"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!