"Hatred - Unifier, Divider and Destroyer"

 In an essay on hatred, it is perhaps unfair to lions to attach this photo. Nevertheless, I have done so. Lions may get angry, but I doubt that they hate. However, the expression on the lion’s face reminded me of extremists in Washington – politicians, news commentators and pod-casters. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Hatred – Unifier, Divider and Destroyer” 

April 26, 2026

 

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life;

love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.”

                                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                                Strength to Love, 1963

 

Hatred has become pervasive. It has been around for decades but sprouted anew during the Obama Administration when ‘identity politics’ divided people into ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed.’  It accelerated with the hyperbole of President Trump’s postings on Truth Social. It has been fertilized by members of Congress like Chuck Schumer, Chris Murphy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Marjory Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, encouraged by podcasters like Nikole Hannah-Jones and Nick Fuentes, and abetted by those from main-stream news like Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow.  

 

It is true that hatred can be unifying. Hatred for Hitler’s Nazis and Tojo’s Japanese military helped solidify Americans in their defense of democracy. In his 1962 travelogue, Travels with Charlie: In Search of America, John Steinbeck wrote: “‘I didn’t think that at all, sir, but I bet I’m going to. Why, I remember when people took everything out on Mr. Roosevelt. Andy Larson got red in the face about Roosevelt one time when his hens got the croup. Yes, sir,’ he said with growing enthusiasm, ‘those Russians got quite a load to carry. Man has a fight with his wife, he belts the Russians.’ Maybe everybody needs Russians. I’ll bet even in Russia they need Russians. Maybe they call it Americans.’” 

 

Steinbeck wrote this during the Cold War. Five years earlier, the Soviets had launched Sputnik1, marking the start of the Space Age. Dislike and distrust of the USSR served as a unifier, as something on which to place blame, something to hate. Most of us knew no Russians. Like Andy Larson, we didn’t hate individual Russians; we hated the Soviet system that denied the dignity that stems from personal freedom and the potential for reward that comes with free-market capitalism. The Soviets had put down the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, stomped out the Prague spring in 1968 and beat back Polish “Solidarity” in 1980. In the United States, even with vocal political differences, that hatred of the repressive Soviet system served as a social glue that bound our nation – and the democratic, freedom-loving West – against the totalitarianism of Communism. 

 

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, we lost that common enemy, but hatred did not disappear. Hatred provides a ready-made, intense sense of self and purpose. It has engulfed our politics, and it has become personal. It is most obvious today in “Trump Hatred Syndrome.” Certainly, Mr. Trump is an easy man to hate. He is vulgar, boastful and inconsiderate. Nevertheless, if a policy emanates from Mr. Trump, Democrats are against it, regardless of its value to the American people. His opponents stoop lower than him. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, in an interview on CNN regarding Iran, spoke honestly about the dilemma he faces: “The problem is I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war, because they are two awful human beings.” His brethren in the media industry are not that candid. Hatred is responsible for the rise in anti-Semitism, which has swept across Western Europe and the United States. Especially obnoxious is when anti-Zionism becomes an euphemism for anti-Semitism. 

 

While extremists, I am sure, represent a minority of the American people, this spread of hatred forces us to pick sides. Democrats claim to be on the side of the good guys – aiding the oppressed, the down-trodden, the poor, those unable to help themselves. But there is hypocrisy in their virtue-signaling. They have more money and spend more on elections – $4.5 billion in 2024 versus $3.5 billion by Republicans, according to Axios. They live in the nation’s wealthiest states – Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, California and Connecticut. In contrast and ironically, Republicans, “oppressors” according to Democrat pooh-bahs, live in the nation’s poorest states, states that lean Republican – Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. In the minds of those on the far-left, I am Simon Legree to their Little Eva.

 

Today, there are over 160 million registered voters in the United States. Yet fitting them neatly into two main parties is more difficult than the task given Sisyphus. It is one reason why the percentage of voters registered as either Democrat or Republican have declined over the past forty years, while those registered as Independents have increased. Nevertheless, extremists in both parties have seized control; so that the interests of the American people are subordinate to the interests of Party leaders. What would our first President think of the gerrymandering efforts in Virginia, North Caroline, Illinois and Florida? Or consider where I live – New England, home to 15.4 million people and about 11 million registered voters. Thirty-five percent are registered as Democrats; twenty-one percent as Republicans, and forty-four percent as Independents. Yet, of the twenty-one House seats, Democrats occupy them all. Of the twelve U.S. Senate seats, Democrats have eleven. Are our Representatives truly representative?

 

This spread of hatred threatens to destroy our country. In his Farewell Address (September 17, 1796), George Washington warned against political parties, that while they “...now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

 

With the notable exception of the Supreme Court, and despite Washington’s admonition, unprincipled men and women have found their way to Washington, as well as to many state capitals and large cities. Nevertheless, I believe that most public servants are still devoted to their jobs and work for the public good. Moderates comprise the majority of the military and even, I would guess, most federal employees. Many are in Congress. But the number of extremists is expanding. What is needed are civility and respect toward all people, tolerance for differing opinions, and humility regarding our own. 

 

An anonymous quote has pertinence: “We may fight against what is wrong (or what we believe to be wrong), but if we allow ourselves to hate that is to ensure our spiritual defeat and our likeness to what we hate.” It reminds me of counsel once offered me by my father: “Never argue with a fool, for a passer-by would be unable to tell who is the fool.” His words apply equally to one who spits out hatred. An eye for an eye does not solve problems.

"Separating the Wheat from th Chaff"

Today is the day we celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday. It is also the 40^th anniversary of the first Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday signed into law by President Reagan on January 20, 1986.

Sunday was wintry in Essex, Connecticut, a good day to get one’s mind off politics and curl up with a good book. Thus, the photo. The stump in the lower left of the photo is from the first log I chopped, a memento saved by my parents almost eighty years ago.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Separating the Wheat from the Chaff”

January 19, 2026

 

“The wise will strive to manifest a brave new world, while

the foolish and unkind will suffer for their lack of common sense.”

                                                                                                Anthon St. Maarten

                                                                                                Divine Living: The Essential Guide to Your True Destiny

                                                                                                2012

 

The title of this essay comes from the Bible, Matthew 3:12: separating the wheat (useful grains) from the chaff (useless husks). It means we should distinguish between the good and the bad, what is important and beneficial from what is superficial and harmful. To the media, it should mean to report the truth of events and restrain biases. To politicians, it should mean to focus on the agendas that are important to the people and to avoid the mean-spiritedness of personal attacks. 

 

The world always faces threats. History does not end. There will always be people and nations attempting to accrue power, to unseat the United States of America. That is the wheat that we should target. While Russia is a nuclear power with a recidivistic leader, China is the biggest threat. Russia has an aging and declining population, engaged in an unending war, and with an economy that faces hurdles. Keep in mind, the EU plus Britain have a population 3.5X bigger than Russia, with a GDP almost ten times that of Russia.

 

The bigger threat comes from China. They have a population of 1.4 billion, and a GDP almost equal to the EU and Britain. Over 150 countries and international organizations, spanning five continents and Oceania, have signed cooperation agreements with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Norh America’s Canada has not signed up as a full partner, but last week’s trip to Beijing by Prime Minister Mark Carney – and given President Trump’s disrespect for the man – suggest that Canada is looking to forge a new strategic partnership. No one should underestimate the goals of Communist China. It is why President Trump wants to halt their expansion in South and East Asia, limit their incursions into Central and South America, and stop their progress in the arctic. Past Presidents have underestimated the will and the aims of the Chinese. As well, at home we face unsustainable debt and the lure of Socialism with its promises of false hopes. 

 

But President Trump has failed to cull the chaff. The prosecution of his political enemies consumes too much of his time. I understand that he was unfairly treated in his first term, but he should move on. Closing the border and deporting criminal migrants are to be praised. But jailing and deporting law-abiding people who have jobs and families undermines the good he is doing. Fighting with the Federal Reserve in senseless and, in fact, dangerous to our economy. His spat with Jeremy Powell is part of what I call chaff. I recognize that the Fed has become politicized. In the fourth quarter of 2008, in response to the credit crisis, Fed Funds were reduced to .25 basis points from 2% in the third quarter (and 4.25% in the first quarter.) Despite the fact that the economy recovered in the 2^nd half of 2009, and remained positive for the next ten years, Fed Funds were not raised again until late 2015. When President Obama left office in January 2017, the rate was still only 1.50%. Does anyone believe that Mr. Obama did not pressure the Fed? Low rates for so long have been a boon to asset prices, including speculative ones like crypto currencies, and they helped give rise to our unsustainable debt.

 

There are other issues that either distract or harm us, more chaff. That the Supreme Court should be forced to define a woman is the peak of silliness. We are not assigned – as was the question on a medical form I recently filled out – a sex when we are born. We are either male or female. Perhaps doctors and nurses no longer study anatomy? Allowing men, who claim to be women, to compete as women in sporting events, or to use their bathrooms, is unfair and an expression of deviant behavior. There are public schools where equity is deemed more important than Shakespeare or calculus. Sitting where it sits, and atop rare earths, Greenland is strategically important militarily, a fact that did not seem to concern the Obama and Biden Administrations. But Denmark is an ally. There is no need to bulldoze our way in. Moving on. Jeffrey Epstein was a pervert. Too many leaders of both parties were his friends. They all should be ashamed of themselves, but the story titillates; it does not inform. Tariffs, no matter how defined, are a form of taxation. For consumers, they raise the price of imported goods. To classify them as an asset, as Mr. Trump has done, is the height of ludicrousness. Should the $4.9 trillion raised in federal taxes in 2024 be considered an asset? It is on the federal government’s balance sheet, but for citizens taxes are a liability.  

 

Back to the wheat. Fraud in Minnesota confirms government corruption permeates our society. It shows how much we need a department devoted to uprooting governmental dishonesty, graft and inefficiencies. Violent protests in Minneapolis and other cities against ICE contrast with Martin Luther King’s call for peaceful protests. The shooting of Renee Good was unfortunate. There should be an investigation into her death, and it should include both federal and local officials. Let the legal system prevail. We are, after all, a nation of laws. However, the responses of Minneapolis Mayor Democrat Jacob Frey and Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz remind me of Southern governors like George Wallace of Mississippi and Arkansas’s Orval Faubus when they refused to adhere to the nation’s anti-segregation laws.

 

The number one issue for voters, as is almost always true, is the economy. Polls reflect nervousness. We are in the midst of a technology revolution. Jobs are threatened by Artificial Intelligence. While down from its highs, inflation remains above the Fed’s target. Raising minimum wages discourage small businesses from offering “starter” jobs. Birth rates below replacement will have negative economic consequences a decade or so out. Gallup finds that 68% of Americans say the economy is worsening. According to Morningstar, the U.S. has fallen from 11^th place to 24^th in global happiness rankings. 

 

I am unsure what this means for the future or for midterm elections, though it does not look good for Republicans. According to Gallup, President Trump’s approval ratings have dropped from 47% last February to 36% today. Things can change; that I know. But my advice to Mr. Trump: ignore conservative pundits. Instead, take heed from the Book of Matthew, and start separating the wheat from the chaff.

"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.

 

 

---

[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.  

"The 1960s - For Me"

 

The photo is of my wife and me on April 11, 1964.

 

In his forward to his 1977 collection of essays, The Essays of E.B. White, Mr. white wrote: “The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest...Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”

 

Truer words I have rarely read, and the attached is exhibit ‘A.’

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“The 1960s – For Me”

October 22, 2025

 

“The sixties produced an archaic mind-set that is

great for imagining a world not yet in existence.”

                                                                                                                Walter Isaacson (1952-)

                                                                                                                Steve Jobs, 2011

 

The third decade of one’s life is, perhaps, the most transformative. One’s first decade is composed of blissful childhood. During one’s second decade, one moves from childhood to adulthood through the challenging teenage years. By one’s third decade, parenting has (mostly) been done; it is the time when one rises (or falls) as an individual, an adult. 

 

For those born in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the 1960s were our time, just as the 2020s are for our grandchildren. It was a chaotic time, one that followed the perceived gentler and more conformist 1950s. 

 

The ‘60s began on a note of hope, with the election of John F. Kennedy as President, the first born in the 20^th Century. Then things fell apart: His assassination in November 1963 was followed by the assassinations of Martin Luther King in April 1968 and two months later of Robert F. Kennedy. As well, civil rights advocates Malcolm X, Medgar Evans and James Chaney, among several others, were killed. It was the decade in which Vietnam divided the country and gave birth to the anti-war movement. That movement led to the 1968 tumultuous Democratic Convention in Chicago and two years later to the Kent State shooting. It was the decade when the Beatles first appeared, when Abbie Hoffman formed the Youth International Party (YIP). It saw the rise of the sexual revolution, with Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinham. And the decade ended on mixed notes – with Woodstock, a four-day rock concert attended by an estimated half a million drugged-up, narcissistic young people. And then, in July 1969, we watched with patriotic pride Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon. 

 

For me, that decade was metamorphic. Born in January 1941, I was twenty in 1961 – an unfocused student who had dropped out of college. I spent the summer of 1961 working in a Canadian nickel mine and then as a lab technician for a metallurgical company outside of Boston.

 

The next ten years changed me. On New Years Eve of 1961 I met Caroline, and my life improved. We were married two years later, and two of our three children were born, one in 1966 and the second in 1968. However, Caroline lost her one remaining grandparent in 1965 and her father in 1969. I lost my three remaining grandparents in 1961, 1963 and 1969, and my father died in 1968. I finished college, completed my military obligation, began a real job. I changed careers in 1967, beginning forty-eight years as a stock broker. 

 

There is no grand design to life. Preparation, diligence and hard work are positive traits, but life is largely serendipitous. In 1960, I could not have predicted how things would change for me, any more than I could foresee how the country would change. There was death, but there was also life. With Caroline as my wife and new-born children, while I mourn the deaths, I look back on the 1960s with fondness.

"Living in a Time of 'Institutional' Hatred"

 It may seem odd to leave the serenity of south-eastern Connecticut for the bedlam of the north-Jersey coast, but we have been doing this every August for our sixty-one years of marriage. Growing up in New York City, it is where Caroline spent summers. She describes these couple of weeks as “returning to her playpen.” The photograph depicts us on a cool day last summer at the Seabright Beach Club.

 While I will have my laptop and a portable printer, I am bringing light reading, so don’t expect much in terms of essays. However, in the back of my mind I have been thinking of one on the beauty and grandeur of silence, but we shall see. Also, I have just completed Lynne Olson’s newest book, The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück, which deserves an essay. Perhaps it will be too noisy down there!

 

But cloistering with friends, children and grandchildren and reading mysteries, I hope (and expect) to avoid the ugly ramifications of hatred That has become too common.

 

We expect to return to Essex on Saturday, August 23.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Living in a Time of ‘Institutional’ Hatred”

August 4, 2025

 

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

                                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                                Sermon: “A Knock at Midnight,” 1958

“I hate you!” Who has not screamed that invective, or had it directed at them? It is generally short-lived, an intense, emotional response to an accusation, characterized by anger, contempt and/or disgust.

 

Such words are usually directed toward specific individuals, things, or ideas. In most cases those feelings are ephemeral. But I write about what I call ‘institutional’ (for lack of a better term) hatred, where an individual or group deliberately foments hatred toward a person, race, ethnicity, or nation. Time is a healer, even of ‘institutional’ hatred. Bill Clinton was despised by Republicans during the 1990s, and as Matthew Hennessey wrote in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: “Hate is too mild a word for how Democrats felt about George W. Bush while he was in the Oval Office.” Today, in both cases, hatred has vanished.

 

But such hatred is not always transient. Blacks were hated by many in this Country for decades, culminating in the white-robed Ku Klux Klan, whose remnants still exist. The consequences were the killings – many by lynchings – of tens of thousands of black Americans. For more than ten years, from the mid 1930s through May 1945, Nazis maintained a nation-wide hatred toward Jews and others they classified as undesirable. The consequence was that between fifteen and twenty million civilians were imprisoned, tortured, mutilated and/or murdered, in a network of over 44,000 Concentration Camps scattered across occupied Europe.

 

Hatred clouds reason. Hatred of Jews is what the Nazis employed to get ordinary citizens to go along with their despicable extermination policies. Reason, on the other hand, is what permitted the Allies to ultimately defeat Nazism. Hatred has returned today, in much of the West, in the anti-Semitism that has infiltrated college campuses, in political speech, and in the language of Podcasters. “Open Jew hatred,” wrote Alvin Rosenfeld in last Monday’s Wall Street Journal, “is also politically mainstream, with ‘free Palestine’ and ‘globalize the intifada’ now a key part of the left’s political agenda.” The call by French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime minister Keir Starmer, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to have their countries recognize a Palestine state before there is one reflects hatred toward Israel. The meaning of ‘globalize the intifada’ is clear: Kill the Jews. While Israel has been winning militarily, Hamas is winning the public relations war.

 

Here in the U.S., hatred’s most common target today is President Trump, an easy person to demagogue, as his language and actions are often goofy and/or intemperate. This hatred is manifested in opposition to anything he supports or does. In the August 2, 2025 issue of American Greatness, Stephen Soukup wrote: “The left’s hatred [of President Trump] is more powerful than any instinct it might have to do the right thing.” That hatred is displayed by those rallying against the deportation of criminal illegal migrants, and by those opposed to Israel’s war against Hamas. It motivates those who blame man for all climate change and stirs up those who support gender-affirming surgeries. Will Weissert of the Associated Press recently quoted a fifteen-year-old girl from Scotland who was protesting President Trump’s visit to Scotland: “We don’t negotiate with fascists...So many people here loathe him...We’re not divided...We’re just here because we hate him.” One hopes she is instructed on the history of fascism, what its aims, goals and means were. Nevertheless, hatred for Mr. Trump is not new. It began ten years ago when he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in New York City to announce his run for President. It was revealed in the fake accusations by the Clinton campaign about Russian “collusion.” It led to the refusal of the media to acknowledge that Hunter Biden’s lap-top was real. I have friends who, to this today, cannot speak the name Trump without a grimace. He is not my favorite politician, but I do not hate him, and I believe he loves his Country. I experienced hatred nine years ago when I refused to join the cortège of those who wished to bury his nascent political career. But hatred is not the exclusive domain of the Left.  MAGA extremists are equally vituperative. We hear it in the voices of many conservative commentators, and in the expressions of those who rail against all immigrants.  But it is most powerful on the left.

 

Mainstream media, threatened with irrelevance, exploits and encourages this scourge of hatred, falsely seeing it as a means to stay relevant. They know their business models are in trouble. Fifty years ago the daily news viewership of the three main networks – CBS, NBC and ABC – was approximately 70 million people, or roughly 30% of the population. Today combined network and cable news programs capture about 30 million viewers, or less than 10% of the population. Newspapers have suffered similarly. In 1975, approximately 62 million newspapers were printed daily. Today that number is less than 25 million. Now, most get their news from social media accounts, like X, Facebook, Instagram and from Podcasts. People listen to what augments their prejudices and not to what challenges their predilections, so these platforms become breeding grounds for polarization and hatred. It is why Alex Jones on the right and Rachel Maddow on the left remain popular, but only with those who share their views. Ironically, greater choice in news has increased our division.

 

In her novel White Oleander, `Janet Fitch wrote: “Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that’s something you can use...It’s hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you.” I think she is wrong, but her words reflect today’s culture. C.S. Lewis warned in Mere Christianity that there is a tendency among people to cling to bad stories of people they detest, to “wish that black was a little blacker, [then] we shall see grey as black...Finally we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad.” I suspect he is right; it is something to guard against.

 

Can we return to a time when respect and tolerance were common? Thirty-six years after he had been freed from slavery, Booker T. Washington wrote in his autobiographical story, Up from Slavery, a remarkable sentiment we should all feel – and one that anticipated by fifty years Martin Luther King’s words in the epigraph that heads this essay: “I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” While the Bible advises us to abhor what is evil, it warns against harboring hatred in one’s heart. It tells us to hold fast to what is good. Two and a half years ago I wrote an essay titled, “Hatred and the Curse of Identity Politics: “Man is perhaps the only species that kills and destroys its own kind out of pure hatred.” Man is also the only creature capable of reason and love, so perhaps there is hope.

 

The goal of ‘institutional’ hatred is power, to be rid of those who stand in their way. The consequences are alienation, division, distrust and polarization. As humans, we have been endowed with emotions and with the ability to reason. In our polarized environment, we run the risk that the emotional response of ‘institutional’ hatred supersedes our willingness to listen, to debate – to reason. We must not let that happen.

"Good and Evil"

 Tomorrow is Juneteenth, a federal holiday since 2021, though the name was first used in the 1890s. It celebrates the emancipation of slaves in the U.S., specifically the day slavery ended in Texas in 1865. With the ratification of the 13^th Amendment in December 1865, slavery officially ended in the United States. Delaware and Kentucky were the last two states to officially prohibit the practice.

 

While it is hard for us to understand, slavery was the norm for most of human history. Helen Keller once wrote: “There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.” When the Union that is now the United States was formed in 1781, slavery was common in the agricultural south but was practiced in all of the original thirteen colonies. Nevertheless, abolitionists were beginning to make their voices heard. On February 24, 1820, John Quincy Adams wrote in his diary: “Slavery is the great and foul stain upon the North American Union…” So, Thursday is the day we celebrate the end of that evil practice.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Good and Evil”

June 18, 2025

 

“In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them,

and one of them must conquer. But in our hands lies the power to choose – what we want to be, we are.”

                                                                                                        Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

                                                                                                       The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, 1886

 

In the early spring of 1945, my father, a 34-years-old Harvard educated artist, married and father of four was serving as a private with the 10^th Mountain Division in Italy. They had suffered many casualties, as the Germans were gradually pushed north out of the Apennines. A few years later, my father spoke of his experiences. He mentioned that once a few young, enraged G.I.s had killed a captured German soldier with shovels. Earlier that same day, two German soldiers had approached their lines with arms raised. The G.I.s rose to meet them. In a moment, the Germans fell to the ground, and a machine gunner behind them killed two of the Americans. While war can bring out the best in people, it can also bring out the worst.

 

………………………………………………………

 

Just like good, evil lurks in all of us. It is our responsibility – to the extent possible – to contain it, to smother it, to let goodness overwhelm it. “Wisdom,” wrote John Cheever in his Journals, “is the knowledge of good and evil…” In The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us…But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.” This is a subject that has been on my mind, with Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and as I have been reading Jonathan Horn’s new book, The Fate of the Generals. It is difficult to reconcile the vile treatment of American and Filipino prisoners by the Japanese, with the Japanese I knew in business and socially. Two generations ago, German Nazis were gassing Jews. Today, they are an ally of Israel. In his 1860 novel The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins wrote: “The best men are not consistent in good – why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”

 

Today, evil is manifested in the anti-Semitism that has infested much of the West. Do college students, born sixty years after the genocide of Jews in Europe and who now accuse Israel of practicing genocide on Palestinians, have any knowledge of history? Battles between forces of good and evil, are as old as mankind. The Bible tells us that Jesus, as the son of God, is inherently good, while man is flawed, so must avoid temptations. Most of my generation have read Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster, of Webster’s defense of Jabez Stone who sold his soul to the devil in return for seven years of good luck. The message: In moments of weakness, good people can make bad decisions.

 

This battle between good and evil is not limited to people. On March 8, 1983, President Reagan correctly referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” Evil manifests itself in nation’s where authoritarian leaders control their populations. In the past century, one can think of Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong. Today Ali Hosseini Khamenei Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un serve that role, as their governments deny citizens their natural rights – “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Governments run by and for dictators disallow people the freedom to achieve their dreams. Yet good people can (and do) live in these countries. Nevertheless, the contrast of autocracies to democracies, where power rests with the people and their representatives, is stark. This can be seen today in Israel’s fight with Iran and Ukraine’s war with Russia. In this uncertain world, and because the United States is a ‘good’ nation, the projection of military strength is necessary to help preserve peace. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt sent sixteen U.S. Naval battleships (the Great White Fleet) on a 42,000 mile, fourteen-month world tour, making twenty port calls on six continents. On Flag Day 2025, President Trump ordered a parade celebrating the U.S. Army’s 250^thbirthday. “Peace is Our Profession” was the motto of the Strategic Air Command (SAC). 

 

In his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Martin Luther King said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” I believe what he said is correct for those of us fortunate to live in a democracy, but, sadly, it is not true for those who find themselves subjected to authoritarian governments, which, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democracy Index for 2024, comprises 39.2% of the world’s population. Thus, more than three billion people are held hostage by evil leaders.

 

As a democracy of free-thinking people, we will always have myriad opinions, from religion to education, from culture to social welfare, and on a host of other subjects. Supporters of these differing opinions are not necessarily evil, nor are their opponents. The history of the United States could be written in protests. Among the successful ones: the Abolitionists of the late 18^th and early 19^th Centuries, which lead to the Civil War and the end of slavery; opponents of poor working conditions and low wages during the early years of the Industrial Revolution led to the creation of unions; Suffragettes of late 19^thand early 20^th Centuries led to the adoption of the 19^th Amendment in 1920; the “Bonus Army” of 1932 demanded payment for service in World War I, and helped relieve poverty during the Great Depression; In the late 1930s, Isolationists battled Interventionists, yet all became unified after Pearl Harbor; Civil Rights’ protests in the late 1950s and early 1960s preceded passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968; anti-war protests, fueled by the Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s hastened the end of that war.

 

On the other hand, some recent protests are driven  by self-interest, counter-productive, pig-headed, or just plain silly: anti-Semites calling for the end of what they claim is Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians; the destruction of pipelines by those calling for the end of fossil fuels: Defund the Police, the consequences of which are harmful for those most vulnerable in our society; and the short-lived Code Pink: Women for Peace. Democracy, by definition, allows for civil disobedience. But change is best accepted when its progress is gradual. In 1849, Henry David Thoreau wrote Resistance to Civil Government, in which he argued that individuals had a moral obligation to protest unjust laws. Of course, one person’s definition of an unjust law may differ from another’s, but that is why we have courts to resolve such differences.

 

We are living through a period of political extremism, of assassinations and protests, not always peaceful and sometimes led by professional agitators. In our secular age, with its ‘smart’ phones, social media and artificial intelligence (AI), moral values have splintered. Evil is  more ubiquitous when society is spiritually hollow and human connection absent. Wisdom, today, is in short supply; nevertheless, “the function of wisdom,” according to Cicero, “is to discriminate between good and evil.” Thus, while we should be unafraid to express our opinions, we should do so respectfully. We should avoid falling into the trap of hatred – of letting evil bury the good that is within us.

"Tit for Tat - Not a Good Strategy"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Tit for Tat – Not a Good Strategy”

June 5, 2025

 

“All things are double, one against another. Tit for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth;

blood for blood; measure for measure; love for love. Give and it shall be given you.”

                                                                                                Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

“Tit for Tat: The infliction of an injury or insult in return for one that one has suffered,” Oxford English Dictionary. Wikipedia: “It is an alteration of tip for tap ‘blow for blow,’ first recorded in 1558.”

…………………………………………………………………….

 

When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States on January 20, 2017 I suspect he was as surprised to be there as anyone. He had been a successful real estate developer, and for thirteen years he hosted “The Apprentice,” a successful reality TV series. But he had never run for political office. As a businessman, he donated to both Jimmy Carter’s and Ronald Reagan’s campaigns in 1980. His political affiliations have changed: a Manhattan Republican in the 1980s; member of the Reform Party in 1999; a Democrat in 2001; and back to a Republican in 2009. By some, he will always be criticized for his changing political affiliations and his out-spoken manner. But he was democratically elected President.

 

For those who make their living in politics, Donald Trump’s success was a threat. His victory was incredulous to Republicans in the primaries and to Democrats in the general election. How could this “orange-haired” man who garbles the English language have won? How could an interloper beat them at their own game?

 

America is a different place than it was a generation or two ago. Civility has declined; anti-social and unethical behavior have increased; and violence has become more common and, worse, acceptable. Scam phone calls have risen by over 20% in each of the last five years. In 2023, the United States Capital Police (USCP) investigated 8,008 threats against members of Congress. A disturbing number of young Leftists cheered on the two attempts on Donald Trump’s life, as well as the attacks on Tesla dealerships. Anti-Semitism has increased, On May 21 a young Jewish couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum. Four days later, in Boulder, Colorado, a man shouted, “Free Palestine,” as he threw Molotov cocktails at demonstrators, injuring fifteen men and women, as they marched in support of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

 

Political parties have changed. The Democrat Party, once the Party of the working class and poor now appeals to wealthy, suburban whites, and monied groups like trial lawyers, hedge fund managers, and Wall Street tycoons. Like the switch of white southern Democrats to Republicans in the 1960s and ‘70s, former “country club” elitist Republicans, in the wake of Vietnam and Civil Rights, abandoned their traditional Party. Democrats have long dominated academia, but they have become more entrenched. As private sector unions lost members, Democrats lost interest, so concentrated on union leaders and on expanding public sector unions, especially teachers’. Republicans have picked up middle-class, working Americans. They have kept in their fold most religious groups, except Episcopalians. 

 

As well, the sense of what it means to be an American has been derailed by politicians from both parties whose leaders appeal to extremists. Politics has become more partisan. The economic divide between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots,’ regardless of race, has widened. When Barack Obama was elected as the first black man to become President, instead of acknowledging the economic divide, he made race the issue. He squandered an opportunity to pull America together on race, to close the chasm, to acknowledge the vision and promise of Martin Luther King in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That was not the path Mr. Obama chose to take.

 

Not surprisingly, the competent, but ungracious, Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to the political outsider Mr. Trump. During his first term as President, he was demonized by the Left, even called a Nazi. While he is coarse in speech and offensive in language, he was falsely accused of Russian collusion by his illiberal Democrat opponents – a story that originated in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. The contempt for him was visceral. It was not just political. No President has ever been treated with the disdain he was. He had invaded the establishment’s sanctuary and succeeded. In their bid to destroy him, Democrats were supported by the Justice Department and joined by a chorus of media enablers. In unprecedented actions, he was impeached twice and indicted four times. And he lost re-election in 2020.

 

Yet after four years of Mr. Biden – a situation for which Democrats have no one to blame but themselves – Mr. Trump won the Presidency again. This time he increased his vote. Notably, he expanded his votes among those who have traditionally been Democrats – blacks, Hispanics, and the working class – those who Democrats have ignored, as they pursued their far-left progressive agenda. They condemned “harmful words,” yet allowed violent anti-Semitism protests on campuses; they opened the southern border to an influx of millions of illegal migrants, including many with criminal records; and they emphasized identity politics, including the allowing of biological men to compete against women in high school and college sports. They abandoned large portions of America’s middle classes.

 

Is revenge a motivating factor in some of Mr. Trump’s actions now? I suspect it is. I don’t support revenge, but I understand it. He is now accused of weaponizing the Justice Department, the same Justice Department that was weaponized against him. In Shakespear’s play Measure for Measure, the title refers to the principle of retributive justice, where actions are judged and punished accordingly – an eye for an eye, for example. In my opinion, it is that principle that has been the impetus behind much of Mr. Trump’s behavior early in his second term. I suspect he believes that those who are being penalized – like prestigious universities being challenged over recruitment and DEI policies, illegal migrants being deported and foreign college students with ties to the CCP having visas revoked – are receiving their just deserts. 

 

But revenge is alien to democratic principles. As a conservative, many of my virtue-signaling Leftist friends remind me of Little Jack Horner who pulled out a plum and, blithely, said, “What a good boy am I!” This while he spoiled the plum pie for others. When these friends condemn Mr. Trump as a tyrant and his supporters as ignorant rubes they should remember that we live in a democracy, and that Mr. Trump won the election. While I will never wear a MAGA hat, I voted for Mr. Trump and, given the option, I am glad I did. When we disagree, we can (and should) take issue even with those we support, and we should not be afraid to speak out against those we do not, but we should do so civilly. And we all should condemn the unacceptable rise in violence.