The last time the "Peace In Our Time" bit of history played out in 1938, over 50 million people were killed in the aftermath and entire economies destroyed for decades. The only acceptable deal with Iran leaves them without a nuclear program. Period. Anything less is suicidal. And if such a deal is not possible, than we strangle their economy and hope that does the trick before military force is required. Yet it seems the Obama administration is dead set on a deal with the mad mad mullahs at any cost.
Iran has been at war with the U.S. and U.S. interests since 1979. They are the single most destabilizing influence in the world, and particularly in the Middle East, where they are the world's foremost proponent and supporter of terrorism. The mad mullahs are every bit as bloody and expansionist as Hitler and Nazi Germany. Given that WMD's are at stake and not conventional weapons, to make a deal with the mad mullahs that would allow them to continue their nuclear weapons program is far more dangerous and irrational than the deal Chamberlain hammered out with Hitler in 1938 to, famously, insure "peace in our time."
Obama is leading the world to Armageddon. Why, I cannot begin to fathom, but there is no doubting at this point that the more a nation is opposed to U.S., the greater the danger a nation poses to the U.S. and its allies, the more Obama is willing to deal with it irrespective of the cost to our national security. And it is truly the world turned upside down when the only adults in the room protecting the interests of the free world are the French.
Recent statements from United Nations officials, that Iran is already blocking their existing efforts to keep track of what is going on in their nuclear program, should tell anyone who does not already know it that any agreement with Iran will be utterly worthless in practice. It doesn’t matter what the terms of the agreement are, if Iran can cheat.
It is amazing — indeed, staggering — that so few Americans are talking about what it would mean for the world’s biggest sponsor of international terrorism, Iran, to have nuclear bombs, and to be developing intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond the Middle East.
Back during the years of the nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the United States, contemplating what a nuclear war would be like was called “thinking the unthinkable.” But surely the Nazi Holocaust during World War II should tell us that what is beyond the imagination of decent people is by no means impossible for people who, as Churchill warned of Hitler before the war, had “currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them.”
Have we not already seen that kind of hatred in the Middle East? Have we not seen it in suicide bombings there and in suicide attacks against America by people willing to sacrifice their own lives by flying planes into massive buildings, to vent their unbridled hatred?
The Soviet Union was never suicidal, so the fact that we could annihilate their cities if they attacked ours was a sufficient deterrent to a nuclear attack from them. But will that deter fanatics with an apocalyptic vision? Should we bet the lives of millions of Americans on our ability to deter nuclear war with Iran?
It is now nearly 70 years since nuclear bombs were used in war. Long periods of safety in that respect have apparently led many to feel as if the danger is not real. But the dangers are even greater now and the nuclear bombs more devastating.
Clearing the way for Iran to get nuclear bombs may — probably will — be the most catastrophic decision in human history. And it can certainly change human history, irrevocably, for the worse.
Against that grim background, it is almost incomprehensible how some people can be preoccupied with the question whether having Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu address Congress, warning against the proposed agreement, without the prior approval of President Obama, was a breach of protocol.
Against the background of the Obama administration’s negotiating what can turn out to be the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation’s history, to complain about protocol is to put questions of etiquette above questions of annihilation.
Why is Barack Obama so anxious to have an international agreement that will have no legal standing under the Constitution just two years from now, since it will be just a presidential agreement, rather than a treaty requiring the “advice and consent” of the Senate? . . .
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.
Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature & Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol 1, 1776
Adam Smith was the father of modern economics and the first proponent of free market, laissez-faire capitalism. He promoted free trade as the world, then experiencing its first massive expansion in wealth as a result of global trade, began to move from mercantilism towards something approaching his vision. So what does that have to do with my supper?
I just had a quite filling repast -- fresh green beans and a bit of diced sweet onion cooked with a slice of bacon, marinated in the bacon fat, then spiced with cayenne pepper, paprika, salt, and black pepper, all washed down with a cup of tea flavored with lime juice and heather honey. Delicious, filling, and . . . only possible because of globalism, capitalism and trade.
The only thing local was the sweet onion. From whence did all else come?
Green beans - shipped fresh from somewhere in Central America
Bacon - probably Virginia
Cayenne Pepper - probably Mexico
Black Pepper - probably India
Paprika - probably south central Europe or perhaps Turkey
Salt - probably Minnesota, with its huge salt mines
Green Tea - China
Lime Juice - Florida
Heather Honey - Scotland
All of the above came in containers made variously of glass, plastic, cardboard and metals from all over the world.
All came to a store near me by transport using fossil fuels.
All of that allowed me to make a meal that probably cost me about $1.25 to make. And the thing of it is, the price could have been far cheaper were not our band of capitalism still stunted by cronyism, protectionism and over regulation.
All of the people involved in bringing the supper to my table tonight did so out of their own enlightened self interest. And I bought all of the things that went into my supper not out of any feeling of benevolence towards the sellers, but out of my own self interest and with trust in the quality of goods from each supplier / producer.
Aren't global trade and capitalism wonderful things? As Ayn Rand once wrote:
Capitalism has been called a system of greed — yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of.
So tonight, as I enjoy a simple, cheap and fine supper, I wonder what the masses are having in the socialist bastion of Venezuela? Or for that matter, what the deeply misguided and hypocritical Occupy protest veterans are dining on?
For anyone who needs a refresher in capitalism, there is no finer reference than Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and purchase a copy.
Another month into the Obama presidency, another horrid economic report. This from Hot Air:
The August jobs report from BLS offers yet another installment on the four-year stagnation period after the Great Recession. The US economy added 169,000 jobs, just above the 150,000 needed to keep pace with population growth. The U-3 jobless rate edged downward to 7.3%, but that’s because the labor force participation rate hit another 35-year low. . . . [A]lmost twice as many people [312,000] left the work force as found new jobs.
Obama, and indeed, the entire left, are simply economically incompetent. They shouldn't be allowed to run a lemonade stand. They see businesses as, at once, an enemy to be regulated and punished and as a cow to be milked for all they want.
The only thing keeping this economy afloat, even in this sad state, has been the Federal Reserve's "quantitative easing" - running the printing presses overtime, printing money to buy up government bonds in something akin to the world's biggest ponzi scheme. The danger of that is run away inflation, and indeed, the Fed has indicated that it intends to start unwinding this massive accumulation of debt at some point here in the near future as unemployment numbers fall.
The only part of the U.S. economy that is doing well is the stock market - and that is a bubble derived by Quantitative Easing (QE) that will burst the moment QE and the Fed's easy money policy stops. There is a reason today that Wall St. is celebrating the horrid economic numbers from the August BLS report - it means that QE will continue. This via Bizzy Blog:
Speaking today, at least one very famous economist says that we have suffered through five "years of tragic waste" under Obama:
[B]y any objective standard, U.S. economic policy since Lehman has been an astonishing, horrifying failure.
I couldn't agree more. That is indeed a damning indictment, but who is the economist that said this? Thomas Sowell? Art Laffer?
No. It is former Enron Advisor, Obama cheerleader and far left economist Paul Krugman writing in the NYT. As Krugman points out:
[T]he failure of policy these past five years has, in fact, been immense.
Some of that immensity can be measured in dollars and cents. Reasonable measures of the “output gap” over the past five years — the difference between the value of goods and services America could and should have produced and what it actually produced — run well over $2 trillion. That’s trillions of dollars of pure waste, which we will never get back.
Behind that financial waste lies an even more tragic waste of human potential. Before the financial crisis, 63 percent of adult Americans were employed; that number quickly plunged to less than 59 percent, and there it remains.
Do remember that Krugman blessed off on Obama's "stimulus" plan several years ago, both in design and size. Now he claims that the real problem is that the stimulus was three times too small. As Powerline describes it:
Of course, Krugman thinks the problem with Obama’s policies is that the stimulus was too small, the United States isn’t far enough in debt, and we don’t have a big enough public sector. More cowbell! The salient point, I think, is that we can say it is now unanimous: Left and Right agree that Obamanomics has been an utter failure. The only question at this point is whether to go even farther left–to, what, the policies of Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-un?–or return to the principles of limited government and a free market that produced our prosperity in the first place. Seems like an easy choice.
The most fundamental fact about labor unions is that they do not create any wealth. They are one of a growing number of institutions which specialize in siphoning off wealth created by others, whether they are businesses or the taxpayers.
There are limits to how long unions can siphon off money from businesses without facing serious economic repercussions.
Congrats to Michigan for passing a right to work law. No person should ever be forced to pay union dues as a condition of working in their chosen field. It is nothing more than state sanctioned indentured servitude.
The most oft repeated myth about labor unions are that they created the middle class and that they protect the rights of workers. The reality is that our increasing productivity since the civil war created the middle class, and labor unions today are nothing more than parasites on the economy, in addition to being the piggy bank for the left. Labor union numbers have been dwindling for half a century because of market realities, and without government mandates, they will go extinct. There is a reason GM and Chrysler went bankrupt, while foreign car manufacturers with plants in the U.S. did not. And can you say "Twinkies?"
The great economist Milton Friedman gave a short lecture on unions and their lack of any role in the free market several years ago. It is worth taking a few minutes to watch.
And just as a reminder, the real threat to our nation today comes not from the dying private sector unions that ultimately are governed by markets, but public sector unions that are not so governed. To see the effects, one need look no further than California.
Updates & Related Posts:
Powerline notes that the NYT's coverage of the Michigan right to work law omits some of the relevant facts - such as all the ones that would make the unions look bad.
From NRO, a discussion of Michigan's modest right-to-work reform and an analysis of why the unions and the Dems are ready to go to war over it:
Democrats are panicked by the spread of right-to-work reforms because the mandatory deduction of dues from the paychecks of public-sector employees provides the party’s financial lifeblood. There are not that many UAW members or Teamsters in the country, but there are legions of bureaucrats, school workers, and surly DMV clerks — and, through its relationship with the public-sector unions, the Democratic party has a direct pipeline into the pockets of practically each and every one of them. The shrieking in Michigan isn’t about workingmen’s wages, but campaign coffers. That is why there is blood.
At the urging of unions and the left, Californians recently passed Prop 30, raising state taxes on high earners to the highest in the nation. The left assured voters that the danger of high earners and businesses abandoning California in light of Prop 30 was ridiculous scaremongering. Gov. Brown even commissioned sage academic studies from sociologists at Stanford University to prove it.
California State Controller John Chiang has announced that total state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget.
Democrats thought they could hammer “the rich” by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation. But it now appears that high income earners have already “voted with their feet” by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis.
Who would have guessed that economics trumps sociology. Perhaps Gov Brown should have gotten a Stanford economist of some note to advise the state.
But hey, its not all bad for economy of deep blue California:
As panic spreads that goosing taxes on the rich may have created enough “tax flight” that the California will actually collect less taxes, there was welcome news that a business had committed to opening in the State. Executives of the 99 Cents Only Stores Inc. proclaimed they would be opening a new location in Beverly Hills on formerly posh Rodeo Drive.
Somewhere (probably in Texas), John Galt is laughing uncontrollably.
Here is my one red line. Any attempt to use our tax dollars to bail out failed blue states should be the clarion call for a second civil war. No more of this. The left needs to live with the consequences of their decisions or they will happily bleed us dry. California is one of several states that needs to go into bankruptcy, with all of their union contracts broken, their ridiculous public sector pensions slashed, and their environmental laws removed from the books.
I am going to make a new label for posts of this ilk - "I told you so." I imagine it will get very long between now and 2016.
Update: France is experiencing the same issues as California, as rich frogs hop over the border to Belgium in order to avoid the new, draconian 75% wealth tax recently imposed by France's socialist government. Gerard Depardieu is the latest to go Gault, leading the socialist mayor of Paris to express sorrow at Depardieu's lack of "generosity." So it is now "generosity" when a person is forced to pay taxes at the point of a government gun. The left are insane.
As regards a recent BBC world poll showing massive support for Obama across the pond, I wrote that my suspicion is that such people lack any understanding of basic economics - which happens to be how I view the vast majority of Democrats.
If nothing else, the past four years have been an utter repudiation of Keynsian economic theory embraced by the left. Moreover, few if any Democratic policies make sense on a much more micro-economic scale. For example, one of the worst economic threats to our nation comes from public sector unions. They are a plague on the public treasury and deeply distorting of our politics. And yet, the voters in Ohio, the majority of whom are getting the shaft from public sector unions, were recently convinced to vote in favor of the unions. How economically illiterate do you have to be to support public sector unions?
A new study commissioned by Independent Women’s Voice reveals that it may be not surface-level stats that can predict voter behavior, but who they are. Their study found that voters’ exposure to facts about the economy can dramatically influence their political preferences.
The research, which was conducted in Colorado, first tested voters’ awareness of several basic economic facts. Then, after an education campaign exposed them to information about the economy over a 10-day period, they tested again. The results are fascinating.
First, voters who identified facts presented to them as true were more likely to support Romney; those who identified the facts as false were more likely to support Obama. While it could be that many of these voters view economic questions as solely the area of one political party already, it is clear that awareness of these facts correlates with support for one candidate.
Further, the information campaign conducted by IWV appears both to have been able to successfully educate voters on economic facts, but also to change preferences for candidates following the path established in their research. . . .
So not only is my theory tentatively vindicated, but there is also a cure - economic literacy. So if you happen to run into a working person who is also an Obama supporter - do them and our nation a favor. Buy them Thomas Sowell's economic masterwork - Basic Economics. It explains the panorama of economics with multiple examples and in simple terms even your average economically illiterate lefty can understand. It explains and repudiates virtually every left wing economic policy plaguing our nation today.
What is happening in black inner city schools is a tragedy. Black school children are stuck in incredibly poor schools and are not getting an education that will allow them to become competitive. Although Obama sends his two children to the best DC private schools, one of his first acts in office was to end a program that would have given DC's poor the same option for their children. And now, in an election year effort to take the focus of blacks off the poor state of education - and the fact that Obama and the left are wholly complicit with it - the DOJ and the Dept. of Education are conducting a campaign to punish schools that punish black males statistically more frequently than whites. This from Prof. Sowell:
[T]he biggest hoax of the past two generations is still going strong -- namely, the hoax that statistical differences in outcomes for different groups are due to the way other people treat those groups.
The latest example of this hoax is the joint crusade of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice against schools that discipline black males more often than other students. According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, this disparity in punishment violates the "promise" of "equity."
Just who made this promise remains unclear, and why equity should mean equal outcomes despite differences in behavior is even more unclear. This crusade by Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is only the latest in a long line of fraudulent arguments based on statistics.
If black males get punished more often than Asian American females, does that mean that it is somebody else's fault? That it is impossible that black males are behaving differently from Asian American females? Nobody in his right mind believes that. But that is the unspoken premise, without which the punishment statistics prove nothing about "equity."
What is the purpose or effect of this whole exercise by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice? To help black students or to secure the black vote in an election year by seeming to be coming to the rescue of blacks from white oppression?
Among the many serious problems of ghetto schools is the legal difficulty of getting rid of disruptive hoodlums, a mere handful of whom can be enough to destroy the education of a far larger number of other black students -- and with it destroy their chances for a better life.
Judges have already imposed too many legalistic procedures on schools that are more appropriate for a courtroom. "Due process" rules that are essential for courts can readily become "undue process" in a school setting, when letting clowns and thugs run amok, while legalistic procedures to suspend or expel them drag on. It is a formula for educational and social disaster.
Now Secretary Duncan and Attorney General Holder want to play the race card in an election year, at the expense of the education of black students. Make no mistake about it, the black students who go to school to get an education are the main victims of the classroom disrupters whom Duncan and Holder are trying to protect.
What they are more fundamentally trying to protect are the black votes which are essential for Democrats. For that, blacks must be constantly depicted as under siege from whites, so that Democrats can be seen as their rescuers.
Promoting paranoia translates into votes. It is a very cynical political game, despite all the lofty rhetoric used to disguise it.
Whether the current generation of black students get a decent education is infinitely more important than whether the current generation of Democratic politicians hang on to their jobs.
Too many of the intelligentsia -- both black and white -- jump on the statistical bandwagon, and see statistical differences as proof of maltreatment, not only in schools but in jobs, in mortgage lending and in many other things.
Some act as if their role is to protect the image of blacks by blaming their problems on whites. But the truth is far more important than racial image.
Wherever we want to go, we can only get there from where we are. Not where we think we are, or wish we are, or where we want others to think we are, but where we are in fact right now.
But political spin and pious euphemisms don't tell us where we are. After a while, such rhetorical exercises don't even fool others.
If we don't have the truth, we don't have anything to start with and build on. A big start toward the truth would be getting rid of the kinds of statistical hoaxes being promoted by Secretary of Education Duncan and Attorney General Holder.
And on a final note, it was the social engineering justified on the grounds of statistical differences in loans received by blacks that destroyed credit standards, put Fannie and Freddie on steroids, and was the direct cause of our economic meltdown of the past five years. That same social engineering was strengthened and made a permanent part of our laws with the passage of Dodd Frank. This use of statistics alone to create the impression of racism where none exists is a systemic malignancy that must be ended.
Last month, in an appearance at Columbia University, his alma mater, [Attorney General Eric] Holder made a jarring statement in support of racial preferences, saying he “can’t actually imagine a time in which the need for more diversity would ever cease.” “Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices,” he declared. “The question is not when does it end, but when does it begin. . . . When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”
Where did that come from? We've had affirmative action for over sixty years. It has been, as Thomas Sowell points out here, here and here, largely ineffective and unintentionally damaging. It is, in today's America, as pointed out by Victor Davis Hanson, ludicrous as a means of supposedly redressing wrongs. And, as pointed out by former Senator Jim Webb, affirmative action is grossly unfair and wholly repugnant to the proposition of equality. So how and why can Holder possibly make such outrageous remarks?
As a threshold matter, not that Holder's remarks come on the heels of an expose from Breitbart.com showing a young Barry Obama hugging and promoting Dr. Derrick Bell, the creator of "critical race theory." It also comes on the heels of the revelation that Prof. Obama, teaching Constitutional Law at Univ. of Chicago law school, made Derrick Bell required reading for his class.
Promoting the canard of wide spread racism - and racial entitlement - in the U.S. is utterly central to the left's survival. It is a foundational source of votes, money and political patronage for the left. In the fantasy world painted by the left, it is always 1950 - with the important exception to historical reality being that it is the conservative right, not the Democrats, who are the font of the racism. If the edifice created by the left cracks, if they don't get 90% of the black vote in every election, the Democrats are in serious trouble.
In the near total absence of any overt racism today, the left last resort is to the claim that racism, even if not conscious, is none the less inherent and endemic. That is at the heart of the ludicrous theory of "color blind racism" now being expoused by the left. And it is at the heart of Derrick Bell's "critical race theory" (CRT). Both ultimately reject Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for equality of all races, arguing that because of permanent racism, blacks will always require special treatment. Skin color is not irrelevant to these people, rather it is the defining characteristic.
Pervasiveness of racism: First, CRT takes as a given -- as its first premise -- that racism infects every aspect of American law and American life. That racism is deep and pervasive -- some would go so far as to say inevitable and permanent.
"Neutral" law as mechanism of racial subordination: Second, CRT attempts to show that the claims of the legal system to neutrality, to impartiality, and to objectivity are false claims. CRT attempts to show that the law -- even when it seems neutral and even-handed -- in fact works in the interest of dominant groups in American society and particularly in the interest of dominant racial groups. CRT attempts to show that the so-called "logic of the law," that so-called "neutral principles" are a sort of cover for a deeply ingrained system of racial domination.
Critical of civil rights strategies: Third, CRT generally is extremely critical of the activity -- the strategy and even the goals -- of the traditional civil rights movement. The thinking here is that the traditional civil rights movement believed that all that needed to be done was to make the laws neutral-- to end legal segregation in the schools, for example -- in order to achieve racial equality in America. But such reforms, critical race theorists say, were ineffectual, and necessarily so -- because they ignored the way even neutral laws could effect racial subordination. In addition, it might be said that critical race theorists see the civil rights movement as too "reformist," too "gradualist," not sufficiently committed to the broad-scale social transformations necessary to achieve racial equality.
Insistence on incorporation of minority perspectives and use of stories: Fourth, and relatedly, critical race theory insists that the law --legal doctrines of all sorts -- be reformulated, fundamentally altered, to reflect and incorporate the perspectives and experiences of so-called "outsider groups," who have known racism and racial subordination at first hand. Critical race theorists often write not in traditional, lawyerly terms, but with parables, and stories, and dialogues. The thinking is that these techniques can better demonstrate the actual experiences of members of minority group -- experiences which should be accepted by and incorporated in the law. In addition, the decision to spurn traditional techniques of legal argument reflects the belief that these apparently neutral techniques are not neutral at all -- that they have been the means of promoting not some objective system of truth and justice, but instead a system based on racial power.
Finally, Kagan demonstrated that Derrick Bell is an "examplar" of critical race theory:
Derrick Bell as examplar:
Now Derrick Bell's writing illustrates each of these four aspects of critical race theory. He believes that racism is a pervasive-- and a permanent --aspect of American society. Read 1. He believes that the legal system is a means of promoting a system of racial subordination--even, or perhaps especially, when it makes claims to objectivity and neutrality. Read 2. He is deeply critical of the strategies and goals of the traditional civil rights movement--of which he used to be a part. And he insists that law must take into account the experiences of minorities, which he attempts to explicate through dialogues and stories.
Is anyone in the least surprised that the same man who was BFF with unrepentant anti-American terrorists or who sat in the pews of a vile reverse racist for 20 years would embrace Critical Race Theory and Dr. Bell? And is anyone surprised that no administration in history has been so race-centric? Is anyone surprised that Obama, who campaigned on healing the racial divide, is actually intent on promoting the canard of wide spread racism and protecting, if not actually expanding, the racial spoils system?
Let's conclude with Dr. Thomas Sowell's thoughts on Derrick Bell from 1990:
My own view of Mitt Romney is that he is a person who has mastered the vocabulary of conservativism in as much as a native speaker of English might master, say Mandarin Chinese. Romney speaks the language of conservativism with perfect diction, but it is obvious that he is not a conservative by nature. I pointed that out in response to his statement that he is not concerned with the poor. Today, Thomas Sowell makes the same point in his latest IBD column, finding Romney's statement that he would index the minimum wage law to inflation to be "defining." This from Dr. Sowell:
. . . Romney's statement about not worrying about the poor — because they "have a very ample safety net" — was followed by a statement that was not just a slip of the tongue, and should be a defining moment in telling us about this man's qualifications as a conservative and, more important, as a potential president of the United States.
Romney has come out in support of indexing the minimum wage law, to have it rise automatically to keep pace with inflation. . . .
. . . [T]o people who call themselves conservatives, and aspire to public office, there is no excuse for not being aware of what a major social disaster the minimum wage law has been for the young, the poor and especially for young and poor blacks.
It is not written in the stars that young black males must have astronomical rates of unemployment. It is written implicitly in the minimum wage laws.
We have gotten so used to seeing unemployment rates of 30% or 40% for black teenage males that it might come as a shock to many people to learn that the unemployment rate for 16- and 17-year-old black males was just under 10% back in 1948. Moreover, it was slightly lower than the unemployment rate for white males of the same age.
How could this be?
The economic reason is quite plain. The inflation of the 1940s had pushed money wages for even unskilled, entry-level labor above the level specified in the minimum wage law passed 10 years earlier. In other words, there was in practical effect no national minimum wage law in the late 1940s.
My first full-time job, as a black teenage high-school dropout in 1946, was as a lowly messenger delivering telegrams. But my starting pay was more than 50% above the level specified in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Liberals were of course appalled that the federal minimum wage law had lagged so far behind inflation — and, in 1950, they began a series of escalations of the minimum wage level over the years.
It was in the wake of these escalations that black teenage unemployment rose to levels that were three or four times the level in 1948. Even in the most prosperous years of later times, the unemployment rate for black teenage males was some multiple of what it was even in the recession year of 1949. And now it was often double the unemployment rate for white males of the same ages.
This was not the first or the last time that liberals did something that made them feel good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake, especially among the poor whom they were supposedly helping.
For those for whom "racism" is the explanation of all racial differences, let me assure them, from personal experience, that there was not less racism in the 1940s.
For those who want to check out the statistics — and I hope that would include Mitt Romney — they can be found detailed on pages 42 to 45 of "Race and Economics" by Walter Williams.
Nor are such consequences of minimum wage laws peculiar to blacks or to the United States. In Western European countries whose social policies liberals consider more "advanced" than our own, including more generous minimum wage laws and other employer-mandated benefits, it has been common in even prosperous years for unemployment rates among young people to be 20% or higher.
The economic reason is not complicated. When you set minimum wage levels higher than many inexperienced young people are worth, they don't get hired. It is not rocket science.
Milton Friedman explained all this, half a century ago, in his popular little book for non-economists, "Capitalism and Freedom." So have many other people. If a presidential candidate who calls himself "conservative" has still not heard of these facts, that simply shows that you can call yourself anything you want to.
In the IBD article linked by Instapundit (see post below), conservative economist Thomas Sowell weighs in on the race for the Republican nomination. His endorsement goes to Newt Gingrich.
As a threshold matter, Jonah Goldberg, in his analysis of whether to vote for Romney or Gingrich, concluded in his post "Newtzilla:"
Mitt Romney is still the sensible choice if you believe these are rough, but generally sensible, times. If, however, you think these are crazy and extraordinary times, then perhaps they call for a crazy, extraordinary -- very high-risk, very high-reward -- figure like Gingrich.
Sowell, for his part, sees our nation in the midst of crazy and extraordinary times indeed:
This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election:
"We are going to change the United States of America."
Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.
Internationally, it is worse. A president who has pulled the rug out from under our allies, whether in Eastern Europe or the Middle East, tried to cozy up to our enemies, and has bowed low from the waist to foreign leaders certainly has not represented either the values or the interests of America. If he continues to do nothing that is likely to stop terrorist-sponsoring Iran from getting nuclear weapons, the consequences can be beyond our worst imagining.
Against that backdrop, Dr. Sowell analyzes which candidate is best prepared to right our ship of state - and comes down definitively on the side of Newt Gingrich:
While the televised debates are what gave Gingrich's candidacy a big boost, concrete accomplishments when in office are the real test. Gingrich engineered the first Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 40 years — followed by the first balanced budget in 40 years. The media called it "the Clinton surplus" but all spending bills start in the House of Representatives, and Gingrich was speaker of the House.
Speaker Gingrich also produced some long overdue welfare reforms, despite howls from liberals that the poor would be devastated. But nobody makes that claim any more.
Did Gingrich ruffle some feathers when he was speaker of the House? Yes, enough for it to cost him that position. But he also showed that he could produce results.
In a world where we can make our choices only among the alternatives actually available, the question is whether Newt Gingrich is better than Barack Obama — and better than Mitt Romney.
Romney is a smooth talker, but what did he actually accomplish as governor of Massachusetts, compared to what Gingrich accomplished as speaker of the House? When you don't accomplish much, you don't ruffle many feathers. But is that what we want?
Can you name one important positive thing that Romney accomplished as governor of Massachusetts? Can anyone? Does a candidate who represents the bland leading the bland increase the chances of victory in November 2012? A lot of candidates like that have lost, from Thomas E. Dewey to John McCain.
Dr. Sowell then makes the case that Newt's anti-conservative sins are merely venial and that his "baggage" - the marriages, the association with Freddie Mac - will not keep him from defeating Obama. He concludes with a final warning for Republicans who are focused on the negatives and baggage in Newt's past:
Those who want to concentrate on the baggage in Gingrich's past, rather than on the nation's future, should remember what Winston Churchill said: "If the past sits in judgment on the present, the future will be lost."
If that means a second term for Barack Obama, then it means lost big time.
On a final note, Dr. Sowell is the author of one of the finest tomes on economics I have ever read - and I've read many. In clear language and with numerous eye opening examples, Sowell makes the case for 'conservative' economics. The book is Basic Economics, 4th Edition, and if you want to give a gift to virtually any conservative - or if you want to watch their head explode, a leftie - who doesn't have a PhD in economics, Dr. Sowell's book should be at the top of your list.
Last weekend, I began reading the recently released 4th edition of Thomas Sowell's tome, "Basic Economics.". It has been a number of years since I took economics in college. It turns out that I haven't forgotten any of the basic principles. But that said, the degree to which Sowell's book has enhanced my understanding of those principles surprised me greatly. Indeed, it did so to the point that I am writing this post to recommend his book to everyone who doesn't hold a PhD in economics (or who does hold one and is named Paul Krugman). Giving example after example of the basic principles of free market economics - and market distortions - in practice, Sowell eviscerates essentially every left wing economic meme of the past half century. It is an invaluable resource.
For but one of thousands of examples from "Basic Economics," Sowell addresses, on page 227, income differential between races in the U.S., pointing out that:
While gross statistics show large income differences among American racial and ethnic groups, finer breakdowns usually show much smaller differences. For example, black, white, and Hispanic males of the same age (29) and IQ (100) have all had average annual incomes within a thousand dollars of one another. In New Zealand, while there are substantial income differences between the Maori population and the white population, these differences likewise shrink drastically when comparing Maoris with other New Zealanders of the same age and with the same skills and literacy levels.
One other notable aspect of this book is how Sowell traces the ripples through the economy of market distortions. At any rate, this book should be required reading for every American. I can't recommend it strongly enough.
On this same theme, Thomas Sowell, probably better than anyone, explained the fundamental fallacy at the heart of the intellectual elitism of the left in a short 2007 essay:
. . . Millions died of starvation when the economic ideas of Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China were inflicted on the population living - and dying - under their iron rule. Many on the left may protest that they do not believe in the ideas or the political systems that prevailed under Hitler, Stalin or Mao. No doubt that is true.
Yet what the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.
They may not impose their presumptions wholesale, like the totalitarians, but retail in innumerable restrictions, ranging from economic and nanny state regulations to "hate speech" laws.
If no one has even one percent of all the knowledge in a society, then it is crucial that the other 99 percent of knowledge - scattered in tiny and individually unimpressive amounts among the population at large - be allowed the freedom to be used in working out mutual accommodations among the people themselves.
These innumerable mutual interactions are what bring the other 99 percent of knowledge into play - and generate new knowledge.
That is why free markets, judicial restraint, and reliance on decisions and traditions growing out of the experiences of the many - rather than the groupthink of the elite few - are so important.
Elites are all too prone to over-estimate the importance of the fact that they average more knowledge per person than the rest of the population - and under-estimate the fact that their total knowledge is so much less than that of the rest of the population.
Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.
The ignorance of people with Ph.D.s is still ignorance, the prejudices of educated elites are still prejudices, and for those with one percent of a society's knowledge to be dictating to those with the other 99 percent is still an absurdity.
What we see today is proof of Dr. Sowell's words. The arrogance of the intellectual elite now in power is boundless; the results of their policies catastrophic. Indeed, even the elite recognizes the latter. When their final arguments going into the midterm elections are not on their record while in power, but rather "F*ck Tea" and a claim that Social Security is solvent and under attack, it is clear to all that they are bereft of ideas and intellectually bankrupt.
A few days ago, the NY Times ran an article on race in baseball. What concerned the NYT?
Among baseball’s 30 teams, only 23 percent of the third-base coaches are members of minorities, compared with 67 percent of its first-base coaches. The disparity has existed for decades but it is now about twice as large as it was in 1990, based on an analysis by The New York Times.
The question is why.
It is more than a mysterious quirk: the third-base coaching position carries greater prestige, the pay is better and the position is often a steppingstone to a managerial job. . . .
This was all too much for Thomas Sowell, who notes that this race based obsession is not only ridiculous, but additionally has already severely harmed our nation by leading to our current economic mess:
. . . This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is.
At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes, and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations, and income brackets if there were not something strange or sinister going on.
Although this notion has been repeated by all sorts of people, from local loudmouths on the street to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not one speck of evidence behind it and a mountain of evidence against it.
Ask the bean-counters: Where in this wide world have different groups been proportionally represented? They can’t tell you. In other words, something that nobody can demonstrate is taken as a norm, and any deviation from that norm is somebody’s fault!
. . . At our leading engineering schools — M.I.T., CalTech, etc. — whites are underrepresented and Asians overrepresented. Is this anti-white racism or pro-Asian racism? Or are different groups just different?
. . . In countries around the world, all sorts of groups differ from each other in all sorts of ways, from rates of alcoholism to infant mortality, education, and virtually everything that can be measured, as well as in some things that cannot be quantified. If black and white Americans were the same, they would be the only two groups on this planet who are the same.
One of the things that got us started on heavy-handed government regulation of the housing market were statistics showing that blacks were turned down for mortgage loans more often than whites. The bean-counters in the media went ballistic. It had to be racism, to hear them tell it.
What they didn’t tell you was that whites were turned down more often than Asians. What they also didn’t tell you was that black-owned banks also turned down blacks more often than whites. Nor did they tell you that credit scores differed from group to group. Instead, the media, the politicians, and the regulators grabbed some statistics and ran with them.
The bean-counters are everywhere, pushing the idea that differences show injustices committed by society. As long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it — and the polarization they create will sell this country down the river.
Amen
I would also note that this type of bean counting is, in the context of discrimination, known as the disparate impact theory. It has done untold damage to our nation since it was introduced - the subprime housing bubble and the destruction of our methods of determining credit ratings being the seminal examples. The Supreme Court went a long way to putting a stake in the heart of this theory in the Ricci decision last year, at least in as much as it pertains to civil rights laws. But it is still alive and well in our financial sector - and indeed, Obama and the far left have strengthened it. It is madness that must be stopped.
Thomas Sowell, in his recent essay, "Race Card Fraud," takes the left to task for using unfounded charges of racism for political purposes. Equally, he takes Obama to task for merely promising to lead us to some new "post-racial" America while, in actuality, leading us in another direction. As Sowell opines:
. . . Among people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, those who are likely to be most disappointed are those who thought that they were voting for a new post-racial era. There was absolutely nothing in Obama’s past to lead to any such expectation, and much to suggest the exact opposite. But the man’s rhetoric and demeanor during the election campaign enabled this and many other illusions to flourish.
Still, it was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with. . . .
Racial issues are more of the same. You want a government where all citizens are treated alike, regardless of race or ethnicity? Obama will say that. Then he will advocate appointing judges with “empathy” for particular segments of the population, such as racial minorities. “Empathy” is just a pretty word for the ugly reality of bias.
Obama’s first nomination of a Supreme Court justice was a classic example of someone with empathy for some racial groups, but not others. As a Circuit Court judge, Sonia Sotomayor voted to dismiss a case involving white firefighters who had been denied the promotions for which they qualified, because not enough blacks or Hispanics passed the same test that they did.
A fellow Hispanic judge protested the way the white firefighters’ case was dismissed, rather than adjudicated. Moreover, the Supreme Court not only took the case, it ruled in favor of the firefighters.
Obama’s injecting himself into a local police matter in Massachusetts, despite admitting that he didn’t know the facts, to say that a white policeman was in the wrong in arresting a black professor who was a friend of Obama, was more of the same. So is Obama’s Justice Department overlooking blatant voter intimidation by thugs who happen to be black.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything post-racial about Barack Obama, except for the people who voted for him in the mistaken belief that he shared their desire to be post-racial. When he leaves office, especially if it is after one term, he will leave this country more racially polarized than before.
Hopefully, he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can’t judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Voters may even wise up to race-card fraud.
This is one of those rare occasions when I think Dr. Sowell may be wrong. I think Obama may in fact - wholly inadvertently - take us down the road to a post-racial America. And I think it may well be because Middle America is very quickly wising up to race-card fraud.
Decades ago, the vast majority of people in post WWII America signed up for the equality of all races and genders. Admittedly, Southern Democrats were forced to sign on the dotted line at the point of a gun, particularly in Little Rock, but in the end, they did. Equality in America didn't happen overnight, nor did it happen without bloodshed, but, as Dennis Prager recently pointed out, America is today "the least racist country in the world." And indeed, while racism will occasionally show its ugly face, and while some remnant of racism will always exist on the far fringes of our nation amongst all races, it is not tolerated in the least in the mainstream.
Since the Civil Rights movement won out half a half century ago, the minority population of America, particularly the black population, has evolved into roughly three groups. The largest group has joined the middle class and embraced the gifts America has to offer. They are us, they are our friends and neighbors, our employees and employers, our family members, and in any and all cases, our fellow Americans. A second group has fully embraced the left's classification of them as victims. These people are the Al Sharptons, Jesse Jacksons, Jeremiah Wrights and Henry Louis Gates's of our country as well as their followers. They live for, and make a living on, the left's utterly distorting fantasy that racism (or whatever -ism) is rampant throughout America. Many occupy positions in academia, teaching the utter canard of critical race theory and loudly demanding reparations based on a very selective and highly myopic view of history. Yet others preach a gospel of separatism and reverse racism under the guises of Islam and Black Liberation Theology. And lastly are those many blacks still mired in poverty in the inner cities. They are approximately 25% of the black population. This is an intractable problem that the far left, despite all of their claims to the contrary, is not seriously interested in solving. It is important to understand how we, as a nation, got to where we are today. The far left, in the 1960's, following the death of Martin Luther King, co-opted the Civil Rights movement as their rasion d'etre and married it with their own politics of Karl Marx. No longer was the Civil Rights movement about equality. Instead, people were categorized into permanent victim classes entitled to special treatment. While equality and an end to racism in America remained the ostensible goals of the movement, they were in reality replaced by the goals of reworking society into a socialist utopia and, above all, attaining money and political power.
This movement, devoid of intellectual honesty and moraly bankrupt, had only one real weapon in its inventory - the race card. Any criticism of a member of a victim class for virtually any reason was recast by the far left as a racial attack. The far left and newly minted "civil rights leaders" quickly learned to use the race card to circumvent debate and demonize political opponents. And, of course, they waged brutal attacks against any "victims" in the public square who did not embrace their victimhood. It has been an incredibly effective weapon for the far left over the past four decades. That is because the generation that came of age as the Civil Rights movement reached its zenith in the 1960's carried with them the collective guilt of large scale racism and sexism in America.
But the people of age today are a different generation. They grew up in a time when the Civil Rights movement was ascendant. They are blacks, whites, hispanics, asians and others who interact freely. These people today are not racist or sexist. In the case of whites, they do not feel the collective guilt of their progenitors. In the case of minorities, they do not hold hatred and nurse the distant historic wounds the left would have them nurture. And as to all of this generation, whether or not they voted for Obama in 2008, all accepted the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency irrespective of the color of his skin.
While Middle America signed on for equality a half century ago, they did not sign up to be subject to reverse racism, or to have their voices delegitimized by false charges of racism, or to tolerate unequal enforcement of the law, or in the case of minorities themselves, to be ruthlessly demonized on racist or sexist grounds for daring not to accept their status as victims. That said, for the past four decades, Middle America has virtually ignored what was going on in the rotting underbelly of the left's world of permanent victims.
All that changed during the Presidential campaign of 2008 with the shocking revelation that Obama's pastor of two decades, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was a rabid racist and anti-semite who reveled in anti-Americanism.
It further changed as America watched the left's brutal, sexist war on Sarah Palin. The blinds were pulled aside on the utter rot at the core of the left. The left won the battles - the MSM pushed Wright out of the news as quickly as possible and they succeeded in demonizing the self-made woman who is Palin. But it is clear now that the window into the rot of the underbelly of the left exposed during the campaign was not forgotten by Middle America, merely filed away.
During the eighteen months since the Obama administration came to power, much more evidence of that rot has surfaced. It started on election day with the New Black Panthers. A few months later, Eric Holder outrageously called all of America “cowards” on the issue of race. Then there was the incident with Henry Louis Gates and Obama's support for Gates. Not long after, Obama's DOJ dropped the charges against the New Black Panthers in what seemed an act inexplicable on any grounds but racial favoritism. Moreover, Obama's DOJ decided it was above the law and refused to answer lawful subpoenas on the matter. Then just recently came the deeply troubling allegations that Obama's DOJ is refusing to apply all voting laws equally to all races. Add to that Obama and the left's push to add yet more racial preferences and quotas into our laws. You can find numerous other racially charged incidents perpetrated by the Obama administration and the left catalgoued in an article by David Limbaugh in the Washington Examiner.
All of that has been important in calling into question the validity of the race card. But the single most important factor has been the rise of the Tea Party movement and the left's efforts to destroy it.
Critically, the Tea Party is a grass roots movement thoroughly anchored in Middle America. It is a decentralized, amorphous movement that opposes Obama and the left on purely ideological grounds. There is no one Tea Party leader for the left to demonize. So instead, the left has relentlessly and falsely attempted to demonize and delegitimize the entire Tea Party movement as racist. It is a move of tactical brilliance worthy of Gen. George Armstrong Custer. The left has managed to personalize their race wars for a huge swath of America that long ago embraced the concept of equality.
Perhaps the stupidest thing that the left could have done was manufacture false incidents of racism. But that is precisely what happened when, during the vote on Obamacare, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) marched through the Tea Party protesters on Capitol Hill in a blatant effort to solicit racist taunts. When none were forthcoming, Rep. Clyburn and others made them up. The problem for the CBC - everyone and his brother, including Jesse Jackson, Jr., was taping the protests that day, in addition to taping every single step of the CBC march. Not a single instance of anything racial was caught on tape, despite offers of rewards of $100,000 by Andrew Breitbart for such proof.
Then to add more fuel to the fire the left has lit at its own feet, last week, the NAACP voted to smear the Tea Party, citing the discredited CBC allegations of racism as justification. Moreover, the First Lady, Michelle Obama, appeared at the NAACP's convention and gave a speech on the eve of the NAACP's well publicized vote. The First Lady did not join in the NAACP's slander, but she did not need to. She gave legitimacy and the blessing of the White House by appearing before the NAACP as their keynote speaker on the eve of their vote.
In the long term, the sum of all this spells doom for the far left. Their entire power base is centered on the twin pillars of maintaining victim classes and mining white guilt. But their device is laid bare and the guilt is dwindling to nothingness. It is happening before our eyes.
White support for Obama is melting away like a candle lit at both ends and in the middle. All of this despite the repeated use of the race card to delegitimize Obama's grass roots opposition. Ten years ago this ploy of the left would have worked. But despite the best efforts of today's MSM, it is sputtering and failing.
Today, with the race card no longer working for them as it has in the past, the left and their MSM cheerleaders are scared indeed. You can see it in the headlines. You can see it in the days events.
Just yesterday, the headline on Drudge was “Race Mess.” Articles are appearing among the MSM decrying the rise of “racial tension” in America and, in essence, telling Middle America to get back in line. Typical is the Reuters article of yesterday, "Race issues beset Obama's "post-racial" presidency.” The authors detail this new racial tension, then quote Paul Krugman and other similar left wing "experts" on the issues. Krugman, weighing in on the allegations of racially motivated unequal application of the laws, helpfully tells the reader that:
"When the right-wing noise machine starts promoting another alleged scandal, you shouldn't suspect that it's fake -- you should presume that it's fake, until further evidence becomes available," columnist Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times.
And if that were insufficient, Reuters tries to shift part of the blame for this “racial tension” onto the right:
Both the right and left accuse each other of injecting race into the political discourse. Experts say that's inevitable given Obama's position as the first non-white U.S. president. Obama's father was Kenyan and his mother a white American.
That is pure bull of course. Nothing Middle America did over the past two years injected “race” into the political discourse. What racial tension there is today wholly derives from acts of the left and the left's increasingly shrill and desperate cries of racism. What is different now is that, for the first time, Middle America is pushing back.
Politico adds an additional spin to this story, attributing this new “racial tension” in America to Fox News and MSNBC:
The America of 2010 is dominated by racial images out of farce and parody, caricatures not seen since the glory days of Shaft. Fox News often stars a leather-clad New Black Panther, while MSNBC scours the tea party movement for racist elements, which one could probably find in any mass organization in America.
This is moral equivalency at its worst. The acts of Fox News are in no way equivalent to those of MSNBC. Fox News is reporting on a blatant violation of the voting rights act that there is strong reason to believe was dropped by the Dept. of Justice as part of a larger, unlawful and racially motivated refusal to enforce laws equally. That is an incredibly serious charge – and indeed, a violation of the oath of office of Obama, Eric Holder, and the other involved attorneys at DOJ. MSNBC, on the other hand, is looking for anything that it can use to delegitimze the Tea Party movement as a whole so that the left need not engage them in a contest of ideology and ideas. There is nothing even remotely moral or intellectually honest about what MSNBC is doing.
It is not only in the press that we see evidence of the seismic change in the landscape. Without doubt, the clearest evidence of that change is the utterly bizarre case of Shirley Sherrod, the Dept. of Agriculture employee fired after a video of a portion of her remarks at an NAACP meeting were posted online by Andrew Breitbart. In the video, Sherrod admits to an act of reverse racism, though she later goes on to say that through the incident she grew in office, that the world is not all about white versus black, but rich versus poor. The NAACP immediately denounced Sherrod and the Dept. of Agriculture immediately fired her, neither apparently realizing that her admission of an act of reverse racism was only part of the story. (That said, Sherrod since then has shown herself a race baiter of the highest order. See Rhymes With Right and Gay Patriot (H/T Instapundit))
When was the last time you saw a left wing organization not merely come down against one of its own for showing something akin to reverse racism, but doing so as a knee jerk reaction? Indeed, prior to Sherrod, such remarks were virtually always either studiously ignored or quickly forgiven by the left. Now it seems there is a new zero tolerance policy at the NAACP.
And when was the last time you saw the Obama administration act with such alacrity to punish an apparent act of reverse racism? Indeed, there are many in Obama's administration today who have a history of reverse racism. And do recall that it was only two years ago when Obama gave his speech on race, stating that he could "no more disown Rev. Wright" than he could disown his white grandmother. It would seem that some in his administration, if not Obama himself, may have recently experienced an epiphany.
I think it fair to assume that the NAACP's knee jerk reaction has its genesis in the push back that they are getting for their scurrilous decision to slime the Tea Party movement as racist. It is equally as reasonable to assume that the decision to fire Sherrod comes from an administration in panic over whites fleeing from support of the administration en masse, perhaps coupled with realization of the very real potential ramifications that the DOJ is picking and choosing which laws to prosecute on the basis of race. And I think it fair to assume the articles we are now seeing decrying “racial tension” in America are in surprise and horror that the race card is no longer working the way it has for the last half century.
The left has suddenly found that they are deeply overdrawn on the race card account. The race card has been a deeply divisive tactic used to distort our body politic for over four decades. The left has lived by the race card; it is fair to forecast that the far left as a serious movement will die by it. If I am right in my assessment, that process has started. When the process ends, it will mark a great advancement for our nation as a whole - and for minorities in particular.
Update: Today, Dem. Sen. Jim Webb, writing in the WSJ, crosses a bright line in American politics that, once, would have brought race cards flying at him at light speed. He calls for an end to most affirmative action programs - the golden goose at the center of the far left's power base. Moreover, he does so on the ground that the programs have stopped being remedial and are now a means to discriminate against white males.
Webb has picked a topic that has wide national support. Polls last year found that a significat majority of Americans support an end to affirmative action for all but the disabled. That support was extremely strong among Republicans and Independents, but only at 33% among Democrats.
But why now? Either Webb is a lone wolf in the Dem. Party on this matter, or he is part of a larger strategy to stem Obama's loss of support by throwing out a red herring to Middle America that the left has no intention of acting upon. To the contrary, the far left has been busy over the past eighteen months legislating ever more affirmative action type policies. Indeed, it is beyond any doubt that the far left, whose very existence is centered on special treatment of victim classes, would defend affirmative action with all the furor of the Nazis defending Berlin in the last days of WWII.
Prof. Henry L. Gates, a Prof. of African American Studies at Harvard, is chasing the Holy Grail of the race-hustling industry – reparations for slavery. Writing in the NYT, Gates defines reparations as “the idea that the descendants of American slaves should receive compensation for their ancestors’ unpaid labor and bondage.” As Gates notes:
There are many thorny issues to resolve before we can arrive at a judicious (if symbolic) gesture to match such a sustained, heinous crime. Perhaps the most vexing is how to parcel out blame to those directly involved in the capture and sale of human beings for immense economic gain.
Prof. Gates has no problem “parcelling out the blame” for slavery on this side of the Atlantic. It is, he tells us, the “whites.” So under Gates's theory, if you are a white American, you are born with the sin of slavery hung about your neck. What troubles Gates is the fact that the historical record shows that the people on the supply side of the African slave trade – the people selling African slaves into bondage - were not the evil white skinned devils, but rather black Africans themselves. To solve that conundrum, Gates wants the intercession of President Obama:
. . . [I]n President Obama, the child of an African and an American, we finally have a leader who is uniquely positioned to bridge the great reparations divide. He is uniquely placed to publicly attribute responsibility and culpability where they truly belong, to white people and black people, on both sides of the Atlantic, complicit alike in one of the greatest evils in the history of civilization. And reaching that understanding is a vital precursor to any just and lasting agreement on the divisive issue of slavery reparations.
The issue is not divisive at all. It's ludicrous. Those who took part in slavery in America are long dead. It is a fundamental aspect of our legal system that people are held responsible for the wrongs they personally commit; responsibility for those wrongs does not follow down bloodlines. But, as Prof. Gates would have us, let us leave that fundamental issue aside. Even so, over 145 years having past since the end of slavery in America, there are a host of issues associated with who should owe what to whom such that every aspect of Gate's call for reparations passes into the surreal. Obama himself perfectly encapsulates some of this.
You will note that Gates glosses over Obama's parentage in the paragraph quoted above. He does so for good reason. Obama is the child of not merely an American mother but a white American mother. Since Obama is half white, does that mean he is entitled to only half of the reparations, or no reparations at all? Actually, it gets even more convoluted. Obama has no American slaves in his family tree, though his wife, Michelle, does. Obama's father was from Kenya – one of those areas heavily involved in the African slave trade in the 16th through 18th centuries. Indeed, it is quite possible that Obama's lineage includes people who captured and sold other blacks into slavery. Where does that leave Dr. Gates and Obama? Does our President now have to make a personal meaculpa for the sin of slavery and pay reparations to Michelle? Is Obama really, as Gates posits, "uniquely positioned" to pass on the relative culpability for the African slave trade to America? If not him, then who?
Those are only a small part of the problem with Gates's call for reparations. That Gates would slander all white Americans living today with the original sin of slavery is at least as surreal and, indeed, historically myopic in the extreme.
Slavery didn't begin with the African slave trade. On the contrary, slavery, as an accepted practice in the world, ended with the African slave trade. Slavery began with the dawn of civilization and it has involved virtually every race. Indeed, unless Gates is historically illiterate, he must know that slave-based agrarian economies have been the norm throughout much of the world's history.
Evidence of slavery predates written records, and has existed in many cultures. . . . The earliest records of slavery can be traced to the Code of Hammurabi . . . and the Bible refers to it as an established institution. Slavery was known to occur in civilizations as old as Sumer, as well as almost every other ancient civilization, including Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Islamic Caliphate, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas. . . . Records of slavery in Ancient Greece go as far back as Mycenaean Greece. Two-fifths (some authorities say four-fifths) of the population of Classical Athens were slaves.
The first movement to end slavery as an economic model can be traced to the downfall of serfdom – a medieval version of slavery – in England. The Black Death of 1348-1350 so depopulated the nation that labour became scarce and the peasantry rebelled at attempts to keep them as serfs. It wasn't until three hundred years later, with the coming of the industrial age and growing moral abhorrence of slavery as part of the American conservative Christian movement known as Second Great Awakening, that the slave-based economic model fully and finally fell from grace. By 1786, all of the colonies except Georgia had banned or limited the African slave trade, with Georgia following in 1798. This movement crossed the pond, where Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and others famously drove public opinion against slavery in 19th century Britain. Their efforts culminated in Parliament's 1807 passage of the Slave Trade Act, making importation of slaves illegal throughout the British Empire. Thereafter, it was the British that drove the slave trade from the high seas.
But, that aside, let's apply the logic of Gates to the reality of history. If slavery is an original sin that involves the collective responsibility of entire races of people, then who owes what to whom - and on a related note, do the people that ended slavery get a pass on reparations?
Gates' first clue should come from examining the origins of the word “slave.” It is a derivation of “Slav” - as in the Slavic people who were enslaved in such numbers by European warlords towards the end of the Dark Ages and for the better half of the following millennium that their very name came to be identified with "slavery." So can anyone with some Slavic blood get in on this reparations deal? Do they get to reach into the pockets of the Germans, Italians, and Celts?
But then what of the Spanish, Italians, British, Irish, and Americans of European ancestry? Many were enslaved by African and Arab Islamic pirates who for centuries made raids to capture white Europeans as slaves. The Africans would also enslave the crews of any ships they captured - including American ships:
Reports of Barbary raids and kidnappings of those in Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, Scotland as far north as Iceland exist from between the 16th to the 19th centuries. It is estimated that between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by pirates and sold as slaves during this time period. Famous accounts of Barbary slave raids include a mention in the Diary of Samuel Pepys and a raid on the coastal village of Baltimore, Ireland, during which pirates left with the entire populace of the settlement.
One and a quarter million Western Europeans were enslaved by Africans during the time frame slavery in America was also in practice? To put this into perspective, note that only an estimated 645,000 Africans were imported into the United States as slaves. That means that Africans enslaved nearly two times as many whites as did whites in America import Africans as slaves. And those European whites enslaved by the Africans never had the benefit of Africans raising up in a civil war to end their slavery. So does this mean that Obama, Gates, and all people with any DNA trace of African origin are morally culpable for enslaving whites? Can people of white European stock get two times the reparations from people of African origin today? Taking Gates' reasoning to its logical conclusion, the answer to both questions should be "Yes."
And what of other people and other lands. The Romans regularly took slaves as they marched across Europe and into the Middle East. If Europeans could trace their lineage back two millennia, probably most of the population of Europe could find an ancestor enslaved by the Romans. Then there were the Mongols and Tartars who enslaved an estimated 3,000,000 people from Poland, Russia, and other parts of Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, I don't think the Mongols have the economy today to grant large-scale reparations. Maybe the Poles and Russians can hit them up for some free yurts.
What of the Jews? The Old Testament makes clear that they owned slaves and made slaves of other tribes in the Middle East. But the Jews may have an out. The Jews themselves were enslaved, during various times, by the Egyptians and Babylonians. So can the Jews just tell whomever they owe to pick up the IOU's in Cairo and Baghdad and call it even?
And of then there are the world's most prolific slavers of history – the Arab Muslims. Indeed, Muslims still teach today that it is permissible to make slaves of non-Muslims. And indeed, they still practice what they preach - enslaving blacks in Mali when it fell under al Qaeda rule. Under the Gates theory, we should all be getting reparation checks from Ridyah.
The bottom line, if slavery is, as Gates posits, an original sin that passes not only through the generations, but also among entire races, then it hangs around the necks of most people in the world today - including President Obama and Prof. Gates. Obviously that can't be right. That doesn't fit the Gate's narrative at all.
But even if we refocus the Gates's theory to do away with collective responsibility and aim to hold culpable just those who actually took part in slavery between 1607 and 1861 in America, it still falls apart. The historical record does anything but support Gates's theory that all white Americans should be deemed morally culpable for slavery. The logic of Gates is an attempt to shoehorn moral culpability to all whites in America based on the fact that the founding fathers allowed the institution of slavery to stand in limited fashion at the founding. That is not merely twisted logic, it completely ignores historical reality.
Slavery in America predates the founding of our nation by well over a century and a half. And by the time our nation was founded, the lines between those supporting slavery and those opposed to it were clearly drawn. Most whites in America didn't own slaves and didn't support the practice of slavery. The abolitionist movement in America predates the founding of our nation by nearly a century, and while slavery was permitted to continue at the time of the founding as a necessary step to the formation of are nation - it is equally as clear that there were many virulently opposed to the practice of slavery. They saw to it that slavery was circumscribed in our new nation through acts such as the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Indeed, so unacceptable was slavery to the majority of our nation that, less than 70 years after the inking of The Constitution, it lead to the bloodiest war in American history.
To follow this line of reasoning further - one of the seemingly best-kept secrets of American history is that so many whites were so opposed to slavery that they formed a political party. That party's central plank was opposition to any expansion of slavery in America. It was called the DemocratRepublican Party. And less than 11 years after it was formed, both the abolitionist leader of that party and over 360,000 men who flocked to its banner lay dead in what proved a successful effort to both preserve the union and end slavery. Indeed, if all Dr. Gate's wants is a "symbolic gesture" from white Americans to expiate the sin of African slavery, then is there any reason this symbolism should not suffice . . .
or what about a Union graveyard . . .
or this drawing of a Republican President dying of an assassin's bullet less than 1,000 days after signing the Emancipation Proclamation and less than 60 days after signing the 13th Amendment . . .
That is, of course all far more than mere symbolism. It is the very essence of substance. Why is it that the death of hundreds of thousands of white Americans and the assassination of a President over the issue of slavery in America insufficient to provide the necessary "symbolic gesture" for Prof. Gates? One might begin to suspect that Gates has an ulterior motive.
The only way Prof. Gates's call for reparations can have even a patina of legitimacy is if it holds culpable only the descendants of those who actually owned slaves and supported the institution of slavery. Fortunately, they are identifiable. The slave-owning class in pre-Civil War America and the supporters of slavery as an institution were all to be found in the Democrat Party. It is beyond perverse for Gates, on this historic record, to also seek to hold culpable the Republicans who never supported slavery and whose ancestor's gave their very lives to end slavery. Do you think an Executive Order condemning the Democrat Party for slavery in America and ordering them to pay the reparations per a special levy would satisfy Dr. Gates? I for one could be persuaded to accept that as a reasonable settlement of the problem,
Besides the failed logic of Gates, there is of course the surrealism of a black man at the pinnacle of academia, a full professor at America's premier university – and a man who has never been a slave - petitioning a black man at the pinnacle of power in America, a President popularly elected by whites and blacks – and who was likewise never a slave but whose progenitors in Kenya may have been slavers - to expiate the original sin of slavery in America by punishing all whites alive in this country today, none of whom have ever owned slaves and many of whose progenitors fought and died in a war against slavery. We won't even delve further into the surrealism of asking, say, an Italian who immigrated to America decades after the end of slavery to foot the repartition bill simply because of the color of his skin. Why . . . that would be positively racist of Dr. Gates.
Gates's push for reparations has more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. If he wanted to actually do something constructive for blacks in America, then Gates would be shouting to the rafters about the call of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for a color blind society. That is certainly in the best interests of both blacks and our nation. Yet instead of focusing on furthering that cause, Gates is pursuing an issue that is sure to, by its very nature, drive whites and blacks apart.
I am sure Dr. Gates is not so dumb as to be ignorant of any of the above. Nor can he be ignorant of the fact that the descendants of slaves in this country have, today, all of the opportunities of America open to them. No one, Prof. Gates included, could possibly believe that the call for reparations will add anything to that.
Actually, given that Prof. Gates's wants to apportion blame to all "whites" in America for slavery, it would seem self-evident that the purpose of Dr. Gate's push for reparations is to foster a permanent sense of guilt in the white population of America on one hand and, on the other hand, to separate blacks from whites in society by keeping blacks focused on past sins. That has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with politics. It is naught but a variant on the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, damning America and calling for blacks to eschew the values of "white" America.
More specifically, this is the “sins and grievances” approach to politics about which Thomas Sowell recently wrote in his brilliant four-part essay, Race and Politics. It directs blacks and other members of 'victim classes' to “nurse their resentments, instead of advancing their skills and their prospects.” As Dr. Sowell notes, the only beneficiaries of this type of grievance politics “are politicians and race hustlers.” The losers in this equation are those blacks ignoring their opportunities and the reality of America in 2010 and instead, following the ilk of Prof. Gates on the hunt for the race hustlers' holy grail.
Update: Thomas Sowell has weighed in on this topic in his article today at NRO, Misusing History. This from Dr. Sowell:
. . . Slavery is a classic example. The history of slavery across the centuries and in many countries around the world is a painful history to read — not only in terms of how slaves have been treated, but because of what that says about the whole human species — because slaves and enslavers alike have been of every race, religion, and nationality.
If the history of slavery ought to teach us anything, it is that human beings cannot be trusted with unbridled power over other human beings — no matter what color or creed any of them are. The history of ancient despotism and modern totalitarianism practically shouts that same message from the blood-stained pages of history.
But that is not the message that is being taught in our schools and colleges, or dramatized on television and in the movies. The message that is pounded home again and again is that white people enslaved black people.
It is true, just as it is true that I don’t go sky-diving with blacks. But it is also false in its implications for the same reason. Just as Europeans enslaved Africans, North Africans enslaved Europeans — more Europeans than there were Africans enslaved in the United States or in the 13 colonies from which the nation was formed.
The treatment of white galley slaves was even worse than the treatment of black slaves who picked cotton. But there are no movies or television dramas about it comparable to Roots, and our schools and colleges don’t pound it into the heads of students.
The inhumanity of human beings toward other human beings is not a new story, much less a local story. There is no need to hide it, because there are lessons we can learn from it. But there is also no need to distort it, so that sins of the whole human species around the world are presented as special defects of “our society” or the sins of a particular race.
If American society and Western civilization are different from other societies and civilizations, it is in that they eventually turned against slavery, and stamped it out, at a time when non-Western societies around the world were still maintaining slavery and resisting Western pressures to end slavery — including, in some cases, by armed resistance.
Only the fact that the West had more firepower put an end to slavery in many non-Western societies during the age of Western imperialism. Yet today there are Americans who have gone to Africa to apologize for slavery — on a continent where slavery has still not been completely ended, to this very moment.
It is not just the history of slavery that gets distorted beyond recognition by the selective filtering of facts. Those who mine history in order to find everything they can to undermine American society or Western civilization have very little interest in the Bataan death march, the atrocities of the Ottoman Empire, or similar atrocities in other times and places.
Those who mine history for sins are not searching for truth but for opportunities to denigrate their own society, or for grievances that can be cashed in today at the expense of people who were not even born when the sins of the past were committed.
An ancient adage says: “Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.” But apparently it is not sufficient for many among our educators, the intelligentsia, or the media. They are busy poisoning the present by the way they present the past.
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