Chronological Snob

I saw this posted somewhere on the internet.

This is a prime example of what C. S. Lewis called chronological snobbery. Chronological snobbery is the idea that because people in earlier times were less knowledgable than we are about natural science, they must have been less intelligent and less knowledgeable about everything than we who live in these more enlightened times. The person who created this meme is suggesting that because the men who wrote the constitution were ignorant about the developments in scientific understanding after their time, they have nothing worthwhile to say to us. The constitution they drafted must be based on their ignorance and should perhaps be discarded as a product of an earlier, benighted era.

The meme isn’t entirely true, even in a real sense. The men of the eighteenth century did not regard women as literal property, except for their Black slaves, but that is another matter. If anything, they probably had a more realistic view concerning men and women than the average gender studies major of our times. At least they knew what a woman was. No educated person at the time would have viewed a light bulb as the product of witchcraft. They would have easily understood the principles of the workings of an incandescent light bulb if someone had explained it to them. Benjamin Franklin and perhaps Thomas Jefferson could have deduced these principles by observation. In fact, Franklin could have invented the light bulb if he had lived a half-century later. These were not ignorant men.

As for the rest, it may be true that the framers did not know about atoms or dinosaurs, though Jefferson at least was aware of the fossils that suggested large animals had existed in the past. They only knew about the prevailing scientific views of their time, just as the creator of this meme only knows about the common views of xir time. It is true that the average college or even high school graduate knows more about the natural world than the most educated persons in the eighteenth century. That is hardly to their credit, however. They had no hand in developing modern scientific theories. They are only repeating what their teachers tell them. It is not to the framers’ discredit they didn’t know better. They could not have known about advancements in knowledge that occurred decades or centuries after their deaths.

In any case, a knowledge of modern physics or medicine is not what is needed to establish a new and lasting government. What is needed is a knowledge of human nature and political history. This sort of wisdom the founding fathers possessed in abundance much greater than the average woke college graduate of today. These men had all read Plutarch, Polybius, and Plato. They were familiar with the works of Locke, Burke, and Montesquieu. Men the woke would dismiss as dead White males with nothing to say to us in these more enlightened times. The men who drafted our constitution had studied the constitutions of many states ancient and modern and had managed to create a political system that has provided the American people with an unparalleled degree of freedom for more than two hundred years. I doubt if any system of government devised by our woke contemporaries would do so well. Indeed, if the history of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is any guide, we still have a lot to learn from the wise men who wrote that allegedly outdated constitution. We should not dismiss the people who lived in the past as ignorant because they did not have the knowledge we have gained since their time. We should learn from their wisdom that we have perhaps lost.

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Bastille Day

In France, they are celebrating Bastille Day. The day in 1789 that mobs stormed the notorious prison fortress and freed seven confused convicts. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. Anyway here’s to France.

France has a really cool national anthem.

A November Surprise?

I read an interesting article about Joe Biden and the upcoming midterm elections at Yahoo News the other day.

Little is going President Joe Biden’s way as the summer lull sets in before the crush of midterm elections.

Gas prices are up; his approval rating is down. A conservative Supreme Court majority is hacking away at his agenda by abolishing federal abortion rights and undermining environmental protections meant to curb climate change. His own party is losing patience, fearing that any chance of consequential change while Democrats control Congress is vanishing.

“There needs to be urgency and action,” said Rebecca Kirszner Katz, who was an aide to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “Folks have been saying since the day Joe Biden was elected that we need to move fast. There are a lot of things we need to get done for the American people.”

I think that Mr. Biden has done quite enough to the American people. Note the bias though; “abolishing abortion rights”, “undermining environmental protections”.  I would say that the recent  Supreme Court decisions have gone a long way toward restoring constitutional government.

Biden has been rolling out plans to cope with the mounting crises. He has a three-part plan to reduce inflation. Another plan to suspend the gas tax in hopes of bringing prices down. Then there’s his long-shot plan to enshrine abortion rights into law by suspending the Senate filibuster rule requiring 60-vote supermajorities.

Is Biden planning to reverse his cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline? Will he allow more leases on federal lands to develop our energy resources? Will Biden cut the red tape to allow more refineries to be built? Probably not. Biden is not going to do anything to reverse the bad decisions that caused the inflation and high gas prices. Instead, the man “elected” to restore the democratic norms destroyed by Trump is going to weaken our democratic norms to appease the most extreme Democratic constituencies.

“He has to change course,” said a Democratic congressman, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting the White House. “His numbers are in the toilet. Whatever he’s doing is not working.”

“There needs to be urgency and action,” said Rebecca Kirszner Katz, who was an aide to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. “Folks have been saying since the day Joe Biden was elected that we need to move fast. There are a lot of things we need to get done for the American people.”

Biden has been rolling out plans to cope with the mounting crises. He has a three-part plan to reduce inflation. Another plan to suspend the gas tax in hopes of bringing prices down. Then there’s his long-shot plan to enshrine abortion rights into law by suspending the Senate filibuster rule requiring 60-vote supermajorities.

Inside the White House, though, advisers grasp that what’s required aren’t just plans, but votes. The 50-50 split in the Senate between the parties has proved an insurmountable obstacle for Biden’s grandest ambitions — to expand the social safety net in ways that insulate the most vulnerable Americans from economic shocks.

“He has to change course,” said a Democratic congressman, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of upsetting the White House. “His numbers are in the toilet. Whatever he’s doing is not working.”

“There’s a benefit to having the president out there every day using his executive power to show the country you’re fighting for them,” the Democratic lawmaker said. “And it’s almost like he’s hiding. He has the bully pulpit, and he’s either hiding behind it or under it. I don’t know where he is.”

The problem is that every time Biden makes a public appearance, his poll ratings drop, for good reason. People can see just how incompetent and senile the man is. The best strategy for the Democrats might be to hide Biden in the basement of the White House and hope people forget he’s the alleged president.

Allies say that Biden, along with others in the administration, will take better advantage of their megaphone in the run-up to the midterms, portraying Republicans as out of touch. Biden, they said, is energized by the Roe v. Wade decision, which may be a prelude to future Supreme Court rulings rolling back rights to same-sex marriage and contraception.

Unpopular presidents tend to fare poorly in midterm elections. But Biden-world sees an opening to defy the historical trends, springing from some of the same setbacks that have so angered the Democratic base.

“I can tell you that on the street, what you hear is a bubbling, seething cauldron of anger at the Republican Party for putting in these antediluvian judges who think they can take us back to the 18th century,” said Jay Inslee, the Democratic governor of Washington state. “My spidey sense and the polling indicate it’s going to help people decide not to vote for the red team.

That bubbling, seething cauldron of anger that Mr. Inslee is sensing is from people finding themselves unable to afford to buy groceries, fill their car’s tanks or walk the streets in safety thanks to policies promoted by the Democrats. I have a feeling that trying to distract voters from their misery with shiny objects isn’t going to help the blue team this time.

Most Democrats fret about a midterm wipeout, but recent polling shows grounds for optimism. Bryan Bennett, a pollster for Navigator Research, a coalition of progressive pollsters, noted that something “weird” is happening in this political moment. Biden’s approval rating is hovering around 40%, which suggests that Republican victories in the November midterms will be not so much a wave as a “tsunami,” he said. And yet in polls pitting generic Democrats against Republicans in congressional races, Democrats perform better than expected given the president’s low standing. Indeed, since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, three polls came out showing Democrats leading Republicans by anywhere from 3 to 7 percentage points.

“It’s a new election,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg wrote in a blog. “The chances of the anti-MAGA majority showing up again — as it did in 2018 and 2020 — have increased dramatically.”

I take it that the Democrats are going to repeat their strategy of 2020 and cheat whenever and wherever possible. It may be harder to cheat in 435 Congressional and 35 Senatorial elections than it was for the presidential election, but they may manage to fortify the results of some close elections. I hope the Republicans are watching out for a November Surprise this election cycle, but they are the stupid party so I’m not terribly optimistic.

The Hippie and his Hat

The post The Anti-Capitalist Capitalist reminded me of an anecdote about a hippie, and his hat, that I read many years ago. I have forgotten most of the details and am unsure if it is a true story. It doesn’t matter, though. The story is worth repeating.

Back during the 1960s, a hippie, one of the famous bomb-throwing radicals, I believe, was giving a speech advocating Communism. By Communism, he did not mean the totalitarian dictatorship practiced in the Soviet bloc. Instead, he proposed that everyone should live in communes where the people shared everything equitably. The hippie inveighed against private property of all sorts, arguing that selfish ownership was the cause of all evils, and spoke feelingly of the paradise that would follow if only everyone would share everything equally. When the hippie finished speaking, the narrator of this story went up to him and complimented the hippie for his excellent speech. He then admired the hat the hippie was wearing and asked if the hippie would give him the hat., Shocked, the hippie said no, of course not. Why not? “Because its my hat.”

It is strange and more than a little ironic that the people who most advocate sharing the wealth somehow never believe that the sharing applies to their own wealth. Bernie Sanders is a socialist who believes we don’t need twenty-three varieties of deodorant, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union is a millionaire with three mansions. Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors, a self-described Marxist, owns four houses. Socialist star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shown no signs of giving up her Congressional salary to live the lifestyle of a bartender, despite calling for increased taxes on the rich. The Castros and the Chavezes happen to be the wealthiest families in Cuba and Venezuela.

I am beginning to think that the whole idea of socialism is a scam, a means to get money, property, and power that other people have earned. The great industrialists of the Nineteenth century have been called ‘robber barons’, but at least they gained their fortunes by providing goods and services other people wanted. Our modern socialists are truly robber barons who take in the name of the poor and powerless to enrich and empower themselves. They are nothing but thieves and hypocrites and should be treated accordingly.

Independence Day

The Fourth of July is the day on which the American people celebrate their independence from Great Britain. It is not actually clear why Independence Day is the Fourth. Congress actually passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2, 1776. It has often been thought that the Declaration was signed on the fourth, but that doesn’t seem to be true. There wasn’t any one time when the members of Congress signed the Declaration and there were a few who didn’t get around to signing it until August. Nevertheless, the fourth is the date that stuck. As John Adams wrote to Abigail.

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.

And so it has been, for the last 246 years. May God bless America and grant us many more years of freedom.

Happy Independence Day.