"End of Identity Politics?"

 Here we are in early December, almost a quarter of the way through the 21^st Century. Growing up in the mid-part of the 20^th Century, I thought I was living in the future. The 19^th Century – the past – was ever-present in grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and older neighbors. The “future,” foretold in books like The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and movies like The War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, provided fanciful entertainment, but hardly accurate predictions.

 

But the world does move on, and change is one constant we can count on.  Politically things change. The Party of Lincoln lost the black vote. The Party of segregation became the party of civil rights. Today we are going through another political change, as the Party of the working class is becoming the Party of elites, and of those dependent on government, and the mindless woke. And the Party of Lincoln, the Party of opportunity, is beginning once again to make inroads among the nation’s minorities.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“End of Identity Politics?”

December 2, 2024

 

“If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of ‘race’ or ‘gender’ alone, then by the exact

same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. You see how

this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.”

                                                                                                  Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

                                                                                                  Letters to a Young Contrarian, 2001

 

Mr. Trump’s victory on November 5^th may have marked the end of identity politics as we know it. Economic class, the election showed, mattered more than ethnicity, race or gender. Identity politics is based on the natural tendency for people of a specific race, ethnicity, gender, cultural, or religious group to band together, in friendship and to rectify past injustices. But that tendency has been employed and advantaged by politicians who, with the assistance of allies in the media, have divided people into oppressors and oppressed. Identity politics has led to an absence of focus on issues more relevant to individuals. 

 

The election showed that the American public is receptive to merit being the determinant to earned rather than “deserved” reward. DEI and ESG have fallen from favor. With the election, they fell further, defeated by common sense and real-world issues like the border, inflation, crime, disarray overseas, and excessive government intrusion and spending. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist historian, wrote in the November 21 issue of American Greatness of culture wars: “The age of flashing pronouns, renaming iconic landmarks, statue toppling, trashing the dead, vandalizing with impunity the campus library, or spouting anti-Semitic venom is passing.”

 

But the going is sluggish. While a CBS News/YouGov poll found 59% of American adults approve of how the Trump team is preparing its return to the White House, the Progressive Left is in denial about the election, as they continue to genuflect at the altar of Wokeness. Many believe that America remains racist, a society divided between victims and victimizers – that its history must be expunged and re-written; and that, for the nation’s redemption, taxpayers should continue to fund government departments of diversity, equity and inclusion. And they feel convinced that Mr. Trump symbolizes all that is wrong with the nation. But who is out of touch with America’s electorate? Mike Gonzalez and Armen Tooloee wrote in last Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: “Donald Trump’s most effective campaign ad featured the tagline, ‘Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.’”

 

In any event, is it accurate to call Mr. Trump a racist, sexist, bigot? Piers Morgan, in the November 23 issue of The Spectator, noted that he received “so many new votes from black, Latino, female, Jewish and Muslim voters, and celebrates by dancing on stage to the Village People’s gay anthem ‘YMCA’.” Empirical evidence suggests the answer to the question is no.

 

Democrats have created a bell-bar approach toward their Party – the elite (the media, the entertainment world, college professors and administrators, coastal tech and Wall Street billionaires) on one side, and those financially dependent on government on the other. It is a policy that ignores working class people, including legal immigrants, those who had once been the backbone of their Party. It is policy that downplays the role of aspiration, dedication, and effort – traits that lead to economic success. Having lived in Connecticut for almost sixty years, I have witnessed this change – wealthy enclaves and country clubs that were once dominated by Republicans have become bastions of Democratic group-think.

 

Politicians have long campaigned by compartmentalizing the electorate. The Marxist Left Review, a semi-annual publication, in August 2021, defined the term: “Identity politics is a set of ideas and practices that aim to build recognition of and expand representation for particular identity groups” to elevate them “to moral and political pre-eminence.” The second half of the 20^thCentury saw the emergence of such large-scale political movements: women’s rights, Black Civil Rights, gay and lesbian liberation, native American movement. They were all, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, based on claims about injustice having been done to them. And their claims were, largely, valid. 

 

But while these issues were imperative sixty years ago, the world has moved on. Those legitimate arguments have morphed into demands that male athletes be allowed to compete in women’s sports, that tampon dispensers be placed in men’s rooms, that school children should be allowed to take hormone-altering drugs without parent permission, and universities where students are fearful of expressing conservative opinions because of retaliation from professors and other students.

 

Despite what we read, see and hear in and on mainstream media and despite claims by Progressives of disinformation from conservative social media outlets, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, and homophobia have been in retreat. Are there still bigots? Of course. There always will be, but they are less ubiquitous than before. Given that the percentage of votes cast for Mr. Trump among blacks, Hispanics and youth increased suggests that the United States is approaching the goal which Martin Luther King sought – that the color of one’s skin is less important than the content of one’s character. The election was an affirmation that merit, aspiration, effort and ability are critical to success, and that affirmative action is yesterday’s answer to yesterday’s problem. The election’s outcome found that economic class was more critical to voters than race, gender or ethnicity. The U.S. is becoming more of a melting pot.

 

People should be judged by ability, effort and their accomplishments. We are each an individual. Today’s identity politics has led to racial and gender discrimination. It was the excuse Nazis used to persecute Jews in the 1930s and ‘40s, and it is what Chinese Communists do today to tyrannize Uyghurs. Its ugliness is seen in anti-Semitism on college campuses. And it is what led the ICC (International Criminal Court) to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant. 

 

I hope my optimism about witnessing the dying embers of identity politics is not pollyannish – that its setback is not just temporary. On February 18, 1958 Senator John F. Kennedy spoke at Loyola College Annual Alumni dinner in Baltimore: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our responsibility for the future.”

 

Read and re-read Christopher Hitchens’ wise remarks that preface this essay. Once anger over the election’s outcome has subsided and common sense returned, cooler heads should prevail. In an interview with Jason Riley in last Wednesday’s The Wall Street Journal, Shelby Steele said, the election was “…a vote for individualism over group identity.” And that it was “… a real note of progress for black America politically.” Aspiration, ability, effort are not characteristics exclusive to one’s gender, race, or ethnicity. But they have not been meted out equally, which explains differences in outcomes. Each of us is unique. Government should support the concept of equal opportunity, and individuals should be encouraged to take advantage of their God-given talents. Merit, regardless of who the individual is, should be the deciding factor in college admission and job offers. If we do, we will put “paid” to the belief in identity politics, at least as we know it; and then we can concentrate on today, the future and new problems that confront us.

"Lighten Up, America"

 Tuesday morning my wife and I will go to the polls at the Essex Town Hall. Afterwards, we will drive to the Griswold Inn, also here in Essex, where my daughter-in-law Beatriz Williams and her two co-authors, Lauren Willig and Karen White, will discuss their latest book, An Author’s Guide to Murder, over lunch. The book is being released that day. The event promises to be good fun – three delightful, smart, articulate and funny ladies, as they take the audience through a rollicking good mystery. Agatha Christie, eat your heart out!

 

On Wednesday we begin a six-day trip to visit two grandchildren in college in Pennsylvania and one in boarding school in Virginia, so your e-mail in-box will be free of my offerings, at least for a few days.

 

God speed, and may your candidate win…though I hope mine does!

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Lighten Up, America”

November 3, 2024

 

“Like a welcome summer rain, humor may

suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you.”

                                                                                                                The Book of Negro Humor, 1966

                                                                                                                Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

 

While Kamala Harris began her campaign with a promise of joy, it soon deteriorated into character smears against her opponent, with Ms. Harris calling him “fascist” and a “Hitler,” and with President Biden referring to Mr. Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” What makes the “fascist” label ironic is that, as Victor Davis Hanson wrote in last Thursday’s issue of American Greatness, “…he [Trump] has been the target of fascists machinations from her own party and supporters for nearly a decade.”

 

Mr. Trump has always appeared devoid of humor, except when polls swing his way. Writing in the current UK issue of The Spectator, Kate Andrews noted “…in the past few weeks, something has restored Trump’s humor.” As the audience left a recent rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, she quoted a man speaking to his family: “That was better than Netflix.”  Most of us smiled when Mr. Trump, wearing an orange reflector vest (and in response to Mr. Biden’s remark), jumped into a garbage truck in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump does have a habit of calling his opponents names that would make Gordon Gekko blush. Amidst this war of words, America seems an unhappy place. Last Thursday, The Washington Post editorialized: “…in an increasingly angry nation…incidents of road rage escalate across the country.”  As in 1888 Mudville, there is little joy in the U.S. today.

 

We have, as J.D. Vance recently reminded us, become overly sensitive, unable to distinguish between a comedian’s attempts at humor and the mean-spiritedness of a politician. Nevertheless, as a society, we (if not our politicians) have also become more sensitive to the feelings of others, a good thing. For generations, tasteless ethnic, racial, religious and sexual jokes were common. Perhaps because of that we were told that words could not hurt us. However today, we are told they can. Students and employees are warned against using “harmful” words. One consequence: we may become less of a melting pot than in those pre-and-post-World War II years – that our differences, not our similarities might define us. When my wife grew up in New York City, Little Italy, Chinatown, Germantown and Spanish Harlem were distinct places. While new enclaves have developed with new immigrants, those old boundaries can now be found only in history books. Immigrants of yesteryear, whether from Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Puerto Rico, or Asia, found it more comfortable, initially, to live in neighborhoods with people who spoke their language and understood their customs. Many new immigrants do so today. As time went by, those earlier immigrants added to the quilt that is the American people, and they became indistinct from their neighbors. Let us hope that today’s politics aimed at dividing us will not prevent the natural forces that unify us. Integration into our nation’s culture is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

 

It is important to remember that the build-out of a diversified population over the past half century happened despite an array of tasteless ethnic, religious and racial jokes. Those jokes – common forty-fifty-and-sixty-years ago – did not hinder the intermarriage of immigrants’ children and grandchildren. The Census Bureau reports that White-Hispanic marriages, White-Asian and White-Black marriages have soared over the past few decades. In 2022, 19% of newlyweds in the United States were married to someone of a different race or ethnicity, versus 3% in 1967. Will political correctness, which has led to the compartmentalization of people, cause that trend to slow or reverse? I don’t know. I am not advocating we revert to telling ethnic jokes. What I am saying is that, accompanied by self-deprecation, that form of humor did no lasting damage.

 

Campaigns, politics and governing are serious endeavors. But perspective is wanted. As the late, legendary ballerina Margot Fonteyn once said: “The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.” In dividing people into groups – ethnic, religious, racial, gender – progressive politicians have focused on our differences rather than our similarities. The poking of fun is no longer allowed. This fear of offending others has ushered in a culture of avoidance, for fear of affronting – widening already existing gaps between political parties, and gender and ethnic groups.

 

In the Essays of Michel Montaigne, the 16^th Century French philosopher wrote: “The highest wisdom is continual cheerfulness; such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene.” Humor prevents us from taking ourselves too seriously. It helps us find the balance between being sensitive to the needs and wants of others, while being honest about ours, and others, strengths and weaknesses. When the going gets tough, humor greases the skids. Mark Twain is alleged to have once said: “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” 

 

We live in serious – some might say perilous – times. Nevertheless, laughter has long been an antidote to dreariness. In his 1851 novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville wrote: “However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more’s the pity.” It is not mindless ‘joy’ we seek, but respectful and good-humored toleration of our differences, be they racial, gender or political. Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s opening stanza to her 1883 poem, as printed in The New York Sun, lends pertinence:  

 

“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep and you weep alone:

For the sad old world must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.”

 

…………………………………………………………………………..

 

In two days the tension of the election will be behind us. Half the country will be happy; the other half disappointed, but we will survive. Results of elections are never as good as winners would have us believe, nor as bad as losers claim. My recommendation is to pick up a Wodehouse. Sink back into Edwardian England where the sun always shone, birds flew overhead, bees buzzed about, and Uncle Fred could be found flitting along a garden path, spreading “sweetness and light.” Whether or not your choice for President was successful, a smile will crease your face.

"A House Divided"

 First, I want to thank you for having been a reader in 2023 and to express, in a few words, some of my foundational beliefs. I know not everyone agrees with what I write, nor do I expect that. Most of us grew up and were educated to think independently, which is the only way a democracy can work. My musings are the opinions of one person and, like living organisms, they mutate over time. 

 

What does not change (or should not change) are the moral truths inherited from our Judeo-Christian heritage: fairness and civility, honesty, respect for the opinions of others, humility. I recognize that I do not always adhere to these principles, but I am conscious of them, and I try.

 

There exists in the world both good and evil. Evil is inherent; goodness, in contrast, must be taught. As an amateur student of history, I know that man is not basically good. Morals and behavior must be learned. Apart from preparation against those both domestic and international who would do us harm, governments should be erected, as was ours, not to be efficient, but to serve the people. Separation of powers was designed to protect the rights of individual citizens. A successful Congress should not be measured by the number of laws passed, but whether the content of those laws meet the needs of the people, secure their safety, and comply with the basic moral principles on which this nation was founded.   

 

Second, I wish for you a peaceful, healthy, and happy 2024. Living, as we do, in a world battered by a constant flow of opinions, much disguised as news, it is important to take some moments each day to reflect on what is important and what is not – to gather, as the Bible says, the wheat into the barn and consign the chaff to the “unquenchable fire.”

 

Happy New Year!

 

Sydney Williams

 

January 2, 2024

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“A House Divided”

January 2, 2024

 

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

                                                                                                                Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

                                                                                                                Illinois Republican State Convention

                                                                                                                Springfield, IL, June 16, 1858

 

Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the U.S. we are divided between two opposing political forces, described by Lance Morrow in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal: “The left denounces the evil of what it claims the country has always been: racist, oppressive, toxically male, transphobic. The right rages against the evil of what the country has become: perverse, perverted, Marxist, sniveling, woke.” In Lincoln’s words, we have become “a house divided.”

 

While this division in America is manifested politically, it is also cultural; it has infested institutions – families, schools, and universities; the media, large corporations, and big banks; government and eleemosynary foundations; the entertainment world and libraries. People’s individual identity has been subsumed to the group to which they belong. As David Brooks wrote in the August 23^, 2023 edition of The Atlantic: “A person’s moral character is not based on their conduct, but on their location on the political spectrum.” We cannot continue on this trajectory. Where, when, and how does this divisiveness end?

 

When Lincoln spoke it was slavery – “a nation half slave and half free” – that divided the country. Today’s division is driven by those who promote identity at the expense of character and merit – in schools, colleges and workplaces, and in sports where transwomen compete against biological women. The United States was founded, we are told, on slavery. We live, it is said, in a land divided between oppressors and the oppressed. Today’s definition of equity demands equal outcomes, not opportunities. Diversity and inclusion demands exclude conservatives, who are seen as racists, misogynists, and xenophobes. Ironically, merit remains the determinant in professional sports, like tennis, golf, basketball and football. 

 

While many elite high schools and colleges have a long history of blackballing certain segments of society – women, Jews, and racial minorities, they do (as they have always done) a disservice to those of high merit whom they ignore, as well as to those whom they accept for reasons that have nothing to do with merit and everything to do with whatever is faddish, whether the favored candidate is the minimally-qualified white son of a wealthy donor or an ill-prepared member of a racial minority. To paraphrase Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discriminating is to stop discriminating.”  

 

How did we reach this point? The causes are myriad and have been years in the making: Politicians found that addressing the concerns of easily identifiable voting blocs was simpler than describing states’ rights, explaining due process, discussing ideas, or defining liberty. Blacks are placed in one category; Hispanics in another; Asians in a third. Women and the LBGTQ community are treated as distinct entities, with nothing in common apart from their gender or sexual identity. A second factor in our divisiveness has been a mainstream media that found itself losing “eyeballs” to social media platforms. Their business models are at risk, so in hiring extremists, whether on the right or the left, they guarantee a certain audience. Think of Fox News and the New York Post on the right, and MSNBC, PBS, The Washington Post and The New York Times on the left. A third factor are cultural and educational institutions for whom “virtue signaling” is critical to their sense of sanctimony. As Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institute recently wrote: The “cultural left self-identifies as erudite and moral and assume their opponents are irredeemable and deplorable.” One consequence, as Republican pollster Whit Ayres recently suggested, has been “public trust in our political system is in the cellar.” Another is the vitriol we all experience, and the lack of civil communication between the left and right.

 

Given the challenges we face, national unity should be a priority for both sides of the political aisle: tens of thousands of illegals, some of whom are surely enemies, cross the border each week, and spread throughout the country. American students lag foreign competitors. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests fifteen-year-olds. For 2022, the U.S., overall, was 18^th of 81 countries. As expected, we are behind Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea; but we also lag Western countries, like Ireland, Canada, Poland, and Finland. To thrive in a competitive global environment we must improve high school education. Our federal debt risks impairing future economic growth. In 2022, federal debt was 121% of GDP, about where it was at the end of World War II. In the post-War period, it first broached 100% in 2012 and has never looked back. The formation of families, the foundation on which all successful societies are built, has declined. A Pew Research survey showed the percent of Americans aged 25-54 who were married fell from 67% in 1990 to 53% in 2019. Birth rates have been below replacement for most of the past fifty years. Children are best served in two-parent households and a growing economy requires an expanding supply of workers. Overseas, the world is becoming more dangerous, with China’s imperialism, Russia’s revisionism, and Iran as a fomenter of Islamic terrorism. 

 

Perhaps this is Panglossian, but there are some signs that the worst may be behind us. On December 27, The Wall Street Journal editorialized that the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) bureaucracy, which practices racial favoritism, promotes the false ideal of equal outcomes and is hostile to equal opportunities, is “meeting resistance.” School choice legislation, which includes vouchers, charter schools, education savings accounts, and tax credit scholarship programs, has succeeded in seventeen states. Climate scare-mongers appear to be in retreat, as economic and innovation costs become more apparent. People continue to make the sensible decision to leave high-tax states and move to low-tax states. The robotic responses to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce by the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and M.I.T. on anti-Semitism showcased their isolation from the real world. 

 

Will this angst be mollified? I hope so. As we head into a new year, we should resolve – not to settle our differences, for they will always exist (and they should) – to be civil in our disagreements, respectful of the opinions of others, and to recognize, and be thankful for the great good fortune that is ours to live in this country at this time. The U.S. may not be perfect, but where would you rather live? George Washington was never the paragon portrayed by Parson Weems in 1800, but neither was he, or his fellow slave-owning Virginians, as evil as depicted in the 1619 Project or by those pushing Critical Race Theory. History can never be understood by imposing today’s values on those who lived in previous times.  Speaking of Washington, we should all read (or re-read) his 110 rules of behavior. They appear dated, but in fact, with their focus on behavior toward other people, they are timeless. And we should not forget that, as Lincoln said in 1858, a divided house “cannot stand.” Slavery was the match that ignited the conflagration in 1861, but preserving the union was Lincoln’s real goal. It must be ours today. 

 

Happy New Year!

 Last night’s debate, in my opinion, was an improvement on the first. There was less in-fighting, while Trump was denounced for not being there. This was especially true of Christie and DeSantis, with the former calling him Donald Duck. Despite recent polls showing Trump beating Biden, there was a sense that for Republicans to prevail next year they must return to conservative principles, which means a Party without Trump at the head of the ticket. For the most part, they targeted their real opponent, President Biden. The focus was on issues: the border, the economy, rule of law, crime, energy, education, family, China, and Ukraine. I thought they all did well. A Poignant moment came when Senator Scott spoke of how black families have survived slavery and discrimination. He credited the values on which the country was founded and family. He said the United States was not a racist country.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Migration”

September 28, 2023

 

“No nation in history has survived once its borders were destroyed, once its citizenship was rendered

no different from mere residence, and once its neighbors with impunity undermined its sovereignty.”

                                                                                                                          Victor Davis Hanson (1953-)

                                                                                                                          Classicist and military historian

                                                                                                                           Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute

                                                                                                                           American Greatness, Sep. 21, 2023

 

Over two and a half million illegal migrants have crossed our southern border this fiscal year. Last week, 10,000 crossed into Eagle Pass, Texas, a city of fewer than 30,000. The United States is not alone in being inundated by swarms of migrants. On Italy’s island of Lampedusa, where 6,000 locals reside, 11,000 migrants arrived in five days last week. In the UK’s The Spectator, on the same date, Douglas Murray wrote: “Keep allowing people with no discernible asylum claims to land by the thousands, from a continent with hundreds of millions more to come, and you will be fêted. Stop the law-breaking and you will find yourself prosecuted.” Today, the problem of illegal immigration appears insoluble. It seems to be, as Churchill once said about Russia: “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” It is neither a mystery nor insoluble. But it is a problem political leaders in Washington and Brussels refuse to address honestly.

 

On one side, there are those who despair a humanitarian crisis – people living in utter poverty and under dictatorial regimes. These people are willing to accommodate victims (perceived or real) without reserve. On the other side are those willing to exercise any measure to keep out all illegal immigrants – a wall, armed guards, barbed wire, refusals to let over-crowded boats dock. It is a problem in need of the common sense of a Jeeves, when too much of the West is led by well-intentioned, feeble-minded Bertie Woosters. 

 

Migration has been a factor in human evolution for at least 200,000 years – since homo sapiens began leaving Africa. For the first 180,000-190,000 years our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, migrating from one area to another, depending on weather and food availability. They first populated the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Around 15,000 years ago they sailed to Australia, and crossed the Bering Sea to the Americas, Sometime about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago our ancestors began to transition from nomads to farmers, raising crops and animals for food, and around 3,000 BCE city states were created, to satisfy a need for laws to govern society and commerce.

 

Political and religious persecution, along with economic opportunity, are the principal reasons people leave homelands for other places. But demographics also plays a role. In some places, population growth outstrips food resources. The developed world has the opposite problem – shrinking populations, which can be offset with increased in-migration. In Europe, according to Christopher Caldwell writing in the September 21, 2023 issue of The Spectator, “each native generation is only about two-thirds the size of the last.” The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in the European Union is 1.5, while that of sub-Saharan Africa is 4.6. (A TFR of 2.1 is needed to replace the population.) Based on current trends, sub-Saharan Africa’s population would expand ten-fold between 1950 and 2050. (In contrast, the United States’ population grew just over three fold from 1920 to 2020.) With these dynamics – a Europe that eschews child-bearing, an Africa birthing more children than can be accommodated, and a Middle East in turmoil – it is unsurprising that Europe faces a migration crisis. Nor is it surprising that the U.S., with a TFR of 1.6, has need of more immigrants. Political parties on the Continent and in the U.S. must set aside partisan differences and address a reality that cannot be wished away. 

 

Italy, with a TFR of 1.24, has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe. The Italian National Institute of Statistics estimates that the population of Italy by 2070 will have declined by 12 million to 47.7 million, while the median age will have increased from 47 to 54. Have government officials thought about the costs and ramifications of this self-induced crisis, of the ratio of workers to retirees? Is Italy willing to assimilate enough migrants to offset the decline in their native population? How will an influx of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East affect a culture that reaches back more than two thousand years?

 

The United States processes roughly a million legal immigrants each year. Illegal crossings have been a problem for decades but have grown noticeably worse over the past three years. Illegal border crossings in 2020 were less than 500,000. This year, they will exceed 2.5 million, more than double legal immigration. The border with Mexico extends two thousand miles and intersects with four states – California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Obviously, those states are under the greatest pressure, but with immigrants being bussed out of those states, northern cities are feeling the effects. Before his election in 2021, New York’s Democrat Mayor Eric Adams declared: “We should protect our immigrants. Period. Yes, New York City will remain a sanctuary city under an Adams administration.” Less than two years later, on August 9, 2023, Mr. Adams’ tone changed: “The City is in an unprecedented state of emergency…we are past our breaking point. For each family seeking asylum through the City’s care, we spend an average of $383.00 per night to provide shelter, food, medical care, and social services. With more than 57,300 individuals currently in our care, it amounts to $9.8 million a day…nearly $3.6 billion a year.”

 

As well, there are humanitarian issues. Traffickers who bring migrants to the southern border extort thousands of dollars from those in their care. Women and children are sexually abused. The amount of fentanyl seized at the border has increased six-fold, but even more has made its way into the country. The number of fentanyl-related deaths in the U.S. have risen five-fold in the past three years. Keep in mind, the precursor chemicals that comprise the essential ingredients of fentanyl come from China. They are shipped to Mexico where they are made into tablets, and then enter the U.S. via drug traffickers.

 

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman spoke to the American Enterprise Institute this week. In her speech she warned that the threshold for asylum claims under the United Nations Refugee Convention has been lowered, creating huge incentives for illegal immigration – “that simply being gay, a woman, or fearful of discrimination is now effectively enough to qualify for protection and, as a result, as many as 780 million people will be eligible to claim asylum.” Perhaps she exaggerated, but directionally she was correct.

 

Do western leaders fully comprehend what they have unleashed, as they move toward open borders, even as they deny doing so? In Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker wrote: “The demographic tsunami from the global South, as the North’s population shrinks, is in its early stages, and most people can see clearly what happens when leaders insist on a moral code that suggests our obligations to indigent foreigners are as great as to our own citizens.” There have been times in the past when we should have taken in more asylum seekers than we did. For example, Jews trying to leave Europe in the late 1930s. We failed thousands of them. But that does not mean our borders should be open now.

 

Flight attendants instruct passengers traveling with small children, in the event of a drop in air pressure, to first secure your own oxygen mask, then the child’s. Similarly, before we let more illegal migrants overwhelm our cities and towns, we must ensure that our citizens are secure, our laws enforced, and that the values that helped mold this Nation remain intact. 

 

We are told that democracy dies in darkness. It does not. It dies in sunlight. It dies with the assumption of power by unelected bureaucrats. It dies when people abandon accountability and responsibility. It dies in the censorship of ideas and opinions that do not accord to an accepted narrative. It dies when mandates replace debate and compromise. It dies when the media equates opinion with news. It dies when we no longer see ourselves as the global standard for individual liberty. It dies when we lose the ability to defend ourselves and freedom-loving people around the world. It dies under the unintended results of foolish and unwise policies. Migration is almost as old as mankind, but the advent of the modern nation-state, after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, limited the freedom to migrate at will. Borders came to mean something. Today, if respect for borders continues to be ignored by political leaders and migrants, we run the risk of unleashing a backlash with potentially devastating consequences.  

"Conformity - Death Knell for Freedom"

                                                                   Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Conformity – Death Knell for Freedom”

April 4, 2022

 

“…for conformity is the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.”

                                                                                                                              President John F. Kennedy

                                                                                                                              Speech to the UN General Assembly

                                                                                                                              September 25, 1961

 

News sources seem unable to deal with more than one crisis at a time. Three months ago, and for the previous twenty-one months, airwaves were dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now it is Ukraine. What has been happening in Ukraine is awful, but is it, as commentators on both Fox News and MSNBC have reported, the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II? Is it worse than China’s Cultural Revolution, which caused an estimated 20 million deaths? Is it worse than the Cambodian killing fields when the Communist-led Khmer Rouge slew as many as 3.0 million people? Does it compare to Islamic terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa where 3 million Christians have been displaced and 43,000 killed in Nigeria alone? Where is perspective? Evil is part of human nature. It was because of the existence of evil that the Founders put constraints on governmental power. Evil leaders – from Hitler, Hirohito and Stalin to Mao Zedong, from Kim Jong-un to Ali Khamenei, from Xi Jinping to Vladimir Putin – rule by forced conformity, with none of the restraints on their leadership necessary for people to live freely and securely. Dissent is not allowed. Opposition to prescribed doctrines threatens totalitarian leaders.

 

Lest one tags me as an anarchist, let me add that I do believe in conformity when it comes to adherence to civility – tolerance, decency and respect for others, regardless of opinions, gender or race. And I believe in the universal values, embedded in traditional concepts of virtue. It is not the superficial differences reflected in gender and race, but differences in the opinions we carry, that threaten progressives’ desire for conformity. The freedom to express those opinions in a civil manner is critical to a democracy. In his 2007 book The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Stanford Professor Philip Zimbardo wrote, “Research shows that the decisions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful; and creative when there is a minority dissent than when it is absent.” It is the premise behind the success of democracies versus the failure of authoritarian rule.

 

Politically, my preference is for Lockean free markets and individual liberty, but I realize our country and politics have grown more complicated, with government assuming responsibilities it did not once have – in voting rights, education, commerce, transportation, retirement, health, protections against fraud, etc. Nevertheless, and while I am in accord with many of government’s responsibilities, they have come with a cost. While the population of the U.S. has increased by a factor of 63 times, from 5.3 million in 1800 to 335 million, the budget of the federal government has grown at a far faster rate – from $11 million in 1800 to a proposed $5.8 trillion in fiscal 2023, or by a factor of over 500,000 times. As government has become more deeply rooted in our lives, elected officials have become less representative – from 106 House members in 1800 to 435 today. Yet there are 1000 times more unelected federal employees today than in 1800 –11,000 to over 11 million. One might argue that today’s social and international complexities warrant a relatively larger government, but this much bigger? And is it surprising that federal bureaucrats whose careers are dependent on ever-growing government, support politicians who favor government expansion?

 

The Left claims the threat to democracy comes from an autocratic Donald Trump and his far-right followers, but that is a red herring to detract from the greater risk that stems from conformity to a progressive manifesto, with tenets that preach gospels which must be obeyed – on climate change, critical race theory, ESG ratings, DEI adherence, mask mandates and digital IDs. Failure to comply with woke policies at universities, and in law firms and corporations, and on Wall Street result in an Orwellian world of cancellation and loss of employment. While Mr. Trump never attained my standards for civility, and his undisciplined use of words risked damage at home and abroad, he was never the threat to democracy that comes from the insidious reach for power that is the progressive state. In a recent op-ed regarding Anthony Fauci and COVID-19 but which is pertinent to today’s woke progressives, Roger Kimball wrote of frogs and boiling water. If you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it will immediately jump out. On the other hand, if you place the frog into a pot and gradually heat it, the “frog will linger languidly…as it is slowly cooked alive.”

 

Reversing the trend in federal expansion may be impossible but slowing its rate is doable, which should be the goal, as every service assumed by government reduces individual choice. At a time when the Left warns of threats to democracy, we should remember that democracy is not designed to be efficient or to have equal outcomes. It was designed with checks and balances. It abhors an invasive administrative state that demands conformity. It thrives on limited and unintrusive government, while it empowers the individual and encourages values found in families and personal faith.

 

The social, psychological and economic effects of the government’s mandates regarding COVID-19, the subsequent rise in inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have had (and will have) real-world consequences for the well-being of the American people. “When the rock of green and woke ideology hits the hard place of reality, sheer madness always results,” wrote Victor Davis Hanson in an op-ed last month. Phrases like social justice, words like inclusivity, diversity and equity and acronyms like ESG and CRT lose their meanings when definitions conform to what the state deems acceptable. Is it right for transgender women to be allowed to compete against biological women in sports, or is it okay when parents are discouraged from instructing their children in traditional Christian values?

 

The French expression vive la difference is generally linked to distinctions between the sexes, but it could as well refer to the myriad opinions we all carry, views that reflect our individual upbringings, experiences, studies, readings and associations. It is the uninhibited flow of ideas that is the backbone of democracy. Conformity, in contrast, demands we relegate our minds to the imprisonment of those who would guide us.

"It's Still the Culture, Stupid"

                                                                     Sydney M. Williams

                                                        30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314 

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“It’s Still the Culture, Stupid”

February 9, 2022

 

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised

for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

                                                                                                                C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)

                                                                                                                God in the Dock: Essays on Theology, 1948

 

Just over a year and a half ago, June 8, 2020, I wrote a TOTD, “It’s the Culture Stupid.” It was two weeks after George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. I wrote: “…the permitting of protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s killing was right. The failure to confront and arrest violent rioters and looters was wrong.” It is that failure to distinguish between right and wrong – a failure to punish wrongdoers and to reward virtue – that haunts our nation and its people. Driven by a sanctimonious and intolerant “woke” community, the situation has worsened over the past twenty months.

 

In 1992, while advising Bill Clinton on his Presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush, James Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.” The economy had entered recession in July-August 1990 but had recovered by the end of the first quarter of 1991. However, job creation lagged, so the recovery became known as the “jobless recovery.” Unemployment continued to rise into mid-year 1992, which provided Mr. Carville the opportunity to conceive a phrase recalled thirty years later.

 

What we face is more onerous. Economies go through booms and busts, while cultures are fundamental to who we are. A self-important, moralizing wokeism offers a new and different threat. Traditionally, our culture has been embedded in families – passed down from one generation to the next. It is confirmed in civil behavior, in our schools, churches and communities. It is institutionalized in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and reflected in Constitutional amendments. It has been enhanced as our country absorbed immigrants from all over the world. But the underlying rules and customs that allowed this country to survive and to thrive should persist – that we are all, no matter our race, ethnicity or gender, created equal and have equal protection under the law, that private property is protected, that we live in a nation of laws not men, that we should be judged by our character, not the color of our skin or gender, and that success is a function of merit, ability, effort and diligence, and that civility, respect and tolerance are necessary for a free, civil and democratic society to exist. 

 

Wokeism threatens to undo this glue that has bound our nation. In schools, universities, museums, charities, businesses and even selections for the Supreme Court, wokeism makes judgements based on identity – racial, gender, ethnic – not merit or character. Its goal is to destroy traditional American culture. It claims that our nation is fundamentally racist, that its people are either victims or victimizers. It says that our founding was in 1619, when these colonies were part of the British Empire. It dismisses the concept of the nuclear family. It has led to lawlessness and the destruction of private property. It asserts that our planet is doomed unless we obey the liturgy of climate zealots. It ignores biological distinctions between men and women. It promotes equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunities. It argues that traits like hard work and adherence to the Golden Rule, are characteristics of white, male oppressors, so should be abandoned. It feeds on social media. Like totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Communism to Nazism, wokeism “is,” as Thomas Klingenstein wrote recently in The American Mind, “self-righteous and intolerant, built on lies and the silencing of those who challenge the lies.” 

 

Today, we face many problems: We know that fatherless children are disadvantaged and that crime-infested cities make life more difficult, especially for the poor, yet little is done to address the former or to fix the latter. The nation’s debt is $30 trillion, or $90,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States, a number that does not include even larger unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs, like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Low interest rates have mitigated the cost of that debt. But the inflation we experience will be addressed with higher interest rates, which will impact the cost of all debt – personal, corporate and government – thereby adding to the nation’s deficits. According to an October 22, 2021 article in The New York Times, illegal immigration in 2021 was the highest since at least 1960. A country that cannot, or will not, control its border is no longer a sovereign nation. We need immigrants to grow. We need their youth, their brains, their energy and enthusiasm, their desire to make a better life for themselves, their children, and their children’s children. But we need immigrants to enter the country legally. When undocumented, unvaccinated hordes enter, legal immigration is reduced.  

 

Our future rests on the young, yet American public schools are failing in international tests. While dollars spent per public school student in the U.S. are second only to Luxembourg, the nation ranks 13^th in reading and 38^th in math, among 79 countries surveyed. A focus on identity studies has meant less time devoted to the basics, and to understanding our unique history and government. Wokeism has co-opted teachers’ unions, depriving poor and middle-class families of school choice. Violent crime, especially in inner cities, has been on the rise, and it cannot be solely blamed on COVID restrictions and mandates, though those have not helped. Following George Floyd’s death, protests turned violent. In Seattle, Antifa-affiliated activists seized control of a city neighborhood and, once the police withdrew, declared an “autonomous zone.” U.S. murder rates in 2020 were up 30% and rose further in 2021. Over 300 people are killed or wounded every day by firearms. The left sees the culprit in a proliferation of guns and in a culture that permits the owning of weapons. The right sees the culprit in a culture of disrespect, incivility and intolerance, in a failure to enforce rules of behavior, whether at home, in schools, or on the street – that the problem lies not with the weapon but with he or she who pulls the trigger. 

 

This attack on our culture by those who foster “diversity, equity and inclusion” is an insidious undermining of the values that allowed this country to become the freest, most productive, richest nation on earth. It recalls the quote by C.S. Lewis, which heads this essay – that totalitarianism often rises from those who profess to do good, but who are intent on showing their virtue and empowering themselves. Respecting and protecting our culture should be our priority, lest we fall victim to this totalitarianism of do-gooders. 

 

The inability to distinguish truth reflects poorly on today’s molders of character – teachers, community leaders, ministers, journalists, politicians, but especially parents. We are a multicultural society, but that does not mean each race, ethnicity, creed or individual can define right and wrong according to their personal beliefs. Words like honor, respect, tolerance and civility have universally accepted definitions. They cannot be defined according to a claimed cultural tradition, else anarchy rules. The killing of a young girl for the shame brought to her family is not an “honor killing.” It is murder. Looters rampaging through a suburban Minneapolis Best Buy store is not “redistribution.” It is theft. Chaos has become the new normal. As Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote: “A pandemic of nihilism has been unleashed upon the land.”