Millions of Americans don’t work. Some are unemployed and looking for work; others simply refuse to look for a job. In fact,12 percent of men in their prime working years aren't in the workforce and aren't looking for work. Millions of healthy men are living off relatives, surviving on government benefits, or working side hustles in the underground economy and not paying taxes.
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
God bless people who work at useful jobs
Monday, May 15, 2023
Biden says white supremacy is the nation' s biggest threat. Where are those white supremacist rascals?
President Biden spoke at Howard University‘s commencement ceremony a few days ago, where he told his audience that "white supremacy" is the nation’s biggest threat. I’m not buying it.
I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which is a majority-Black city. Our mayor is African American. Our police chief is African American. Our school superintendent is African American, and African Americans are well-represented on the municipal council and the school board.Are there white supremacists in Baton Rouge? Probably, but they keep well hidden. If President Biden knows where they are, I wish he would point them out to me.
Everyone agrees that the United States has a shameful racist past. As late as 1955, an African American boy was lynched in Mississippi by a racist mob. Even today, I’m sure there are pockets of virulent racism throughout the United States.
Nevertheless, the nation has come a long way since the Supreme Court desegregated public schools in 1954. The nation elected its first African American president in 2008, and our current vice president is a Black woman.
I was deeply offended by President Biden’s remarks, which can fairly be described as race-baiting. It certainly was not a helpful thing to say to a mostly Black audience.
President Biden’s shameful speech reminds me of a passage from Solzhenitsyn’s novel, Cancer Ward. The trouble with Stalinist Socialism, one character observed, is that you can never hate enough. You can never say I’ve hated enough. From now on, I’m going to love.
Just as the soulless bureaucrats of Stalinist Russia constantly searched for more people to vilify, more people to denounce, and more people to ostracize, Biden constantly searches for more ways to divide Americans rather than unite us. He is like the wealthy planters in the Reconstruction South, who pitted poor Whites against poor Blacks and, thus, kept both groups from prospering.
But perhaps I am giving President Biden too much credit. We all know the President simply reads what is put in front of him when he makes a speech. Perhaps it is President Biden’s speech writers who are the hate mongers, and not the President himself.
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Get smart before you go to college because you might not get smarter while you're there
I had a stroke last month, and I spent three weeks at a rehab center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During my time there, I was treated by several gifted occupational therapists, physical therapists, and speech therapists.
Saturday, May 13, 2023
Why are universities opening campuses in Washington, DC? Bedause that’s where the money is
Someone asked Willie Sutton, the notorious bank robber, why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is," he replied.
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
I’m bored: Let's go to war with Russia
So far, Ukraine is doing the fighting and dying in its year-long conflict with Russia, sustained by American weapons, technology and military expertise. Ukraine appears to be holding its own, but it would be a mistake to believe that Russia will simply give up and abandon its imperialistic ambitions to annex a portion of its western neighbor. Certainly, in my opinion, Russia will never surrender Crimea.
The American mainline media is fond of describing Russia as a regional power with an incompetent military and unstable leadership. I’m not sure that’s true.
Napoleon thought he had defeated Russia when he captured Moscow in 1812. In Napoleon’s mind, all that was left to do was wait for Russia’s military leaders to admit they had been beaten and formally surrender.
But the Russians never showed up to surrender. Instead, winter set in, and a cataclysmic fire burned down most of Moscow.
Rather than spend the winter in a burned out city, Napoleon decided to march his troops back to France. That’s when the Cossacks showed up. Russian cavalry harassed the French army on its long retreat and Napoleon lost ninety percent of his troops before he reached safety.
During World War II, Hitler invaded Russia in the summer of 1941 and drove the Russians back across a broad front. The Nazis made it to the outskirts of Moscow but they never captured the city. The Germans besieged Leningrad for 900 days but the Russians refused to surrender, although one million Leningrad civilians died from starvation during the siege.
Are there any lessons to be learned from history? I think there are. Russia may appear to be on the verge of defeat in its war with Ukraine, but that’s what Napoleon and Hitler believed when they picked a fight with Russia.
But what do I know about military strategy and geopolitical affairs? After all, I’m just a retired professor who lives smack dab in the middle of flyover country.
That’s a fair point. On the other hand, what do the bozos in Washington know about military strategy or the tangled history that connects Ukraine and Russia? Apparently, not much.
The witless diplomats and policy wonks who are recklessly pushing our country into war with a nuclear power probably think it’s fun to muck around in eastern European affairs. Who knows? They might get a lucrative book contract out of this fracas or a teaching gig at Harvard.
Monday, May 8, 2023
Things fall apart: American civilization is collapsing and it's time to start paying attention
Like many prophecies, Yeats's prediction took a long time to be realized. Now, a little more than a century after Yeats penned those words, his prophecy is finally coming true.
America, the greatest civilization in the history of mankind, is falling apart. The nation that sent 9 million men to Europe and the South Pacific during World War II and sacrificed 300,000 is crumbling. The country that accepted to its bosom the refugees from the Irish potato famine and found homes for the Vietnamese who fled the war in Southeast Asia is about to collapse.
Who would’ve thought that the United States, which conquered the Nazis in World War II, would sneak out of Afghanistan in the dead of night without bothering to tell its allies? Who would’ve thought that a nation dedicated to law and justice would allow criminals, terrorists, human traffickers, and fentanyl to flow across our southern border unmolested?
Saturday, May 6, 2023
Surgeon General to fight “epidemic of loneliness”: I’m from the government and I’m here to help
Vivek Murthy, President Biden’s Surgeon General, issued an advisory a few days ago,alerting the nation to an epidemic of loneliness. According to Dr. Murphy’s report, about half of adult Americans experience loneliness, and the Surgeon General warned that loneliness can contribute to depression, high blood pressure, dementia, and other serious medical conditions.
Dr. Murphy announced a “National Strategy to Advance Social Connections Across Society." He called for more research on loneliness, and he pledged to enact pro-connection public policies and to cultivate a culture of connection in American life.
A few years ago, Americans would have greeted the Surgeon General’s advisory with derisive hoots and catcalls. Who believes the federal government can do anything to make Americans feel less lonely? What is Dr. Murthy proposing, Americans might once have asked: A government-run dating service?
Today, however, Dr. Murthy ‘s advisory is taken seriously. Maybe a few billion dollars in federally funded research at the nation’s elite universities will reveal how the nation can conquer loneliness After all, who knows more about loneliness than a university professor?
Perhaps federal money can banish loneliness from our daily lives, but I am skeptical. Americans once looked to their churches, their families, and social clubs for social connecutiveness. Unfortunately, many Americans have turned their backs on these institutions. Do we really think the federal government can provide the social connections that our religious faith, our families and our bowling leagues offer?
Besides, a little loneliness may not be such a bad thing. Throughout history, loneliness has inspired great art, great literature, and great music. Edward Hopper’s famous painting, “Nighththawks,” for example,masterfully captures the anomie and isolation of early 20th century urban life. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has spoken to generations of American adolescents because it is an almost perfect expression of youthful isolation.
Country music, perhaps America’s most original art form, speaks to millions of Americans because it expresses the loneliness that most of us feel from time to time. Roy Orbison's “Only the Lonely,” Johnny Cash’s “ I still Miss Someone,” and Merle Haggard’s “Looking for a Place to Fall Apart” are so powerful because they express one of the most basic of human emotions, which is loneliness.
In my view, the Surgeon General’s assault on the epidemic of loneliness will not make us less lonely. It will just make our loneliness more banal.