"The Ascent of Power," by David L. Roll

There are two lessons that stem from these few years in the immediate post-War period: One, never before, in the almost continuous history of man and warfare, had the vanquished been treated so well by the victor. And two, the division of Europe by the Iron Curtain, imposed by the Soviet Union in 1946, clearly demonstrated the economic, personal and political advantages of capitalism versus communism.

 

For anyone interested in the foundation for the remarkable economic growth in Europe and Japan – as well as the transition in the United States from a war economy to a peace economy – in the decades following the world’s most destructive war, this book, recommended by a friend, should be required reading. 

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Ascent of Power, David L. Roll

July 7, 2024

 

“I always felt that [Truman] understood me, not as a servant to be tolerated…President Roosevelt was

genial and warm but he left one feeling, as most aristocrats do, that they really do not understand one.”

                                                                                                        Alonzo Fields (1900-1994)

White House head butler

                                                                                                        My 21 Years in the White House, 1960         

                                                                                                        As quoted by David R. Roll

 

The devastation caused by World War II is virtually incalculable. During the almost six years between Germany’s invasion of Poland on January 1, 1939 and the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945 approximately 75 million people died, two thirds of them civilians. Poland lost 19% of its population, the Soviet Union 14% and some islands in the South Pacific lost over 40% of their pre-war populations. Twenty percent of homes in Great Britain were destroyed and 40% of those in Germany. France estimated that the cost of the war was three times their national income. In Europe alone, there were an estimated 21 million refugees or “displaced persons.” With war’s end came the job of aiding survivors, replacing infrastructure, restoring economies and preventing the spread of Communism. It was left to Truman to lead the way.

 

Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, less than a month before Germany’s surrender; so Vice President Harry Truman inherited the Presidency. David Roll writes in the Prologue: “Framed by the presidential elections of 1944 and 1948, this study captures the illusions of a dying president and the mistakes and triumphs of his successor, an arc of world history that separated those who found freedom from those consigned to live under tyranny for decades to come.” Truman, who had not been advised or prepared by Roosevelt, made the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But his legacy – and the thrust of Roll’s story – is the role he played in Europe’s and Japan’s recovery: The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO and the United Nations, the recovery of Japan, the birth of Israel, the Berlin airlift, and Civil Rights – prosecution of lynchings in federal courts, voting rights, equal employment opportunities, protection of the nation’s civil service, and the integration of the armed forces.

 

In a report to the nation on April 28, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall is quoted by Mr. Roll: “A fundamental objective of our foreign policy was the achievement of a coordinated European economy…It was not just a matter of humanitarian relief…it is necessary for our national security.” Truman’s election in 1948 freed him from the yoke of Roosevelt – allowing him to be his own man, to work with Republicans like Senator Vandenberg. At his swearing in on January 20, 1949, Truman invoked his Point Four Program: unfaltering support of the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, “and the inexhaustible benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress…to help people realize their aspirations for a better life.”

 

In terms of Europe’s and Japan’s recovery, Truman’s success could be seen in that by 1960, just fifteen years after the end of the War, West Germany had the world’s third largest economy and Japan its seventh.

 

Roll’s story is of a (seemingly) ordinary man who emerged from the shadow of an iconic President to accomplish remarkable things. In doing so, he changed for the better lives of millions. Roll quotes Winston Churchill speaking to Truman in 1952: “You more than any other man saved Western civilization.”

 

This is history well told.     

"Censorship"

 

As for this essay, its importance cannot be overstated. Without the preservation of our past – both good and bad – and without the free-flowing of ideas we will cease to be that “city on the hill.” 

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Censorship”

July 21, 2023

 

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has

only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it

becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

                                                                Harry S, Truman (1884-1972)

                                                                Special Message to Congress on the Internal Security of the United States

                                                                August 8, 1950

 

When President Truman spoke to Congress in August 1950, the United States was in the early stages of what became known as the Red Scare. A year earlier (August 29, 1949), the Soviets had tested their first atomic bomb. On February 2, 1950 Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist working at Los Alamos, was arrested for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Speaking in Wheeling, West Virginia, later that month, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) accused some in the U.S. government of harboring Communist-sympathizers.. 

 

Do political leaders in Washington today have that same courage as did President Truman, and in his belief in the rights of citizens to offer opposing opinions? Do school boards and do teachers’ unions? Do colleges and universities? Does the media? Does Disney? Do large banks and big tech? The shutting down of opinions that are at odds with conventional thinking, whether about climate, the origins of COVID, affirmative action, the biology of the sexes, the rights of school parents – they all suggest the answer is no.

 

Much of this objection to free speech is happening in schools and universities. In February of this year, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression) found university faculty support for “investigating faculty for controversial expression and applying social and professional pressure to get professors to take mandatory training they oppose.” The consequence is a “chilling effect which disproportionately strikes political minorities: principally, but not exclusively, faculty with more moderate or conservative viewpoints.”  Leftists were censured in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s; today it is the Right. 

 

Polls suggest this is a concern for the majority of Americans and has been for several years. Six years ago the Cato Institute, in a poll of 2,300 U. S. adults, found “that 71% of Americans believe that political correctness has silenced important discussions our society needs to have…58% of Americans believe the political climate prevents them from sharing their own political beliefs.” The poll showed that Republicans and Independents were particularly affected. Five years later, on March 18, 2022, the editorial board of The New York Times wrote of similar concerns: “For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.” They went on to note that surveys from the Pew Research Center and Knight Foundation revealed a crisis of confidence in one of America’s most basic values – freedom of speech and expression.

 

Free speech has become politicized, with both sides blaming the other. The Left accuses the Right of hate speech and banning books, while the Right blames the Left for removing hateful language from books and the cancellation of ideas. In most cases, the Right does not want to ban books, but to move them to more age-appropriate areas, while accusations of hate speech are vague, as they can include anything at odds with conventional thought. Symptomatic of this debate is a local public library, which in a small town also serves as the schools’ library. A controversy arose over the inclusion of two books in the “Tween/Teen room:” You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty, and Other Things by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth and Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan. The books, which speak to masturbation, anal sex, and other such pleasures, may not meet Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, but neither do they meet traditional standards of good taste. However, as I do not believe in censorship, the library was right to make the books available. I only hope that parents, teachers, and the library staff promote, as well, such classics as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and many others by authors whose stories are not only well written but through which readers can witness how we, as a people, have evolved over the years to meet new social standards. Even so, at least two of those books have either been banned or had their language altered by Leftists, thereby masking how values have changed over the decades.

 

Freedom of speech is fundamental to who we are, which includes the right to protest what we do not like. But it does not give universities the right to cancel what they term “hate speech.” It does not give public schools the right to ignore parents. It does not give big tech the right to censor what conservatives write or say. It does not mean one has the right to use violence or intimidation. It means listening, respectfully, to those with whom we disagree. Diversity is also a matter of ideas, philosophies, and values.

 

Censorship has no place in the U.S. The Constitution’s First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” These words have stood the test of time; they have been a magnet for millions of immigrants, and they should not be forgotten by those fortunate to be born here. President Truman understood them. But do today’s political leaders? Do today’s cultural, media, and educational leaders?

"We Are All Americans"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“We Are All Americans”

February 11, 2023

 

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage,

on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

                                                                                                                                President Harry Truman

                                                                                                                                Message to Congress

                                                                                                                                January 8, 1947

 

Public debates, be they high school, college or Presidential, are aimed at diminishing one’s opponent and convincing the audience of one’s superior argument. It is rhetoric, the art of persuasion. Like political campaigns, its goal is to win. In contrast, debates in the classroom – at least in years past – and in legislative bodies – at least when no press is present – are to test one’s argument, to listen to one’s opponent. The purpose is to learn and to come to a consensus. When I was young, I argued with my father; only later did I realize I was trying to understand why he believed as he did. 

 

…………………………………………………………….

 

In a polyglot society, such as the United States, individual identities are natural and differences in ideas are to be expected. The latter should be encouraged, for it is through respectful debate that common ground is found. On the other hand, the political exploitation of group identifications has caused a widening divide among an already fractionated people. Factionalism was a concern of the Founding Fathers. In “Federalist 10,” James Madison warned that it could lead to “…instability, injustice, and confusion…the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

 

Yet politicians today have found that splitting the electorate into manageable pieces makes it easier to campaign and win on specific issues. Thus, we have been divided into victims and assailants. This division makes the insulting assumption that certain races are incapable of competing on merit; so different standards are used for Asians, blacks, and whites in college admissions and jobs. We have been divided by cultural preferences, where gender is seen as a matter of choice, not biology. Dependency on government has come at the expense of individual responsibility and accountability; the concept of equal opportunity has been subordinated to a demand for equal outcomes, and the dignity of work seems an abandoned philosophy. Diversity and inclusion, the battle cry of the Woke, does not include diversity of ideas or the inclusion of those who dare challenge conventional thought.

 

The people of the United States represent most every nation on the planet. We speak hundreds of languages and dialects. We represent virtually every religion. In those senses, we are unique as a nation. We are born equal in our basic rights and before the law, but we are not born equal in mental abilities or physical attributes, nor do we all aspire to the same heights. No amount of political talk and promises can change that fact. We are of different economic classes, races, religions, and ethnicities. We must play the cards we were dealt. In his critically acclaimed novel, Trust, Hernan Diaz wrote: “Whatever the past may have handed us, it is up to each one of us to chisel our present out of the shapeless block of the future.” There is no question that a white child born in a suburb has a head start over a black child born in an inner city. Similarly, a black child born in suburbia has an easier start on life than a white one born dirt-poor in Appalachia. The promise of the United States is not the impossible gift of equity, but the real gift of opportunity – access to the social and economic ladder, the ascent of which is limited only by personal ambition and talent. Fundamental to climbing that ladder is education, which is why good schools are critical. 

 

We have reached an odd place – where our unique culture is at risk, where stories of deprivation and racism are not offset by stories of the success of men and women overcoming enormous odds, where values are muted or deemed relative, and where good and evil are not contrasted. It is not just politicians who have placed us in this spot. It is also the proliferation of a biased media. The news, whether on-line, TV or paper, has become little more than political propaganda. It is our universities where students are protected against “harmful” words and where truth has succumbed to ideology. It is social media, which has invaded our privacy with the tenacity of a four-year-old screaming for his popped balloon. Shared values become scarcer when individuals adopt the questionable memes of internet “influencers,” rather than the virtues gathered from classical literature, traditions, and customs.

 

What the people of the United States need are debates, not rhetorical flourishes designed for political campaign-style harangues; but debates with straight talk, to help citizens understand the problems we face and the opportunities we have. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are an example. No one wants to cut payments to retirees, or not provide healthcare to the needy. But we must face the fact that unless something is done money will run out. There are policies we could pursue: Raising retirement age, means-testing benefits, and/or increasing the minimum taxable wage from $160,000. I am sure there are other ideas. But to pretend that the problem does not exist, as was the message from both sides during last Tuesday’s State of the Union, insults the intelligence of the American people. 

 

The United States is fortunate. It is laden with natural resources and uniquely positioned geographically. We are fortunate to be citizens of a nation of laws not men, a nation without an aristocracy, a nation whose men and women comprise myriad ethnicities, races, religions, and sexual orientations – a nation where a black man and a black woman sit on the highest court. “Vive la différence,” is a well-known French expression, generally used to celebrate the differences between the sexes. We, too, should laud our differences. But we cannot let them smother what we have in common – “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

 

But democracy is work. Without attention, it collapses. As Jesus said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. We cannot let differences destroy the symmetry history has given us. In his recent book Leadership, Henry

Kissinger wrote that we cannot let sectarian passions overwhelm traditional structures.[1]It is a challenge that must be met, else society unravels. We must not forget that what we have in common is individual freedom: free to pray, to speak, and to assemble; free to use the special gifts God gave each of us, to succeed or fail. We are all Americans.

"Corruption in a Woke World"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Corruption in a Woke World”

April 14, 2022

 

“Politics. n: The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

                                                                                                                                          The Devil’s Dictionary, 1906

                                                                                                                                          Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

 

Power and money are at the heart of politics, so it is unsurprising that politics is rife with corruption. Corrupt politicians rank among the world’s oldest professions. In his 1894 novel Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain wrote: “There is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.” Theodore Roosevelt is alleged to have once said, “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘present’ or ‘not guilty.’ Humor aside, has corruption become more common? Certainly, we have moved beyond the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries’ big city political machines like Tammany Hall in New York and the Pendergast organization in Kansas City. But we live in a time and a place that venerates wealth and power.

 

President Truman famously refused a corporate board seat in 1953 – “You don’t want me. You want the office of the president, and that does not belong to me. It belongs to the American people and its not for sale.” His decision can be contrasted to the wealth accumulated by ex-presidents Bill Clinton ($80 million) and Barack Obama ($70 million). George W. Bush has an estimated net worth of $40 million. Unlike Messrs. Clinton and Obama, Mr. Bush entered the Presidency with an estimated $20 million. And then we have the greatly resisted Donald Trump who became the first individual to lose a billion dollars while President. Yet he is the one cited by an honor-challenged media as being the most corrupt.

 

Since Clinton’s and Obama’s wealth was made after they left the White House, they may not meet a common definition of corrupt: “to act dishonestly in return for money or personal gain.” However, both diverged from the moral standards enunciated by Mr. Truman when he left the Presidency. Clinton and Obama had no qualms in leveraging their fame (or infamy) into book contracts and speaking engagements. Mainstream media’s lack of interest in their extraordinary (and quick) wealth accumulation may be explained by the fact we live in a material age, as Madonna sang almost forty years ago: “You know we are living in a material world/And I am a material girl.” The hypocritical woke elite publicly lament income and wealth inequality, while privately celebrating their own riches behind gated compounds.

 

The word “corrupt” derives from the Latin cor (altogether) and rumpere (break). Its meaning is broader than simply selling access for dollars, which President Biden’s son Hunter has done in China, Russia and Ukraine, activities “which,” wrote Kimberly Strassel in the April 8, 2022 edition of the Wall Street Journal, “raises questions about counterintelligence and extortion, even as it puts a spotlight on how honest President Biden has been in claiming no knowledge of his son’s doings.”

 

Corruption can refer to any action that results in dishonest and immoral behavior. It can refer to an organization that has debased its raison d’être – the United Nation’s Human Rights Council comes to mind. Corruption escalates in our woke world. In his recent memoir One Damn Thing After Another, William Barr wrote about the blitzkrieg of progressive ideological thinking: “The essential factor, in my view, was the corruption of the mainstream news media beginning around the turn of the century.” False stories of Russia-collusion during the 2016 Presidential election was manifest of media corruption, and it was corruption within Congress and intelligence agencies that led to Robert Mueller’s $40 million fruitless search for corroborating evidence of Russian interference. It was the corruption of ethics that allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to sit on a story of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer for over a year, a story written up by the New York Post on October 19, 2020 and then banned on social media. It was fifteen months before mainstream news outlets acknowledged the laptop and its contents. The intelligence services have yet to admit their role in withholding information. Woke corruption is pervasive. It raises fear in corporate boardrooms; it dominates Hollywood; it proliferates in colleges and universities, which shut down debate and cancel harmful (read conservative) speech, while claiming their mission is to seek truth. 

 

This is not a blanket condemnation of all politicians, government bureaucrats and members of the woke community. Not all are corrupt and not all news sources are propagandists. But many are. Not all universities are hotbeds of progressive nihilists and not all boardrooms bow to woke ideologies. Serving the public as an elected representative is an honorable task and most who go to Washington do so to improve the lives of their constituents, but there are those who fit Ambrose Bierce’s description and who will, with the help of a compliant press, use all means to personally benefit. The decision by the jury in Grand Rapids last week to acquit Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta of conspiring to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer was an example of corruption embedded in the FBI’s “Praetorian Guard” mentality of entrapping opponents of favored politicians. 

 

The world will never be rid of corrupt politicians, moralizing news reporters, social media suppressors, sanctimonious bureaucrats, obsequious business leaders and progressive professors. While cynicism may be unhealthy, skepticism about what we read, hear and watch is not. We should read extensively, retain our moral standards and form our own conclusions, while remembering we are part of a larger community. We should be wary of politicians bearing false promises. We should remember President Reagan’s warning of the nine most terrifying words in the English language: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

"Cult of Personality v. Suppression of Voices"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Cult of Personality v. Suppression of Voices”

May 25, 2021

 

“The cure for evil and disorder is more liberty, not suppression.”

                                                                                                                                Alexander Berkman (1870-1936)

                                                                                                                                Author, The Bolshevik Myth, 1925

 

Olawale Daniel, founder of TechAtLast International, once said: “The most dangerous and powerful people in the world do not carry guns or shoot missiles; they write code to surveil and suppress opposing views.” There is no question that a commanding personality can become demagogic, especially when emotion supplants reason, and the goal is nefarious. But a demagogue only becomes dangerous when accompanied by a willing state, a compliant media and a culture of conformity that does not permit dissenting voices. So long as people are free to exercise their natural rights to speak, write, assemble and pray, people will remain the master and politicians the servants.

 

For four years the Left ranted about the risk to democracy, with a “demagogic” Donald Trump in the White House. They spoke of his coarseness, exaggerations, and his non-PC speech. Ignored were the facts he diminished government’s impact on individuals through deregulation and reduced government’s resources through lower taxes. A charismatic personality can camouflage a bad leader, as the world learned in the last century, with Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, but it can also magnify a good leader, like Churchill, FDR or Ronald Reagan.  

 

It is the suppression of voices that should concern lovers of freedom. In 1950, when the United States was experiencing a “Red Scare” and Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) was starting his infamous hearings, President Truman sent a special message to Congress on August 8: “…we must be eternally vigilant against those who would undermine freedom in the name of security.” Three years later, in the March 1953 issue of the Vassar Alumnae Magazine, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote: “Restrictions of free thought is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one Un-American act that could most easily defeat us.” Over the years, free expression allowed man to grow and expand his horizons. Freedom, progress and wealth are its progeny. It is a never-ending process, which will continue so long as man is able to think, speak and act freely.

 

In his concurrence in Whitney v. California (1927), Justice Louis Brandies wrote: “Man feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.” When universities ban books for fear of hurtful language, they do damage to those they purport to protect. When politicians repress opposing views with threats of investigations and inquiries, they do irreparable harm to our Constitution. When tech companies shut down social media accounts for those they dislike, they set precedents that affect all mankind. When mainstream media reports only the news that fit their narrative, they promote ignorance rather than knowledge. During the Trump years, the response of the Left was far more dangerous than anything Mr. Trump said or did, for they blocked dissent and suppressed speech. It is not just Mr. Trump who was treated in this manner, but those who supported him. This was done under a hypocritical flag of moral righteousness, abetted by mainstream media and a cultural environment that celebrated wokeness, and which canceled history and opinions when they did not conform to a predetermined narrative.  

 

Who is responsible for this state of affairs? Politicians? The media? Schools and universities? Churches? Wall Street and large corporations? TV personalities? Cultural institutions? Hollywood? Publishers? Eleemosynary organizations? All bear some responsibility. In a political environment inundated with conflicting opinions and no one to sort them out other than ourselves, we must, like Diogenes, conduct the search for truth alone, whether it is asking about the unpublished Durham Report, learning exactly what happened on January 6, or uncovering the origins of COVID-19. In an undated video, Carl Sagan (1934-1996), the astronomer and planetary scientist, spoke: “The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge.”

 

While Sagan was speaking about science, his words reflect the current environment of enforced conformity to woke ideas regarding equity, diversity, inclusion, victimization, race and gender. Roger Kimball, writing in the May issue of The Spectator, noted that at one time colleges and universities were dedicated to the “pursuit of truth and the transmission of the highest values of our civilization.” Today, the “mantra is ‘diversity.’ The reality is strictly enforced conformity about any ideas that might disturb the heavy moral slumber of wokeness.” The story of our past is cancelled, for fear it celebrates the whiteness of our European ancestors, thus denying today’s youth the history of man’s progress over the centuries. Today, some of the United States’ most successful individuals emigrated from Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. It was here, within our culture and customs and under our government and our laws, that they flourished. Is not that something to recognize and celebrate?

 

History moves across a continuum, reflecting events and ideas, along with changing and unchanging values. We cannot know who we are without learning of our past, the good and the bad. Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter, under the banner of equity, would have us fall backward into a discriminatory and divisive past, when we should be moving forward toward a mutually respectful and tolerant future. In a recent column in The Epoch Times, Victor Davis Hanson wrote: “When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all-too predictable future becomes terrifying.” Staying silent, when an enormous cloud of fairy dust is sprinkled on the people by woke elites, is not the answer.

 

While there is, at present, no mesmerizing politician on the Left capable of lassoing the current cultural environment of wokeness and suppressed speech, the landscape has been prepared and the gate is open. I am reminded of how the ground in Germany was furrowed and seeded in the half dozen years leading to Hitler’s Chancellorship in 1933. We must be vigilant. For, it is when the charismatic politician enters an arena with uncritical support from the media, universities, woke corporations and cultural institutions that we have to fear.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Election – A Few More Things to Consider”

October 30, 2020

 

“Extreme intolerance has now replaced the liberal notion of 

negotiated compromise that is the sine quo non of democracy.”

                                                                                                                                Andrew A. Michta

                                                                                                                                Dean, College of International Studies

                                                                                                                                George C. Marshall European Center

                                                                                                                                Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

                                                                                                                                Op-ed, Wall Street Journal, 10-27-20

 

The election will be over in four days, though the results may not be known for a while. This is written to raise questions, which give credence to the importance of this election.

 

The strongest case for Joe Biden is that he will (or so he claims) return the country to normalcy – whatever that is – and bring civility back to the White House. God knows, today’s politics do not appear normal and even Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters would hesitate to affix the adjective “civil” when describing the 45^th President. Calling Vice President Biden “sleepy Joe,” and referring to the Speaker of the House as “crazy Nancy” would not endear Mr. Trump to Emily Post. But is he alone? Was it polite for Mr. Biden to tell the black radio host Charlamagne, “If you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black!”? Was it gracious for the Speaker to tear up the President’s State of the Union speech on live TV? Civility is absent in Washington. Should that be blamed on Trump or do its roots extend further back? Could anyone describe Joe Biden’s behavior as civil, when as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1980s, he interrogated Robert Bork, claiming his America was “…a land where women are forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors…” or what about his “high-tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas? Was Senate Majority leader Harry Reid deferential (or even wise) to eliminate the filibuster, as it applied to judicial appointments, in November 2013? A decision regretted four years later. 

 

And what is normal behavior? Is it normal to not acknowledge the results of an election, as numerous politicians did in joining the Trump “resistance” in January 2017? Have the looting, riots and killings in cities across the nation, in response to the horrific death of George Lloyd at the hands of a policeman, been normal? Was the refusal to accept the findings of the Mueller investigation, after three years and the expenditure of thirty to forty million taxpayer dollars normal? Was it normal for a sitting U.S. Vice President to allow his son to trade on his name with foreign nationals? Was it normal for the nation’s intelligence agencies to try to sabotage a duly elected President? Was it normal for the New York Times’ writer-at-large, Jim Rutenberg to admit, as he did in August 2016, that they (the Times) could not be “objective” when covering Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump?  Would it be normal, should Democrats take the Senate and the Presidency, to then try to “pack” the Supreme Court and/or attempt to make Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. states? 

 

There are other points to consider: Is the nihilism implicit in cancel culture, and which is rampant in our schools and universities, something average Americans want? Do we want the segregation that stems from identity politics? Are we ready to embrace the Socialism of the far Left? Will the New York Times 1619 Project replace the story of our founding in our public schools? And what about Black Lives Matter? Their lives have long mattered, as have all lives. Are the words expressed in our Declaration of Independence and in the Gettysburg Address to be discarded, along with statues of Jefferson and Lincoln that have already been destroyed? Should we ignore the long path toward racial equality over which our nation has traveled, beginning with Lincoln and furthered by Democrat President Harry Truman when he integrated the Armed Forces in July 1948? It received an assist with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which stated that separate schools for whites and blacks are unconstitutional and inherently unequal. And it was abetted by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower when he sent the 101^st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, to integrate the city’s all-white Central High School. Did not the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 help the cause? 

 

Should we not allow inner-city children and their parents to have choice, as do wealthy elites, when it comes to schools, through vouchers or charters? The Country has achieved energy independence for the first time in decades. Do we want to return to dependence on Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia? Is it healthy when three technology companies, from whom 70% of Americans get their news, genuflect to the same political ideology? I don’t pretend to have an answer, but I am sure if the shoe were on the other foot, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi would be up in arms. 

 

And what about the pandemic. In truth, what would Biden have done differently? Mr. Trump was faced with a novel virus, the first of its kind in a hundred years. On January 30, Mr. Trump declared a national public health emergency. On that same day, he barred entry into the U.S. by foreign nationals who had recently visited China, a decision Mr. Biden said was xenophobic. Four weeks later, on February 24^th, Nancy Pelosi visited San Francisco’s China Town: “Come, because precautions have been taken. The city is on top of the situation.” Because of its novelty, the handling of the Virus was experimental, on-the-job training if you will. Operation Warp Speed has been a success. A partnership between components of HHS, CDC, BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) and the DOD and private companies, it was introduced on May 15, its purpose is to accelerate the development of products and services to combat COVID-19, while maintaining protocols of safety and efficacy. Could the overall situation have been handled better? Perhaps. Monday morning quarterbacks can always find something they would have done differently. but the President had to balance the pandemic with the need to keep the economy alive. Now, we look forward to a bright spring, hopefully not a “dark winter.”     

 

With the prospect for peace in the Middle East more viable than ever, should we abandon Jerusalem and return to regional instability?  Should we permit China to resume its practice of stealing American technology, its unfair trade practices and its building of military bases on man-made islands in the South China Sea? Should we permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapon? Should not Europe be made to pay their fair share for defense? Should we remove the newly-erected missile defense system in Poland?

 

This list does not pretend to cover all areas, and everyone will have different things to considers. But they point to the fact that this election is important, in ways beyond the two men running. What kind of a country do we want for our children, grandchildren and all those yet to be born? Tolerance of intolerance, whether on the left or the right, is never the answer. We need debate and discussion – civilly, if possible. Nor can we forget our heritage that dates back to the earliest settlers, and which was forged in a War for Independence and, seventy-four years later, in a Civil War. It is a heritage of which to be proud and that today includes all races, ethnicities and religions – people who came to these shores and this place on sailing ships, steam ships, planes and on foot. They came for a better future. They came to become Americans, not hyphenated Americans. That is something to celebrate.

"A 75th Anniversary"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Essay from Essex

“A 75^th Anniversary”

May 7, 2020

“Can it be true this really is V-E Day?”

                                                            My mother, in a letter to my father

                                                            May 7, 1945

                                                            Dear Mary: Letters home from the 10^th Mountain Division, 1944-1945

                                                            Sydney M. Williams

While V-E Day is celebrated on May 8, the “Act of Military Surrender” was signed in Reims by General Affred Jodl, on behalf of Nazi Germany and accepted by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, at 2:41AM May 7, 1945. When guns finally ceased, Europe had been at war for five years and eight months. Americans had been fighting for three years and five months. An estimated 75 million people lost their lives during those years, including 405,000 Americans.  

I was four years old, living at my maternal grandparents’ home in Madison, Connecticut, with my mother, two sisters and a brother. My father, with the 10^th Mountain Division, was in Roverto, just west and north of Italy’s Lake Garda’s. In his History of the 87^th Mountain Infantry, Captain George Earle wrote: “After the memory of the seared browns of the Apennines and the recent dust of battle, the May colors of the foothills of the Alps seemed unbelievably fresh and vivid.”  The war in Italy had ended five days earlier.

While some equate our experience with COVID-19 today as our generation’s trial, it is not the same. Certainly, healthcare workers, who daily face the possibility of infection, knowingly confront peril. But those of us who “shelter-at-home” have little in common with foot soldiers in foxholes, airmen in combat, submariners being depth-charged, or marines storming beaches. We wear masks and socially distance.

On May 7, 1945, the war in Europe was over, but the Japanese were still dug in on Okinawa. The next day, President Harry Truman spoke: “This is a solemn but glorious hour.” British Prime minister Winston Churchill also spoke: “We must now devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task both at home and abroad…” An invasion of Japan was planned for the fall, and the 10^th Mountain Division was to participate. On May 21, in words that captured his somber mood, my father wrote my mother: “I don’t believe there’s any use thinking about getting home for a long, long time.” Fortunately, his concern was never realized. The bomb ended the War, and he arrived home on V-J Day.   

None of us chooses a time to be born. It was the fate of the generation born in the first two and a half decades of the 20^th Century that they were fated to serve in the Second World War. All lives face obstacles, some worse than others, most of which are beyond one’s control. We must each play the cards we are dealt. J.R.R. Tolkien’s young Frodo Baggins, after his final adventures in The Fellowship of the Ring, says to the wizard: Gandalf: “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Gandalf replies: “So do I. So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” The World War II generation, in their time, faced incredible challenges, yet they did their duty. They went without complaints to a fate they knew not.

On this day, when we remember the victory that brought seventy-five years of peace to Europe, we should never forget the men and women who fought to preserve civilization.

"Resistance (At All Costs)" by Kimberley Strassel

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

“Resistance (At All Costs)” by Kimberley Strassel

December 10, 2019

“Her fact-filled reporting exposes a simple but hidden truth:

The Resistance is violating the norms it claims to care so much about,

leaving a lasting and damaging mark on the country.”

                                                                                                Mollie Hemingway

                                                                                                Senior Editor, The Federalist

                                                                                                Advance Praise for Resistance

Kimberley Strassel is a member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board and writes a weekly political column, “Potomac Watch.” This book, her second, should be read by all, especially by those who feel Mr. Trump’s behavior justifies any and all resistance: to the man, his Presidency and even to those who speak or write positively about him or his policies. Sadly, it won’t be. But, if it were, there would be a better understanding of the harm done to our democracy by “haters” and how politicized the federal bureaucracy has become. There would be a greater recognition that the real threats to the freedoms we take for granted come not from the flawed Mr. Trump but from those whose hatred knows no bounds.

Ms. Strassel defines the Resistance as “…the legions of Americans who were resolutely opposed to the election of Trump, and who remain angrily determined to remove him from office.” The full title of her book is Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters are Breaking America. She deliberately avoided using the word “critics,” as the “haters” do not believe in nuance. In their view, one cannot disapprove of the man yet approve of his policies. As Ms. Strassel wrote, haters view everything to do with Trump in “black-and-white morality. You either hate the man, or you are as bad as the man.” – Witness what is happening to Attorney General William Barr.  (From personal experience, I am sensitive to this issue. While I have been critical of Mr. Trump’s behavior, language and character, I support many of his policies – tax reform; deregulation; exposing sanctimonious, prejudiced bureaucrats; support for Israel; demanding that Europeans pay more for NATO; levying heavier sanctions on Russian oligarchs; taking the U.S. out of the toothless Paris Accord; appointing conservative judges who practice Constitutional restraint and advocate for justice, not social justice; confronting China on the stealing of our technology, etc. I believe the disruption he has brought to Washington has been good for the cleansing of the City’s soul. Nevertheless, for stating my opinions, I have been called an insensitive racist.)

The infestation of hatred reaches deep into government’s bureaucracy and affects us all. “…it should worry every American that prosecutors and law enforcement officials are willing to smear elected officials – just to hide their secrets.”. These same non-elected bureaucrats have come to understand that “there are few immediate consequences to balking congressional subpoenas…that they have the ability to keep their actions hidden in the longer term.” This attitude extends to the judiciary, with the insertion of “political animus into our judicial system [that] is undermining American belief in a blind Lady Justice.” Prejudicial

Lower courts have forced the Supreme Court to intervene more than usual. The media, too, has become part of the resistance. Ms. Strassel concludes her observations on the press with a question: “What defined the media breakdown that started in 2016 was their destruction of standards in aid of peddling a fiction – the Trump-Russia collusion narrative…The country needs a fair and balanced press; post-Trump, how does the industry ever gain that trust back?”

Mr. Trump is called a demagogue and a despot by the “haters,” a man who will destroy democracy. Yet, he has not governed by Executive Order to the extent his immediate predecessor did. He has reduced, not increased, the size of government. With his real estate holdings in Europe, Asia and South America, he has been accused of violating the Emoluments Clause, yet Forbes estimates his net worth declined by 30% during the first two years of his Presidency. In contrast, the Clinton’s net worth went from zero in 2000 to an estimated $240 million today, much of it from foreign governments’ donations to the Clinton Foundation, while Hillary Clinton was a New York Senator, Secretary of State and while she was running for President as the Democrat nominee in 2015-2016. Forbes estimates that the Obama’s net worth has increased thirty-fold in the three years since he left the Presidency. What would Harry Truman say?

There are those who will claim that Ms. Strassel is too prejudiced, too wrapped up in her opinions that the intelligence community of James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper used their offices to hamper the candidacy of Mr. Trump and to further their own political interests – that she is too consumed with this narrative to be an unbiased, dispassionate observer. However, the facts she offers and the perspective she provides tell a compellingly different tale.

Finally, this is a story about the risks of big government and the dangers from its octopus-like arms, which encroach on the rights of the people. In an article in last month’s National Review, Victor Davis Hanson wrote: “…by nature, the huge federal bureaucracy counts on bigger government and more taxes to feed it. So, naturally, the bureaucracy is usually more sympathetic to big-government progressives.” Ms. Strassel quotes Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) during the final days of the Kavanaugh hearings, perhaps the nadir for Trump haters (or, at least, until the impeachment hearings), as vindictiveness and hyperbole spread like wildfire through Congress: “We must always remember that it is when passions are most inflamed that fairness is most in jeopardy.”

Since this book is unlikely to be read by those targeted, it is unlikely to heal what divides us. We will go on, two halves of a bivalve, separated by a hatred that precludes reconciliation. “Haters” must learn to tolerate political differences, recognize that one can like a politician’s policies without loving the individual, and we all must acknowledge that, as Americans, we are citizens of an exceptional and special nation. Instead of letting hatred define our times, we should thank God we can call America our home.