"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.

Review - "He Has The People," Jonathan Earle

 It is extraordinary that the man generally considered the best President the United States has ever had was virtually unknown before being elected to the nation’s highest office. The last time he had won a race for elective office had been fourteen years earlier when he was elected to Congress. He served one term. Though he despised slavery, he did not campaign as a staunch abolitionist. He wanted to maintain the union. The fact that he was able to both abolish slavery and maintain the union – though at enormous cost – speaks to the greatness of the man. 

 

One of the best things about this book is that, including notes and index, it comes in at just over 200 pages – something appreciated by this aging octogenarian.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860, Jonathan Earle

September 19, 2026

 

“...the most transformative election in American history.”

                                                                                                                He has the People, Jonathan Earle

 

History gets a bad rap, as humanities have been closeted among the undesirables. Yet history informs us of the past so to better understand the future, and it teaches us that the “most interesting times” are not necessarily those of today. In 1860, the first U.S. election for President had occurred only 72 years earlier – recent enough that there would have been a few people who would have remembered the election of George Washington. 

 

In 1860 the most important subject was slavery. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required escaped slaves be returned to their owners. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise by letting local settlers decide on slavery in territories. The Dred-Scott Decision of 1857 (overturned in 1865 and 1868 with ratification of the 13^th and 14^thAmendments) stated that slaves were not citizens and that Congress could not ban slavery in federal territories. And John Brown, convicted of treason, murder and inciting a slave rebellion, was hanged in December 1859. 

 

Such was the setting, as the 1860 election got underway. Jonathan Earle, a professor of history at LSU, follows journalist Murat Halsted, editor-in-chief of the Cincinnati Commercial, as he attends all seven national political conventions in 1860. Mr. Halsted was also present at the hanging of John Brown. 

 

The political scene had been shifting. In the previous twenty-four years eight men had served as President. (William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor both died in office.) The Republican Party, heirs to the Whigs and home to Abolitionists, had only existed since 1854; John Frémont had been the first Republican candidate in 1856, a race won by James Buchanan. The last two Presidents had been Northern Democrats. They prevented secession by emphasizing sovereignty of the states.

 

Today Lincoln is deemed among the best Presidents the country has had, but his selection in 1860 was by no means certain. Earle writes: “The fact is, no seasoned observer in any political party would have considered Abraham Limcoln a favorite for the presidency as the 1860 campaign began.” Either William Seward or Salmon P. Chase expected the nomination. But John Brown’s raid on the armory at Harper’s Ferry hurt the chances of Seward and Chase, both northerners and tied more closely to the abolitionists’ movement. However, Lincoln’s speech at The Cooper Union in February gave confidence to a skeptical New York press and to “...Republicans [that] he would be a safe second choice.” He was nominated on the third ballot at the Republican convention. However, he had not won an election since 1846. 

 

Democrats split between Stephen Douglas (northern) and John Breckinridge (southern). Together they amassed as many popular votes as Lincoln, but fell behind him in the Electoral College, with a total of 84 votes. John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party (remnants of the Whigs) garnered 39 votes. Lincoln, with a minority of the popular vote, won in the Electoral College with 180 votes, or 59 percent.

 

As James McPherson’s blurb on the back cover reads, “...Jonathan Earle has written the best campaign account since Teddy White’s book on the 1960 election.”

"AI - Apocalyptic or Consequential"

 Like most of you, this is a subject I have been thinking a lot about. I have read reports from thoughtful people on both sides of the issue. So what you have here is my best guess. But I could be easily wrong.

 

On a separate issue, I was pleased that the Federal Reserve raised the benchmark rate by a quarter of a point. We need, as others have said, to let the bond market speak. And we need to recognize that there are creditors as well as debtors. Free markets, marking the decisions of millions of investors, generally do a good job in deciding values.

 

The photograph was borrowed from the Internet.

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“AI – Apocalyptic or Consequential?”

September 17, 2026

 

"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary

only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts

through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

                                                                                                                   Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)

                                                                                                                   The Gulag Archipelago, 1973

 

In searching for the right path forward, as regards AI and its further development, we cannot let emotion determine our response. Change has always wrought concerns. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published as the Industrial Revolution was getting underway. It tapped into the psychological dread and ethical limits of tampering with nature. Henry Ford’s first car, the Ford Quadricycle, reached a speed of 20MPH, about twice as fast a horse could trot for long distances. Its noise and speed frightened those encountering it. And, of course, the decision to drop the Atomic bomb raised moral dilemmas. Yet, history suggests it saved lives, ending the war far earlier than otherwise. What would the world look like today if Nazi Germany beat us in its development and dropped an Atomic bomb on London?

 

AI, or artificial intelligence, is a branch of computer science focused on building computer systems that can perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence. As Daniel Huttenlochner wrote in last Wednesday’s The Wall Street Journal, “AI can make complex choices rather than merely execute specified actions...but accountability doesn’t transfer, because there is no one there to receive it.” It is not human. AI responds to tasks delegated to it by humans. An AK 47 is harmless until picked up by a human. It was not Boeing 767’s that flew alone into the two World Trade Center towers, but Islamic terrorist pilots who wanted to kill innocent civilians. AI requires a power source, as we require air to breathe. Evil exists in humans, not in machines. 

 

The possibility for advanced technology systems to do harm already exists. Hackers in Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are working with AI systems to disenable our banking systems, destroy energy sources and defense capabilities, as we are working on similar systems, for purposes both offensive and defensive. 

 

Differences of opinion are healthy and illustrative of a free people. We in North America and Western Europe are fortunate to live in countries ranked in the top quartile of Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index. But we should not lose sight of the fact that nations competing for supremacy in AI, like China, rank near the bottom. China’s development of AI will not be held up by debate or protests.

 

Just as we need accountable politicians to put the needs of the Country above personal wants, we need answerable business leaders to ensure that what they produce is without unnecessary risk. If Dario Amodei of Anthropic or Sam Altman of OpenAI feel the risk of what they are creating is too great, they should slow their progress, without calling for government regulation. Otherwise they will be suspected of self-preservation, shutting out future competition. And Congress should debate the issue, and if guardrails are deemed necessary, they should be legislated. 

 

In the epigraph, Solzhenitsyn was expanding on an ancient precept. In Mark 7: 21-23, Jesus is quoted: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts...All these evil thoughts come from within and defile a man.”  In 1788, James Madison wrote in Federalist 51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Evil does exist, but it is not endemic to machines, computer programs, or artificial intelligence. If an outcome is bad, it stems from the individual who is designing the algorithm, or in programing and creating the system; it is not the software or machine that is evil. 

 

In debating the issue of AI, as for any issue like climate change and the coronavirus, we need reflection and common sense, not emotion. In the same article quoted above, Mr. Huttenlocher, who is dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing wrote: “AI is an extremely powerful and beneficial technology. But accountability for its actions remains with the people and institutions that grant it the power to act...”

 

As for the question in the title. Artificial intelligence is certainly consequential. I am no expert, but from what I have read AI will increase productivity across myriad industries. It will help generate advances in defense and in the sciences, especially in healthcare. And it will generate jobs that today we cannot imagine. However, in the wrong hands, like any weapon, it could be apocalyptic, which is why it is critical that the United States – not China – be the industry’s leader.