"November's Election - None of the Above?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“November’s Election – None of the Above?”

July 4, 2020

“A wise man makes his own decisions.

An ignorant man follows public opinion.”

                                                                                                Chinese Proverb

On a multiple-choice test “none of the above’ may be a legitimate response. But no matter how tempting that answer may seem to voters sick and tired of politics, such a response on November 3, 2020 is not acceptable. As we celebrate our country’s 244^th birthday, we should consider the critical importance of the election four months out.

While no politician is the paragon of virtue drawn by Parson Weems of an idealized George Washington, character has slipped down the scale of traits we treasure when electing leaders. In 2020, we will be offered a choice between a man whose thin skin exposes a large ego, and a man whose intellectual capacity wanes as his defects wax. Mr. Trump’s flaws are well publicized – orange hair, ungrammatical speech, his volatility and personal insecurity seen in his untempered Tweets and his apparent admiration for dictators. But they are all superficial. No matter his appeasing words about Putin and Xi Jinping, he has been tougher on Russia and China than his predecessors. His dyed hair and manner of speaking may offend those raised in coastal, elitist families, but they are far less damaging to democracy than was the misuse of intelligence services by the Clinton campaign and the Obama Administration in undermining a freely elected President. Charges of corruption against Mr. Trump have been investigated for four years by a zealous press, a partisan House, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a complicit FBI. They came to naught. On the other hand, mainstream media has been largely silent on financial favors sought by Mr. Biden for his son in Ukraine and China and on his alleged sexual assault on a staff member.

Nevertheless, and despite the impurity of both candidates, the single most important factor in this election has been the hijacking of the Democrat Party by illiberal, so-called “progressives.” Professor Wilfred McClay of the University of Oklahoma described the random and willful destruction of statues, acts condoned by many city mayors: “…these acts of destruction are acts of pure, unmitigated hate…,” hatred not dissimilar in its intensity to that levied against President Trump by the New York Times and the Washington Post. “Unless new leaders come forth,” wrote Heather MacDonald in City Journal this past week, “who understand their duty to maintain the rule of law, the country will not pull back from disaster.”

This wanton destruction reflects George Orwell’s third slogan, “Ignorance is Strength,” that the past is what our leaders tell us it is, not historical facts. Such ignorance ignores the truth in what Thomas Sowell wrote two days ago: “History is what happened, not what we wished had happened.” This nescience reflects abandonment of the humanities by our universities and the life lessons taught therein. The recent anarchy and deaths in Seattle’s Capitol Hill area would not have surprised those familiar with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and those who had studied Robespierre and his Jacobin Reign of Terror in 1793 Paris. 

Polarization has become the norm, but in an election year it is exaggerated. Common sense about distancing, hygiene and the wearing of masks has given way to political diktats. While mainstream media has been filled with scare stories of rising new infections in states that did not lockdown sufficiently or opened prematurely, they have back-paged declining deaths from the virus across the country. Protesters of draconian lockdown rules have been blamed for infecting fellow citizens, yet those who march mask-less with Black Lives Matter (BLM) are exempted. It is okay to spread the virus if you are marching for “social justice,” but not if you are marching for your rights as a citizen. Despite ominous headlines about the virus, there has been some good news. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Dr. Joseph Ladapo of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine wrote “…there has not been a single confirmed case of reinfection among the 10 million cases of Covid-19 world-wide, according to a May report in the Journal of the American Medical Association” – a positive piece of news, supporting herd immunity, that has largely gone unreported.

The campaigns must deal with the fact that we are in the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression – bad for the President but opportunity for his opponent. The media, urban and suburban elitists – those with little concept of what the recession and closing of schools have done to average families – have greeted the news with schadenfreude-like glee. Most continue to work from home offices, inconvenienced but not economically deprived. History-challenged politicians, university and school heads and business CEOs have agreed to the assertion that the U.S. is systemically racist. Millions of dollars have flowed into the coffers of BLM, which calls for the defunding of police and whose website (since removed) described the U.S. as a “corrupt democracy originally built on indigenous genocide and chattel slavery [that] thrives today on the brutal exploitation of people of color.”  This mob of ignoramuses have no knowledge of history; they ignore failing schools and Black-on-Black killings in inner cities; they have forgotten (or never knew of) advances in civil rights over the past half century and are blind to the economic gains made by Blacks in the last two years of the Trump Administration. “They are,” as Communist expert and author Trevor Loudon wrote about BLM, “following the line of the Chinese Cultural Revolution… that toppled statues and desecrated monuments.” “It’s hard to find precedents for a civilization turning on itself with such fury,” said Heather MacDonald in an interview with The Epoch Times.

And yet, and yet, there may be a reaction to this madness – perhaps an over-reaction. Leaders at BLM may have over-played their hand. Just as Extinction Rebellion’s shutting down of London in October 2019 was an over-reach by extremists in the climate wars, the lack of wisdom shown by officials in Seattle to CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest) may come to signify the height of political idiocy. The London episode led to Michael Shellenberger’s writing Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, a commonsensical look at our changing climate. It is too early to say if some member of the “progressive” Left will, likewise, exchange advocacy and propaganda for reason and facts, as they pertain to the issue of race. Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. “Jim Crow” laws were enacted by white, southern Democrats in the late 19^th and early 20^th Centuries in excessive response to North-imposed Reconstruction, which provided needed assistance to former slaves but humiliated whites. When a pendulum is moved beyond its usual arc, it does not revert to its normal, central position. It Can’t Happen Here was a satirical play written by Sinclair Lewis in 1935. It was based on the rise of National Socialism in Europe. To believe that America today could not fall victim to authoritarian terrorist groups like BLM and Antifa is to be blind to the fact that schools, universities, media and corporations have already acquiesced to their demands. Democracy shuts down one door at a time.

The election is four months out. With the choice being an undisciplined Mr. Trump or a cognitively impaired Mr. Biden, the temptation may be to check off None of the Above. Such a decision is okay if one is offered a rotten apple or a spoiled banana, but that is never the right verdict in an election. Sometimes we must vote for the least bad candidate but choose we must. This time the choice should be easy. It is the Party, not the candidate. Democrats have become radicalized to a degree unthinkable a few months ago. Daniel Henninger wrote in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal that “this will be a revolutionary election.” Perhaps, but not revolutionary in the spirit of 1776. This time the “revolutionaries” are more interested in destruction than creation. Gone is the land of opportunity; the future they offer is nihilistic.

"American Dialogue: The Founders and Us," by Joseph J. Ellis

Sydney M. Williams

burrowingintobooks.blogspot.com

Burrowing into Books

“American Dialogue: The Founders and Us”, Joseph J. Ellis

May 27, 2019

“The study of history is an ongoing conversation

between past and present from which we all have much to learn.”

                                                                                                Joseph J. Ellis (1943-)

                                                                                                American Dialogue: The Founders and Us

The study of history allows us to better understand – not to idolize or condemn, not to excuse or justify – the past. It provides us the ability to debate today’s issues, many of which have roots in years long ago.

As Joseph Ellis explains, the U.S. was founded on paradoxes: A Declaration of Independence was declared; a Constitution was drafted and confirmed; a government of three co-equal branches was formed. Yet slavery would be the future for African Americans; the lands of Native American Indians would be confiscated, and women would not receive the vote until 1920. These are the inconsistencies that consume Professor Ellis, and which make necessary a dialogue; for, as he sums up, “…we rise or fall together, as a single people.” He accomplishes this in four parts: Thomas Jefferson and race; John Adams and economic equality; James Madison and the judiciary, and George Washington and foreign policy. In a final chapter entitled “Leadership,” he reminds us that in 1788 four million newly minted Americans had a choice for President between George Washington and John Adams. Two hundred and twenty-eight years later, three hundred and fifteen million Americans had a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump!

Professor Ellis recently retired as Ford Foundation Chair of history at Mount Holyoke College. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize (Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation) and the National Book Award (American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson). He has authored a dozen biographies and histories about our founding years.

In this book he engages four of the founders, their thoughts at the time and their impact today. Jefferson: “While his views on race were horrific, his words on liberty and freedom are magnificent. We should know both and not let the former destroy the latter.” Adams: “Reason holds the helm, while passions are the gales.” While we strive for equality, “inequality is the natural condition of mankind.” Madison: During debates as to whether sovereignty should remain with the states or reside in the federal government: “…argument itself became the abiding solution, and ambiguity the great asset.” He was the principal author of the Constitution and, with Alexander Hamilton, the voice behind the Federalist Papers. Washington: “The myth, the monument and the mythology are so mixed together they can never be disentangled.” He was the architect of foreign policy. “He saw Europe as the past and the American frontier as the future.”

The American founding was a “collective enterprise,” with founders harboring different beliefs as to the meaning of the American Revolution and for what sort of government should evolve. “This political and psychological diversity enhanced creativity by generating a dynamic chemistry that surfaced in the arguments whenever a major crisis materialized. Diversity made dialogue unavoidable.” Given today’s focus on identity, there is irony in the diversity that emerged from founders who were all white, heterosexual (as far as we know) males of English heritage. Their diversity came to fruition in debate, formed from opinions derived from reading and were based on how and where they lived. It was from this furnace of invisible differences and visible sameness that our nation was born.

“Conflict is part of the human condition and can never be eliminated. Neither can the desire for power and the tendency to abuse it,” wrote Wilfred McClay in his history of the U.S., Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story.  Yet, by almost any measure the results of the Founders have been a resounding success, as Joseph Ellis tells us. For someone born in the developing world there is no other country where most would choose to live. Part of that is geographic. We are abundant in natural resources. We have no aggressive neighbors. As well, we have no landed aristocracy. We are merit based. Ultimate authority is embedded in our citizens. We are peopled with those from myriad lands and cultures. To travel to this country from afar required (and requires) aspiration, a willingness to work hard and self-reliance. Our system of government has been tried, notably during the Civil War and during the 1960s. We, the people, have prevailed, and we should again today, as divisiveness again consumes our nation. Professor Ellis quotes Alexis de Tocqueville on America: “I am full of apprehension and hope.” These thought-provoking essays provide reason for on-going dialogues and continued debate. For it is only when arguments cease and all seems settled, when silence reigns, that we should worry. 

Like us today, the Founders weighed the possible versus the ideal – “the distinction between a realist and an idealist, a skeptic and a believer.”Joseph Ellis recognizes the individual flaws of the founders, but he also acknowledges the extraordinary success of what they achieved – the nation and government they built. One does not have to agree with all opinions expressed to get the value of the message conveyed by Professor Ellis – an intelligent and necessary dialogue is only possible with knowledge of the issues and resolutions that were confronted and decided upon by those who founded this nation two hundred and fifty years ago. This is a book that should be read by all who care about the political and cultural chasm that divide us today.