"A Common Culture?"

 We are less than two weeks from the Inauguration. Like some of you, I look forward to a change in leadership, not only because I am conservative, but, more important, because we will know who is in the driver’s seat. I should not be surprised – though I will not be around to witness their assessments – that when historians consider the last four years from the vantage of a few decades the focus will be, who was in charge? President Biden’s sad cognitive decline was obvious from the beginning. But what was really wrong was that his advisors and the press did their best to keep the public ignorant of his deteriorating condition. Living with an Administration with which we disagree is part of democracy. But having a government run by those we don’t know violates the very essence of a democracy.

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Common Culture?”

January 8, 2025

 

“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their

Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

                                                                                                                                The Declaration of Independence

                                                                                                                                July 4, 1776

 

Many Americans bemoan a decline in culture. But what do we mean by culture? Are we speaking of the arts, religion, traditions, or a shared history? Are we referring to behavior? In a review of Eliot Stein’s Custodians of Wonder, Brandy Schillace wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Our lives are connected to the land and the animals. Yet we are also threads in the tapestry that stretches back into prehistory, a part of a superorganism that is culture itself.”

 

So, what is culture? Definitions have changed. Noah Webster, in his 1828 dictionary, defined the word according to its etymological roots: “The act of tilling and preparing the earth for crops.” Forty-three years later, Edward Burnett Tyler, in Primitive Culture, defined the term in words we better understand today: “Culture…is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” From the Oxford English Dictionary: “Culture –The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” In 1952, U.S. anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, cited 164 definitions of culture. I think of culture, first as a system of shared beliefs, values, behavior and practices – based on our Judeo-Christian heritage and embedded in our founding documents – and second as works of art, literature and music. 

 

For most of our nation’s history differences ruled. Rural and immigrant communities were often distinct entities. Until the mid-19^th Century, most Americans never ventured far from their homes. But from the mid 19^th Century on, technological advances unified us in a way unknown to earlier Americans. First we had steam ships, trains and then, later, the automobile, which allowed people to experience the size of our country. Radio then television brought other parts of the country and the world into our lives. The number of newspapers began to shrink. So that by my generation, people read the same news, listened to the same music, watched the same TV shows, saw the same movies, and heard the same nightly newscasts. In 1956 (in a country half the size it is today), Elvis Presley sold 10 million copies of a single song, “Hound Dog.” According to Pew Research, every evening during the 1960s between 27 and 29 million people listened to Walter Cronkite’s news on CBS, an audience greater than today’s combined daily audiences for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

 

While we had differences back then – the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, the Civil Rights movement of the late 1950s and early ‘60s and the anti-War protests of the late 1960s and early ‘70s – the country was, generally, unified, at least in terms of what we read, listened to, and watched. That has changed. The expansion of social media posts, podcasts, YouTube and other platforms have meant we listen to and watch entertainment and news that fits our biases.  A Pew research study from last September suggests 91% of Americans aged 18-49 get their news, “at least some of the time,” from digital devices.

 

While it is estimated that more than 350 languages are spoken in the U.S. today, English is our common language. To be successful, one must adopt it. Even in colonial America a variety of languages and dialects were spoken, including German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Swedish, Hebrew, Irish and Welch, along with myriad variations. The roughly 450,000 African slaves then in America spoke numerous languages. As well, the estimated 250,000 Native Americans spoke approximately 300 different languages. Because of an anti-British sense, a few founding fathers preferred adopting German as the new nation’s language. But English prevailed and Webster’s Speller was published in 1783. In The Forgotten Founding Father, Joshua Kendall quoted Noah Webster: “Our political harmony is therefore concerned in the uniformity of language.”

 

We will not return to a time when we all listened to the same music, read the same newspapers, and watched the same television programs. As Americans we are not hindered by a class system that is integral to Europe’s and many other societies’ history and traditions. We are a nation of immigrants, born of multicultural parents. We are beneficiaries of a unique government and society, birthed during the Enlightenment, one that cares more about the individual than who her or his parents were. In his 1931 history, The Epic of America, historian James Truslow Adams wrote of what we all yearn: “The American dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” In August 1790 President George Washington visited Newport, Rhode Island. Afterwards he wrote a letter to Newport’s Hebrew Congregation, founded in 1763: “For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean[1] themselves as good citizens.” 

 

In my opinion, the answer to the question posed in the title is yes, the United States does have a common culture. Besides our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have a common language, rooted in the words so eloquently expressed in The Declaration of Independence; it is fostered by a government elected by the people, which secures those rights, and operates under the rule of law. It is reflected in a society that promotes tolerance and respect for others, and that allows for the accommodation of differences. It is a culture that depends on personal responsibility and accountability, a culture built on individual freedom.

 

Our culture requires we be governed by our peers, with a government, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, of, by and for the people. Our culture does not shy from dissent but reflects an undefinable something that draws us together in time of strife when commonalities rise above differences. It is a culture that is, however, always at risk of being lost; so it cannot be abandoned to self-serving, ephemeral policies like DEI, identity politics, or promoting a lifestyle that permits men to compete against women in sports or encourages gender alteration among prepubescent children and teenagers.

 

In 1919, Henry Cabot Lodge wrote President Woodrow Wilson words that echo today: “I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first…I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it.” Does anyone believe that if China were to become the global hegemon the world would be better off? We cherish this unique culture that is ours. It is not transient. It is embedded in our unique origins. It is our culture that draws to these shores the industrious and aspirant, because they know that it offers an environment in which they will be free to thrive. 

 

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[1] The word demean was defined then as “to behave; to carry, to conduct.”

"Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?"

Memorial Day was first celebrated as Decoration Day on May 30, 1868. It was celebrated as a day of remembrance for those who died in the Civil War. On that first day 20,000 graves in Arlington Cemetery were decorated with flowers. Over the years the day came to be celebrated as one of remembrance for all those who fell, defending our liberties, in all the Nation’s wars. 

In 1971, Memorial Day was moved to the last Monday of the month. Growing up in Peterborough, New Hampshire, I remember the parade in which marched veterans of both world wars, with most from the Second World War still in their 20s. On our bikes we followed the parade to Pine Hill Cemetery where wreaths were laid on the graves of veterans, a three-volley salute was fired, and Taps were played, with its haunting echo wafting through the White Pines. Pine Hill Cemetery is where my parents – my father a veteran of World War II – now lie, along with my brother Stuart.

 

Today, we watch the parade in Old Lyme where we lived for a quarter of a century. It is a parade with far fewer soldiers, but one that embodies the community’s patriotic spirit. As in my childhood, we follow the marchers, now to the Duck River Cemetery, where we listen to the three-volley salute to the fallen, then doff our hats and place our hands over our hearts as Taps reverberates across the graves, marshes and out to the Connecticut River.

 

Memorial Day is a reminder that we are all Americans, no matter our ethnic and racial heritage, and of how lucky we are to be here, to be living in this great nation at this time.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?”

May 24, 2024

 

“One of the things I admire most about America is they have created a

genuine melting pot society, a country of opportunity; you can be of any

religion, colour, ethnicity, persuasion and make it to the top of your chosen

field. And that’s something I admire about America and hope they continue with.”

                                                                                                                                David Cameron (1966-)

Speech at Foreign Policy Centre, London

August 24, 2005 

 

In The Forgotten Founding Father Joshua Kendall wrote: “Recognizing [Noah] Webster’s knack for getting Americans to think of themselves as Americans, [George] Washington relied time and time again on his trusted policy advisor.” We tend to think of colonial Americans as being solely of British heritage, and certainly they dominated. But languages spoken in the American colonies in 1775 included German, Dutch, French, Swedish, Polish and Hebrew, along with numerous dialects and myriad languages of indigenous Americans. From its beginning America was diverse, unlike the more homogenous countries from which immigrants had come. The Founding Fathers wanted the people to become a melting pot.

 

Noah Webster[1] understood the value of developing the unique character of an American. His spelling books were designed to help people read, write and speak a common language. In the June 29, 2019 issue of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Richard Lederer noted that Webster’s dictionaries had “an array of shiny new American words, among them bullfrog, chowder, handy, hickory, succotash, tomahawk…” Today, in this English-speaking country, those not fluent are disadvantaged, yet not all are encouraged to learn English.

 

Integration, in this nation of immigrants, was slow, as could be seen in many New York City neighborhoods that remained distinctive into the 20^th Century: Little Italy; China Town; Yorkville (for Germans); Spanish Harlem; Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant and Manhattan’s Harlem, home for black Americans, and Lapskaus Boulevard in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn where many Norwegians settled. But assimilation became increasingly common in the first and second halves of the 20^thCentury, first through inter-ethnic marriages and later through interracial marriages.

 

Change is always slower than we would like. For example, until the 1967 unanimous Supreme Court decision of Loving versus Virginia, interracial marriages were forbidden by law in thirty-one states. According to Pew Research, in 1960 only 3% of marriages in the U.S. were between persons of different races. Yet by 2022, such unions represented 19% of all marriages. Public approval of interracial marriages, according to Wikipedia, was 5% in 1950, but had risen to 94% in 2021.  Ancestry.com and 23andMe have increased people’s interest in their ancestry, and many are amazed at the diversity of their heritage – something more common in the United States than in other parts of the world.

 

 

The melting pot ideal remains the preferred metaphor for most Americans. We recognize the uniqueness of this country, that it values individual freedom, yet with a government that operates under the rule of law, not men. It stands, most of us believe, as “a shining city on a hill,” as a beacon to the rest of the world. But not all Americans see us that way, including many who consider themselves part of “the elite.” In a recent essay in National Review, British historian Andrew Roberts wrote about D-Day, and its 80^th Anniversary to be celebrated in a couple of weeks. He wrote of how yesterday’s heroes might not meet the tests of “today’s masters of inclusivity and sensitivity.” He suggested that there is not today, among the nation’s elites, a sense of “…the superiority of democracy and liberty and the benefits of Western civilization…” He asks if those ideals, “something noble,” are something we now choose to discard? Roberts concludes: Eighty years ago “they knew what was worth fighting and dying for, whereas today we seem to be unsure of everything, even down to the pronouns we should use for one another.”

 

Washington politicians and their supporters in the media today find it easier to compartmentalize people by identity, including gender, sexual preference, race and ethnicity, rather than embrace the compromises that come from opposing ideas. They divide people into victims and oppressors – if you are of the former you can never succeed without help, and if you are one of the latter you will always have an unfair advantage. For those who practice identity politics, initiative does not count; merit is out, and personal responsibility plays no role. For example, Title IX has been re-written, so that preference is given to all women, transwomen as well as biological women. The consequences, including use of bathrooms and sports competition, cannot be what the authors of the original Title IX intended.

 

Dividing people into identifiable groups is destructive to the concept of a unified people, as Roberts noted. It breeds distrust and hatred. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) – the Austrian free-market economist, born of Jewish parents and who left Vienna in 1934 to avoid Nazi influence (and who well understood the risk of identity politics) – called out in his Theory and History what he termed “the pernicious doctrine of polylogism,” the belief that different groups of people reason in fundamentally different ways – the path down which identity politics leads. Such beliefs result in anarchy, a society with no moral code, no rules as to right or wrong – that there is no one logic or one truth. A society of such “unconstrained imagination[2]” would not have been able to have written our Constitution in 1787.

 

Of course, a “melting pot” achieved through coercion is antidemocratic, as is one that denies people the right to stay in touch with their heritage. As well, a “melting pot” should never be confused with unity of opinions. Diversity of ideas is essential to democracy. It is why independent thought should be encouraged. It is why we debate issues – to find a consensus. On the other hand, a preference for the “salad bowl” approach where the radishes clash with the tomatoes and the peppers stand aloof of the cucumbers, ignores the need for the people of this nation to discover that consensus and to think of themselves as Americans. 

 

The metaphor of the melting pot best reflects the natural course of a free and open society. It suggests that there are things more important than race or ethnicity. It suggests that opportunity, as David Cameron implied, is available to all, and that individual success is dependent on individual initiative, aspiration and ability. The beauty and uniqueness of America is that the opinions of its citizens – people of all races and nationalities – are reflected in the voting booths. According to the website PoliEngine there are more than 100,000 governments in the United States, employing 519,682 politicians – 96% of those governments are local.  So long as Washington’s efforts to divide us fail, those myriad ideas and decisions will reflect the diversity of an increasingly complex melting pot, where the ingredients become inseparable. Let the pot grow in size. But as for diversity of ideas, let the salad bowl flourish.

 

                                                                                

 

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[1] Noah Webster was one of my 32 four-great grandfathers. His wisdom, though, has been diluted by my 31 less illustrious male ancestors; though buttressed by my 32 four-great grandmothers.

[2] Jeffrey Tucker’s term in the May 15-21, 2024 issue of The Epoch Times.

"What Ails Us?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“What Ails Us?”

February 24, 2020

“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

                                                                                                            Mark Twain (1835-1910)

                                                                                                            Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1935

                                                                                                            Editor, Albert Bigelow Paine

In the summer of 1961, after my sophomore year in college, I worked in the smelter of Canada’s Falconbridge Nickel Mines just outside of Sudbury, Ontario. There were a number of Canadian students – all men – working in the mine that summer. On weekends, we would head into Sudbury to have a few beers and otherwise relax. One evening, fortified with libations, we attended a student union debate. The subject: “Resolved: I Would Rather be Dead than Red,” a common debate topic at the time. At the debates’ conclusion, members of the audience were asked if they would like to come up and speak, first for the affirmative and later for the negative. Having enjoyed debate in school and with vocal cords loosened with a couple of Molson Ales, I approached the dais and gave my reasons in the two minutes of allotted time. A few other students did as well. Then the moderator asked who would speak for the negative. At first no one rose, so again I approached the dais, this time to applause, to offer my opposing views.

The idea of debating two sides of an issue was always good training. Aristotle is alleged to have said that “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” I would go further and claim that if one does not understand an opponent’s position, then there is no possibility of reaching compromise. We have entered a twilight zone where biases are so extreme that we no longer communicate but talk over one another. Institutions, like family, church (or, at least, traditional Christian churches) and community organizations are in decline. They have been replaced by groups like #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #Resistance, #MAGA and social media, which give participants a chance to gather on like-minded platforms but offer little opportunity to witness or appreciate opposing views.

Unlike Swedes, French, Chinese or Japanese, we are Americans by choice, a choice that was either ours or that of our forefathers. While a typical Swede or Chinese can be imagined, a typical American cannot. We are too diverse. While our land was inhabited by immigrants in the early 17^th Century, our nation was formed in 1789, with men wise in the knowledge of laws and with an understanding of the governments of other nations, past and present – their strengths and their weaknesses. Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Founders knew that “…unaccommodated [uncivilized] man is no more but a bare, forked animal…,” metaphorically suggesting he was anarchical, with the capacity for good and evil. They also knew, through a study of history, that governments without restrictions become instruments of tyranny. So, they devised a government in which laws, not men, set boundaries, and one in which three, counter-forcing branches balance one another, so that no individual or group would wield power indiscriminately.

Our Founders were not perfect by today’s standards, but measured against those of 250 years ago, they were extraordinary, enlightened men. From the start, we were a polyglot nation. In those far away days, according to Joshua Kendall’s biography of Noah Webster, The Forgotten Founding Father (and my four-greats grandfather), more than fifty languages and dialects were spoken in Pennsylvania alone. Overtime, the country became – and is still becoming – a melting pot. The mixing of religions, ethnicities and races. Not too many years ago, Germantown, Little Italy and Chinatown were culturally distinct neighborhoods in New York City, not marketing venues as they are today. Europe, with its long history of nativist populations, has had a far more difficult time integrating immigrants, as has been seen in violent attacks in France, Sweden, Germany and Britain. Yet the consequence of progressives today, with their emphasis on identity politics and victimization, is to divide a people struggling to unite, to create a salad bowl, a place where the radishes, carrots, peppers and tomatoes have their distinct places. Their reason for doing so is political, as it is easier to tailor messages to distinct groups – ones of race, religion and heritage, and others of gender and sexual preference, but not ones of ideas based on a study of history and civics. What has been lost is a sense of what America means, of a people of disparate opinions, backgrounds, aspirations and abilities who formed (and are still forming) a nation unlike any other on Earth.

As well, the composition of our political parties has changed. It was in 1860 that the first presidential election pitted a Democrat against a Republican. The 2020 election will the 40^th such election where those two main parties represent the myriad views of millions of voters.  Today’s population is eleven times bigger than it was in 1860. A microcosm of the change that has taken place in political parties over the past sixty years could be seen in Connecticut’s 2018 gubernatorial election. The Democrat Ned Lamont is the great grandson of J.P Morgan’s partner Thomas W. Lamont. He grew up in Laurel Hollow, Long Island and attended Phillips Exeter and Harvard. His father worked in the Nixon Administration. The Republican Bob Stefanowski grew up in a working-class family in North Haven, CT. His father was a scoreboard assistant at the Yale Bowl. He is a graduate of North Haven High School and Fairfield University. Sixty years ago, Lamont would have been the Republican and Stefanowski the Democrat.

Privileged is a word tossed around carelessly today. Those of us fortunate to live in the United States are all privileged. We live in a nation without aristocracies, where backgrounds account for less than talent and aspiration. We live in a nation of laws that protect private property. We have abundant resources and no enemies on our borders. We come from all corners of the globe. According to the Census Bureau, over three hundred and fifty languages are spoken in this country. Success is a function of desire, ability and a willingness to work hard. Yet, all of us do not accept the opportunities our privileges permit.

Contradictions abound in today’s political environment. Extreme right-wing Republicans push nativist policies, incompatible with our multicultural country. Progressive Democrats, push dependency on government, to reassure their re-elections. Dependency is necessary, when individuals cannot care for themselves, but in other cases dependency deprives the capable and aspirant from realizing their hopes and dreams. What makes this ironic is that technology, particularly the internet, has boosted opportunities for innovative entrepreneurs. What Joseph Schumpeter described as “creative destruction” has hit our economy, destroying old industries – some known for lifetime employment – but creating new ones, which offer risk and opportunity. The taxi industry is a good example. Collusion between politicians and medallion owners limited competition in cities like New York. When Uber and Lyft entered the market, they felt the wrath of government, even as consumers benefitted. Creative destruction is not a new phenomenon. It is the way economies and societies advance. Booth Tarkington’s Pulitzer prize winning novel The Magnificent Ambersons – subsequently made into a movie directed by Orson Welles – described the horse-carriage businesses bankrupted by the new automobile industry. Without adapting, businesses die. Retail, communication, entertainment industries and others are undergoing “destructive” change, with positive consequences for consumers and opportunities for risk takers. In many sexual abuse cases, presumption of innocence has too often become assumption of guilt. News programs have given up a search for truth and become advocates for policy preferences. Families have been subordinated to “villages,” in terms of raising a child, yet where else than from a family does a child receive unconditional love?

Ironies abound. There is irony, as Victor Davis Hanson recently noted in National Review, in universities that have achieved record endowments, while their students are burdened with record levels of debt. What allowed this to happen? If colleges and universities, not just U.S. taxpayers, had assumed some of the financial risk of student loan default, would tuition prices have risen as rapidly as they did? Colleges and universities took no risk. They knew they would be paid, so lifted prices and competed on the basis of physical plant and administrative help in non-educational endeavors. Attitudes toward government have changed. The call of duty, so famously echoed by John F. Kennedy, has been replaced by a demand for entitlements. Vulnerable children from troubled and impoverished families are no longer called “at risk.” They are now “at promise.” Is there not a difference between a child at risk, and a child who, given his or her untapped talent, has a promising future? In mass shootings, we blame the weapon but place no responsibility or accountability on he who pulled the trigger. We have entered an Orwellian world where universities, places that light the flame of curiosity, have banned books considered offensive to a few. That such actions are similar to those taken by tyrants in despotic states seem to be of no relevance to today’s college administrators.

Why are we in this place? We are wealthy. GDP is at record levels and unemployment at record lows. We are free, privileged to live in a democracy. We are engaged in no major wars. Despite climate-scaremongers, our carbon emissions are lower than they were ten years ago, and our rivers, lakes and beaches are cleaner than ever before. Can we do more, and should we not help developing nations? Of course, but celebrate what has been done. Blacks and Hispanics are repeatedly told that the economy and politics are not working for them, that they are victims of white oppression. Yet their unemployment is at record low levels and their real wages have begun to rise for the first time in years. President Trump is accused of being crude (which he is), yet his accusers talk of assassination without condemnation or even comment. He is accused of authoritarian tendencies, yet he has reduced regulations. Which President weaponized the IRS in 2013 to go after conservative organizations? And which political party colluded with the Justice Department and the CIA to publish false information on Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2017, first the candidate and later the nominee? Why has hatred for Mr. Trump so infested mainstream media and members of the Washington elite, that reason is no longer an arrow in their quivers? Cannot bureaucrats in Washington and elites in Hollywood, the media and in cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston and Austin understand that is a lack of consideration of some of these facts and a failure to respond to unanswered questions that led to the election three and a half years ago of Donald Trump, and which will likely lead to his re-election this November?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once wrote: “It’s a universal law – intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impertinence, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.” What ails us is a sense of arrogance that there is only one side to an argument – the one we profess, that those who disagree with us are stupid, elitist, blind or deplorable. As Mark Twain suggested, when you find yourself among only those who think like you, it may be time to regroup. Would not teachers in schools and colleges be wise to require students to debate issuess from a position opposite from what they believe? Would not that help them formulate their own ideas, as well as to help them learn something of the opinions of their opponents? Should not college be a time to be skeptical and a place to delve into the murkiness of history, to learn from the wisdom of those who came before?