A blog in defense of western civilization by Roger Graf
Author: RogerG
I am a retired teacher and coach, Social Science Department chairman, community college instructor in Physical and Human Geography. I have attended 4 colleges with relevant degrees and certificates in History, Religious Studies/Philosophy, Education, and Planning and Community Development. I am also a 3rd generation native Californian, now refugee living in northwest Montana.
The following is my comment to Jonah Goldberg’s “Bonfire of the Straw Men” column in National Review Online for July 11, 2018, https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/michael-doran-strawman-response/.
Why do we have to portray our leaders as saints or devils, with those unable to accept the starkness facing excommunication or worse? Some traditionally on the right have embraced the hodge-podge that is Trump-thought as the closest thing to scripture. While on the left, many are careening off the cliff of outright socialism and boosterism for an end to the rule of law. It’s madness.
The madness is an international phenomena. Here we have a Norwegian protester screaming after comments by a government minister.
Trump is still a buffoon and the Dems have finally shed any semblance of reasonableness in the exposure of their socialist and anti-western inner selves. What we have remaining is a chaotic and impulse-driven Trump as the Dems go batty.
It’s not that I’m not thankful for a right-leaning Congress, SCOTUS, and the occasional winners coming out of a ping-pong ball presidential mind. Restrained judges, tax cuts, reigning in the administrative state, a no-nonsense use of military might, and controlling the immigration tsunami are greatly appreciated. But, please, let’s stop the sycophancy on the right and the mob-like Jacobanism on the left. In today’s politics, is there a zone of serenity and rationality somewhere between Sean Hannity and Maxine Waters?
Maxine Waters (D, Calif.) living up to her reputation.
Respondent: If we as a nation have had fair elections and that we did not disenfranchise so many throughout American history. What exactly is your point, Roger?
My response: Jon, many arbitrary discriminations could be eliminated without judges acting as activist sociology professors. Remember, we’re a nation of laws. Laws rely upon the dictates of some sense of nature and popular sovereignty. For those remaining discriminations, they are evidence of the failure to convince our fellow citizens that they are sufficiently arbitrary. Democracy is the worst system, except for all the others — to borrow a cliche’.
Respondent: Yes, Winston Churchill I believe. But the Constitution must uphold majority rule and minority rights. Just because some swath of society has passed legislation (albiet illegally with respect to disenfranchisement from 1890s to 1908 or so) doesn’t mean that that majority can trample and disregard the rights of minorities, correct? The role of the SCOTUS is to interpret the Constitution and make sure rights and laws do not violate it. We had laws (14th Amendment being the MOST important in my opinion and many others) that were not followed. Thus the Civil Rights movement, etc.
My response: Yes, and those rights can be protected without the recruitment of activist-sociology-professors in black robes. The damage to the law and respect for it is too great for judges to be allowed to fly by the seat of their pants in almost any fashion that excites their fancy. Remember those southern state governments were also activist Democrat governments … just in the pursuit of Jim Crow. Our highest law protects these basic rights and its the clear wording of the law that does so. It may take awhile, but remember that it took nearly 10 years after Brown for the enactment of the ’64 Civil Rights Act. Sometimes it takes awhile for facts on the ground to catch up to our Constitution. But such is human frailty.
Respondent: Roger, Jim Crow was already well entrenched in the South. If by activist southern state governments you mean the Bourbon Democrats sho really controlled the Democratic Party and used the terrorist organizations of the kkk, etc. yes they were activist. Albeit to suppress black voting rights which was law. I would argue that the SCOTUS is needed to balance the other branches of government and make sure that minority rights are being upheld. And you know LBJ only passed the 64 act because of mounting pressure for various civil rights groups who were advocating for the law to be followed.
My response: The Jim Crow South was an extension of the state of “expert”, “elite”, and “scientific” reasoning that arose in the early 19th century. Freshly imbued with Hegel’s philosophy of “progress”, whose dialectic was instrumental to Marx and Darwin, we have the race musings of John C. Calhoun. Race theory continued after Appomattox and supplied the justification for the denial of rights to an entire category of citizens, who were so proclaimed by the 14th Amendment. If SCOTUS was so wise, look at the jurisprudence prior to 1954. Those black-robed “wise men” embossed second-class status on blacks for an additional 4 generations, as well as forcing sterilization on “imbeciles” … in Holmes’s unillustrious phrase. Plus, the damage caused by imperial decree-making outside the law far outweighs any momentary benefit of any individual ruling. The losers in any Article I and Article II election should not have easy recourse to replace a judge’s insight for the voters. If that becomes commonplace, our constitutional republic is dead. Be careful about readily dispensing with popular sovereignty for a yearning for mommy government in a black robe.
Another Court pick – Brett Kavanaugh in this case – and the partisan circus is revving up. Why? Well, so much is at stake since now we have unelected commissars, appointed for life, reaching way beyond the law, sitting on the bench. What happened to the republic? Will these black-robed grand viziers practice self-restraint? Don’t know, but nominating people who will is an absolute necessity.
President Trump with Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh at the White House, July 9, 2018. (Jim Bourg/Reuters)
How did we get to this juncture of near imperial rule? Sadly, Brown v. Board of Education did much to send us in that direction. While legally mandated segregation is a blot, the Court christened “social jurisprudence” as the means to eradicate it. So, it isn’t the law anymore as the basis for many rulings. It’s a judge’s conjecture on the current state of society. As a result, judges are unhinged from the tethers of the law, whether it be the Constitution or statute.
The 1954 Court, anxious to end the practice of forced segregation, couldn’t rely upon tried-and-true “originalism” to make the desired legal rendering, since the 14th Amendment’s authors of 1868 had enshrined segregation in their own contemporaneous laws (mandates for segregation in DC public schools). To achieve the desired end, they fashioned a new role for themselves as legislators, or pontificators on our social conditions. Discontent and ambition has a powerful new avenue for satisfaction. If you don’t get your way at the ballot box, recruit a judge among the 677 District Court black robes littered throughout the country.
The late jurist, Antonin Scalia.
Avoiding the pitfalls of lifetime-tenured lawmakers as we pursue justice requires some threading of the needle. Scalia’s “textualism” may get the thread through the eye. The law’s words, not legislative history, point the way. Here’s the logic for ending segregation using textualism: 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause for blacks > incorporation (applying the Bill of Rights to the states) > due process protections in the 5th and 14th Amendments (which includes equal protection) > forced segregation violates the clear wording in the Constitution. No need to resort to the witchcraft of “social jurisprudence”.
Brett Kavanaugh could be a nice addition to the cause of self-restraint. For most of the endless list of pet causes, it would be nice if people realized that they must win legislative elections and not turn to a mommy in a black robe. Not prevailing normally means too many people disagree with you. Live with it.
California is a real-life version of a Salvador Dali painting. The state is governed as if certain realities can be twisted by fantastical imagination – even ignored entirely – in the service of an all-embracing dream. Case in point: the “putrid city by the bay” *. San Francisco is the poster child of unintentionally engineered urban decay. This happenstance wasn’t produced by magic. Policies of longstanding have unexpected consequences of longstanding.
First, the situation. It is best described by local media reports:
– “Trash bags full of approximately 20 pounds of human poop were left on the sidewalk over the weekend in downtown San Francisco. It’s the latest — and perhaps most alarming — sign of the increased filthiness of one of the most popular cities in the United States”. Fresno Bee, July 4, 2018. **
The 20 pounds of SF human poop reported by the Fresno Bee.
– An investigation by NBC Bay Area “reveals a dangerous concoction of drug needles, garbage, and feces lining the streets of downtown San Francisco. The Investigative Unit surveyed more than 150 blocks, including some of the city’s top tourist destinations, and discovered conditions that are now being compared to some of the worst slums in the world.” NBC Bay Area, Feb. 18, 2018. ***
Needles, garbage, and dried feces on the streets of SF.
– The president of the SF’s travel association reported the cancellation of a convention by a medical assication due to the city’s filthy and mean streets. He said, “They just said that the conditions of the streets, in their mind, had gotten to the point where their delegates don’t feel safe coming to San Francisco. They see harassment on the street, and it’s not a pleasant environment, so they have reconsidered all future years in San Francisco.” NBC Bay Area, July 3, 2018. ****
– The problem encompasses more than SF. Similar conditions can be found up and down the state’s urban coastal corridor and capital. In Sacramento, the Sacramento Bee reported that “safety inspectors have issued nine citations and fined the Department of General Services for failing to adequately prepare groundskeepers asked to clean up needles and fecal matter in Capitol Park.” *****
Typical homeless camp in the American River Parkway, Sacramento.A homeless encampment arrayed along the Santa Ana River, southern California.
Why is this so? For one, the state is smothered in regulations. Many of them meander back to lefty utopia-building. Take rent control. SF plans to address its homeless crisis with – you guessed it – rent control, the same mantra that helped create the problem. Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck put it best: “Next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities.” If SF’s elected officials were doctors, they’d be practicing phrenology.
The state is infatuated with regulating its way to the better world. Greenie obsessions are at the top of the list. Obsessions have consequences. Today, temps in Bakersfield will top over 100 degrees … but don’t turn on your air conditioner unless you want to file bankruptcy. Of course, you could surrender to the state’s shotgun wedding between you and solar panels.
And we have the tangle of intestines of the state’s multi-faceted, multi-layered system of land use controls. It’s something that would make Daedalus, the engineer of King Minos’s Labyrinth, green with envy. So, forget about addressing the state’s housing woes with an increase in supply.
RVs are seen parked on South 7th Street in San Jose on Dec. 5, 2017. Government officials and homeless advocates have seen an increase in the number of working poor residents living in RVs on public streets. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)RV resident Robert Ramirez, 54, has been living in his RV for about six months. Ramirez supports himself by collecting recyclable materials and also gets government assistance. He wishes he could park his trailer in a RV park for more stability in his life but he can’t afford it. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Run to the hills if you have a six-figure income and wish to avoid the minefield of feces and needles, because you will pay, and pay, and pay in so many ways.
The state is a psychiatric patient in a condition of perpetual denial. It has unleashed a host of incentives and disincentives pointing in one direction: decay. While Dali had clocks melting over the edge of a table, the creators of California’s mess have constructed a canvass of a more all-encompassing meltdown. Let’s see if the state’s voters can find a new bank of artists before it’s too late.
RogerG
Footnotes:
* “Increasingly Putrid City by the Bay”, Steven Greenhut, California Policy Center, July 5, 2018, https://spectator.org/increasingly-putrid-city-by-the-bay/…
** “Approximately 20 pounds of human poop was found on a sidewalk of San Francisco”, Bryant-Jon Anteola, Fresno Bee, July 4, 2018, https://www.fresnobee.com/news/state/article214320174.html
*** “Diseased Streets”, NBC Bay Area, Feb.18, 2018, https://www.nbcbayarea.com/…/Diseased-Streets-472430013.html
**** “San Francisco’s ‘Dirty Streets’ Scare Off Long-time Convention with 15,000 attendees”, NBC Bay Area, July 3, 2018, https://www.nbcbayarea.com/…/Dirty-Streets-Threaten-San-Fra…
***** “Feces, blood, syringes at California Capitol: Workers unprepared for clean up, OSHA says”, Sacramento Bee, July 3, 2018, https://www.sacbee.com/…/the-state-wo…/article214208014.html
I have long sought to keep separate the FBI’s Trump/Russia probe and their “MYI” [Mid-year Investigation] into Hillary’s server. The IG report of this past week shattered that assumption. The two are linked by the same personnel, a coterminous but muddled boundary in time, and an obvious unity in partisan bias. All of this is nestled in unbridled DOJ and FBI higher-ups in DC and its satellites. We’ve got a real mess on our hands.
The legacy media oracles responded as if they are on a mission to contradict conservatives and simple common sense. A bias in its own right. They serve to mystify and cloud what is increasingly becoming apparent: powerful organs of our government engaged in crass partisan favoritism in both official queries.
If this doesn’t dispel the progressive dream of the benign, above-the-fray rule of a clerisy of “experts”, nothing will. Progressivism has its roots in upending the understanding of our nature dating back to Genesis. It used to be accepted as axiomatic that humans are corrupted by an imperious selfishness. We were counseled by our traditions to restrain it. The late 19th-century progressives jettisoned this human nature and replaced it with a person cleansed by an expertise born of formal education (the “expert”). In other words, people like themselves.
This has profound societal consequences. The design of our Constitution is predicated on the overriding inclination of people to pursue self-interest, and thus it is true to our traditions. The founders’ structure sought to fight selfish faction with selfish faction by distributing power with separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism.
No need for that kind of thing under the progressives’ scheme of rule by a degreed priesthood of technicians. According to Churchill, though, “The French have a saying, ‘Drive Nature away, and she will return at the gallop'”. The episodes in 2016 and 2017 reveal those technicians to be riven by the same weaknesses as our sandaled and later-wigged ancestors. All that we’ve done is insulate the powerful from accountability in a massive bureaucratic pyramid.
The officials with the guns now have a political eco-system to facilitate great damage. Free of popular sovereignty, their base instincts are free to flower.
Recourse to official ombudsmen – like the IG – as a corrective is fruitless. They are too often infected by the same natural defensiveness as the rest of us. Thus we have the IG report’s equivocations, contradictions, and voluminous mind-numbing prose stretching beyond 500 pages. A glaring example from the report: on the one hand there exists coarse bias; on the other, we can’t attach the bias to any actions. What? How does that work?
There’s the rush to exonerate the favorite (Hillary) while they jump at the slightest unproven provocation to bedevil the targeted villain (Trump). It’s laid out in the report’s timeline and public record. But we’re expected to believe that what’s in the head of Strzok, Page, McCabe, and untold others is somehow unrelated to the clearly observable actions adjoining the thoughts. It’s simply Orwellian.
Trump/Russia and Hillary’s server are two investigations that share the same DNA. Questions about Mueller’s probe are similarly warranted. Like the others, Mueller is taking on a flavor akin to the previous machinations. The same or similar people are scouring for Trump people to ensnare.
Has it been happening for years? You know, the underhanded tactics to flip people, empire-building of imaginary cases, the incestuous relationships – some sexual – between big journalism and big law enforcement, the hounding of people into incriminations, and all of it unchecked. A look under the rug at the Carl Icahn-Phil Mickelsen-Chlorox-Tom Davis imbroglio, shepherded by FBI honcho David Chaves and the DA of SDNY, might be instructive.
Yes, we’ve got a mess. The sooner we discard the demigod status of government apparatchiks, the sooner we’ll make sense of it all. Only then will we be empowered to restrain our own government. Accountability need not be something necessitating a 500 page report.
I’ve been reading Salena Zito and Brad Todd’s The Great Revolt, an exegesis of the 2016 election. Villification of one’s opponents after the shocking loss has reached new heights, enough to obscure the reality. Tune into the halfwit but snarky late-night comedians and you’ll get a flavor of it.
The authors Brad Todd (c) and Salena Zito (r) on C-SPAN Book TV.
No, the voters opposing Hillary cannot be reduced to rural bigots left behind by “progress”. Many other things were at root to explain Trump’s winning coalition: condescension, social and political bias, and too many deaf ears in too many places of cultural authority. Those places correspond to urban and academic dots, socio-political monasteries walled off into insular echo chambers. The roiling in the backcountry therefore came as a shock to those comfortably nestled behind the walls – which means most everybody in the dots, or mentally influenced by the dots.
The book dispels these real urban myths with a grand survey of Trump voters and a series of vignettes in locales that flipped 15-30 points from solidly Democrat to Trump in the rust belt. In a nutshell, they were so fed up with the long-running disparagement that not even Trump’s boorishness would slacken their momentum to the polls.
Main Street, USA, the epicenter of the Great Revolt.
Main Street rebelled against the Acela corridor, the left coast, intense urban clusters, and the disconnected college campus. Zito and Todd make abundantly clear it was a revolt and not a Klan march. Many Obama voters became Trump voters and the rest is history.
An accidental meeting on a forest road with a semi-Californian/Montanan – he spends his winters in California (understandable) – showcases much that has gone astray in the America of today. Our biggest threat doesn’t arise from material circumstances but from what rolls around in our heads. Occupying the synapses are an excess of unexamined assumptions and the crazes that they feed.
Let me explain. While riding our ATV’s through the forests near our property, my wife and I came upon a man on a motor-bike. Pleasantries and friendly conversation arose. It turns out that the man haled from Redding, Ca. He had few nice things to say about the winters and complained of the shrinking longevity of restaurants in the area. I mentioned that we had lost our appetite for our native state after one of many recent visits. Prohibitions, high prices, and petty annoyances – the plastic bag carousels are empty at the stores for instance – have soured us.
He complained about the plastic litter in a feeble defense of the ban. I don’t think that he, and many others, connected the dots between the propensity for prohibition and the new feudalism that is taking shape in the so-called golden state. Many off-the-cuff reactions to a hypothetical evil produce unexpected effects. Too much plastic bag litter? Ban them. Too many poor people? Tax the rich. Don’t like carbon? Command people to put solar panels on their roofs or punish them with high utility bills – or both. Don’t like suburbia? Strangle it in a maze of land-use controls. The only problem is: growth suffocates; the middle-class flees; and the cost of living inflates. The result is a new feudalism of the hyper-rich in their manorial enclaves surrounded by a growing low-wage servant class.
As for the limited restaurants in our area, our friend showed no acknowledgement of rudimentary cause-and-effect. Enterprise has been suffering in industrial and rural America for quite some time. Take away the primary industries – mining and lumbering in our case – in those places dependent on them and poverty, meth use, and social chaos erupts. Tourism is a very poor substitute.
Many of these ruminations were kept to myself. He did say that he didn’t like mining for its scarring of the land. I responded with the obvious: without it, he and I wouldn’t be on our vehicles. He dismissed the claim with a cursory, “I’ll buy it from China”.
There you have it. Don’t think of employing our own people; export our wish-fulfillment to foreign lands; and don’t give a second thought about the repercussions. As long as the consequences are invisible to us, and we remain ensconced in our comfortable illusions, all is right with the world. Right?
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34
US President Donald Trump makes remarks at a roundtable meeting on sanctuary cities May 16, 2018, in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, DC. Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel is 3rd from left.(Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)
From 1864 to 1865, Jones County, Mississippi, and its immediate environs were in open revolt against the Confederate state of Mississippi and its governor, Charles Clark – a Democrat by the way. The so-called “Free State of Jones”. Numerous state officials were assaulted and harassed, some probably killed. Clearly, this was a pro-union constituency. Project forward to May 16, 2018 and a meeting of disgruntled California local leaders with President Trump. A parallel anyone?
Some firebrands of the left – who rule the roost in California – are as incensed about federal immigration law as the South was about abolitionism and tariffs. They have made cooperation with ICE the equivalent of assisting child porn traffickers. What’s next, an act of secession?
Well, some in the state are having none of it. They have approached the president, as surely as some in 1864 Jones County would relish a confab with Lincoln.
History seldom repeats, but it does rhyme. (Reputedly stated by Mark Twain)
RogerG
* See “Orange County, Inland Empire leaders talk immigration with Trump in White House”, Roxana Kopetman, Orange County Register, 5/17/2018, https://www.pe.com/2018/05/16/trump-meeting-today-with-leaders-from-orange-county-inland-empire/
If we can’t celebrate our moms on a special day for her, how can we, in good conscience, show deep and personal gratitude to anyone? A she – with the momentary assistance of a he – brought us into the world. In an age when women are pressured to stretch themselves thin by being a master of the universe, motherhood still makes all those other competing roles fade to insignificance. Literally, my very existence came from her. I thank God every day for having had my mom.
It’s time to resurrect motherhood in this era of declining birth rates and turmoil over marriage and genders. Mom, dad, and home need some burnishing, now more than ever. We can start by resurrecting the writings of Phyllis McGinley.
“Women are the fulfilled sex. Through our children we are able to produce our own immortality, so we lack that divine restlessness which sends men charging off in pursuit of fortune or fame or an imagined Utopia . . . the wholesome oyster wears no pearl, the healthy whale no ambergris, and as long as we can keep on adding to the race, we harbor a sort of health within ourselves.”
Teachers rally outside the state Capitol for the second day of a teacher walkout to demand higher pay and more funding for education in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, April 3, 2018. Reuters
The recent teacher strikes – mostly in “red” (i.e., Conservative) states – are intriguing. What started out as a cause to boost the pay of truly underpaid teachers in West Virginia has metastasized into Occupy Wall Street, something under the rubric #redfored. In truth, I think that the lefty hive is being ginned up as the Supreme Court deliberates its decision in Janus vs. AFSCME. If Janus wins, the cushy power relationships of public employee unions will be deflated. But here’s the big scoop from the ruckus: government unions are lefty enterprises.
PHOENIX, AZ – APRIL 26: Arizona teachers chant in support of the #REDforED movement as they walk through downtown Phoenix on their way to the State Capitol on April 26, 2018 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Ralph Freso/Getty Images)
It’s a familiar script. Trump gets elected and hyperventilation replaces deliberation – mostly on the left but also in some extreme precincts on the right. The swarming extends everywhere the left has a stranglehold. The only surprise to me is the length of time it took for the education blob to catch on.
What has the adoption of California-style taxes to do with teacher pocketbook issues? Clearly, for the firebrands, simply raising pay is too vanilla. The slogan is bloated to include lefty planks like the adoption of the progressive tax nightmare and dolloping layers of bureaucracy on the schools. Poor pay was simply the vehicle to swarm the hive and cloak the wolf in a pleasant disguise.
Well, it took some time but the genus Ovis aries (sheep) costume was outed. Now the “#redfored” is no different from “#resist”, “Bernie Sanders for president”, or Occupy … [fill in the blank].
RogerG
* Check out “Teacher strikes morph from pocketbook clash to partisan street theater”, Frederick M. Hess, Education Next, AEI, 5/8/2018, http://www.aei.org/publication/teacher-strikes-morph-from-pocketbook-clash-to-partisan-street-theater/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT0RjM1pERXhabUZsWVRBNSIsInQiOiJzeFpQdkVWblBGaExlMGhtQnFwTFB4dEd4VmlDbFBxYWdZSVF5QXJoQVVzNDdYK3J3bDNEb0xycDBHT2dJOWUzVGI5Rjh1QTdIOU9mMWhDYllmWWFodVpneWxPNXhWSUo5T0VtWGZsK3BGSGtIV2ordDBHM0ZqcVhiVUxvSnhyYiJ9
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34
