"End of the West? Not so Fast"

 The accompanying photo has nothing to do with today’s essay, but I loved the contrast of the snow-covered branches silhouetted against the bright blue sky.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“End of the West? Not so Fast.”

January 7, 2026

 

“In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the

predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole.”

                                                                                                                Edmund Burke

                                                                                                                Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies

                                                                                                                March 22, 1775

 

“What we once called the normative West no longer exists in this form.”

                                                                                                                Friedrich Merz, German Chancellor

                                                                                                                Speaking to business leaders in Berlin

                                                                                                                December 9, 2025

 

“My single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe,” stated Barack Obama during his Presidency, a sentiment echoed by his successors, Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. But what about their responsibilities to ensure those freedoms cited in our Declaration of Independence and guaranteed by our Constitution? Safety appears to have superseded freedom. Keeping people safe is an important government responsibility, but ensuring individual freedom is its most important duty.

 

In his first inaugural, Thomas Jefferson wrote of the need for “a wise and frugal Government, which will restrain men from injuring one another, [but] shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement...” In his letter from Birmingham jail (April 16, 1963), Martin Luther king wrote: “We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.” Ludwig von Mises, in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method, defined what differentiates Western governments: [1] “The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state.” One has only to look at the plight of citizens in dozens of nations, from China to Venezuela, to recognize that freedom is our most valuable possession.

 

For many politicians, however the dependency of the people on government is an asset. What politician wants to ask their people to work harder or to save more to help ensure a brighter future. Yet, when the state assumes responsibilities better left to individuals, personal freedom lessens as restraints on choice take over. As the power of the state expands, people may feel safer, but it becomes riskier to speak out in opposition. 

 

Those politicians who prefer safety to freedom cite those places where individual freedom leads to personal choices, which, combined with differences in abilities and diligence, leads to vastly different outcomes. People are not equal in abilities. The best gymnast and the best physicist are masters of their respective crafts, but they could not switch places. Those who prefer freedom to safety have history on their side. Individual freedoms, along with the rule of law, the right to own property, tradition and personal virtue, are fundamental to the foundation on which Western civilization was built.   

 

Of course those who carry the greatest influence, teachers and the media, are overwhelmingly of the left, yet voter registration suggests a more nuanced nation – roughly 37% of voters nationally are registered as Democrats, 31% as Republicans, 28% as Independents, according to BallotPedia. In Connecticut, where I live and where all Congressional seats are held by Democrats, unaffiliated voters represent the largest bloc of registered voters at 42%. However, big government is still the preference of most politicians on the right as well as on the left. Benefits once granted are almost impossible to remove. Nevertheless, expanding welfare states have been accompanied with declines in marriages and births. More welfare spending impedes economic growth as investment dollars get diverted. They have, however, increased debt to a level where the easiest decision for a politician is to cheapen the currency. In this, Republicans have been as guilty as Democrats.

 

It is important to understand that individual freedoms, inherent to democracies and fundamental to our concept of the West, are always at risk, as they confound and hinder those who seek political power for personal purposes. “Freedom,” Ronald Reagan said in a 1961 speech in Phoenix, “is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Even so, as long as thought, debate and speech are not cancelled, the West has a weapon unavailable to tyrants – the power of individuals to speak and act.

 

Twice in my lifetime the West was threatened – in the mid 1930s through 1945 from Nazism and Fascism and from 1945 to 1991 by Soviet Communism. In both cases the West was ultimately triumphant, though at enormous costs in human lives. Today, external threats come from Islamic terrorists, a nuclear-armed Russia, and an aggressive Communist China. The latter seeks to extend her military, technological and economic control throughout the world. As well there are internal threats from those who seek to enlarge the role of government, by providing goodies, citing “fairness” and promising to keep us safe. In his January 1^st inaugural address as New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani spoke for those who see government as the answer to all life’s ills: “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” Contrast his words with those of President Reagan (the greatest proponent of individual freedom in my lifetime) at a 1986 press conference where he cited the languages’ nine most terrifying words: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”  

 

What gives me hope is that there are indications that some in the West are backtracking on the nanny state – an excessively protective state that interferes with personal choice. Some signs: the declining influence of climate tyrants, skepticism regarding men competing against women in sports and “gender-affirming” (sex changes) for minors, expanding acceptance of the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven Report, which declared that a university is “the home and sponsor of critics but is not itself the critic,” and an acknowledgement that Black Lives Matter (BLM), always a divisive organization in a nation where all lives matter, has lost support. In 2020, when Nancy Pelosi took a knee, along with other publicity seekers, BLM had the support of 67% of the population. Today that is around 45%. The re-emergence of talk, at least in some quarters, of accountability, responsibility, mutual respect, and the celebration of our nation’s semiquincentennial all suggest the early stages of a return to the virtues that propelled Western civilization. 

 

Western civilization is not Utopia, it is not perfect. But it has provided more innovation, better economic and social outcomes, and more individual freedoms than any other. Can the West survive today’s assault on its bulwarks from without and within? The honest answer is no one knows.  But, despite Hollywood’s despicable reimaging of George Orwell’s Animal Farm to be released this spring, I suspect the answer is ‘yes.’ Threats to the West in the past have arisen and fallen. Current ones may worsen, but the call of freedom has echoed through the ages with a clarion tone. It is heard by people around the world.

 

 

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[1]What is referred to as the “West” should not be construed as a geographic term, but as those nations who adhere to the concept of individual freedom, so includes countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.  

"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.

"Common Sense - Where Has It Gone?"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Common Sense – Where Has It Gone?”

September 29, 2021

 

“Common sense is seeing things as they are,

and doing things as they ought to be.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

 

Common sense: noun – sound and prudent judgement. Its best antonym: unreasonable – without reason.

 

Common sense is a phrase we all know but rarely practice. So why is it called common? In A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote: “Common sense is not so common.” It does not appear to exist among our cultural and political elite, where reason has given way to ideology. Ralph Waldo Emerson is alleged to have said: “Common Sense is genius dressed in working clothes.” That is, perhaps, what William Buckley meant when he said he would rather be governed by the first four hundred names in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty? Today, politicians, professors, CEOs, the media and many in the world of entertainment dress more informally, which may be sensible in terms of personal comfort, but a lack of common sense pulsates through their daily activities and commentaries. 

 

Common sense has been banished by the self-righteous. This part of Connecticut is not immune. Last week, in my local paper The Day, appeared an article about the sensible (my word) refusal of Old Lyme’s First Selectman (a Republican) to bring to a vote a resolution proposed by the Democratic Selectwoman which would identify racism as a public health crisis. His refusal was based, first, on the question: What does racism have to do with public health? Secondly, he pointed out such a resolution would imply the town has a race problem. Even the Democratic Selectwoman has said that she does not believe the people in Old Lyme are racist, yet she wants this resolution. Admittedly, the town of 7,000 is estimated to be 97.4% white, but that does not mean the community is racist. Certainly, the Republican First Selectman is not. His daughter is married to a black man whom, with his wife and children, we often see at our beach club. And Old Lyme is among a handful of Connecticut towns that welcome refugees.

 

So, why does she insist on such a resolution? Does she feel pangs of “white” guilt because of who she is and where she lives? Does she believe systemic racism infests Old Lyme? Or does she expect that accusations of racism will help Democrats’ cause? The answer seems obvious. She is motivated by politics and a lack of common sense. Social justice, systemic racism and anthropological-caused climate change are lightning rods, which activate the juices of hypocritical progressives. Common sense be damned.

 

We see this lack of common sense everywhere. Does it make sense to say that the “rich” should pay their “fair share,” and then say you want to reinstate SALT (state and local taxes) deductions, when 95% of the benefit accrues to the top one percent of wage earners? Or is that simply hypocrisy?  Corporations have adopted to this new world by claiming support for all “stakeholders.” It is a feel-good word, but does it say anything new? Years ago, the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) observed: “He who serves the public best, makes the highest profits.” In Iacocca: An Autobiography (1984), Lee Iacocca wrote: “In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people, products, profit.” Over four million businesses were created in 2020, with about 600,000 failing. According to the Center for M.I.T. Entrepreneurship, most new businesses are not cash flow positive for 3-5 years. If a business is not profitable, no one is served – not the employees, customers, suppliers, tax agencies or owners. Consider, when the Left decries the inequities of capitalism, the words of Thomas Sowell in Controversial Essays: “No government of the left has done as much for the poor as capitalism has. Even when it comes to the redistribution of income, the left talks the talk, but the free market walks the walk.”

 

Bjorn Lomborg, in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, wrote that according to a forthcoming Lancet study: “More than 45% of people 16 to 25 in the ten countries surveyed are so worried (about climate change) that it affects their daily life and functioning.” Does that reflect sensible behavior on the part of their teachers? Was it common sense that allowed an uncompromising focus on renewables to cause electricity prices in Connecticut to rise by 14% last June? Regarding the stalled $3.5 trillion spending bill, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) recently tweeted: “Paid leave is infrastructure. Childcare is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure.” Common sense tells us they are not. Bridges, tunnels and roads are infrastructure, not entitlements. Her comments are part of a narrative that lacks reason and truth. It was “virtue-signaling that led to pride flags, gender studies and George Floyd murals in Kabul,” as Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote, when common sense would have had the U.S. maintain Bagram Airfield until the last American, ally, and Afghani who had assisted allied forces had left Afghanistan. Did General Mark A. Milley show common sense when he made those Dr. Strangelove-like calls to General Li Zuocheng? Do calls for defunding the police, despite rising murder rates in inner cities, reflect common sense? What about the discrimination exhibited in schools and colleges in setting different standards for students based on race? Is not that sanctimonious discrimination? Does it make common sense to mandate masks and vaccinations for university students and business employees, yet let in tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, without requiring either masks or vaccines? 

 

It is not as though the U.S. is not faced with real problems, which common sense would address. To name four: Debt and deficits: The ratio of federal debt to GDP is approaching what it was in World War II, and that does not include unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. In 1960, mandatory spending (entitlements, like Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid, etc.) accounted for about 25% of the federal budget. Today, that number is close to 70%. Education: We spend more per student than most any other country. Yet, we are failing many, mostly in Democrat-controlled, inner cities. In the 2018 PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), which tests 15-year-olds around the world, the United States ranks below the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average. As well, college costs have become untethered from reality. Families: It is well understood that children raised in two-parent households fare better economically and emotionally. Yet, family formations have been in decline in the U.S. for sixty years. In 1960, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center study, 73% of children were raised in two-parent households. By 2014, that had declined to 46%. Culture: As a nation, we have descended into a morass of multiculturalism, political correctness and wokeism, which has left us bereft of a national moral compass.

 

Common sense is looking at the world through clear lenses. It sees the world as it is, as Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, not as one would like it to be. Like classical liberalism, common sense is based on empiricism, experience and research.; it is skeptical of fashion. It recognizes differences in people, not in races. It acknowledges there are two biological genders, not the 57 that OpenLearn suggests. It adheres to the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you; it is learning right from wrong and practicing the civilities once taught by parents, and in schools, Synagogues and Churches. Common sense allows us to focus on the individual, rather than the collective.

 

Horse sense is a synonym for common sense. The former was once defined by the comedian and actor W.C. Fields: “Horse sense is a thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.” Yet we, with people-sense and with government encouragement, bet on everything, from Lotteries to sports to horses – which common sense tells us is a loser’s game and regressive taxation. Common sense, where have you gone? 

"Inflation"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams 

Thought of the Day

“Inflation”

July 31, 2021

 

“The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not

a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy.”

                                                                                                        Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)

                                                                                                        From a lecture, 1958

                                                                                                        Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, Chapter 9

 

Are we or are we not, in the early stages of an inflation surge? The question is important because the answer has consequences that affect us all – from the daily cost of bread and energy to investment and retirement accounts.

 

The President and the Federal Reserve claim inflation is not a problem. On July 19, Mr. Biden spoke at the White House: “Our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen are – were – expected and expected to be temporary.” In February, in testimony to Congress, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that the growth in money supply, specifically M2, “doesn’t really have important implications.” Upticks in inflation are “anomalous and transitory.” Nevertheless, one wonders. In a July 21 Wall Street Journal op-ed, John Greenwood, chief economist of Invesco and Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins, wrote: “Since March 2020, M2 has been growing at an average annualized rate of 23.9% - the fastest rate since World War II.” The Fed’s target rate for inflation is two percent; however, for April, the CPI was 4.2%; for May, 5% and for June, 5.4%. The PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) price index – the index the Fed uses as their primary source for inflation – rose 6.4% in the second quarter versus 3.8% in the first quarter. If inflation is nothing to worry about, try telling that to families living on a median wage or to retirees on fixed incomes. Energy prices were up over 40% between December 31 and June 30, while food commodity prices were up close to 20 percent.

 

Since the start of the recession in February 2020 (which lasted only two months according to the National Bureau of Economic Research!), the Federal Reserve has retained a policy of near-zero interest rates and $120 billion in monthly bond purchases. When the Fed purchases Treasury’s they add to the money supply. Federal debt now amounts to 119% of GDP. The last time federal debt exceeded GDP was in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, when it stood at 106% of GDP. The federal deficit for fiscal 2021 is expected to be $3 trillion, much of which will be financed by the Federal Reserve. As the Wall Street Journal noted in their lead editorial on July 29: “You don’t have to be a cynic to wonder if the Fed privately now wants more inflation to ease that rising debt burden.” Paying back borrowed dollars with cheaper ones is a policy decision. Five percent inflation means that $100.00 invested in a Thirty-Year Treasury would be worth $23.00 at maturity, while the interest payments (currently 1.93%) would amount to less than $60.00 (before reinvestment) of a depreciating currency – attractive to the borrower but not for the investor. In 1919 John Maynard Keynes, in an essay entitled “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” wrote: “By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” Inflation is a tax that falls most heavily on retirees and the low income.

 

Fifty years ago (August 15, 1971), President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods Agreement, which called for the U.S. to redeem dollars presented by foreign governments at 1/35^th of an ounce of gold. Ending the agreement made it easier for the U.S. Government to finance social programs, without raising the necessary taxes, but making inflation more likely. The Dollar, thus, became a fiat currency, meaning it was backed by the credit worthiness of the issuing government, not a physical commodity, like gold or silver. Fiat currencies lose value during times of economic and political uncertainty. Their numbers can be increased, ad hoc, at the will of the government 

 

In a 1963 talk in India, Milton Friedman observed: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in that it can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” His hypothesis is expressed in the equation MV = Py, where M is the supply of money, V is its velocity (the rate at which money is exchanged), P is the price level (using either PCE or CPI) and y is real gross domestic product (GDP). Thus, when V and y are constant, an increase in M means an increase in P. On the other hand, increased GDP growth may warrant an increase in the money supply, as well as its velocity. If price stability is the desired outcome, the Fed must carefully monitor the relationship between the supply of money, its velocity and GDP.

 

But are they, and will they? Over the past several years, the Fed has become politicized and less independent. Today, a former Fed Chairperson, Janet Yellen, serves as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Since the end of the last recession in 2009, the Fed, pressured by the Obama and Trump White Houses, kept interest rates at historically low levels. In the past two years, since the onset of the pandemic, the growth in money supply has been high, driven by increased government spending, much of which has been funded by the Federal Reserve’s bond purchases. However, velocity of M2 fell by 21% during 2020, reflecting declines in consumer and business spending caused by COVID. So, inflation was not a concern in 2020. However, with the economy picking up speed, the velocity of money has accelerated, and the money supply continues to expand, creating inflationary pressures. Will that trend continue?

 

The Federal Government’s proposed spending plans, especially the $3.5 trillion budget plan, will require the issuance of new bonds, along with new taxes that act as a retardant on GDP growth. While GDP is now above pre-pandemic levels, economic growth in second quarter was below expectations, perhaps a warning sign. Higher debt loads have a natural tendency to increase interest rates, something Washington does not want, so there will be pressure for the Fed to continue bond purchases. Using Friedman’s formula, can GDP growth equal the increase in money supply and velocity, without an increase in price (inflation)? The truth is we don’t know, or, at least, I don’t. But I worry.

 

Debt to GDP is at record levels for a peace time economy. Budget deficits are the highest since World War II. The fiscal 2021 federal budget outlays will represent about 29% of GDP, five percentage points higher than a year ago. Will higher government spending boost GDP growth, or will it impede the private economy? Near the conclusion of his lecture quoted in the rubric, Ludwig von Mises said, “One of the privileges of a rich man is that he can afford to be foolish much longer than a poor one.” The Federal Reserve has a challenge. It must navigate between the Charybdis of inflation and the Scylla of excessive federal spending and debt. Can they do that without debauching the currency? Let us hope so. In his 1919 speech quoted above, Keynes began: “Lenin is said to have declared the best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” Is that what we are doing?

 

I am not predicting a return to the 1970s inflation or something worse. But I worry. As a country, we are that rich man to whom von Mises referred. Let us pray we will not be more foolish than we have been.

"The Emperor's New Clothes - Decline of Western Civilization?"

                                                             Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Emperor’s New Clothes – Decline of Western Civilization?”

September 4, 2020

 

“Even so, let me boldly and plainly say that it has long seemed to me clear

 beyond any shadow of doubt that what is still called Western Civilization

 is in an advanced stage of decomposition, and that another Dark Age

 will soon be upon us, if, indeed, it has not already begun.”

                                                                                    Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)

                                                                                    English journalist and satirist

                                                                                    Speech, Lausanne, Switzerland, August 16, 1974

 

The story of the emperor’s new clothes is applicable to our times. Two swindlers, posing as weavers, appealed to the emperor’s vanity, a man fond of new clothes. They convinced him and his courtiers that only those fit for high office or brilliant of mind would be able to see the bright colors and patterns that would comprise his new outfit. For everybody else, they would be invisible. The weavers then wove air on the looms they had set up. Once finished, they had the emperor and his councilors approve what they had done. Not wanting to be seen as stupid or unfit, they all admired what they could not see. The emperor then paraded through town, while the weavers scurried away. It took a young child without pretension to alert the town folk that the emperor was naked. The people at first hushed the child, but as the truth was whispered throughout the crowd, people saw – the emperor was naked.

 

For the past several months, the tale has been spun that America is systemically racist and built on a foundation of slavery, that social justice must be pursued regardless of societal costs, that capitalism created privilege for white males and inequality for minorities and women, and that brutal police oppress people of color. It is a tale that says white males need be indoctrinated with critical race theory, a view that race is not biologically grounded but socially constructed by white people at the expense of people of color.

 

This mythical tale originated in elite universities – ironically, where endowments are the fruit of capitalism – whose wealth allowed professors and administrators to criticize the hand that feeds them. It has been abetted by a media, a vomitorium more interested in promoting ideology than in discovering truth. It is an orthodoxy that combines ignorance and shame and is intolerant of all who do not adhere to its “wokeness.” A recent survey conducted by Heterodox Academy and quoted by John McWhorter in the September issue of The Atlantic, found that “more than half of respondents considered expressing views beyond a certain consensus in an academic setting quite dangerous to their career trajectory.”

 

This orthodoxy instructs youth to condemn Western Civilization, the culture that has done more than any other to free people from the yoke of tyranny, lift them from poverty and extend lives. Many of these professors and journalists promote Marxism, which promises a transcendent life of sunny days and blue skies, a place where equality reigns, but which in reality is state-sponsored dictatorship and which was instrumental in the formation of Fascism, Nazism and Communism. Supporters of Socialism point to Nordic countries, failing to note their capitalistic ways and ignoring the dreary lives of Cubans, Venezuelans and the 90% of Chinese who are not members of the Communist Party.

 

Western civilization is not perfect. While its positive consequences have benefitted millions, its negative effects cannot be ignored. Territorial and religious wars have been fought. It produced empires that enriched a few at the expense of the many. Thousands of American Indians were killed or displaced as the frontier moved west. Western civilization produced Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini. But it also produced Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle, Witold Pilecki, Dwight Eisenhower, Ruby Bradley and the thousands of men and women who joined the Resistance in France, Poland and other countries. Western civilization gave us Thomas Jefferson, William Blackstone, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie and the Wright Brothers. “The essential characteristic of Western civilization…is its concern for freedom from the state,” wrote Ludwig von Mises in his 1962 essay, “In Praise of Government.” In his 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Samuel Huntington wrote: “The qualities that make a society western…are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society…”  

 

Yet, in the multicultural world, in which we live, we are told no culture is superior to another. So, questions must be asked: Why did Christianity flourish in Rome and then migrate north, east and west? Why did the enlightenment, which took people out of the dark ages, originate in Europe? Why did the concept of individual freedom give birth to the Declaration of Independence? Why did the Industrial Revolution, which did more to eradicate poverty and extend lives than any state-run program, emerge in Christian-dominated Europe? Why do people from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America choose to migrate to Western countries? Why is the U.S. the number one choice of immigrants? With the exception of Macau, Singapore and Qatar, why have European and Anglo-sphere countries produced a GDP per capita that is multiples of those in Asia, Africa, Central and South America and Russia? It is not because the latter do not have resources or populations. It is not racism; it is culture – individual opportunity and personal responsibility, a representative form of government with separation of powers, rule of law, respect for the individual, minority rights and the ability to own property. Eleven and a half percent of the world’s population produces thirty percent of the world’s GDP. Without the West, what would standards of living be? What about life expectancy? What about the art, music, architecture and literature that Western Civilization has produced?

 

Many Americans look at the choices we have this November and despair. On one side they see a dyed blond-orange, boorish braggart, a non-conforming egotist who speaks with a New York accent. On the other, they see a professional politician, an insider who has spent half a century making a good living in Washington’s corridors of power, a nice man but one who has become incoherent and has bedded with those who would bring down the West, like the statues and monuments they have already toppled. In an op-ed a few days ago in the Wall Street Journal, Ruth Wisse, born to a Jewish family in what is now Ukraine and professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, noted differences and similarities between Czarist Russia and the Communist Soviet Union. She wrote of the political distinction between bad and worse: “America today is far removed from czarist Russia, but that lesson has governed my political thinking ever since. Because we in the United States start from a much better place, our ‘progressives’ may destroy even more of the good that exists. When there is no better choice, it is all the more important to vote for the merely bad over the worse.” That, to many, seems November’s choice. But to me the election is clear – to continue the slide toward the end of Western Civilization, or to persist with the Trump disruption that alienates Washington bureaucrats and insiders but returns political power to the people.

 

In every age, there are Cassandras. Malcolm Muggeridge’s prophecy was early. Nevertheless, attacks on the West have become more frequent and virulent. We have been spun this tale by those who blame the West, especially America, as oppressive and systemically racist. It is a tale instigated by “progressives” and brought to us by their accomplices in the media. Its purpose is power. Fearful of not being “woke,” schools, universities, businesses, non-profits and thousands of gullible people, like the emperor and his courtiers, have chosen blindness over truth. Let the child’s voice ring clear – this tale they promote is as naked as the emperor’s new clothes.

                                                           

"End of Classical Liberalism?"

Sydney M. Williams

swstotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“End of Classical Liberalism?”

September 16, 2019

“A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the

nonconformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great 

ideas of freedom. A free society fertilizes the soil in which 

nonconformity and dissent and individuals can grow.”

                                                                                    Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998)

                                                                                    American historian

Anarchy, war and despotism are the natural states of man, not freedom, democracy and classical liberalism. (I use the term “classical liberalism,” which speaks to the advocacy of civil liberties under the rule of law, with an emphasis on individual economic freedom, to differentiate from today’s use of “liberalism,” which is defined as a compassionate but intrusive, all-powerful state. Thomas Sowell was more direct when he declared“liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.” 

Anarchy is at one end of the spectrum, with totalitarianism at the other. In his 1927 book, Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, a book in which he uses the word “liberalism” as I do “classical liberalism,” Ludwig von Mises wrote: “Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism.The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whoseobservance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace.” It is to provide justice, not social justice.

Totalitarianism represents the other extreme. In harsh, dictatorial nations blemishes are obvious. But in a state where, over time, one is seduced by offerings of free services, like food stamps, help with housing, health and college, life can be comfortable. All that is asked in return is allegiance to a political party. Beware apathy, warned Baron de Montesquieu: “The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.”  Like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, despots build their power bases slowly, deliberately, much like the lobster dropped into tepid water, with the heat gradually increased, so that when the water boils the lobster has already succumbed. The best antidote to tyranny is education, which is why citizens should be concerned by the attack on meritocratic public schools in big cities like New York. The slogan for Sy Syms’ one-time company was “an educated consumer is our best customer.” Classical liberalisms’ best defense is an educated citizen.

Classically liberal societies are difficult – difficult to create and even harder to maintain. They rely on the people, not the state, as the ultimate source of power. But a pure democracy carries its own risks. “In a democracy, the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority,” wrote Edmund Burke in 1790. It is why our founders created a government that combines republicanism with democracy. Besides being wary of despotic rulers, they were concerned about mob rule, so designed a government based on rule of law, with a legislature composed of representatives of the people and a separation of power across three branches. Inefficiency is a (not-always-wanted) consequence. It is only in times of war when certain basic rights become temporarily suspended, and efficiency returns.

A free and independent press should be the first line of defense. Unfortunately, our media has become compromised, so that fact and opinion are indistinguishable. The narrative, not the news, has become the story. The internet, while freeing people to more easily express opinions, has anarchical traits, leading to what our founders feared about an unrestrained democracy. Politicians who ignore history and who seek office only for the power it affords or for the private wealth it can create should be viewed with suspicion.

However, it is not anarchy that threatens society today, or even the prospect of a “strong man,” which detractors of Donald Trump toss up as a red herring; it is the promise by social justice warriors of a more “woke,” equitable, compassionate state.  They use “victimization” and “identity politics” to further their cause. A rich society, advocates claim, can afford to offer free healthcare, free college and a guaranteed income for all. Why, they ask, should some people be billionaires and others live in poverty? In their desire for power, these demigods choose to ignore the positive attributes that led to wealth and success – aspiration, industry, intelligence, a sense of personal responsibility, diligence, creativity and a willingness to take risk – the uniqueness of the individual. Why and how did the society or country become wealthy? What led to innovation? How were ideas in a dreamers’ mind transformed into cash-generating businesses? How were natural resources converted to income? How many failures preceded each success? Why are big-city mayors afraid of competition in public schools? Why did growth, led by a few, give us an economy that boosted the well-being of most? Why is it, we should ask ourselves, that an emphasis on equality of outcomes never produces the wealth that an emphasis on equality of opportunity does?    

One should be skeptical of all political leaders, for they have the potential to destroy what classical liberalism has produced. But the leaders of which one should be most wary are those who want to extend the reach of government, either through taxation, regulation or executive reach. We must also keep in mind that when a government consumes an ever-greater proportion of a nation’s gross national product, the private sector – the fuel that fires the engine – shrinks as a percentage, hurting all.

We are a nation of 330 million individuals. We have myriad opinions. When colleges and universities blackball conservative speakers they place classical liberalism at risk. The late Henry Steele Commager, who taught history at Amherst College for over forty years was not a man with whom I always agreed, but he wrote wise words that provide the rubric for this essay. He also wrote, “The fact is censorship always defeats its own purpose…In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.” What is needed is intelligent debate among those who aspire to political office, which is listened to and opined on by citizens educated in civics and history. For it is the political compromises that emerge from conflicting values that allow self-government to succeed. Have we reached the end of classical Liberalism? I pray we have not, but I worry.