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I guess it must be awards season. On TV, the Country Music Awards were hyped. Then we had the Oscars where the motion picture industry gives itself awards and where Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. And now we have the Grammys. I immediately realized that I was completely out of touch. I had not seen a single movie that was nominated. By the way, I never realized how many categories of “excellence” existed in the movies. I had not heard any of the country music songs or heard of the singers. That is not surprising since I don’t listen to country music. But I had not heard of any of the nominees for best song on the Grammys nor heard of any “artist” except for Kanye West – who I hadn’t realized was a musician. I listen to R&B, blues and jazz. I did recognize virtually all of the jazz nominees but interesting enough, I had never heard any of the R&B songs or their artists. I guess every R&B singer I like is dead. Since I don’t listen to rap, all the “artists” and “songs” were new to me. I asked my grandchildren to recommend some of their music just to see if I would change my mind about their peculiar tastes. But listening to their stuff made me remember that part of the torture of detainees at Gitmo was to pipe in Eminem into their cells. Also recently, New Zealand dispersed Covid-19 protestors by playing Barry Manilow.

Music is a passion of mine as is reading novels – mostly science fiction, military history, mystery and historical fiction. But I don’t go to movies anymore. Today’s movies are too violent for my tastes. They seem to be awash with characters I don’t like and themes I don’t care for. Even the cartoons seem to be obligated to promote LGBTQ. But I am fond of film noire (The Grifters, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, The Moderns, Choose Me), assorted Humphrey Bogart and older film. 

I like old stuff. But I do like some new stuff too. Its just that the new stuff is in the tradition of the old stuff like the Marsalis brothers, Kenny Garrett, Joshua Redman and Eric Reed. No hip hop. No rap. But no country either. Just music I understand and love. Does this mean I am old? Yes it does. When I was a teenager I listened to Monk, Miles, Mingus and Coltrane. My father thought it was just noise. He loved big band jazz and used to say that modern jazz was useless because you couldn’t dance to it. When he said that I laughed until I cried, imagining trying to dance to Monk. Yet one of my fondest memories is that the year before my Dad died, he picked me up at the Atlanta airport and had Atlanta’s only classical jazz station on the radio. They were playing Coltrane’s Ballads. When we pulled into the garage, we just sat in the car listening until it finished. I said “you are listening to jazz?” He looked at me and said “Well some of this stuff isn’t so bad”. 

Harold A Black

Knoxville Focus

March 28, 2022    

         How poor are the American poor? The 2020 Census says that 34 million Americans live in poverty.  The official povery line for a family of four is $27,750 or $6,937 per person. Add $4,720 for each additional person and subtract $4,720 for each fewer person. However, last year we spent $714 billion on anti-poverty programs. That’s $21,000 per poor person or $84,000 a year for a family of four.  We could have just mailed every poor person a check for $10,000 and saved $374 billion. That $374 billion explains why we have no plans to eliminate poverty in the United States. The poor are a commodity and support the poverty industry. Mailing the poor a check would unemploy the thousands of administrators who depend on the poor for their livelihood.

         We are spending enough each year to make the poor middle class.  That is why long ago when I started paying enough in taxes to support a family of four above the poverty level, I suggested that the government just assign me a family. I would send them the money, give the kids birthday presents and visit them at Christmas.

         The standard of living of America’s poor is higher than that of the average European.  Poverty in America does not mean the devastating poverty seen in the rest of the world. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation points out that very few of America’s poor live in the type of poverty that suffer significant hardships. Rector notes that 40 percent of the poor own their homes of which 84 percent are air conditioned, two thirds have cable or satellite TV, three-fourths own a car, 98 percent own a color TV with two-thirds owning two or more color TVs.  Sixty percent own computers. The typical poor American has more living space that the average European. Poor boys at 18 are an inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. 

         This is not to say that we should not address the issues faced by the poor. The problem is that we have programs that do not encourage incentives that lead to a reduction in poverty. We have programs that do just the opposite. Those programs when first implemented saw the black nuclear family little different from that of whites. Now disincentives translate to 70 percent of black babies being born to single mothers. I would subsidize the poor nuclear family especially those whose kids are not in trouble, who go to school and work hard. Surely we are smart enough to structure anti-poverty programs that encourage people not to be poor. 

         The poor are ill served by the politicans that represent them.  I have yet to hear positive solutions coming from Maxine Waters, Cori Bush or Ayanna Pressley. Indeed, suggestions made by socialist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would make the poor even poorer and more dependent on the government. Yet the so-called poverty experts who get most of the press time tend to be socialists rather than capitalists.  This is likely due to the politics of the media. No positive solutions ever come from these people on the left. 

         Those with positive solutions typically come from thinkers and practitioners who are pro-market and are capitalists. They receive less press than those on the left. Perhaps the most famous thinker is Thomas Sowell and perhaps the most prominent practitioner is Bob Woodson. But there are many others that are pro market and pro free enterprise. Typically, the media ignores them and runs to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi or even Al Sharpton rather than Shelby Steele, Glenn Loury or John Sibley Butler. 

           The media trumpets the agenda of the left and choose those who are like minded to speak for poor minorities.  We are therefore left with apologists who blame every ill on racism. One of the best examples of media bias is the 1619 project of the New York Times. Despite its well documented poor scholarship, flaws and mischaracterizations, it has received favorable coverage and considerably more media attention than the Woodson Center’s 1776 Unites (1776Unites.com) which is positive and touts individual responsibility. 

         Blacks have a higher percentage of their population in poverty than do whites but white poverty is typically ignored by the media. The result is the impression that most blacks are poor when this is not the case. The black poverty rate is around 18 percent while that of whites is 8 percent. Yet I would wager if you took a poll, most would put the black rate much higher and the white rate lower. The media has painted a caricature of blacks that is far from reality. A caricature that is a lie and does a disservice to the blacks in this country.

Why Support Term Limits?

knoxfocus.com

March 7, 2022

In my mailbox were flyers from a group “U.S. Term Limits” urging my local state representatives to support congressional term limits. Their website says that resolutions have been introduced in 17 states. I presume that they want a constitutional amendment. Unfortunately, their website does not succinctly explain why they favor term limits. They mention that the re-election rate in congress is 90 percent. However, that points to the number of “safe” seats created in part by gerrymandering from the state legislatures. The implication is that guaranteed reelection constitutes bad government. 

They cite that 82 percent of voters favor term limits. But I seriously doubt that even a small percentage of voters have thought through the issue. Asking a voter if they support term limits is like asking if they like Mom’s apple pie. It sounds good. I’m reminded of my Dad saying “it sounds good if you are interested in sounds.”

They state “with tenure reaching an all-time high, seats open up less frequently than ever before. A quarter of Congress has been in office for more than 16 years. Nearly half of Congress has been in office for more than eight. Nine members have been in office for more than 40 years. Term limits would reverse this trend by ensuring that open-seat races are held on a regular basis.” It should be noted that the longest serving senator was Robert (KKK) Byrd of West Virginia who was in office for 51 years. The longest in the House was Michigan’s John Dingell (59 years) who was succeeded by his wife who currently serves.

I don’t find this convincing. I am surprised to find that tenure is less than I had assumed. If my representative is doing a “good” job, I will vote for reelection. If not, I will vote to change. If the electorate disagrees with me, then I will work to change that representative’s positions on items I consider important.

The website never documents whether term limits lead to better government. It points out that 36 governors and 15 state legislatures have term limits. It should be simple enough to create a template to show whether the term limited governors and state legislatures have “better government” than those without the term limits.  Of course, the definition of “better government” is in the eye of the beholder. The poster child against term limits is the state of California where state representatives are limited to 3 terms (6 years) and state senators limited to 2 terms (8 years). Prima facia, one should oppose term limits simply because California has them.

I defer to the Founding Fathers on most issues of governance. It is important to note that they did not impose term limits on the nascent government. Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, the only Founding Father to help draft and sign the Declaration and Resolves (1774), the Articles of Association (1774), the Declaration of American Independence (1776), the Articles of Confederation (1777, 1778), and the U.S. Constitution (1787) wrote “Nothing renders government more unstable than a frequent change of the persons that administer it.” 

My position is that we already have term limits: elections. Term limits would remove experienced lawmakers and make current ones even more susceptible to lobbyists and to staff. Bills are so enormous that few of our elected officials have time to read them. Remember “we will find out what’s in the bill after we pass it”? All too often with the mass of paperwork, staffers read the proposed legislation and make recommendations. This gets more exacerbated if term limits are imposed. New legislators take time to learn the lay of the land and are generally not very effective during their first terms. If the House were limited to 4 terms, then 115 new members would appear every two years. If limited to 5 terms, then it would be 87 new members. In the senate, if limited to 2 terms (12 years) then every four years 25 new senators would be elected. I doubt that this turnover would lead to better governance.

I lean toward Sherman’s position. Again, I am not dogmatic. Show me the evidence that term limited governors, govern best. Show me the evidence that term limited state houses govern best. If that evidence exists, then I will support term limits. Otherwise, I think the effort is a waste of time and resources with little benefit to the public.

Did you hear Joe Biden’s speech in New York on guns? Referring to the Second Amendment he stated that “no amendment was absolute” and that preventing the sale of certain firearms “doesn’t violate anybody’s Second Amendment rights.” He also said that “You couldn’t buy a cannon when this amendment was passed, and so nobody with the money should be able to buy certain assault weapons.” My reaction was “who writes this stuff for him?” I went on the internet and found that I could purchase a cannon. An article in the National Review (https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/americans-can-still-buy-cannon/) tells me that if the cannon were manufactured prior to 1898 I can buy one without regulation. I can buy a later model but subject to certain regulations. So Biden was wrong and his speech writer should get fired. I also found that I can buy a tank (https://militarymachine.com/military-tanks-for-sale/) or even land mines (https://www.buymilsurp.com/ordnance-grenades-munitions-landmines-c-3075_3181_3184.html). 

Thus, it is obvious even to the most casual observer who factchecks that Biden is misinformed on this issue and is spreading misinformation. Given his penchant for fabrication, perhaps he should be deplatformed from social media or at least there should be a qualifying statement to all that he utters. However, when I looked at the news coverage of the speech, the media mostly gave him a pass and did not question its accuracy. Some literally gushed saying it was “emotional” and “forceful”. Unfortunately it was also wrong. Part of the problem is that Biden is attacking guns and not criminals. The speech was devoid of criticism of “progressive” DAs who have weakened penalties, bail and sentencing. The basic question that is never addressed is why has crime and gun violence surged? New York has seen a surge in gun violence directly related to its dismantling of its anti-crime unit. Given its progressive DA, I wonder if this unit will be reinstated after the election of an ex-cop as mayor. Recall that New York has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. 

It is also illuminating that some of the most vocal advocates for stricter gun control laws live in gated communities and often employ security guards. One of the “squad” Cori Bush (D-MO) is a staunch advocate of gun control yet is reported to pay $200,000 for gun-toting private security guards.

Gun control is one of two national perplexing issues. The other is drug control. Although there are strict laws regarding drug control, there is evidence that such laws have failed to decrease drug use and crime associated with drugs. This is being displayed prominently with the fentanyl crisis. The drug has become the number one cause of death among those aged 18-45. Between 2020 and 2021, over 79,000 deaths were attributed to fentanyl. In contrast there were 45,000 gun related deaths of which 19,000 were murders and 24,000 were suicides. This is not to lessen the importance of dealing with gun crime but it does give one pause about our thinking about crime and its prevention.

February 4, 2022

Recently there was a headline on India Hicks and a fluff piece entitled “India Hicks at home.” I was expecting :

1. seeing a woman in a sari smoking a corncob pipe
2. guys throwing huumus cans out of pickups
3. people ordering light bread pita sandwiches
4. elephants with “88” painted on their sides
5. Ravi Shankar-Dolly Parton Grand Ole Opry videos
6. trailer parks in New Delhi
7. reruns of the Mumbai Hillbillies
8. sales reports on white socks and Blue Ribbon beer in Bangalore
9. Jeff Foxworthy routines of “you might be a brown neck”.
10. cobra handling

But no. It turned out to be an article on an interior designer of that name who is Prince Charles’ cousin.

I love to hunt deer and turkey. Having spent significant time growing up on my mother’s family farm, I loved walking through the woods with my grandfather hunting small game with my 22. There were no turkey in Georgia during those days and precious few deer. We hunted squirrels, racoons and rabbits. He would have loved to hunt bigger game but got his meat from the animals he grew and slaughtered. He and my grandmother grew cr9ps, made their own soap, churned butter and were essentially self-sufficient. My mother talked about lean days growing up but she said that they never complained and remembers being happy with what little she had. The farm now belongs to me. It is fully of good memories and I get no greater satisfaction than being on my ancestors’ land.

1. The wind will always be at your back (this is different from running where the wind is always in your face).

2. If by some miracle the wind is in your face and you suddenly hear a deer, the wind will shift to your back.

3. Murphy says that “if it can go wrong, it will”. Harold Black says “Murphy was an optimist.”

4. Deer will always pick the least assessable place to die.

5. If your gun (or bow) breaks, your 42 blade leatherman’s tool will not have a tool that fixes it.

6. When you take it go get it fixed, the repairman will say “In my 30 years I have never seen this happen.”

7. In bow season the deer will be in muzzleloader range. In muzzleloader season the deer will be in gun range. In gun season, the deer will be nowhere to be found.

8. If you can shoot a doe you will only see does with fawns.

9. If you can only shoot a buck, you will be overrun with does.

10. Deer calls never work. The best way to call a deer call is to take a leak.

11. Anyone who claims to have success grunting and rattling is lying.

12. If you see the buck of a lifetime walking down a path, you will only have a lefthanded shot (if you are righthanded you will only have a lefthanded shot).

13. If you see the buck of a lifetime when you are muzzleloading, the gun will misfire.

14. If you see the buck of a lifetime and you are bow hunting, the arrow will fall off the rest when you draw.

15. If you see the buck of a lifetime and you are gun hunting, you will sneeze.

16. If you hunt a road where deer always cross, they will only cross when you are looking in the other direction.

17. If the outfitter has a success rate of 100%, it will be lower when you leave.

18. Animals shrink if you shoot them.

19. If you only shoot deer 8 points or better, you will only see six pointers and spikes.

20. Deer only look up if you are in a tree stand.

21. A turkey always struts one foot past the exact distance that number 6 shot can travel.

22. Camo is about as effective as a deer with a sofa painted on its side can hide in your living room.

23. Hunting clothing billed as no-scents makes no sense.

24. Buck lures only to attract hunters to buy them.

25. The only hunters who swear by grunting and rattling for bucks are the ones who sell them.

26. Primos calls if they work at all must only work on Mississippi deer and turkeys.

27. If you decide to leave your stand at noon, the deer will walk by at 12:01.

28. The only purpose of scouting before the season is to find out where the deer were.

29. A person who looks down their nose and sneers “You kill bambi!” isn’t worth knowing.

30. If you go on a hunting trip with a group, expect to be the only one who doesn’t kill anything.

31. If you are hunting your own land without seeing anything all day and suddenly you hear something coming down a path, it will be your dog.

32. No woman is worth your time unless she thinks you look cute in camo.

33. Do you have more success stalking or still hunting? Neither.

34. Is the best time to hunt early, midday or late? None of the above.

35. Deer will always walk down the path you are not hunting.

36. The only camo that works is absence.

37. Anyone who tells you that a deer smells better than a person is obviously European.

38. Anyone who asks you why do you own so many different caliber rifles is obviously stupid because it doesn’t make sense to own ten rifles of the same caliber.

39. Since camo wearers look like trees and grass, I guess this makes them environmentalists.

40. Most muzzleloaders were designed to hangfire only when a big deer shows up.

41. That Al Gore rather than the inventor of the Loggy Bayou climbing stand was awarded a Nobel prize is a travesty.

42. My favorite t-shirt is from Cabela’s and says “Conservation through incompetence.”

43. If God didn’t want you to kill deer he wouldn’t have invented the pickup truck.

44. If God didn’t want you to hunt in the cold rain, he wouldn’t have invented GoreTex.

45. If Al Gore got the Nobel prize for inventing GoreTex, then I guess I am ok with it.

46. Since I have never seen a woman who looks like a Victoria Secret’s model, I presume that all about those women are fakes, the product of many plastic surgeries. Similarly, videos that show bucks called in by grunting and rattling are fake.

47. Those who can smoke in a tree stand and deer will walk by even though the wind is wrong and seem to kill big deer every time are the chosen few of which I am not one.

48. A person who claims not to like venison has never eaten my cooking.

49. Jerky is not a food since it cannot be broken down by saliva and chewing. It must be swallowed whole.

50. That jerky is not a food was proven when after I tried to eat it, I gave it to my dogs – who also refused to eat it.

51. Just like when I fish I only catch small fish (I’m a small fish specialist), I only see immature deer (which I let walk).

52. Anyone who says that if you kill a trophy animal every time you hunt then it would not be fun is a fool.

53. The hunter the outfitter describes as being “the luckiest hunter I have ever seen” will always be a person in camp. That person will not be you.

54. Recurve bowhunters are snobs and are hunting’s equivalents of fly fishermen.

55. The longest week I ever spent in my life was in a camp in Alberta hunting for bear and all the other hunters shot recurves.

56. There are 6 things that every bow hunter must do in order to shoot accurately. When a trophy deer approaches you will do five of them.

57. If you believe that nonsense about buying all that expensive no scents gear so you can “Forget the Wind – Just Hunt”, let someone release your dogs one hour after you go in the woods.

58. Game cameras tell you where to hunt at 2:03 in the morning.

59. The one hour before sunup is the longest time of the hunt – much longer than the 8 hours or so that follow.

60. Nothing is more satisfying than being able to furnish your own food.

61. I kill animals. I wear fur. I am not the least bit apologetic about being at the top of the food chain.

62. If spending days in the woods in camp with your dogs away from cell service, the internet and tv, hunting by day, smoking cigars and listening to night sounds is not heaven then what is? 

63. Sure most times you can kill just as many deer sitting at your kitchen table as you usually do in the woods, but coming home even empty handed to your dogs makes it all worthwhile.

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This essay and subsequent ones can be found at https://oll.libertyfund.org/page/liberty-matters-the-legacy-of-walter-williams#61

Perhaps the greatest compliment paid to Walter Williams is that Thomas Sowell considered him his oldest and closest friend. [1] Like Sowell, Williams used common sense – the basis of economics – to address contemporary problems.  Economics tells us that price controls such as minimum wages, rent control, and usury ceilings may help a few individuals but will harm many more. Such facts led both to embrace capitalism and free markets as the mechanisms best suited to improve the well-being of the poor. Both cited historic and modern examples to illustrate their points. Williams’ use of common sense was often devastating and generated the usual chorus of wails from those who disagreed. However, Williams could not have cared less. On issues such as education, limited government, democracy, income redistribution, welfare, and race, Williams provided wit, logic, and reason in areas where there was often very little. To the chagrin of his critics, they could do little to prove him wrong. 

When writing about the education of Black children and their tragic performance in reading and math Williams stated that such performance was not always the case. Citing Sowell, Williams reminds us that all-Black schools during segregation demonstrated academic excellence. [2] Frederick Douglass High in Baltimore, Paul Laurence Dunbar High in Washington, DC and my alma mater, Booker T. Washington High in Atlanta excelled in an era where Blacks were poorer and overtly discriminated against. Williams implies that the education of Black children did not benefit from integration, and the evidence supports him. The question is why? During segregation, school teaching was an honorable occupation when the only jobs available to college educated Blacks were in the government or self-employment. A high percentage of primary and high school teachers were men. Discipline was enforced. Times have changed. Williams contends that the modern education system is a failure in large part due to the laxity of discipline and lower academic standards. Today the educators and “elites” have replaced what worked with what sounds good. Williams once said he was 74 years old and was glad that he had received most of his education before it became fashionable for white people to like Black people which meant that he was obligated to live up to higher standards. [3] 

Williams would point out the obvious when the obvious was being ignored. He was a skeptic of “systemic racism” and stated that the plight experienced by many Blacks had little to do with systemic racism or with the actions of the police. He noted that in many of our major cities, Blacks control many of the elected positions, police departments, and school officials. These cities have dreadful schools and high rates of crime, especially murders. Williams asks where the systemic racism is when Blacks are in control? It’s a question that the left avoids answering. Williams also implies that the left and the mainstream media conspire to keep Blacks distracted from addressing the main sources of their discontent by focusing on subjects like shootings – however infrequent – by the police. A poll asked how many unarmed Blacks were killed by police in 2019. Twenty percent answered 10,000 or more! The correct answer was 13. [4] The situation is not helped when famous Blacks, like LeBron James, tweet “I’m so damn tired of seeing black people killed by police.” To date, James has said very little about Black people being killed by Black people. In Chicago alone there were 769 homicides in 2020. Moreover, record homicides of Blacks are being recorded in most of our major cities. Where is the outrage?

Williams was a fierce advocate of limited government and opponent of forced income redistribution. He famously stated, “Let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well you tell me what I earn belongs to you – and why?” [5] He also stated “No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.” [6] As such, Williams added to the debate of reparations and paying one’s “fair share” and did it in a manner that was intentionally provocative. Williams’ prescription for lessening poverty was simple: “complete high school; get a job, any kind of job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both Black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.” [7] A controversial statement in today’s “woke” climate but again one that cannot be proven wrong.

Although Williams was labeled as a “conservative”, he was even handed when it came to criticizing both liberals and conservatives in government. Both liberals and conservatives advocate the confiscation of one person’s property to give it to another. The difference was in who was to get the spoils. In essence, taxationwas theft, and since the government is essentially nonproductive, it has to seize the property of others to function and to reward its friends and not its enemies (which change with each election). To quote Williams, “The compelling issue for both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one’s property to give it to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage.” [8]

Williams loved America and warned about the dangers inherent in democracy.  In his “The United States is not a Democracy, Thank Goodness” [9] he liberally quotes the Founding Fathers arguing that democracy leads to the tyranny of the majority. A democracy is where 50+1 percent can confiscate the property of the other 49 percent. John Marshall noted that “between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”  Thus, Williams was an advocate for a limited federal government, individual freedom, the separation of powers, and institutions such as the Electoral College. For Williams, the Electoral College prevented national elections from being determined by a minority of states – those with large populations – and imposing their politics on the rest of the country.

Williams reminded us to weigh costs and benefits. During the COVID-19 pandemic Williams chided governments for often taking actions without the benefit of any scientific justification and with no consideration of costs and benefits. He quoted then New York governor Cuomo who said that any action is justified so long as it saved one life. As Williams said, “Cuomo knows that many Americans buy into such a seemingly caring statement that would be easily revealed as utter nonsense if one had just a modicum of economic knowledge. Prudent decision-making requires one to compare benefits to costs.” [10] The example he gives is clear. He notes that there were 36,120 traffic deaths in 2019. Most could have been saved if there were a mandated speed limit of 5 miles per hour. When the costs and inconvenience of such a mandate are considered, it is clear that the benefits of saving those lives are outweighed by the costs. The same can be said about the shutdowns and mandates during the COVID panic.

Lastly, Williams was a vocal skeptic of man-made climate change. He cited the numerous grossly inaccurate predictions of doom and gloom related to climate change that proved not to be true. Here, Williams is at his acerbic best, deriding those who say it’s “settled science.” [11] He stated that “mounting evidence suggests that claims of manmade global warming might turn out to be the greatest hoax in mankind’s history. Immune and hostile to the evidence.” [12] Williams points out that earth went through a period of global warming which ended the Ice Age. Although there were a few humans on the planet, Williams notes that the end of the Ice Age was not caused by “coal-fired electric generation plants, incandescent light bulbs and sport utility vehicles tooling up and down the highways.” [13] Williams further states “there is much at stake in getting people to subscribe to the global warming religion. There is so much at stake that some scientists, using government grants, are fraudulently manipulating climate data and engaging in criminal activity.” [14] Lastly, he states “The absolute worst case of professional incompetence and dishonesty is in the area of climate science.” Needless to say, such a statement did not go unchallenged. However, a careful reading of both Williams’ criticisms and the rejoinder show that Williams is not referring to all climate scientists but only those who have adopted climate change as a religion and as a vehicle for enriching themselves. Which side is right?  The important thing to remember is that Walter Williams loved to poke the bear and provoke controversy. He succeeded and he will be missed.

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[1] Sowell, “Walter Williams’ Memoir: Up from the Projects, The New American, December 8, 2010.

[2] Williams, “Black Education Tragedy is New” December 2, 2020, in Selected Syndicated Columns, walterwilliams.com.

[3] Williams, “Liberals Confuse Me,” The New American, September 29, 2010.

[4] Kevin Drum, “How Many Unarmed Black Men are Killed by the Police? Poll says Conservatives have the Best Estimates,” February 23, 2021, jabberwocking.com.

[5] Walter E. Williams (https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/3104-walter-e-williams) 

[6] Walter E. Williams (https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/3104-walter-e-williams)

[7] Walter E. Williams (https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/3104-walter-e-williams)

[8] Walter E. Williams (https://www.inspiringquotes.us/author/3104-walter-e-williams) 

[9] Williams, Creators Syndicate, February 1, 2020.

[10] Williams, “Insane News Tidbits,” The Daily Wire, May 31, 2020.

[11] Williams, “Global Warming,” Town Hall, March 11, 2015.

[12] Williams, Climate Change Advocates Update and Invalidate Themselves,” Washington Examiner, February 23, 2010.

[13] Williams, “It’s Arrogant to Say Humans Cause Global Warming,” Desert News, January 13, 2010.

[14] Williams, ibid.

Knoxfocus.com

January 31, 2022

“One cannot hope to reason people out of those things they haven’t been reasoned into” – Jonathan Swift

After Joe Manchin said “no” to the Left’s latest attempt at transitioning the country to quasi-socialism, the Left lost its collective mind. Representatives, senators, the White House and their sycopaths in the media wailed that Manchin was a “threat to democracy”.  Biden was then implored to authorize as many of the “Build Back Better” provisions as possible through executive fiat. Huh? The Left somehow thinks that government through fiat is not a threat to democracy? Obviously, the Left must think that we all are stupid because they should know that the country is not a democracy nor was it ever intended to be one.

The Left is un-American. It wants to get rid of the foundations of the country and turn us into something different. Many of their number have advocated the following: abolishing the Senate, abolishing the Electoral College, packing the Supreme Court, federalizing elections, eliminating the filibuster and restructuring the House of Representatives to reflect one person one vote and abolish the Constitution. Doing any or all of these things will fundamentally alter how we are governed.

America is not a democracy and never has been. The Founding Fathers feared a democracy as much as they feared a totalitarian government. In fact, they stated – like Plato – that “tyranny arises naturally out of democracy”. The Founders feared the “tyranny of the majority” where the current whims of the majority could discriminate against the minority. Thus, they formed a government of checks and balances – a government that is a representative republic. It is significant that the word “democracy” does not appear in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. None of the three legs of government are the result of unfettered democracy. The judiciary is not elected but is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The president is elected by members of the Electoral College. The members of the House of Representatives and the Senate are elected by the people but neither body reflects one person one vote. In the senate, each state gets two senators regardless of population. In the case of Joe Manchin, the left wailed that he comes from a state with a small population and can stymie the wishes of fellow senators who hail from more populous states. However, he cannot do this by himself. I guess they don’t count the 50 republican senators who were also opposed. Doesn’t 51 and possibly 52 senators opposed outnumber the 48 senators who would vote for the bill? Even the House of Representatives is not equally proportioned. District sizes within states vary. In California the difference between the population in the largest and smallest district is 121,000, yet each elects one representative that gets one vote. Therefore, shouldn’t the Left demand that each resident of California be equally represented? Clearly if the Left wants a total democracy, then they should advocate the abolition of both the House and the Senate. 

However, no election reflects one person one vote. In any election, only a fraction of the population votes. In the last presidential election, 67% of all citizens aged 18 and above voted. While this was a record turnout, 33% did not vote. This means that 83 million eligible voters did not vote. Of course, state and local elections have much worse numbers. For example, Knoxville has a population of 186,000 and voter turnout in city elections is around a dismal 29 percent of those eligible, meaning that a mere 10,000 votes can determine the mayor and city council races. Is this fair?

It is evident that those who wish to destroy the foundations of the country are shortsighted. When the democrats changed the rules of the senate to allow more Obama nominated judges to be confirmed, they did not envision the election of Donald Trump and republican majorities in the House and Senate, resulting in the seating of three conservative Supreme Court judges. Despite evidence to the contrary, they think that the whims of the electorate will always be in their favor. At a minimum, the Left wants the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico admitted as states. Hawaii and Alaska were admitted together so as not to upset the party balance in the senate. The Left assumes that the two new states will always vote democrat assuring the party of a majority in the senate although the addition of two new representatives will not likely  affect the House. Nonetheless, the overall objective of the left is to blow up our system of government. Perhaps they are wishing for what is transpiring in Latin America where many of the democracies have elected leftists and are moving toward authoritarianism. Yet be careful for what you wish. To quote von Mises: “The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have his country ruled by socialists who are not his friends.”

I’m an academic – an academic who reads divergent viewpoints. In my doctoral classes I would have students read studies testing certain propositions and then compare them with contrasting studies looking at the same issues. I would then have them tell me which were the most plausible and why. I do the same with everyday events and not just academic esoterica.

Therefore, the censorship in social media of certain views claiming “misinformation” is disingenuous at best. What constitutes “misinformation”? Consider that social media is more likely to deplatform and censor conservative views while leaving misinformation on the left. Social media will censor Trump but not the Ayatollah. One of the latest dustups is the pressure on Spotify to oust Joe Rogan. Now I have never listened to a podcast and was unfamiliar with Rogan. From what I read, his sin is to present alternative views concerning COVID resulting in such faded musicians like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young pulling their music from the streaming service. As one wag wrote, at least Young has let us know that he is not dead. Spotify ditched Young as per his request because his music is long past popular while keeping Rogan. Take that! Of course if a truly popular Canadian musician (Young is Canadian) like Drake had pressured Spotify it would have been interesting to see the result. I never cared for the whinny singing of Young and was amused by his politically incorrect group Crazy Horse – which contained no Native Americans. I wondered why there were no protests. Certainly if the group were called “Aunt Jemima” there were have been indignant howls.

We don’t expect evenhandedness in today’s world, but if social media were so with “misinformation” it would deplatform and censor Anthony Fauci. He is the font of misinformation. He was against masks before he was for them. He calls himself the science while contradicting scientific evidence. He has steadfastly denied gain-of-function research funded by his agency at the Wuhan lab in the face of emails and correspondence to the contrary. He warned us not to celebrate holidays with family before changing his mind. He contended that the lockdowns saved “millions of lives” when there are over 60 studies showing that the lockdowns had no impact on COVID mortalies. I could go on and on. Remember “15 days to slow the spread?” Or “the vaccines will end COVID?” Or “No masks after vaccinated?” Or Biden’s ludicrous “pandemic of the unvaccinated?” Or perhaps the worse is assuring women that the “vaccines would not affect fertility” when there are studies that indicate otherwise.

For whatever reason, the media has bought into the “keep them scared” narrative when the evidence is to the contrary. Fortunately Americans are starting to tune out all the misinformation coming from the governments and their shills and moving toward adopting normalcy. The Canadian truckers are a case in point. While their media wants to paint them as extremists and potentially violent, the evidence is to the contrary. I feel sorry for the Canadians. Not just because I have had two moose hunts postponed but because they have abdicated their freedoms to the urban elites and to their haughty government. Maybe in all fairness, the Canadian government – as well as the CDC and Anthony Fauci – needs to be deplatformed.

Anthony Fauci is a Liar

Anthony Fauci is a liar but that’s to be expected since he is also a life-long unelected politician. Its getting so bad that the old adage applies to him: how can you tell if Fauci is lieing? His lips are moving. If you disagree I am open to arguments to the contrary. If you are convincing, I will issue a retraction. There was the denial of gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci denied it. He lied. There are hundreds of pages of information from the NIH that showed that federal grant money was used to fund bat coronavirus research in the Chinese lab. One leading scientist has said that Fauci is a “serial liar.”

Then there are his recommendations. At the first he said Coronavirus is not a major threat and it’s not something the citizens should be worried about.” He once said that healthy people should not be wearing masks. He defends his past recommendations on the coronavirus arguing that science changes over time. Speaking of science, recall when he said that to criticize him was to criticize science? I wonder how he justifies saying that children 4-years-old and younger will likely need three shots of a COVID-19 vaccine to complete their regimen. Doesn’t the science say that there is no justification for masking children and for vaccinating young children? It makes me think that he is in the pocket of Big Pharma.

He is the grinch that stole Christmas, urging Americans once not to get together for the holidays and later saying that it is OK if everyone is fully vaccinated and masked. Get serious. Even my democrat relatives did not do this during the first year of Covid.

He also favored lockdowns and shutting down schools. My youngest granddaughter did not have a graduation or a prom. Even though her high school had a large footfall stadium and could have practiced social distancing, they opted not to do so. This isn’t really surprising since she lives in Northern Virginia at the epicenter of wokeness. Weddings were canceled as were vacations. She is now at my alma mater, the University of Georgia where last year she and most of her dorm were quarantined due to Covid. No one got sick. The only bright spot for me was that when I went to visit my mother in Atlanta and go to the family farm in central Georgia, I could drive through Atlanta at 75 miles per hour.

Fauci claimed that if we did not follow his recommendations that we were no better than a serial killer. Those that challenged him were attacked by social media and de-platformed. YouTube just permanently deplatformed Dan Bongino’s channel for his statement that masks were “useless”. Opponents were called racists – the new mantra of the left. You were supposed to wear masks indoors. Reports came in of people being harassed for not wearing masks outdoors even though the science indicated that it was not effective to do so. First the mask wearing was tied to the unvaccinated and lately they are saying that mask wearing should occur amongst the vaccinated. Go figure. That indicates that the vaccines are not actually vaccines. They do not prevent folks from contracting the disease. Rather, if they just lessen the severity of Covid, then they should be classified as therapeutics. 

Then there is the recommendation that people should use a self-test if they are going out in public. If you test positive, this means you have an infection and should stay at home. Fauci said: “One of the things you can do is try to restrict your activities to situations where you know the vaccination status of people.” Well I don’t understand the self-test. I found it somewhat amusing when I saw pictures of long lines waiting to be tested. Why? If you self-test positive and are nonsymptomatic what should you do? Surely you should not run to the hospital. If you test negative, just remember you have been standing in a line with hundreds of people and could be positive the next day.

Even Fauci now says that health care workers who test positive can end their isolation period sooner and get back to work if they don’t have symptoms and wear N-95 masks and other personal protective equipment. However, even Fauci cannot explain why health workers are not 100% fully vaccinated. What do they know about the vaccines that we don’t know? 

Fauci actually said that we may not need an omicron boost. “But I think it’s prudent to at least prepare for the possibility that this may be a persistent variant that we may have to face, even if it’s at a very low level.” 

One thing that I will never understand is the postponing of important medical procedures during Covid. How many died because of lack of diagnosis and operations? Twenty-eight million surgeries were postponed worldwide. Thirty-eight percent of cancer surgeries were canceled. Why was Covid deemed more important than cancer? Someone please tell me.

It’s taken a while but polls indicate that Americans have lost faith in Fauci who has a trust rating of only 30 percent. This means that at long last Fauci has fallen from sainthood and Americans do not trust what he says or the attempts by the media to ignore his lies and misinformation.

What happened to natural immunity? Remember when Fauci said that we would reach herd immunity with vaccines coupled with natural immunity. He is ignoring natural immunity and is going full bore with vaccinations – even for those who have already had Covid. This is despite the evidence that those with natural immunity who get vaccinated may have serious aftereffects. In fact, everyone I know who has had an adverse and sometimes life threatening reaction to the vaccines has previously had Covid. There is also evidence from Israeli studies that natural immunity is 27 times stronger and lasts longer than the vaccines.

There is considerable evidence – cited in the Wall Street Journal – that all of what we have been told and currently being told will actually prolong the disease and may strengthen it. These scientists are now recommend abandoning social distancing and masking. They also recommend against the vaccines except for the vulnerable – mainly the elderly with co-conditions. Since the dominant variant is omicron which is a mild Covid often likened to having a cold, the scientists say that the spreading of omicron will lead to a super immunity and we prevent it at our peril. To date I have not heard Fouci endorse this position but stay tuned.

Lastly, Fauci should be forced to resign. The bombshell report that Fauci deliberately lied to the public and under oath to conceal the origins of the virus leave no doubt of a coverup. Former congressman Jason Chavitz writes that leftist apologists from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to scientific journals like the Lancet stifled valid questions, censored credible scientific perspectives, and prevented justified congressional inquiry. “Fauci himself was emphatic in his public comments. In October 2020, he told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulous that the lab leak theory “would be molecularly impossible.” Likewise, Fauci told National Geographic in May 2020 that the virus “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” When questioned in Senate hearings, Fauci called his questioners morons and liars.” No Dr. Fauci, your questioners are no liars. You are.