"The Boy Who Cried Wolf"

 I yearn for a Ronald Reagan-type figure to emerge from our political landscape. The idea of doing a deal with Putin that would satisfy a few days demand for diesel fuel, and at the same time bad-mouthing Mr. Zelensky who has done miracles for the people of Ukraine, strikes me as dangerous and the height of idiocy. And certainly I would never buy a watch stamped “Trump.” And the idea that we should make a martyr, through a public execution, of U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan, an Islamic terrorist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas seven years ago is unnecessarily provocative and just plain stupid.

 

What has happened to us, or, I should say to our political leaders. The loudest voices on the left are advocating a path toward Socialism. Are there any common-sensical politicians out there? 

 

Perhaps. I read with admiration Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech last Wednesday in Athens – a call for Western nations to reconnect with their civilizational and historical roots. I just hope his wisdom and decency prevail. If you have not read it, pull it up on the internet.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Thought of the Day

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf”

October 14, 2026

 

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populous alarmed (and hence clamorous

to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

                                                                                                                                    H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

                                                                                                                                    In Defense of Women, 1918

 

Almost sixty years before Mencken wrote the line quoted above, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “Self-Reliance,” expressed similar concerns: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” In his dystopian novels Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell wrote of his misgivings for “groupthink” and “doublethink” – where the desire for group harmony overrides critical thinking and reasoned debate.

 

In last Tuesday’s The Wall Street Journal, Steven Koonin and Dr. Scott Atlas wrote analogously, in an op-ed titled “Covid, Climate and the ‘Consensus Trap:’” “We should neither be wholly distrustful of expertise nor subservient to it without critical challenge. We must institute safeguards that make expertise trustworthy: transparency about uncertainty, protection for those who test it, and real consequences when things go wrong.”

 

While Koonin and Atlas were writing of global warming scares, the 2008 credit crisis and Covid, they could have included the recent reaction of many, including mainstream media, politicians and some industry leaders to potential dangers stemming from AI. This is not to suggest that the planet is not in a warming cycle, that debt does not pose risks, that contagious respiratory diseases should be ignored, or that artificial intelligence cannot be used for nefarious purposes. Life is filled with risks, which must be carefully assessed. But sensible risk-taking is integral to a free society that seeks advancement. A police state promises security, but at a price no lover of freedom wants to pay. 

 

There are natural risks over which we have little control. Paleontologists tell us that during the Mesozoic Era (250 to 60 million years ago) the Earth’s temperature was ten to fourteen degrees warmer than it is today. During the peak of the last ice age (10,000 to 11,000 years ago), the temperature was ten to twelve degrees colder than today. Paleoclimatologists attribute those changes to small adjustments in the Earth’s orbit, the tilt on its axis, atmospheric greenhouse gasses, volcanic eruptions and ocean currents. However, these same people estimate that the Earth will survive another four to five billion years. Certainly, man has had an effect on the environment and the weather, but are his effects existential? When I note a ten degree upward (or downward) change in the outside temperature in 24 hours, I marvel at the power of nature – the energy required to warm (or cool) millions of cubic feet of the Earth’s atmosphere in a relatively short time. We face many challenges, but I doubt climate catastrophe is in our immediate future. 

 

The 2008 credit crisis was largely a consequence of political pressure to increase home ownership through government guaranteed loans, while encouraging rating agencies to make subprime mortgages appear safe to lenders. When the economy turned down jobs were lost and foreclosures increased. Yet no one – not politicians, Wall Street bankers, or homebuyers who took on more debt than they should have – assumed responsibility. Largely ignored today by both media and politicians is a real crisis – the size of the federal government’s debt and its entitlement obligations. 

 

Lockdowns of schools were seen as one answer to Covid, even as the lethality was largely centered on the elderly. The human cost can be seen in declines in student academic performance, but have we seen or heard any mea culpas?

 

Mencken was right. Alarming voters propels some politicians into seats of power. As well, such tactics enrich others. Artificial intelligence seems to be the latest target. We have been told that mankind could become extinct in a few years, that a billion people might die. What they mean – but what gets little press – is that a bad actor (a human) could gain control. That is true, as it would be if, for example, Iran got an atomic bomb, and as it was when Mohamed Atta took control of American Airlines Flight 11 on 9/11. Good and evil are not characteristics of weather, markets, pathogens or software. They are traits of humans. The technology already exists to shut down our banking system, close our power grid and interrupt air control. It is critical that we stay ahead of those individuals and nations who would do us harm. Regulation may be needed; for that reason President Trump appointed National Intelligence Director Jay Clayton, former Chair of the SEC, to serve as the Administration’s AI leader.

 

To the best of my knowledge there is no magic formula that erases evil from mankind. But the teaching of ethics is not a bad place to start. The Bible teaches that all humans have the capacity to do harm and good. Morality is not relative; it is universal, as the Ten Commandments make clear. Artificial Intelligence, in the wrong hands, makes easier the ability to cause harm, which is why it is imperative we, as a nation, stay in the lead in its development. Democracy may not be the perfect form of government and free-market capitalism may not be the most equitable economic system, but history shows that no better system has ever been devised.

 

The title of this essay comes from Aesop Fables. Its moral: Because the boy had shown himself a liar, when a wolf did appear no one believed him, and the sheep were scattered. A few of those who warn of the evil of Artificial Intelligence may truly believe in the Frankenstein traits of what they have created. Others fear liability suits or want to discourage competition. Some see warnings as a way to enhance their profile. Politicians see virtue in scaring the public, as it sends people running for the cover of a benevolent government. And there will be a small number whose interest is in having U.S. companies slow their research and development, which would allow China and others to surge ahead.

 

Beware the alarmists.

"My Love for Children's Books and "Why You Should Read Children's Books...", by Katherine Rundell

This is my second essay of the weekend. There are a couple of others simmering on the cooker, but not yet ready for the table.

As a fan (and modest collector) of children’s books, I had fun with this essay. While all children’s stories may not be politically correct, there is wisdom inthem. To censor or ban children’s books, because their content may not accord with today’s moral teachings, is to deprive a child the ability to understand how his country’s culture changed and evolved over the years.

 

C.S. Lewis, author of the Narnia books, famously stated that a book worth reading at age ten is often equally – or even more – worth reading at age fifty. In the past ten years I have read (or re-read) such classics as Moby Dick, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Lewis’s Narnia Tales, and Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. None have done me harm. All have done me good. If you do not read Ms. Rundell’s book – which I hope you do – perhaps, my essay will cause you to re-read some of your favorites from childhood. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“My Love for Children’s Books and...

Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old And Wise”

By Katherine Rundell

October 4, 2026

 

“The more that you read, the more things you will know.

The more that you learn, the more places you will go.”

                                                                                                            Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), 1904-1991

                                                                                                             I Can Read With My Eyes Shut, 1978

 

For most of our married life I have collected books. In the late 1960s, while living in Durham, CT. we had a neighbor, Keith Hutchison. A retired editor of The Nation, he had been born in England in 1901, moved to New York, and retired to rural Connecticut. In Durham, he operated a search service for college libraries and a small used bookstore. Most important for me, he stimulated my interest. Forty-seven years later, when we sold our house in Old Lyme, I had more than 5,000 books, including several first editions of children’s books. Moving to Essex Meadows, we converted one room into a library, which houses about 700 books. I brought my favorites, gave my children what they wanted, and donated the balance to the town library.

 

I still buy books, but no longer as a collector. Today’s purchases are mostly given away once read. Not so Katherine Rundell’s wonderful short book. It has found a home on my shelves. Children’s books have long been favorites. I have first and/or signed editions of many, from Huckleberry Finn (bought from Mr. Hutchison) to Winnie the Pooh, Through the Looking Glass, Stuart Little and The Crock of Gold. Many years ago, in a second-hand Philadelphia bookstore, I found a first edition of one of my childhood favorites, Wolf Story by Willam McCleery. It was written in 1947 at the MacDowell Colony, in Peterborough, New Hampshire, the town where I grew up. 

 

Katherine Rundell is a Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford (where she completed her doctoral thesis on John Donne), and she is author of best-selling books for children and adults. In this brief (66 pages) book, Ms. Rundell takes us through her childhood reading experiences, a brief history of fairy tales, which “...were never just for children,” to the “Golden Age” of children’s literature that includes Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, J. M. Barrie and others. Separately, she writes of American authors, like Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, L. Frank Baum, Kay Thompson and Judy Blume. This is an informative, lively book.

 

“Children’s books,” she writes, “are not a hiding place; they are a seeking place...Remember what it was to long for impossible and perhaps-not-impossible things.” As E.B. White, in a 1969 interview with The Paris Review, said: “Anybody who shifts gears when he writes for children is likely to wind up stripping his gears.”

 

Like many, I have a predilection for children’s books. C.S. Lewis once wrote that a children’s story should be written simply because it is the best art-form for the story you have to tell. Ms. Rundell’s book will return you to your childhood, to the books you then read and to the dreams you once had.  

"A Family Story"

 As you may have noted, my output of essays has declined, especially those of a political nature. While there is much for which I am thankful – the border is secure; Iran has been deprived of a nuclear weapon; the economy appears robust; interest rates seem to be normalizing; "Wokeness" in the workplace and universities seems to be in remission; businesses and people appear to be adjusting to the inevitable changes that will be wrought by changes in technology – I am dismayed by the behavior many of our politicians on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps I am getting old, but I yearn for a time when civility and tolerance were more prominent, and less hatred was being expressed. 

Nevertheless, the pull of writing essays remains strong. This one is short about a single, but amusing, incident many years ago. And tomorrow I shall have a review of a short but delightful book.

 

The photo is of me and my five siblings (I am on the left), taken around 1950, outside of our home in Peterborough. Three more boys would be born before the family was complete.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

        “A Family Story”

October 3, 2026

 

“I was lucky to be born abnormal. It ran in the family.”

                                                                                                                                    E.B. White

                                                                                                                                    Letter to Mrs. Dorothy Guth

                                                                                                                                    March 16, 1984

 

We had pulled into a gas station somewhere near Athol, Massachusetts.

 

“Where you headed?” the attendant inquired.

 

“My mother-in-law’s,” my father replied.

 

He surveyed the car and trailer: “Does she know you’re coming?” was his dubious response.

 

My mother laughed.

 

It was around 1950. In our 1941 Ford station wagon, pulling a one-horse trailer in which were a Shetland pony and two goats, we were driving from Peterborough, New Hampshire to Madison, Connecticut to visit my grandmother. Besides my parents, in the car were six children, a couple of dogs and a cat.

 

My mother and father were artists – sculptors – who a few years earlier had started a small toy business, Red Shed Rubber Animals. My mother had grown up in New Haven and Madison, and my father in Wellesley, Massachusetts and Peterborough. They had married during the Depression and chosen to live lives quite different from that in which they had been raised. They created a close-knit family that included their love for family, horses and skiing. 

 

We saw a lot of my paternal grandparents, as they summered on property adjacent to ours. On the other hand, my maternal grandmother – widowed in 1947 – lived in the East River section of Madison; so we would spend a couple of weeks with her every summer. She had a barn; so the animals would not have to bed down in the house.

 

My mother’s response was infectious; my father saw the humor, as did we. They had grown up in the 1920s, were young adults during the 1930s Depression years, and my father went to war in 1944. The post-War years were filled with hope for peace and prosperity. But this moment at the gas station was funny. As E. B. White described his family in the epigraph above, we were an abnormally strange sight – a cacophonous station wagon, filled with voices of children – crying and laughing, and the sounds of animals – barking, mewing, neighing and bleating.

 

As we drove off, the attendant smiled.