"Solitude"

I recall past Labor Days that marked the end of summer. Now, our three college-age grandchildren and the one still in high school, have been back on their respective campuses for over a week. It seems to me a sad finish to what in June seemed an endless summer. But they are all happy to be back among friends and the lives they are carving out for themselves.

 

In thinking about this essay on solitude. I wandered past a small pond and came across this lone Painted Turtle pondering its future.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Solitude”

August 30, 2025

 

“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it occasionally.”

                                                                Albert Camus (1913-1960)

              The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, 1942

 

Man is inherently social. He craves company. He thrives on companionship. It is one reason there are an estimated 28,000 social and country clubs in the U.S. It is why solitary confinement is severe punishment. 

 

However, Camus was also right. In solitude, imaginations swell. Possibilities enter one’s mind, to be accepted or discarded. Goethe allegedly once wrote: “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.” In schools and universities, students learn from others – their teachers and fellow students. Yet there is truth in the quote attributed to educational reformer John Dewey: “We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.” Henry David Thoreau was unique in his desire for solitude. In Walden or, Life in the Woods: “I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.”

 

While each of us is different, like most I am a social animal. For almost fifty years I worked on a trading floor, surrounded by salespeople and traders. My customers were in cities across the country and in London. I spoke to them daily and met with them regularly. It was a job I loved, requiring continuous contact. Despite being retired for almost ten years, I still stay in touch with many who became friends. Today, besides having a large family – my wife, Caroline, three children and spouses, ten grandchildren, and five surviving siblings – I belong to three ROMEO (retired old men eating out) lunch groups. I love the friendship and the exchange of ideas. Without that stimulation, I would shrivel up.

 

Like the late American novelist Patricia Highsmith who wrote of how her imagination functions better when she didn’t have to speak to people, I love being alone – to let my fancy take wing. Driving alone with the radio off, lying in bed before sleep arrives, or walking woodland trails, I identify with the Lord Byron’s words from “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage:” “There is pleasure in the pathless woods/...There is society, where none intrudes...” Treading well-worn paths, I ponder politics; the stock market; world events; friends I have known, especially those who have died; books I have read or am reading; as well as subjects for essays like this – Teddy Bears, eggs, and solitude. I bring a pen and paper, as my memory is not what it was, to jot down words or phrases that come to me. Sitting on a bench that populates these trails – sensibly placed for those my age – I watch a turtle ponder its future (pictured), an ant carry a load back to its nest.

 

But voluntary solitude is not forced loneliness. Social isolation is a health risk for the mentally challenged and the risks they impose to citizens, as we saw last Wednesday in Minneapolis; for the young, as they go through puberty when the desire to be accepted by one’s peers is paramount; and for the elderly when loneliness can lead to a poor quality of life and even premature death. It is why retirement communities, like Essex Meadows where we live, put a premium on social activities. According to the non-profit organization Trust for America’s Health, isolation imposed by restrictions due to COVID resulted in a 20% increase in deaths in 2020 from the effects of alcohol, drugs and suicide.

"A Cauldron of Challenges"

Yesterday, a grandson, a graduate student in 20^th Century European history, texted me a copy of the front page from the October 1, 1938 New York Times: “Czech Rulers Bow, But Under Protest.” British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned to London from meeting Hitler in Munich the previous day, declaring that, in offering Germany Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland he had brought “peace in our time.” My grandson was reminded of that event after President Trump’s urged Ukraine’s President Zelensky to give up Crimea to Russia.   

 

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While Francis was not my favorite Pope, there is no question that he was a compassionate man, especially to the poor and those unable to care for themselves. However, his allowing China’s Communist Party to select (or approve) Bishops I thought was wrong, but Francis may have concluded that it was the only way the Church could exist in that despotic, secular country. I also have long felt that like so many Socialists, Francis failed to credit capitalism as being the principal (albeit imperfect) force in reducing poverty. One has only to compare life in the Democratic and capitalist West with the Socialist world.

 

Nevertheless, I wish him eternal life, and, having watched the movie Conclave, I eagerly await the results of next month’s Conclave.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A Cauldron of Challenges”

April 25, 2025

 

“Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

                                                                                                                Macbeth, Act IV, Scene 1 (1606)

                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

                                                                                                                Attributed to Socrates (c. 469 BC – 399 BC)

 

President Trump has achieved a few goals. Border crossings by illegal migrants have declined by close to ninety percent. Military recruitment is up, with Army recruitment at 15-year highs. DOGE has exposed waste and fraud in many government agencies, and woke ideology is on the run. And, unlike the Biden years, we know who is in charge at the White House. 

 

But in other respects Mr. Trump has been less successful. He is wrong, in my opinion, when he calls for the capitulation of Ukraine, and when he advocates for tariffs – a tax on American consumers. His on-again-off-again tariffs have wreaked havoc with the stock market, weakened the dollar, and caused a pause in the economy. A weak dollar would result in higher interest rates for U.S. Treasuries. While illegal migration poses cultural and dependency risks, globalization and a strong dollar have raised living standards, as the cost of consumables, measured in hours worked, have declined over the decades, due to manufacturing being done where it is most cost efficient, along with technological innovations. Stronger education standards, secure borders, and a tax code that encourages innovation and investment are what is needed, not barriers to free trade. And I fail to understand Mr. Trump’s love affair with cryptocurrencies.

 

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This essay focuses on a few of the challenges we face. (There are, obviously, many others). Shakespeare’s three witches had filled their cauldron with fillets of fenny snakes, eyes of Newts, tongues of dogs, and other such delicacies, but the cauldron of which I write is filled with threats: federal debt and unfunded liabilities at record levels; interest rates that encourage borrowing and discourage savings; public schools that don’t educate; declining birthrates – a world-wide phenomenon; an imperialistic China; a revanchist Russia; a soon-to-be nuclear armed Iran; and, I would argue, an absence of moral judgement. 

 

As a percent of GDP, today’s federal debt exceeds the level reached in 1945 when it peaked at 121.2%. Then, the United States financed a large portion of the Allies needs to fight a global war. Currently, the debt to GDP ratio stands around 122%, and is estimated to rise further, as a projected $1.3 trillion deficit for fiscal 2025 will be added to the current $36.2 trillion in U.S. federal debt. Today, more than half the federal budget is spent on entitlements. None of this debt, of course, includes an estimated $73 trillion in unfunded liabilities, principally from Medicare and Social Security. The reason that deficits continue to increase is simple – we spend more than we take in. Resolution can only lie with higher taxes or reduced spending, or a combination of the two. Reduced spending penalizes recipients of government largesse. Increased taxes inhibit economic growth. Will anyone in Washington address this problem? 

 

Low interest rates encourage consumption and speculation, and they discourage savings. When Treasury rates are only a percent or two above inflation they offer little incentive, apart for foreigners who benefit (or have benefitted) from the strong dollar, which explains why they currently own about one third of all U.S. Treasuries publicly held. If Mr. Trump is successful, in achieving a weaker dollar one can expect foreign investors to fade. If they do, rates will rise, as domestic investors will demand higher returns. 

 

Thomas Jefferson believed that for a society to be self-governed it had to be “educated and free-thinking.” Yet, according to Pacific Research Institute 43% of high school students in the U.S. graduate illiterate and innumerate. A debate between Republicans and Democrats over whether boys can play on girls sports’ teams and use their bathrooms may be worth having, but it should not detract from the fact that not all our children are being taught to read, write and do simple arithmetic. Superintendents and principals need to be able to fire non-performing teachers, without fear of retribution from teachers’ unions.

 

Attention must be paid to the demographic crisis soon to confront us. Total Fertility Rates (TFR) measure the average number of children a woman is expected to bear in her lifetime. A TFR of 2.1 represents replacement rate. For the last fifty years, the TFR in the U.S. has been below replacement. Today, the TFR in the U.S. stands at 1.76. And during the last fifty years, the average age in the U.S. has risen from 27.6 to 38.5, even as the population increased by better than 50%, or about130 million. A little more than a third of that increase reflects legal immigrants. Additionally, current population numbers include illegal migrants. Nevertheless, births in the U.S. outnumbered deaths by approximately 380,000 in 2023. However, declining birthrates and an aging population pose economic and social risks. In the EU the situation is dire. Deaths outnumber births by more than a million, and the TFR for 2024 is estimated to have been 1.4, with the median age having risen from 31.3 to 42.5 over the past fifty years. Birthrates below replacement, with increasing longevity will have economic consequences, yet politicians and the media seem to care little about what could become a monumental challenge. “Attention must be paid,” as Linda Loman says to her husband in Death of a Salesman.

 

Overseas, China dominates the Pacific and is making inroads in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East through its Belt & Road initiatives. Putin’s Russia seems determined to restore its Tsarist boundaries, while Iran and North Korea threaten the peace in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. U.S. defense spending, as a percent of the federal budget, has declined from 24.3% in 1980 to 13.5% in 2024. At the same time interest expense in 1980, when the Ten-Year yielded 11.4%, has risen from 8.8% to 13.2%, even as the yield on the Ten-Year has fallen to 4.2%. World peace demands a militarily strong United States.

 

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If blame for the challenges cited above were allocated fairly among our two political parties, there would be no one to manage government. Playing to the choir and grabbing headlines is more important than debating controversial subjects. If Diogenes were to wander the streets of Washington searching for an honest politician, he would have better luck looking for a Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree on the Tibetan Plateau.

 

Perhaps I exaggerate the threats. We have been in tight spots in the past – obviously during the Civil War, but also in the 1960s, when Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement caused bloody protests, campus shootings and assassinations. Nevertheless, today’s divisiveness is disturbing. We need as President a Lincoln-like figure, an individual capable of uniting the diverse strands of our people, a person with humor and possessed of moral certitude based on the Judeo-Christian heritage on which our nation was built.

 

After all, we are the United States. Surely such an individual must exist…somewhere in this great Country.

"Necessary Trouble: Growing Up in Midcentury," Drew Gilpin Faust - A Review

Today is Veterans Day – Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth. It was originally celebrated as Armistice Day, as it marked the end of fighting on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918. But as that truce held, the day assumed a new name. Today, in the U.S. we use this day to celebrate all those who have served in the United States Armed Forces. While I have always been pleased that I did serve in the Army, but as one who completed his military obligation with six months of active duty and five and a half years in the inactive reserves, I have always felt guilty of being lumped with those who were in combat, men and women who put their lives on the line for their country.

 

And I prefer the term Remembrance Day, as we should take a few minutes to think of and thank those who did serve, whether in France, Italy, the Philippines, Korea, South Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan, or in any place where American soldiers were sent to aid their own nation or that of Allies. And that includes my father who, at age 34 and with four children, served in Italy with the 10^th Mountain Division in 1944-45. Thank God he came home, where he and my mother bore another five children. What we owe them can never be adequately re-paid.

 

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Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Burrowing into Books

“Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury,” Drew Gilpin Faust

November 11, 2023

 

“This was an issue between me and my conscience

about what was necessary for me to live my life.”

Drew Gilpin Faust (1947-)

Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury, 2023  

 

Socrates, who allegedly said that the unexamined life is not worth living, would have praised this reflection of Harvard’s first female president. While we do learn that the average American family in the mid-1950s “ate 850 cans of food annually,” and that they welcomed innovations like “instant oatmeal, instant coffee and Swanson’s TV dinners,” in this book Ms. Faust examines her responses to the social and cultural tectonic shifts that rattled the 1950s and ‘60s, especially the lives of those white and comfortable. 

 

She was born in Virginia in 1947 to parents steeped in the “benevolent paternalistic concern” toward black servants that characterized wealthy, land-owning whites, at a time when prejudices were hidden “beneath a surface of politeness and civility that scarcely masked the assumption of superiority…” She grew up in the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley, where her father raised thoroughbreds and her mother tried to train her to be a lady “in a man’s world.” But she also grew up to the rumblings of dissent, emanating from the Civil Rights and Women’s movements, at a time when the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik questioned America’s leadership in science. She came to her majority as earlier protests became crescendos, when drugs and the sexual revolution seized America’s youth, when the Vietnam War raised questions about the Nation’s commitment and morality, and finally when the non-violence preached by Martin Luther King gave way to violence. 

 

From an early age she had been an activist, fighting for freedom. She writes: “Freedom had been a pressing concern for me from the time I was a small child and first launched battles with my mother about clothes and hair and girls’ rules…There was my gradual discovery that others around me confronted far greater injustices…that freedom meant not just ‘freedom from’ but ‘freedom to.’” At age ten, disturbed by black children being unable to attend her school, she wrote President Eisenhower: “Please Mr. Eisenhower, please try and have schools and other things accept colored people.”

 

The book ends in 1968 when, at twenty-one, she casts her first presidential vote, in protest, for comedian Dick Gregory. But student activists were becoming more violent, which was an aversion to her exposure to Quaker precepts at Bryn Mawr: “One of my greatest challenges as an activist was probably that I was too polite for the revolution…I was much more comfortable with a politics grounded in debate and persuasion, and with power exerted through democratic expression, than with the new performative and coercive style coming to characterize young militants.”

 

Her title comes from John Lewis (1940-2020) who inspired her along with many of her generation to “get in good trouble, necessary trouble,” to effect change. Drew Gilpin Faust went on to get her PhD in history at the University of Pennsylvania, where she taught until 2001 when she was appointed dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and Lincoln Professor of History. Her sound judgement and moral sense are infectious. Her examined life is an antidote for our troubled times.

"Know Thyself"

 Welcome to the post-Labor Day period, traditionally, the beginning of the fall political campaign season, though in today’s world that season has no beginning and no end.

 

A few words on Donald Trump. As we all know, he is not a saint. But neither is he a semi-fascist, as President Biden claimed, nor is he a lunatic, as National Review recently wrote. His super-sized ego and bombastic language are offensive. But lost in the polarization of feelings he engenders, it is worth remembering why he decided to run for President. He went to Washington for at least two reasons: He went selfishly, to raise his profile, and he went magnanimously to drain Washington’s swamp. His profile has risen, but not in ways he would have wished. Keep in mind, his net worth declined by about a billion dollars while he was President. The swamp, however, remains dense and dark. Establishment politicians of both Parties, with their enablers in Washington’s bureaucracy, banded to destroy the threat he posed to their comfortable way of life, which in hundreds of cases have converted public service to private gains.

 

The swamp remains – at an enormous cost to taxpayers – as does the job to drain it. Is there another politician from either Party willing to take on this unpopular and Herculean task, or will the swamp grow danker, deeper, and darker?

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Know Thyself”

September 6, 2022

 

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself

can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

                                                                                                George Goodman as Adam Smith (1930-2014)

                                                                                                The Money Game, 1968

 

The words “Know thyself” were, according to legend, engraved above the forecourt in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on Mount Parnassus in central Greece. A search for self-knowledge is common, and its importance has been lauded by many, from Benjamin Franklin to Lao Tzu to Pythagoras. To fatalist Greeks the saying meant that one should accept the role nature assigned one. But for those of us today who believe we are also nurtured by our environment. self-examination should be an ongoing process.

 

There are those who dismiss the concept, because we change. Andre Gide wrote in Autumn Leaves: “A caterpillar who seeks to know himself would never become a butterfly.” But a search for self-understanding is not seeking perfection in the here and now; it seeks to understand; it recognizes that change is given: We have new experiences; we meet different people, and we read. Life does not stand still and neither do we. What if Gide’s caterpillar wanted to become a butterfly? Some conflate self-knowledge with hubris – that in claiming to know ourselves we admit to knowing what we do not know. That, to borrow one of Joe Biden’s favorite expressions, is malarkey. It’s an argument used by woke philosophy professors to confuse young, impressionable minds. It is impossible to know what we do not know. 

 

Self-understanding is important in an ever-changing world. In a recent interview in The Wall Street Journal, American tennis player Danielle Collins spoke “of how to use your strengths and how to work around your weaknesses” to win matches. She understands that her weaknesses will improve with practice, and that her strengths can be harbored and utilized. It was Heraclitus (c.535BC-c.475BC) who is credited with the saying: “Change is the only constant in life.” Knowing oneself is acknowledging that truth.

 

Knowing oneself is especially important in this age of political polarization that has tipped into extremism. It is easy to get carried away by the swift-moving current of political correctness. Those of us who still believe in the premise of classical liberalism face a political mindset that invokes moral equivalence to justify a belief that the United States is inherently evil, founded on the backs of slaves – that we are no better than other despotic nations. Today, amidst a torrent of “wokeness,” we face a crisis in education, where equity trumps excellence, where conformity reigns due to a lack of diversity of ideas, and where history incorporates “presentism,” promoting ignorance of earlier eras and cultures. The consequence has been high school and college graduates who know little of our history and civic affairs, and where persistently low scores on international tests have become common. The Department of Education (DOE) recently released fourth grade test scores that show the effects of Covid-related shutdowns. But shutdowns were not solely to blame, as charts show declines in math and reading scores began ten years ago.

 

We face a border crisis that is unfair to immigrants and to American citizens, where the only beneficiaries have been human and drug smugglers. We have created a national debt that has reached a size that a normalization of interest rates is no longer a viable alternative. We no longer celebrate the two-parent family, value the moral teachings of religion, or appreciate the dignity of work. We have a “semi-Socialist and semi-authoritarian” President (to borrow from Daniel Henninger) who promised to unify the nation, but who recently called his 2020 competitor a “semi-fascist.”

 

Except for the Reagan years, for over eight decades an expanding and “compassionate” government has been seen as the answer to problems we individually face. On January 6, 1941, in his State of the Union, President Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four freedoms: The first two were lifted from the Bill of Rights: freedom of speech and freedom to worship. The next two involved government, in a way unintended by the Constitution – freedom from want and freedom from fear. After a dozen years of depression and a European war underway, it is understandable why his words were so well received and are so fondly remembered. But all the ills of the world cannot be resolved by a pen and a phone. Want has persisted as has fear. Sadly, there will always be poverty, illness, and accidents. But, keep in mind, no political system yet devised has been better at reducing poverty and alleviating fears than a democratic-republic and free-market capitalism. 

 

As we head toward the midterm elections, we should each take stock of our own political beliefs. I can only speak for myself: I want constrained, self-paying government, with separation of powers, a fair judiciary. a government which functions under the rule of law, guarantees our enumerated rights and our borders, provides for defense – a government that allows us to freely have options, which fit individual needs. I want a vibrant, competitive, free-market economy that responds to millions of people making thousands of choices every day, not one directed by bureaucrats in Washington. We have seen the unfortunate consequences of government-managed economies, in an earlier period of Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe and today in places like China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Paraguay, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, among others.

 

Knowing oneself involves soul-searching and asking difficult questions. Do we like what we have become? The President has called Mr. Trump and his followers “semi-fascists.” Democratic advisor Kurt Bardella, speaking on MSNBC last week, said that modern Republican ‘playbook’ was like that of Nazi Germany: “We are watching right now a very radical and extreme Republican Party mirror what we have seen in other places like Nazi Germany, like other people, like the Bolsheviks. We have seen this playbook before.”

 

Really? Which Party weaponized the IRS in 2012 to slow-walk non-profit status for groups whose ideology was deemed unhelpful? Which Party colluded with the FBI to find dirt on their political opponents in 2016? Which Party referred to parents as terrorists in 2020? Which Party in 2022 authorized an unprecedented FBI invasion of the home of a former President? Which Party has most expanded the state and constricted the private sector, with restrictive rules and regulations? Both Parties are guilty of extremism, but the sanctimonious left, “the anointed” as Thomas Sowell calls them, has been guilty of undemocratic actions.

 

Politics historically, through debate and vote, have been used to resolve controversial issues. But we live in an age of extremism. Donald Trump, if he cares for conservative values, should remove himself, as he has become Democrats’ principal asset and Republicans’ biggest liability. But it is Democrats, with their sycophants in Washington’s bureaucracies, media and social media, universities, big corporations, and the entertainment industry who are stifling freedom and destroying democracy, not Republicans. I urge my Democrat friends to consider the rhetoric and vendettas of their Party. It has been their words and actions, plus censorship in schools and colleges, and a politicization of climate change, which imperil the freedom and prospects of the citizens of this exceptional nation. Socrates said that to know oneself is the beginning of wisdom. There is no need to navel gaze, but we should take a few moments to consider our history, to think of who we are and what we want, and to ask: What has happened? Why has so much gone wrong?

 

We are better than what we have become.

"Social Justice: Its Effect on Education, Politics and Us"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Social Justice: Its Effect on Education, Politics and Us”

November 14, 2019

“Everybody talks about social justice, but if you ask people exactly what

they mean by social justice, what they accept as justice, nobody knows. I’ve

 been trying for the last twenty years, asking people ‘What exactly are your principles?’”

                                                                                                Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992)

                                                                                                Interviewed on Firing Line, 1977

                                                                                                By William Buckley

Social justice is generally thought of as being fair and just relations between an individual and society. But to understand it, we must first consider its antithesis, justice, as expressed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, and as it was historically understood. Justice is freedom from encroachment on our rights to speak, to assemble, to own property. Justice reflects our inalienable rights that will not be denied. Social justice, in contrast, involves positive rights – the right to food, shelter, education, healthcare, etc. Justice allows for the precepts of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Social justice involves the provisioning of things. Since governments have no resources other than that which they take, social justice is, as the Libertarian Leonard Read put it, “robbing the selected Peter to pay for the collective Paul.” 

Social justice warriors would have us believe government has the virtues of individuals – a moral sense that invokes empathy, mercy, love and concern for the less fortunate. But governments have no feelings. Men and women do. It is justice, not social justice, that is the purpose of a democracy. Politicians, advocating for social justice, have joined their cause with emotion. They argue that only the state has the means to gather and equitably distribute wealth in the amounts required. However, Father Martin Rhonheimer, president of the Austrian Institute of Economics and Social Philosophy in Vienna, wrote that as “…social justice is essentially a moral virtue, it applies to all other actions of human beings, insofar as they relate to the common good.” It is a Christian teaching. Father Rhonheimer went on: “Social justice in this sense applies to the actions of capitalists, investors and entrepreneurs, and also to citizens feeling responsible for persons in need and for the poor.” In other words, social justice can be accomplished by individuals and eleemosynary institutions as wells as by government – and it is in many places.

Words are cheap and some who promote social justice are distinguished by hypocrisy.  Cuba’s dictator Fidel Castro impoverished his people materially, spiritually and democratically, yet he once spoke of his goal, as being “… not Communism or Marxism but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.” He could not provide his people a basic subsistence, and he certainly could not or would not give them justice. When trust is placed in the state as arbiter and promoter of the common good, abuses of power may be seized by elected legislators and unelected bureaucrats What is lost, in a clamor for social justice, is the justice inherent in free markets, derived from a free people making millions of individual decisions, operating under the rule of law.

Our schools and colleges have become incubators for social justice warriors. In an op-ed in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Judge José A. Cabranes, a former general counsel and trustee of Yale University, wrote that “colleges and universities have subordinated their historic mission of free inquiry to a new pursuit of social justice.” He used, as an example, the change in the first sentence of Yale’s new mission statement, which before 2016 read: “Like all great universities, Yale has a tripartite mission: to create, preserve, and disseminate knowledge.” That sentence now reads: “Yale is committed to improving the world today and for future generations through outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.” In their desire to be woke, the word knowledge disappeared from the Yale mission statement. Despite claims of equitable treatment for all, due process for faculty and students disappeared. Despite assertions of inclusion, conservative ideas are condemned and treated as hate speech. Recently a Harvard student, protesting a representative of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency on campus to be interviewed by The Crimson, explained: “My feelings are more important than freedom of the press.”

Socrates is credited with saying that the mind is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit. It is the purpose of education to keep those fires burning, to read and understand history, to incite curiosity, to debate issues, to think. Universities should recognize we never stop learning. Eric Hoffer once wrote that the central task of education is to “produce not learned but learning people.” Martin Luther King wrote that “The function of education is to think intensively and to think critically.” A university has a captive audience. When it is used to inculcate propaganda and discourage dissent, it is an injustice, not just to students but to society. Judge Cabranes wrote that faculties today play almost no role in the admissions process. That job has been assumed by “specialized” admissions departments, individuals who are less interested in intellectual curiosity and accomplishment, and more in “activism,” “social entrepreneurs,” or “overcoming adversity.” He added that “it has become common for applicants to claim to have ‘founded’ at [age] 17 some shiny-sounding non-profit devoted to beneficent acts.” (Surely, most such nonprofit foundations are founded and funded by wealthy parents.) Nevertheless, those are all good qualities that should not be dismissed. Promoting good citizenship is as critical to a democracy, as is creating a skilled, career-ready workforce to a job’s market. But first we should assure that our universities provide rigorous academic instruction, instill a love of learning, instruct on virtues and promote tolerance, all while encouraging a diversity of opinion.

For generations our nation has been blessed with great schools and universities, which have produced scientists, engineers, artists, writers, philosophers, doctors, teachers, politicians and entrepreneurs. With a Constitution of laws that protect private property and free speech, our Country has grown wealthy. Yet, today’s graduates have little understanding of how the promotion of social justice, definitionally, retards an historic understanding of justice. Free and open debate would allow students to better understand exactly how much freedom will have to be given up, in order to accomplish the social justice of their dreams.

It is in the political realm where social justice can cause the most damage. Social justice, we should never forget, entails injustice to those from whom something has been taken – even given that it is a price willingly paid by most for living in this nation. Government already provides much – defense, law enforcement, diplomacy, the promotion of interstate commerce, a public-school education, a network of highways, bridges and tunnels, healthcare for the elderly and indigent, and a retirement income for seniors. As the Country has matured, so have its commitments to its citizens. Social justice has become a buzz phrase (and Socialism is its inevitable destination) that is used by the Left to attract voters. Democrat candidates outdo one another in terms of promises made – promises which can only be realized by denying justice to the few who must bear the cost in dollars even as all must bear the costs in freedoms foregone.

While I believe we have a responsibility, individually and collectively, to care for those unable to care for themselves, we must identify and understand the costs incurred when government assumes responsibility – costs in terms of a demeaning culture of dependency and victimhood, along with freedoms lost and dollars spent. One is reminded of Margaret Thatcher’s famous aphorism that “the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of someone else’s money.” But it is Friedrich Hayek’s question at the top of this essay that needs be answered by each of us, individually: “what exactly are your principles?”