Fraud

Fraud:  "wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain."  I would add, perhaps, "deliberate" and "political gain."  Criminal fraud, which must be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt, in Michigan can result in a prison term of up to 14 years.  A civil conviction requires a less strident standard and normally results in financial restitution.  Regardless.....

I've posted about this before.  But it was reawakened by the extortion tactics being used by some of the "peaceful protesters."  They are making "demands" of often small businesses.  "Comply with our demands or we'll shut you down."  Well, in some places like Louisville, the "peaceful" groups have, in effect, already shut down businesses with their violence.  But if these businesses agree to demands, some of which might be noble in spirit, the violence will cease.  Or, if some of the demands (in the form of quotas) are not met, the businesses will be required to make involuntary contributions to groups of the protesters' choosing. That sounds like the old neighborhood shakedown, almost like protection money.

 

What about politicians?  We call them "campaign promises" and routinely accept them as likely nothing more than lies.  We don't hold politicians to their promises.  I am surprised, but it was only a couple of years ago that one of my students introduced me to this question.  "How can you tell when a politician is lying?"  I didn't know the punchline and didn't even know it was a joke, regardless of its veracity.  I burst out laughing when she answered, "When his lips are moving."  

Obviously that's not true of all politicians.  And just as obviously there are some political roadblocks for some of the campaign promises.  But far too often we are just bombarded with known lies.  So, then, aren't those campaign promises really fraud?

Perhaps one way to get our politicians to behave more honestly is to prosecute for fraud.  Of course, many of the district attorneys/prosecutors are elected officials themselves; that is, they too are politicians.  So what are the chances of any prosecutions?

Maybe a more realistic solution is to vote against the worst of the liars.  We can whittle our way down, from the worst to the little less bad to the little less.....  I wonder, though, if they'd get the message.  I doubt, too, that voters would do that.  They are hung up on voting by political party, based on their unions' endorsements, how they are expected to vote because of their inclusion in this group or that, etc.

I don't really see a solution.  Voters have proven time and time again they are  more than willing to vote for, not good candidates, but "the lesser of two evils."  It seems the best "liars" are rewarded.  It's very disheartening.

I guess I'm still living in my little dream world.

Censorship

Censorship is becoming a big problem in this country, in more ways that one.  I'm not a Libertarian as far as censorship goes.   But I think we need to be very, very careful in restricting freedom of expression.

There was a reason the Founding Fathers made the First Amendment the one protecting freedom of expression.  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or the press or the people peaceably to assemble......"  These men were wise and they realized that once a government ("Congress shall make no law......") can control people's thoughts, self-rule is all over but the shouting.

We encounter today two variations of censorship.  Both are included in this sentiment, "I may disagree with what you say," or write or....., "but will fight to the death your right to say it."  It's a misconception that the French philosophe (yes, philosophe, not philosopher) Voltaire wrote this.  He almost assuredly didn't, but he also most assuredly believe it.  Federal and state governments have, over the years, attempted to curtail certain speech.  Often it's in the name of national security, in wartime, etc.  But citizens can also exercise censorship through a variety of means--ostracism, boycotts, and today, peer pressure under the guise of being "woke," "cancel culture," and other current evils.  (Oh, there I did it.  I spilled the beans as to my views.  Ha Ha Ha.)

Freedom of expression means, above all, protecting the right to say things that are not popular, indeed, things that are despicable.  (I'm not talking here of slander, pornography, etc., but the expression of ideas.)  It's easy to allow people to say and write things that we like or support.  It's the ideas we hate that need to be protected.  Laws and social pressures are not the ways to combat such hated ideas.  That includes views that favor fascism and communism.  Those views need to be, not censored, but defeated in the arena of ideas. 

I wonder, in schools today, if students are taught about Frank Collin and his American Nazis in the late '70s.  They wanted to hold a march, a demonstration, ("peaceful" of course) in Skokie, Illinois.  Skokie was the target because of the sizable number of Jews who lived there.  Some of the Jews were relatives of survivors of the German Nazi extermination camps; some were survivors themselves.  I won't go into the history of the legal battle, but it is worth studying.  Ideas we hate......

Today, although I am still very wary of Big Government's penchant and abilities to control what is said, printed, and even thought, I think a bigger danger comes from the "woke" and "cancel culture" people.  This has come to the utterly ridiculous.  We've all read or heard of people who have been forced to resign or even been fired, who have issued apologies to snowflakes, er, people who have been "offended," for what they have said.  Locally, a teacher was dismissed for, it now appears, several tweets/twits (I can't help myself with that!) he made.  One was, "Liberals suck!"  (My aversion to that word, "suck," is well known.  I hate it and always have.  But, if the shoe fits......)  Another was simply, "Trump is our President!"  There have been other dismissals and forced resignations nationally at big-name companies, newspapers (Isn't that the epitome of irony?), and television networks.  I imagine liberals might take offense at such a characterization "suck!", but aren't conservatives often called names, too?  Aren't conservatives--or so I've read and heard--"greedy" and "selfish," "bigoted" and "racist," and "white supremacists," among other things?  (I don't know where that leaves people like Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Kira Davis, Candace Owens, and others.)  In fact, one of the e-mails the local school district received urging this teacher's dismissal called the President "a fascist."  (OK, no doubt like a majority of those throwing around the word "fascist," the letter-writer likely has no real idea of its meaning and its historical context.  But they heard--probably didn't see it as that would entail reading, Ha Ha Ha--it somewhere and it sounded good and got a desired reaction, so......)

Intelligent people I know, ones who have been educated to examine different viewpoints, to listen to all sides, before making judgments have also jumped on the bandwagon of intolerance.  I was struck a while ago by a guy who was very tentative in expressing to me the beginnings of an opinion that wouldn't fly with the woke folks.  In a way, I was offended.  (Ha Ha Ha!)  But my initial response was not at all critical, but open and tolerant, and he eventually said a lot more that the woke folks wouldn't tolerate.  I agreed with all of it.

This, the woke censorship, the cancel culture, and the like is what we need to combat.  I wonder how loudly these self-ordained censors would cry if their ability to yell and scream was, ahem, "canceled."

Chris Columbo

Christopher Columbus.

Statues of him have been toppled all over the US.  Others, I'm certain, will join them.  OK, he kidnapped people, enslaved Native Americans, and was dishonest.  Without a doubt, though, he was a terrific sailor and salesman, especially in his relations with Ferdinand and, in particular, Isabella.

Timing is everything.  Columbus received financing from the Spanish monarchs in 1492.  ("In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue......")  It was no accident.  About half a dozen years before, he had approached the Portuguese, the leaders at the time in exploration of the world outside of Europe, about sponsoring his voyages.  They knew he was wrong about his claims of reaching the riches of Asia (India, China, Japan) by sailing westward and turned down his request.

The Muslims were expelled from Spain, The Reconquest, in 1492.  That freed up money (Wars are expensive!) for Ferdinand and Isabella to invest in Columbus's venture, to catch up with their neighbors the Portuguese.

OK, enough of that.  People now blame Columbus for the ensuing slavery, genocide, ecocide, etc.  The anti-Columbus movement started years ago.  In 1992, the 500th anniversary of his first  Atlantic crossing, popular posters were selling.  They read, "Christopher Columbus: Wanted for Grand Theft, genocide, racism, rape, torture....."  Columbus may have been first, the one who initiated the Europeanization (for better or worse) of the American continents.  (And when will we hear the calls for renaming the "Americas?"  After all, they were so named after Amerigo Vespucci, a European.)  But he was not the one who was the most egregious.  Many others followed him.  And, had Columbus not "discovered" the Americas, does any reasonable person think no other Europeans soon would have?

And are these people ignorant of all history?  "Canceling" it, or at least what many of these ignorant people seem to want to do, will not purify it.  There is no absolute purity to history.  To try to make it so is creating fairy tales. 

History is the story of the conquest, slavery, etc. of some peoples by other people.  The list is practically endless.  In Africa, we can start but not end with Shaka Zulu.  In Asia, there were the Chinese and all their emperors, native and adopted (Manchus, Mongols).  Let's not forget Genghis Khan and his grandson. Kublai Khan.  Perhaps we can ask the Eries (if we can find any!) and Pottawatomis what they think of the Iroquois.  I wonder what the Cheyennes thought of the Sioux, those same Sioux from whom the protesters claim the US stole Mt. Rushmore.  And speaking of the indigenous American peoples, the Aztecs, among others, practiced human sacrifice.  

One lesson we can learn from Columbus is asking the question:  Hero or Villain?  

Hero?  Columbus' deeds introduced American foods and medicines to Europe.  How many lives were saved?  The wealth from the New World helped to finance European growth n culture, the arts, business, technology, and ideas.  (And, note below, it was Western Europe, through the Englightenment, which began the process of abolishing slavery, to the extent it has been abolished.)  Opening the two American continents led to wider settlement, eventual population growth, and the consequent spread of a more complex civilization.  In turn, that led to advances in health, industrialization, etc. all over the globe for the next centuries.  (When the "woke" people are critical of this, ask if they are willing to give up their cell phones, their televisions, their computers, their cars, their indoor plumbing, their great life-expectancy, etc.  If they are, then they aren't hypocrites.)  There's more, but.....

Villian?  Europeans decimated the Native American population; some claim as much as 75 to 90% of it.  I have no idea how that number was reached given the times, no census, etc.  Maybe someone threw out that number at one time and it stuck.  We'll never really know.  But the Indian population, especially in the Caribbean was devastated.  Likely, the Europeanization led to the African slave trade, when the native source of slaves disappeared.  But, again, slavery was not initiated by the Europeans after Columbus and the African slave traded was aided and abetted by Africans and Muslims--that's where the trade started. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of native plants and animals were destroyed, no doubt.  The actual number will also never be known.  Some say the precedent for colonization, not only of the Americas, but the entire globe was established, its odious residue lasting to the present.  Remember, too, the Europeans weren't the first or only people to dominate others through colonization.  

Was all this the fault of Columbus, rather than Europeans who followed, from Spain and Portugal to Britain and, eventually, Americans of European descent?  Was this merely (and I don't say that lightly) the march of history, weaker peoples from all over the globe being dominated by more powerful peoples from all over the globe?  Had Columbus not "discovered" the New World, no doubt some other European would have.  Were the atrocities that followed foreseeable?  Maybe, maybe not.  But are they all to be laid at the feet of Columbus?

To recognize this is not to condone it.  But people should get their facts straight.  It was, after all, Western Civilization (if not the US, coming late into the picture) that began the process of ending the African slave trade, well, to the extent it's been ended.  And the American Founders, I think, realized that slavery was evil, that it was something that needed to be eradicated.  That they didn't is shameful, but, in some ways, understandable.  But that's something for another post.

A Speech That Will Never Be Given

Here is something I've been mulling over in my mind for about a week.  I shared some of this idea with others in an e-mail. 

Perhaps Trump should finally make a speech, to the nation on prime time television, bypassing the biased media.  He should address the protests/demonstrations that continue, directly talking to the American people.

First he should condemn the violence in no uncertain terms.  That would appeal to, I think (or at least hope), the vast majority of Americans.  He should point out the destruction being done to people's businesses, homes, and cars.  He should strongly condemn the beatings and killings of what some of the media have called "peaceful demonstrations."

Second, he should question the actions of the protesters, specifically the destruction of memorials and monuments.  Not all of the attempts to topple them are in the least bit warranted.  Do these ignorant demonstrators know anything about US Grant and the Civil War, the winning of which led to the practical emancipation of the slaves?  (I am not downplaying the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment, nor Lincoln's and others' roles in ending slavery.)  If their goals are what they claim them to be, Trump should ask (and not rhetorically) why memorials to Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and other abolitionists are being defaced, ruined, and destroyed?  Should ignorance be the driving force behind these demonstrations and violence?

Third, and this one would be difficult to finesse, but it's needed, he should ask the demonstrators why they have never protested the black-on-black murders in places like Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, etc.  Doesn't/Didn't the life of Mekhi James, the three-year old who was shot in a drive-by last weekend in Chicago, "matter?"  (I know, I know.  There is a difference between police brutality and shootings by thugs.  But the end result, to the families, is the same--a wasted life.) "Why haven't the 60+ shootings in Chicago just last weekend alone, the 100+ shootings in NYC just last week alone, etc. attracted your anger?  They haven't even attracted your concern!"

Specifically,  he could then call out the hypocritical and cowardly corporations, which have become too numerous to name individually, who have sided with and financed BLM.   Also, "Hey NFL and its players!  Why haven't you taken knees for the likes of Mehki James or any of the three teen-age girls shot and killed last week in Chicago, too?"

Then he could address the college kids and their professors, you know, the ones who know everything and aren't afraid to tell us.  "Why aren't you upset enough to demonstrate against murders like Mekhi's?"  (Yeah, I'm fixated on Mekhi James, but the murder of a three-year old breaks my heart.)

Before going on national television, though, Trump should invite Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and others to sit with him as a show of unity for the black community and its lives.  I have no doubts they would decline, making up all sorts of excuses.  But then Trump could throw that back on them, asking the black community, "Why have your self-anointed black leaders," he could name them, "refused to sit in support of my anger at so many black lives lost in Chicago, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles.....?"

This is a speech that will never happen.  I think such a speech, while ticking off the left, Democrats, and the Lamestream media (as does everything "Trump") would show leadership from the President.  I'm talking real leadership, not bullying.  Too many of Trump's followers still equate his bullying and juvenile tweets/twits with leadership.

I think a problem is that Trump has been so adolescent that few people other than his die hard supporters would listen.  That is, in part, their fault.  But it's also, in part, Trump's.  Only the Trumpsters would listen--and they listen no matter what he says.  But it's not them he needs to convince.

I also don't think Trump is capable of a serious speech.  He lacks the ability to deliver one.  And he doesn't recognize the messages that need to be sent.

Just a thought or two on this:  the demonstrations and violence, the troubles in the black community, real Presidential leadership.

Razing, redux

With all of the pandering done by Democrats to garner support from the iconoclasts, when will they move to rename the Richard Russell Senate Office Building?  A staunch segregationist and bigot, Russell not only filibustered in an attempt to block the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but along with a dozen or so other Southern Senators boycotted the Democratic National Convention later that year to protest after Lyndon Johnson signed the bill into law. 

It's quite an honor to have one of only three Senate office buildings carry one's name.  I think there have been about 2,000 US Senators in history, going back to 1789.  Three out of 2,000!  And there was nobody with a cleaner record than Richard Russell?  

As a point of fact, if I recall, the only Senator to vote against naming the building for Russell was--Michigan's own "Conscience of the Senate," Philip Hart!!!!!!  Now, regardless if I agreed or disagreed with Hart's politics, there is a man to admire.

 

For that matter, what about the noted Klansman Robert Byrd, a long-time Dem leader honored by the party at his death.  He served in the US House and Senate for almost 60 years.  At his funeral, a certain President eulogized him as "a true champion" and "a voice of principle and reason."  Granted, maybe the man changed over the years.  But if he could change, why in the eyes of so many are others with questionable pasts not allowed to change?

 

I believe any attempts to censure either man was met with the rationale from Democrats, "He was a product of his times."  So, then, why weren't Washington, Jefferson, et al, even Columbus, "products of their times?"

 

If I recall correctly, too, aren't there statues of Lenin in NYC, LA, and Seattle?  What about the statue of Che Guevara in NYC?  Real friends of democracy there, both of them.

Of course, maybe like the British demonstrator who didn't know Winston Churchill, these American protesters don't know the history of their country either.

 

Just askin'.

 

Toppling Statues?

A recent e-mail exchange on the razing of statues and memorials, for instance, of Columbus and  Robert E. Lee, led to some thinking about history and its figures.  What questions do history and its personalities raise?  How are we to evaluate them?  What lessons can we learn, if any?  Is it "fair" to judge the past and others in the past using today's standards of morality and ethics?  (We'd better be careful with that one!)  Do contributions and "sins" carry the same weight?

Three names immediately come to mind:  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson.  All have come under attack in recent years, if not longer.  All three owned slaves and, to boot, Jackson initiated "The Trail of Tears" aimed at Indians.

Jefferson, of course, wrote the American Creed in the form of the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  He referred to the young United States as "the Empire of Liberty."  How could the man who wrote these stirring words also have owned, over his lifetime, more than 600 slaves?  And he knew it was wrong, morally if not practically.  He equated slavery with holding a "wolf by the ear...  We can neither hold him nor safely let him go.  Justice is in one scale and self-preservation in the other."  Yet he did own slaves.  Of those hundred, he emancipated but seven, five after his death.  Several others, purportedly of the Sally Hemings family, ran away and he didn't bother to chase them down.  

Slavery was legal and, in many eyes, moral--even in the North.  But there was a great deal of literature that criticized slavery and slave owners.  Jefferson, as noted, knew slavery was morally wrong ("justice in one scale", but a practical necessity for him ("self-preservation").  Yet, the Declaration of Independence is perhaps the greatest document of liberty ever written and Jefferson wrote it.

Do his achievements, great though they are (and I didn't list nearly all of them), atone for being a slaver?  The Jefferson Memorial,  The University of Virginia.  Are they legitimate targets for protests?

Andrew Jackson also owned slaves, destroyed Indian life, and was generally not a nice person.  Yet, if not personally, at least by aura of his personality, Jackson boosted participation in American democracy.  Voting, party politics (much of the work done by Martin Van Buren), the spoils system, and more grew during his two administrations.  Do we, say, take his portrait off the $20 bill, remove his statues, change the names of myriad cities named after him, etc.?  Again, sins v achievements.  I have no crystal ball, but I think I can make the argument that "No Jackson, No Abraham Lincoln" 30 years later.  And where would the US be without Lincoln??????

Washington also owned slaves and is the biggest enigma for me.  Almost certainly, there would have been no USA without Washington.  He was one of the two or three primary reasons the colonists (now Americans) defeated the British in what was undoubtedly "the upset of the 18th Century."  His mere presence and often mere tacit approval of the Constitution gave it immediate legitimacy to a people deeply divided over its ratification.  And without Washington as the first President, it is also likely that the fragile new nation would have collapsed.  Do the protesters topple the Washington Monument and more?  

But more significant to me with Washington, the big enigma, reflects on his character.  There can be no doubt of his physical courage.  Perhaps the wealthiest man in the colonies, he risked his fortune  for his country.  More, in accepting the command of the Continental Army, he was, in effect, signing his own death warrant.  He exhibited great physical and, even in some sense, moral courage.

But he owned slaves and knew that was wrong.  In his will, he decreed that all of his 100+ were to be freed--not after his death, but the death of Martha.  He had wrestled with the problem of owning slaves and talked about ending slavery.  But he never did. Why not?  To maintain his plantation at Mt. Vernon, that is, his fortune?  Was he intimidated by his social and economic standing?  That is, was the peer pressure of his fellow Virginian slave owners too much to overcome for him?  Did he lack the moral courage, in the face of others in his social and economic class, to free his slaves until after his death, when he would not have to encounter what would have been their scathing disapprobation and criticism?  No, Washington was certainly not a physical coward, but morally??????  He stood up to the mightiest army in the world, but he couldn't or wouldn't stand up to his fellow Virginia slave owners.

People are imperfect.  They have flaws.  They are also, mostly, products of their times, of their times, not ours.  We might be wise in remembering that before our almost knee-jerk reactions to raze statues and memorials of the past.

Thoughts on an Early Sun AM

According to The Blogger, this is my 1200 blog post.  I don't know if that is a lot or not.  I don't recall my first blog post or even the year it was written.  It just seems like a long time, "1200" posts.

BTW, thank you Rachel G!  I don't always see the comments right away, but eventually I get to them.  Where are you teaching?

We sure live in strange times.  They seem to be out of a novel, one that is quite far-fetched.  "Defund the Police!"  Huh?  That really is stupid.  Obviously some reforms/changes are needed, but "Defund.....?"  To lump all police officers as "racists" is just like lumping all protesters as "rioters."  Why is it permissible to make one broad, inaccurate generalization, but not another?"

Of course there is racism in this country.  I don't know how prevalent it is.  Some might argue that there isn't any.  I'd say that's naive if not delusional (which is becoming one of my favorite words).  Gee, maybe they are right.  I have never heard anyone say, "Hey, I'm a racist."  I don't know if it is "systemic" or not and am not even sure what that word, "systemic," entails.  I'm inclined to believe it's more of an individual thing, though, and, in 2020, there is too much of it.  

But how carried away can we get?  I read where some university professor (somewhere) has been placed on administrative leave/suspended because he would not change his final examination schedule or grading policy following the demonstrations after George Floyd's death.  There have been people who have lost their jobs because they have uttered or written things that apparently offended others.  Why is "All Lives Matter" offensive enough to be fired?  Really, don't all lives matter?  I would hope everyone would think so.  Isn't picking and choosing whose lives matter a very dangerous, not to mention unsympathetic, thing to do?  I know what some of you are thinking (I have ESPN!) and I agree, but I'm not going there this AM.

Maybe I have this wrong, but it seems those who want to tear down statues and monuments of our not so prideful past (I'm not saying we should or shouldn't raze them, but am saying we need to discuss that--rationally.  There are more than one reason to erect or let stand a statue or monument.) are the same sort who in the past wore tee shirts with the images of  Mao Zedong and Che Guevara, mass murderers both.  OK, I realize many wear those shirts to be trendy, but they must be unaware that, say, Mao was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people, probably more than Hitler and Stalin combined.  Well, I hope they are unaware/ignorant, not that they are wearing the tee shirts as statements of support for Mao!

Related, why are professors who do something, for instance, that offends the Black Lives Matter supporters maligned and even fired, while those who still espouse the views of communists (and the hundreds of millions of deaths that lay at their feet) protected by "freedom of speech" or "academic freedom?"  As much as I hate some ideas, I believe that's what freedom of expression entails, protecting the ideas we hate.  We really don't need to protect ideas with which we agree, right?  Although this is misattributed to the French philosophe Voltaire, "I may disagree with what you say, but will fight to the death your right to say it," I concur wholeheartedly.