for the benefit of certain businesses, activists, progressive politicians and government bureaucrats. Unlike a civil war, this one suppresses personal initiative. It elevates the tribe, race or gender over the individual. It focuses on equality of outcomes at the expense of equal opportunity. Merit has surrendered to inclusivity. Work has lost its dignity. Personal responsibility and independence have been abandoned for dependency on government. Fear is a weapon of choice of those who prosecute this war.

 

As President Kennedy said in 1962, “…a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.” Democracy only works when citizens are without fear to express opinions, and when the marketplace for ideas is free and open. The loss of that freedom, which this war on traditional, western culture is provoking, is something we should all fear.

"The Plateau," by Maggie Paxson

 In 1941, Hannah Arendt, the philosopher and political commentator, escaped Europe and settled in New York. She was thirty-five. Two years later she wrote an essay, “We Refugees.” The essay concludes: “The comity of European peoples went to pieces when, and because, it allowed its weakest members to be excluded and persecuted.” It is a line worth recalling, as the plight of asylum seekers continues to this day.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Burrowing into Book

“The Plateau,” Maggie Paxson

December 19, 2020

 

“I am a lapsed anthropologist who thought she could figure out something

about peace, but now my nights are haunted by faces of the living and the dead.”

                                                                                                                                                Maggie Paxson

                                                                                                                                                The Plateau, 2020

 

Over the years I have read many books on the Holocaust. While I am not Jewish and am far from an expert, I recall my father, who had fought in Italy with the 10^th Mountain Division, admonishing me that I should never forget what happened during the war. The German people were a civilized and cultured people, still they followed a leader into an abyss of evil, filled with hatred, contempt and corruption. Yet, in occupied countries, some remained good. Among them were people of the Plateau. 

 

In spending time in the Plateau Vivrais-Lignon, a remote, mountainous region in south central France and specifically in La Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Haute-Loire department, Ms. Paxson comes to understand its history and, over time, becomes accepted by its residents. She writes of how individuals and families saved hundreds of lives during World War II and of how the area today aids refugees who seek asylum – from countries like Chechnya and Syria and nations in Africa. La Chambon, with a population of just over 2,500, has a history of befriending the displaced. We learn that the Plateau region was settled in the 16^th and 17^th Centuries by Protestant Huguenots, who were persecuted by the French Catholic government.

 

The book has three main stories, running concurrently – of a young French schoolteacher named Daniel Trocmé. who arrived in the region in late 1942 to help his schoolteacher cousin, Andre Trocmé. We read about CADA (Centre d’Accueil de Demandeurs d’Asile), a welcome center for asylum seekers that was established in 1973 to help those fleeing Vietnam and Chile, and which today places asylum-seeking families in homes and their children in schools. And we are witness to the author’s personal odyssey, as she comes to understand “who does what to whom” – a mantra she uses, as an anthropologist, to interpret societies, like why have the people of the Plateau been so good in the face of so much evil. Toward the end, she quotes from her favorite childhood book, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who himself spent some time in the Plateau during the War and who died in July 1944: “You are humanity, and your face comes to my mind simply as man incarnate.”

 

The story of Daniel Trocmé is especially moving. With eighteen of his students, in December 1943, he is arrested by the Gestapo, hustled into a tarpaulin-covered truck: “Don’t worry,” he tells his fellow teacher Magda. “I’ll go with my students; try to explain things for them.” He asks her to write to his parents: “Tell them I am not afraid. This is my work. I love these students very much.” Those are the last words his parents will hear from him. Five months later, at age thirty-one, he would be dead, in the Nazi extermination camp, Majdanek, which is just outside Lublin, Poland.

 

There were times when Ms. Paxson’s personal interjections were annoying, but they display her quest for self-understanding. She is smitten by the story of Daniel and follows it all the way to Israel where he is remembered as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations.” She grows to love the families she meets.  She ends the book by speaking to all refugees: “…this book is my love letter to every one of you…”

"A Cultural Revolution?"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

November 21, 2020

“A Cultural Revolution?”

 

“…the Cultural Revolution’s most enduring legacy in China was…

the destruction of the bonds of organic trust which hold together a society.”

                                                                                                       Xiao Li

                                                                                                       Pseudonym for an academic based in America

                                                                                                       UnHerd, a British news website

                                                                                          (The author’s father was imprisoned and punished 

                                                                                                During China’s Cultural Revolution. He later 

                                                                                                emigrated to the United States).

 

For a democracy to collapse into authoritarianism, what are required is a man or a woman and a movement. In Trump, we have a man but no movement. On the Progressive Left, we have a movement but no one person. To be effective, the movement must have the backing of the media, the academy and a sufficient number of bureaucrats who run government – advantage, the Left. 

 

Trump is criticized by his detractors as a neo-fascist, a would-be dictator, but, apart from his love for America and his call to “clean the swamp,” he has no overriding political philosophy. The Tea Party did not expand during his White House tenure. The Progressive Left calls for an expansionist government that will provide more regulation, a “green new deal,” free college, all of which will mean higher taxes and limit individual freedom. They have on their side mainstream media, the academy and most of the bureaucracy that runs Washington. But they have no one individual around whom they gather.  Some might look at this as an optimistic appraisal – a leader with no real movement and a movement with no one leader – and assume an Alfred E. Neuman stance. 

 

However, there are cultural trends abroad that should worry a believer in a free and open society. In the essay, from which the rubric was drawn, Mr. Xiao wrote about his father and his contemporaries, now living in the United States: “…they can feel a certain febrility in the air which reminded them of the events of half a century ago.” Former President Obama, in a recent speech, prescribed “a combination of regulations and standards within industries to get us back to the point where we at least recognize a common set of facts,” suggesting a need for an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. In a speech on November 12 before the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention, Justice Samuel Alito warned that “tolerance for opposing views is now in short supply in many law schools, and in the broader academic community.” Richard Stengel, who joined Joe Biden’s transition team, wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post in October 2019: “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails.” Whose Truths? Whose lies? Whose guardrails? 

 

Students at Harvard, America’s oldest and best-known university, called on college officials to ban Trump officials from giving talks or holding positions on campus. Like tyrants in dictatorial countries, the students called for the administration to “set up a system of accountability for high-level political appointees and Trump administration consultants before they are invited as fellows or to teach or speak on campus.” The letter went on: “Harvard should stand firm with its stated commitment to a just Harvard and a just world, to free and honest inquiry in the unfettered pursuit of truth” – except when that search uncovers a truth opposed to their narrative.

 

Religious liberty has become a “disfavored right,” so spoke Justice Alito. Social media platforms police conservative ideas; schools expunge history that does not accord with their pre-determined story; colleges promote a cancel culture and encourage safe places for students against “harmful words,” and politicians compartmentalize voters, creating a salad bowl of diversity rather than the melting pot traditionally promised immigrants. These actions have led to identity politics where the narrative of victimization has replaced the concept of individual responsibility. The consequence is an ideology that “seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with,” using Hannah Arendt’s definition of a totalitarian society, “the goal of bringing all aspects of society under the control of that ideology.”

 

When government recommendations become edicts, when enforcement of rules, such as the wearing of masks or keeping family gatherings below a fixed number, relies on neighbors or friends informing on others, we reach a tipping point. One of the most powerful books to be published in the wake of China’s Cultural Revolution was Nien Cheng’s Life and Death in Shanghai. In it, she wrote: “One of the ugliest aspects of life in Communist China during the Mao Zedong era was the Party’s demand that people inform on each other routinely…This practice had a profoundly destructive effect on human relationships…It encouraged secretiveness and hypocrisy.” We have not reached that point in the U.S. However, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her squad, after the recent election, suggested that information should be collected on anyone who might ever had said anything positive about Trump, lest such people scrub their records and pretend they were critical of him all along. To do so, she believes, would be a “public service.” To do so, in my opinion, would put us further down the road to serfdom, to borrow a title from Friedrich Hayek.

 

The United States has never had an aristocracy, a landed gentry or a permanent ruling class. But it has always had exceptional people who have risen to the top of their field – politics, business, finance, the arts, media and the world of sports. Attempts to pull up the ladders that provide opportunity, something we see in inner cities where school competition is denied, should be resisted. The U.S. stands alone, a beacon of freedom based on the rule of law and the rights of individuals. The nation is unique. For generations, it has set standards for other nations.

 

Is there a cultural revolution underway in the U.S.? The evidence suggests there is. It is fascinating to witness how many of us (including myself) have, with the pandemic as an excuse, willingly complied with directives from the state – succumbing to mask-wearing everywhere and staying away from family and friends. Is it enough to plunge us into an authoritarian regime? I think not at this time. Nevertheless, there are those who have exhibited authoritarian tendencies, like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gary Newsom of California. I worry that a charismatic leader, adored by the media, could emerge. And I know that I would rather encounter an impolite man with a bark than be seduced by the mellifluous voice of a temptress. We do not want a cultural revolution.