"Why Have Politics Become So Hateful?"

 To replace the retiring Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer, President Biden promised an “historic appointment,” a black woman. Consider how much more powerful his words would have been (and more important to the appointee) if he had promised to nominate the most qualified individual, and then named a black woman.

 

Last Thursday was Holocaust Remembrance Day, something we should all honor in a world with rising anti-Semitism. I recall my father telling me, about a decade after he had returned from combatting the Germans in Italy’s Apennines, to never forget what the Nazis did, in attempting to eliminate the Jewish people.

 

Here in Connecticut, we are getting a full winter blast – low temperatures, a blizzard and high winds. It is beautiful to look at, as long as one can remain indoors.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“Why Have Politics Become So Hateful?”

January 29, 2022

 

“Don’t let anger control you.

Don’t let hate enslave you.

Don’t let negativity overcome you.

Don’t let bitterness conquer you.”

                                                                                                Attributed to Matshona Dhliwayo (1982 -)

                                                                                                Zimbabwean-born Canadian author

 

In a September 2021 Public Agenda/USA Today/Ipsos poll, 72% of Americans thought it would be “good for the country” if there were less political hostility and a greater focus on common ground. Yet only 9% of respondents thought hostilities would decrease in the next decade, while 42% expected them to increase. Why have political differences made us so bitter? Why do we hate those with different opinions so intensely? What does this anger mean for the future of our nation?

 

Political hatred has had a long gestation.  It is easy to blame the crude and narcissistic Donald Trump. But this bitterness preceded him. He made things worse, but he was not its genesis. He reflected the animosity felt by rural and mid-Americans toward coastal elites. He widened and deepened the divide, but he was not its cause. Barack Obama, as the first African American elected President, was one who could have bridged racial dissensions. Instead, he made things worse. It is true that Mr. Obama was despised by a few right-wing racists, but most criticisms of his policies were assumed by his supporters to be race-based. President Joe Biden ran on a platform of unity, yet he has fanned the flames of partisanship; an example – when in Georgia he referred to Republicans as similar to Jefferson Davis, George Wallace and Bull Connor, ironically all Democrats. Political hatefulness has deepened because of social media and cable TV.

I do not presume to know all reasons why we have become so angry. But I suspect three culprits play a role: wokeism, identity politics, and a breakdown of traditional ethical norms. Wokeism is a creed that uses Jacobin tactics to foster economic chaos and property destruction, as it obsesses about climate, race, class and gender. Climate evangelists call opponents deniers – those who suggest adaption and see natural forces as an important cause of climate change. Then we have transgender women allowed to compete in women’s college sports. Wokeism in the classroom and the boardroom has replaced meritocracy with equity, in the belief it will produce equality of outcomes. In their unbridled zeal, these acolytes of wokeism, with their self-righteousness and absence of common sense, remind one of Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby. 

 

As for identity politics, for years politicians compartmentalized the electorate into addressable groups. Old people care about health and security. Young parents care about schools. Farmers care about vicissitudes of the weather. Coal miners care about loss of jobs, while environmentalists worry about climate change. Immigrants (legal ones) care about citizenship, while Americans who live along borders care about illegal crossings. The wealthy care about tax rates, while the needy care about assistance. Now, promotion of gender and racial politics have aggravated differences. Affirmative action was used to address years of discrimination, and which, while necessary fifty years ago, has had the consequence of again, segregating people by race. Once divided, these groups became difficult to stitch back together.

 

Perhaps it is unsurprising that in a multicultural country, traditional ethical behavior is seen as “too white,” too reflective of western values. Yet it has been those values, along with rule of law, protection of private property and guarantees of free expression, that attracted immigrants to this country. But is the U.S. still that country? Civics and civil behavior are no longer taught. Church attendance has been in decline. since the early 1960s. Family formations have been in decline for forty years. The average age of Americans in 1960 was 29.5. In 2000, it was 35.3 and today it is 38.3. To help fill diminishing state treasury coffers, states like “blue” Connecticut promote gaming, the lottery, and on-line and sports betting, while dismissing the attendant increase in gambling addiction and the regressive nature of such funding. People become disillusioned when sold false promises of riches. An aging and shrinking population hampers economic growth, which leads to impatience that gives birth to stress. 

 

Barring a war or national emergency, unity is difficult in any country. But it is especially so in a multi-racial nation of assorted ethnicities. The government’s handling of COVID created dissension. One would have thought that a Chinese-originated infectious disease – whether from a wet market or a lab – would have unified the U.S. (and the world) against China. Instead, the disease was politicized. Inter-governmental agencies with financial ties to China have impeded investigations as to the pandemic’s origins. “Follow the science” became the mantra, even as the science was changing. Special powers were granted governors. “You are with us or against us” are the words of a tyrant. There was no middle way, no room for debate.

 

One thing that could help restore a sense of unity would be a political leader with the self-deprecating humor of a Lincoln, Coolidge or Reagan. Lincoln, when accused of being two-faced: “If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?” Coolidge, when asked what it felt like to be President: “Well, you got to be mighty careful.” Reagan, when in debate with Mondale and the subject of age arose: “I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” None of these quips were nasty or injurious. Non-aggressive humor, unlike today’s political cartoons and late-night TV, has a bonding effect. Such humor is missing in today’s partisan swamp.

 

Differences are important in a democracy and debate is critical to understanding. But so is civility. We will never (nor should we) agree on everything. Compromise is not a four-letter word. There is unnecessary nastiness in Democrats claiming that a Republican win in the midterms will put democracy at risk, as Nancy Pelosi declared in her re-election announcement. Keep in mind, it was the Democratic Party that issued mandates, canceled speakers, censored speech, enforced segregation – now against Asians and whites – and jailed without habeas corpus many of those who invaded the Capitol last January 6.  This is not a call for blind patriotic devotion, but neither is it to agree with Samuel Johnson declaration: “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” It is to acknowledge that just as evil exists, so does goodness, in people and in nations. It is to argue that the United States, despite obvious historical and current warts, has been a force for good in this world, more so than any other nation – deserving of pride. And it has been so because it has always put first the freedom of the individual, while combining, as the late conservative political philosopher Roger Scruton noted, a suspicion of government with the acknowledgement of its necessity.

 

Without a reduction in political animosity, how will the U.S. address the real problems we confront: China’s and Russia’s aggression; nuclear weapons in rogue states; the failure of our K-12 public schools? Balancing the budget. Problems at home and in the world are real. Hatefulness will not solve them.

Review: "Conservatism," by Sir Roger Scruton

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

Review: “Conservatism,” by Sir Roger Scruton

July 10, 2019

“Conservatives are not reactionaries. As Burke said, ‘we must reform in order

 to conserve,’ or, in more modern idiom: we must adapt. But we adapt to change

 in the name of continuity, in order to conserve what we are and what we have.”

                                                                                                Conservatism, 2017

                                                                                                Roger Scruton (1944-)

                                                                                                Philosopher and Writer

Labels are misleading. The terms “liberal” or “conservative” confuse substance with abstractions. To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, labels mean whatever we want them to mean. If told I am conservative is it meant I am a tightwad in fiscal matters? Does it mean I favor martial law to a democratic process?Does it mean I am antediluvian in cultural ways? Does it mean I am anti-progress, preferring the past to the future? Does it mean I am racist, xenophobic or misogynist?Does it mean all, or none of the above? I know what I mean when I claim to be conservative, but do others?  For me, conservativism is about freedom – free to speak, write, assemble and pray. But it also includes respect for tradition and for the opinions of others; being responsible for one’s actions and accountable to other. It means a belief in the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and a commitment to values, like honor and duty. I believe strongly in family and in loyalty, and that the Constitution provided freedom for religion, not from religion. I believe government is an instrument of the people, not the other way around; that we must be ruled by laws, not men; it assumes a vigorous military, but one reflective of the nation’s citizens and under the control of a civilian president; it is the welcoming of legal immigrants and those legitimately seeking asylum; and it is an understanding that debt, while having useful purposes, when excessive has consequences, including political pressure to keep interest rates artificially low. 

The subtitle of Mr. Scruton’s short book is “An Introduction to the Great Tradition,” and that is what this book is – a primer on conservatism, a guide through the history of the discipline.  “…modern conservativism arose as a defence of the individual against potential oppressors, and an endorsement of popular sovereignty.” But it also recognizes the role communities and government must play in civil society. In institutions and traditions, there are kernels of wisdom without which, Mr. Scruton writes, “…the exercise of freedom is as likely to destroy human rights and entitlements as to enhance them.” 

We are taken on a sleigh ride from Aristotle to Niall Ferguson. He writes of Edmund Burke (1729-1797), “…the greatest of British conservative thinkers…” and Adam Smith (1723-1790), who “…provided the philosophical insight that gave intellectual conservatism its first start in life.” He cites Thomas Jefferson’s (1743-1826) contribution to conservativism, in his “insistence on continuity and custom as necessary conditions for constitution building and also for his warnings against the centralization of political power.” He writes of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) and their belief that “only in a free market do prices provide a guide to the economic needs of others.” He notes the role of cultural conservatives, like T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973), George Orwell (1903-1950) and Allan Bloom (1930-1990). He quotes George H. Nash (1945-) on William Buckley (1925-2008), as “the pre-eminent voice of American conservatism, and its first great ecumenical figure, ecumenical because Buckley attempted to synthesize in his writings and his life the three principal aspects of the American conservative movement: cultural conservatism, economic liberalism and anti-communism.” 

Scruton differentiates conservatism from libertarianism, where the latter is interested only in the bare minimum of government necessary for the maintenance of individual freedom, while conservatives believe more is at stake: “Society depends for its health and continuity on customs and traditions that are at risk from individual freedom, even if they are also expressions of it.” He adds, “The philosophical burden of American conservatism has been to define those customs and traditions and to show how they might endure and flourish from their own inner dynamic, outside the control of the state.”

Conservatism has long been portrayed in pejorative terms, as privileged white males who, as Franklin Roosevelt once said, “stand on two legs but never go forward.” Conservatism has been under attack more recently by intolerant liberals purporting to fight for equality and fairness. It has been most common in universities, where administrators and professors blindly reject alternative opinions. We have seen “liberal” entertainers call for the assassination of President Trump. We have witnessed this hatred manifested in violent attacks by Antifa, most recently on journalist Andy Ngo in Portland, Oregon. Roger Scruton has not been immune from this scourge. George Eaton a deputy editor of the New Statesman interviewed him last November. By taking Scruton’s responses out of context and resorting to Twitter, Eaton was able to get Scruton fired from his unpaid position as chairman of the UK commission, Building Better, Building Beautiful. Indicative of his own character, Eaton then posted a photo of himself online clasping a bottle of champagne: “The feeling when you get right-winged racist and homophobic Roger Scruton sacked as a Tory government advisor.” He later deleted the photo.

Perhaps, though, there is a shift in the winds. There are a few on the Left who have begun to realize that they may have gone too far, that they are partaking in a “sort of progressive feeding frenzy,” as Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote. This tendency toward extremism is not new to the left. It periodically surfaces. We saw it in 1968, in the attack on police in Chicago at the Democrat National Convention, and in the militaristic occupying of college campuses in the late 1960s by groups like SDS. When attacked by George McGovern on his policies in 1968, Lyndon Johnson, who had pushed through Congress the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, told a reporter: “You know the difference between cannibals and liberals? Cannibals eat only their enemies.” But attitudes may be changing. In his 2019 book, A Thousand Small Sanities, the left-of-center Adam Gopnik wrote: “The contemporary left can sometimes seem to have an insufficient respect for the fragility of the very same liberal institutions that allow its views to be broadcast without impediments.” In These Truths, Harvard professor Jill Lepore bemoans that studying the United States as a nation fell out of favor. She has migrated from the progressive fascination with identity politics to the Declaration of Independence as her guiding star. While she does not whitewash America’s past, she wrote: “There is also, in the American past, an extraordinary amount of decency and hope…” There are defenders of conservatism, like Boston College professor Kenneth Kersch’s recent book Conservatives and the Constitution. As well, the “Intellectual Dark Web,” or IDW, has become prominent, a group that includes Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, all who have articulated opposition to identity politics, political correctness, multiculturalism, intersectionality theory and perpetual grievance.

So where does President Trump fit into this discussion. I like what he has done overseas, in terms of accentuating the hypocrisy of global institutions, bringing attention to supercilious Europeans who have taken advantage of the U.S. in terms of their own defense; I like him for calling out the Chinese for having done the same in trade and in stealing our technology, for naming the Iranians for what they are  – seekers of the bomb and exporters of terror; and I admire him for defending Israel and being honest about the Paris Agreement, which was nothing more than a glorified mechanism to transfer wealth. I like what Mr. trump has done for the economy, in terms of taxes and regulation. But he is coarse, inarticulate and egotistical. However, like George M. Cohan (as played by James Cagney in the 1942 film “Yankee Doodle Dandy”), he knows what ordinary people want. But he is not a defender of classical conservatism. Just look at the increase in national debt. As well, conservatism incorporates contrition, manners and respect for others. One might argue those traits are no longer possible in today’s dog-eat-dog world. Perhaps? I hope they are simply taking a temporary leave of absence.

Sir Roger’s book is timely. Freedom is fragile and must be constantly tracked. The risk to our democracy is less the threat of terrorism, global warming or an attack by Iran or China, and more dissolution from within. When the central government assumes too much power, over-regulates and/or puts in place laws that constantly monitor and govern people’s behavior, freedom is the loser. To ward against that threat, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo established a Commission on Unalienable Rights at the State Department to be chaired by Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon. The purpose: to ensure that our human rights – those granted by government – are grounded in America’s founding principle of unalienable rights, which are universal and not granted by government. They include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In this post-Soviet Union period, those rights have been challenged by ad hoc (or human) rights, which include healthcare, old age pensions, education and basic income. Real freedom depends on the pursuit of unalienable rights. A focus on human rights, while desirable in a compassionate community, can detract from those that make us a free and independent people.  It is not that human rights should be abolished; though we must be wary of suffocation by kindness. It is that we cannot lose sight of those rights that are unalienable. Keep in mind, anything that government grants, they can take away, and that as dependency waxes independence wanes. 

In the 2006 revised edition of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, George H. Nash asked: “Whether conservatives could thrive indefinitely without victory in the context for our culture wars was, perhaps, the great unanswered question about American politics.” The question, in my opinion, remains unanswered, as intolerant professors and skittish administrators dominate our universities and colleges, as the incident regarding Oberlin College and the Gibson Bakery so vividly demonstrated, and as mainstream media serves as advocates for progressive causes, rather than as skeptical reporters indifferent to political philosophies. Scruton writes of the need to adapt – to change in the name of continuity, “in order to conserve what we are and what we have.” He emphasizes the importance of the first-person plural “we,” as it binds us together. Our identity is not one of gender, race, sexual preference or religion; it is one of being American – citizens of a sovereign state, governed by laws not men, where we are free to write, speak or act, subject only to rules of civility – that what we write, say or do does not infringe on the same rights of our neighbors. 

Roger Scruton has done a public service in producing this small book (155 pages). Not all will agree with his conclusions. He is controversial, scorned by the left and too often undefended by the right. But a reading should cause thinking people to question their assumptions and to decry the use of labels that do more to confuse than clarify.

"The Liberal World Order - At Risk?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“The Liberal World Order – At Risk?”

June 20, 2019

“Where is the life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

                                                                                                T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

                                                                                                Choruses from the Rock, 1934

The liberal world order grew from the ashes of World War II, a war that killed almost four percent of the world’s population – that is one out of every twenty-five people. Look at your town, city, street or apartment building and consider the human cost! It is no surprise that Western leaders wanted to ensure that no such atrocity happened again. It was the United States that exited the War in a position of global strength, and thus became the guarantor of security and the principal provider of funds necessary to rebuild both its allies and its enemies. The U.S., in 1945 had about 50% of the world’s wealth, with only 6.5% of its population. Militarily, the U.S. was peerless and, until 1949, the only country with an Atomic weapon.

The liberal order was committed to democratic ideals and the free movements of goods and people. It was organized around nation states. The result has been seventy years of unprecedented prosperity. And, while genocides in subsequent years were experienced in Cambodia and Rwanda, Europe and Japan remained at peace. To help enforce that liberal order, supranational organizations were built, like the United Nations, NATO and the World Bank. However, because of transnational governance, those institutions threatened to override the laws of the sovereign states they were charged to uphold. As well, the impulse to impose progressive norms on all nations was a natural consequence of these organizations. They interfered with internal affairs, when autocracies threatened, and they spread progressive ideas, without regard to a country’s customs and traditions. As well, well-intentioned Presidents from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush wanted to transform autocratic regimes into democratic ones, with the former’s National Endowment for Democracy and the latter’s “freedom agenda” – a task that proved insurmountable.   

As early as February 1948, George Kennan said we must avoid “sentimentality” and deal in “straight power concepts” – a role played by the United States’ military, which was not always welcomed. In the same memo, Mr. Kennan was emphatically realistic: “We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.” Yet the reach of humanitarian groups within the United Nations has expanded: The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the United Nations Department of Global Communications, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and UNICEF. These NGOs employ tens of thousands of people, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, with the U.S. being the principal benefactor. While purporting to further the “liberal order,” they, in fact, undermine it, at least according to the dictates of Mr. Kennan. Brock Chisholm, a Canadian and first Director- General of the World Health Organization and who died in 1971 was blunt: “To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas” – an Orwellian concept, the beginnings of which we see in Brussels today and in the words and deeds of those who put supranational organizations and treaties above the nation state.

Things change. The world today is different from the one in 1945. The Soviet Union recovered and fell. China rose. Theocracy appeared in Iran, which then became an exporter of terror, as did its neighbor Iraq. The 1970s oil embargo strengthened OPEC and enriched the elite in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Russia and other oil-rich nations. North Korea became an aggressor. Climate change became politicized. Today the United Nations Human Rights Council includes such non-democratic nations as Cuba, Afghanistan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A re-energized Russia invaded Georgia and Ukraine. China’s attempt at reform was set back by an autocratic Xi Jinping. On a relative basis, the United States position in the world declined. Today, with 4.4% of the world’s population, the U.S. produces 24% of the world’s GDP. Non-state terrorism, under the guise of Islamism, became a major threat, while nations like Iran and North Korea, footnotes in 1945, threaten the world with exported terrorism and are aggressively pursuing nuclear weapons. A resurgent Russia and China offer economic and societal alternatives to developing nations, from a West that has vacated its moral framework.

We are told by progressives that populism, nationalism and authoritarianism threaten the “liberal order” from within, while powers like Russia, China and Iran contest its hegemony and legitimacy Dartmouth professors Jennifer Lind and William Wohlforth wrote last January in Foreign Affairs: “Instead of expanding it to new places and new domains, the United States and its partners should consolidate the gains the order has reaped.” In a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a few days before Donald Trump was sworn in as President, Vice President Joe Biden warned: “The liberal international world order is at risk of collapse.” His words were aimed at Russia and at the social instability he claimed was caused by the top one percent not paying their fair share of taxes. But there are other causes. A recent survey, taken by the Center for American Progress and quoted by David Brooks in a recent New York Timesop-ed, suggested that Americans care most about terrorism and illegal immigration. What they care least about is promoting democracy. Mr. Brooks believes the U.S. is “withdrawing from the world.” I am not so sure. It is my sense we are re-ordering priorities after spending too much time on what George Kennan called “sentimentality and day-dreaming,” and not enough time on jobs and security.

The world changes, but the needs for order and freedom, remain. In World Order, Henry Kissinger wrote: “Order and freedom, sometimes described as opposite poles on the spectrum of experience, should instead be understood as interdependent.” We live in an information age, with the amount of data growing exponentially. We have an accumulated knowledge that exceeds our ability to consume and digest. But, have we gained wisdom? Listening to our politicians and pundits, one could only answer in the negative. Whatever direction our foreign policy goes, not all will be satisfied. But we should have one goal – the avoidance of nuclear devastation. There are those who recommend restraint and, while that sounds reasonable, restraint without a moral framework will not do the job – and it will not do the job unless one is militarily strong. We in the West, with our Judeo-Christian heritage and our traditions of families, churches and schools, should have the right moral impulse. A problem with globalism is it leads to multiculturalism and an absence of moral certitude. We do not have all the answers and are not always right, but thus far no other culture comes close to ours in terms of moral rectitude. Margaret Thatcher once wrote: “There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.”  Morality is not, as some globalists would have one believe, relative. It is absolute. There is good and there is evil. To prevail, we must remain militarily and morally strong. 

Later, in “Choruses from the Rock,”T.S. Eliot goes on:

“The world turns and the world changes,

But one thing does not change.

In all my years, one thing does not change,

However you disguise it, this thing does not change:

The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.”

Eliot is lamenting a world that has forsaken religion, first for Reason and then for money and power. The liberal world order was always an ideal. Though it worked well for Europe, it has separated from its moral anchor. Roger Scruton in Conservativism wrote, “…political communities, democracies included, are held together by something stronger than politics. There is a ‘first person plural,’ a pre-political loyalty, which causes neighbors who voted in opposing ways to treat each other as fellow citizens, for whom the government is not ‘mine’ or ‘yours,’ but ‘ours,’ whether we approve of it or not.” The liberal world order bemoaned by Vice President Biden is not possible unless Western Nations recognize the moral turpitude of practices that promote incivility and elevate identity politics over unity. We must remember that in the U.S., we are Americans; in Germany, Germans; in Italy, Italians; in Poland, Polish, etc. We have rights that must be honored. We have traditions that must be maintained. We have communities into which all, including immigrants, must be integrated. As for immigrants, the onus is on them to adapt to the standards and customs of the country to which they have emigrated. It cannot be otherwise. Within a nation, we cannot live segregated lives. We have laws that, until they are changed by the legislative process, must be obeyed. Personal responsibility and accountability are fundamental. Together, these elements create the foundation on which all else stands. It is the only way a civil society can persevere. It is the only way a liberal world order can prevail.