Off The Rails Once More

Another Walter Williams Derailment

       In what may be the most desperate attempt at tokenism in US newspaper journalism, The Villages Daily Sun sports two columns by persons of color. That, alone, could be a good thing, if it wasn’t always the same two persons. I have written at length about one of them, the thoroughly despicable Michelle Malkin. Remember her? She’s the anchor baby, born here to Filipino parents on temporary work visas, who hates birthright citizenship, immigrants and, all things to the left of Joe McCarthy. One example – Japanese internment was an unqualified “good thing!”

        Today’s column is her (Malkin’s) usual drivel and unworthy of further commentary. The other columnist today, however, is the almost always wrong (and this is no exception) Dr. Walter Williams. Like his idol, Dr. Thomas Sowell, a Black economics professor, Williams may well have expertise, to the extent that it is possible to do so, in his academic field of economics. Admittedly one of  the “softest” of the “Soft Sciences” a group which includes sociology, psychology, and the non-reproducible data areas, economics is a field where, as an example, we have a president with a non-honors bachelor’s degree at odds with PhDs in the field over such issues of tariffs, monetary theory, and Federal reserve interest rates. Both claim to be right, and while the rest of us pay the price of their uncertainty we’re forced into a “wait and see” situation. In Chemistry, Na+Cl always yields salt. In Economics, bullshit added to bloviation frequently yields uncertainty. Soft science!

        Where the good doctor goes astray is when he waxes eloquent in areas unrelated to his field of expertise or, even worse, draws demonstrably wrong conclusions from what may sound like reasonable assertions of fact. This usually takes the form of making a statement which has an element of fact, and then drawing conclusions which fit his conservative mindset rather than logic. As an example of how this works, let’s draw on an analogous, simple,  Malkin example: In a column last year, she lauded John Roebling, designer and builder of the Brooklyn Bridge as a great engineer and risk taker (true!) She then concluded that the bridge itself was a monument to private enterprise and personal capital risk, stating that it was built by Roebling with his and other’s private money. Sadly, that belies the reality, which it that the “Great Bridge” (the title of David McCullough’s terrific book on the subject) was built almost entirely with the proceeds of “public” money, that is, bonds sold by the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan, who actually “owned” the bridge after its completion. We see that today in the, all too familiar, Trump method of beginning with a statement that is, perhaps, speckled with a grain of truth and then departs reason into fantasy and outright lies. (Colonial airports, Fort McHenry during the revolution, six new steel mills?)

        But on to today’s fiasco. Dr. Williams, in a column entitled “The Assault on Western Civilization Continues” correctly identifies an issue on which he and I are in total agreement. He bemoans the fact that many universities no longer require a course in United States history as a core curriculum study. This, he asserts has resulted in a current group of grads who are, and surveys substantiate this, woefully ignorant of our history. His conclusion, however, is that this is driven strictly by “the left,” his own personal term for anything with which he disagrees, and that removing this requirement is typical of Leftist regimes. Really? In fact, leftist regimes historically haven’t removed history, they’ve rewritten it and made it (the “new truth” required reading (Mao’s Little Red Book, Stalinist rewrites and North Korean school texts.)

       In fact, concentrating on revisionist history, while it is certain that some US history books are being rewritten every day to include things previously omitted in the aim of including all our history, not just the White parts, Williams cites the current lack of requirement as leaving students as “Easy prey to charlatans, quacks and liars who wish to downgrade our founders and the American achievement.” This is a bit troubling, since much revisionism of US history has revolved around “re-humanizing” the founders, such as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Washington, et all, who while bright men (and slave owners) all, were also acting in what they viewed as their own self-interest. Were they humans with human failings? Of course. Did many of them own Dr. Williams ancestors? Sure did! In fact, much revisionism in US History has originated in places like Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, where curricula and texts are being sanitized for such “unpleasantries” as lynching, post war race riots, the civil rights movement or factual treatment of the Vietnam war. The theory in these places, coincidentally, bastions of the Christian conservatism Williams apparently adores, seems to be “If we did it, it was right, so there!”  

       Another thread of the op-ed is “The attack on the Western Civilization must begin with the attack on church and Christian values.” By implication he also apparently believes that all the founders were committed Christians. As many Christians do, he hints at several “founding fathers” who allude to some higher power when speaking of human rights and responsibilities. This undoubtedly includes Jefferson's "all men are created equal" verbiage in the Declaration of independence. I can imagine TJ's slaves muttering about "equal this, m****r f****r." Of course, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Adams, (Deists all) never speak of “Jesus.”

         As enlightenment era literate men (largely autodidacts as in Washington’s case) they would have been educated in the concept of “natural law,” which concept precedes Jesus by centuries, was mentioned by the Greeks and others and has parallels in Asian religions as well, but don’t tell him; his head will explode.  As one last example, Williams cites “Christian” values which in his case, I’m fairly sure means a view that belief in any higher intelligence in the universe apparently only means belief in the Christian version of God and, by inclusion - especially and specifically, a divine Jesus.

      Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, constructed by cutting, pasting and excluding some parts, tells a different story.  Jefferson's condensed composition excludes all miracles by Jesus and mentions of the supernatural, including sections of the four gospels that contain the Resurrection and other miracles, and passages that portray Jesus as divine.  In like fashion, while Washington regularly attended church while in residence at Mount Vernon, his pastor acknowledged after his death that he never, ever, took communion, choosing to leave instead.  Why? Deist, that’s why. The same thread holds true for all the others Madison, Adams, Franklin, and others.

        The concepts of the Ten Commandments are often cited as a basis for western law, as if no one else has a moral code. In fact, the principles which Moses claimed to have been delivered by “tongues of fire” (really?) were commonly cited, (Hammurabi (pre Moses) or Ashoka anyone?) exercised in parallel language and intent in numerous non-Christian cultures. Of course, they were good tools for construction of a civil law code - then. A law code based on Buddhist principles would have been equally acceptable as a civil code, but they went with what they, and more specifically, those about to be governed, knew.     

        In a final brush with fantasy we have this, “Joe Biden, criticizing sexual assault, said “This in English jurisprudence culture, a white man’s culture”, adding, “It’s got to change.”

          Now let’s be careful at this juncture. Again, there is a grain of truth, involved. I have essentially zero difficulty with the Biden quote as stated. Both parts of the statement are correct, Our laws do follow English Common Law (which law has changed and modernized markedly over time) but, in 1776, it derived from a culture of undeniable western European Caucasian racial and male gender superiority. Williams, however, then cites other parts of the world, under different legal constructs, where women are considerably more disadvantaged, mentioning such things as genital mutilation and civil restrictions. Again, demonstrably true.

        Where Williams is astonishingly wrong is his conclusion that there is only one alternative – things as they are with “Christian values” or the non-western alternatives. Of course, as an ignorant man, which he must be to conclude as he does, he omits that in the Buddhist parts of the world, women usually do not fare worse than in America. Even during the Colonial period women of the Six Nations (Iroquois Confederation) fared better than Massachusetts Bay colony wives. That, however, fails to mesh with his theory.

       I would be remiss if I failed to point out that those founders who, Williams lionizes, did or believed the following things as of 1776: women were essentially chattel, having no rights to own or manage property or to control their own money. Women could be beaten, short of fatal injury, by their husbands, raped by them, charged with witchcraft with no recourse. In fact, most unwitnessed rape was assumed to be seduction by the woman, children had no rights whatsoever. Slavery was legal in America and all English colonies. Indians could be forced to convert and live in “praying towns” or face genocidal war over land they had lived on for 10 millennia (see Pequot Wars ,1636-38), Indentured servants fared little better. Have we progressed beyond these circumstances? Of course, we have, but apparently Williams believes we risk a backslide into communism or socialism if we try to do better.  

        The assertion that there is no need for change (which for Williams is always driven by “leftists,” the term “progressive” apparently too difficult for him to spell) implies that all things under the good old Christian system are meant for the best. I am reminded of Voltaire’s satire, Candide, in which the young and naïve hero is under the tutelage of one Dr. Pangloss. As Candide's mentor and a philosopher, Pangloss is responsible for the novel's most famous idea: that all is for the best in this “best of all possible worlds.” This optimistic sentiment is the main target of Voltaire's satire. It is also apparently the concept which Walter Williams holds about things as they are.

        It seems that the concept of improving things to more evenly support civil rights or gender issues or any impetus which posits that we can do things better or more equitably is somehow impossible within the current system and  is linked in Walter Williams’ mind with “Leftist” thought, whatever that might mean to him. If recent history demonstrates anything regarding assaults on human rights in America it is that the more self- proclaimed “Christian or Judeo Christian” ethic based and uber-patriotic the effort, the more discriminatory it is likely to be. Don’t tell me that treating all citizens more fairly is leftist, tell that to the descendants of Stalin’s purges, Hitler’s genocide, ISIS’s horrors, Southern lynchings,  and the list goes on, all totalitarian, all brutal, all driven by religious and/or political doctrinarianism.

       Apparently, Dr. Williams, a Black man who bootstrapped himself to prominence, prefers the current “white man’s Christian culture” regardless of its inequities and biases. The system can be changed for the better. That isn’t revolutionary, it's just progress!