I&#8217;m not sure whether COVID-19, first identified in Wuhan, China, in the U.S. qualifies as a true disaster. Putting the disease in perspective, we might look at current influenza illnesses. According to Centers for Disease Control estimates, between Oct. 1, 2019, and March 14, 2020, there have been 390,000 to 710,000 hospitalizations as a result of the flu, 38,000,000 to 54,000,000 flu illnesses and 23,000 to 59,000 flu deaths. That&#8217;s compared with, as of March 27, a total of 85,356 cases of COVID-19 resulting in the deaths of 1,246 people.
But let&#8217;s agree that COVID-19 is a disaster and ask what the appropriate steps that are to deal with it. One of the first observations about any disaster is that the quantity demanded of many goods greatly exceeds the supply. There is a shortage. The natural market response when there is a shortage is for prices to rise. Rising prices produce several beneficial effects. They reduce the incentive for people to hoard while suppliers, motivated by the prospect of higher profits, are incentivized to produce more of the good in short supply.
Thirty-four states and the District of Columbia have anti-price gouging laws that prohibit &#8220;excessive and unjustified&#8221; increases in prices of essential consumer goods and services during a federal, state or local declared emergency. Price gouging is legally defined as charging 10 to 25% more for something than you charged for it during the month before an emergency. Sellers convicted of price gouging face stiff fines and perhaps prison terms.
But what about hoarding? Often, hoarding creates the shortage. In uncertain times, people may purchase three dozen eggs instead of one dozen. They may want to maintain stockpiles of canned goods and buy up large quantities of cleaners, paper towels and toilet paper. This kind of behavior has left some with overflowing freezers, shelves of sanitizers and garages full of toilet paper while their neighbors are left either wanting for the same items or paying what some call &#8220;excessive and unjustified&#8221; prices.
While it&#8217;s difficult to get beyond emotions, the fact is that consumers are not forced to buy products for the higher (gouged) price. If they pay, it is likely because they see themselves as being better off acquiring the good than the alternative &#8211; keeping their money in their pocket. Higher prices charged have a couple of unappreciated benefits. First, they get people to economize on the use of the good whose price has risen. That is higher prices reduce demand and encourage conservation. That helps with the disaster.
With higher prices, profit-seeking suppliers know that they can make more money by bringing additional quantities of the goods to the market. This increases the supply of goods, which helps to drive prices back down. Anti-price gouging laws disrupt these two very important functions of the marketplace and enhance and prolong a disaster. In other words, in a disaster, we want people to economize their use of goods and services and we want suppliers of these goods and services to produce more. Rising prices encourage these actions. Anti-price gouging laws stymy those incentives and create the pretense that a disaster does not exist.
Some people might reluctantly agree that allowing prices to rise during a disaster helps allocate resources. But they&#8217;ll complain that&#8217;s not the intention of greedy sellers who are out to profit. I say, so what? It&#8217;s not sellers&#8217; intentions that count but what their actions accomplish that&#8217;s important — namely, getting people to conserve more and suppliers to produce more.
Many of the problems associated with a disaster would be eliminated if people&#8217;s buying behavior were the same as it was before the disaster. To get people to behave nicely and consider their neighbors is the ultimate challenge. I think rising prices are the best and most dependable way to get people to be considerate of their fellow man.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at <a href="http://www.creators.com">www.creators.com</a>.

Empty shelves

WILLIAMS: Managing A Disaster

Coronavirus

COVID-19

Price Gouging

A recent report by Chris Stewart has shed new light on some of the educational problems faced by black youth. The report is titled &#8220;The Secret Shame: How America&#8217;s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity for All.&#8221; Stewart is a self-described liberal and CEO of Brightbeam, a nonprofit network of education activists who want to hold progressive political leaders accountable.
The report asks, &#8220;So how do we explain outstandingly poor educational results for minority children in San Francisco — which also happens to be one of the wealthiest cities in the country?&#8221; &#8220;The Secret Shame&#8221; reports that progressive cities, on average, have black/white achievement gaps in math and reading that are 15 and 13 percentage points higher than in conservative cities. For example, in San Francisco, 70% of white students are proficient in math; for black students it&#8217;s 12% — a 58-point gap. In Washington, D.C., 83% of white students scored proficient in reading compared to 23% of black students — a 60-point gap.
Yet, three of the 12 conservative cities researchers looked at — Virginia Beach, Anaheim and Fort Worth — have effectively closed or even erased the gap in at least one of the academic categories studied, achieving a gap of zero or one. &#8220;The politically conservative Oklahoma City has even turned the tables on our typical thinking about race-based gaps,&#8221; says Stewart. Black students in Oklahoma City even have higher high school graduation rates than white students.
Had the &#8220;Secret Shame&#8221; study analyzed other cities, it would have found that educational outcomes for most black youngsters is a national disgrace. As of 2016, in Philadelphia, only 19% of eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 16% were proficient in reading. In Detroit, only 4% of its eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 7% were proficient in reading. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore&#8217;s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state&#8217;s math exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state&#8217;s English test.
National Assessment of Education Progress tests (also called the Nation&#8217;s Report Card) give further testament to the tragedy. In Philadelphia, 47% of its students scored below basic in math and 42% scored below basic in reading. In Baltimore, it was, respectively, 59% and 49%. In Detroit, 73% scored below basic in math and 56% in reading. Below basic means that a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his or her grade level.
Then there&#8217;s gross fraud practiced by the education establishment. High school graduation rates for black students range from a high of 84% in Texas to a low of 57% in Nevada and Oregon. However, according to ACT data, the percentage of black students judged to be college-ready in English, math, reading and science ranges from 17% in Massachusetts to only 3% in Mississippi. One concrete example of this fraud is the fact that Baltimore&#8217;s Frederick Douglass High School has a graduation rate of 70% while not a single student tested proficient in mathematics and only 3% did so in reading.
&#8220;The Secret Shame&#8221; report didn&#8217;t say why the black/white achievement gap was smaller in conservative cities compared to their progressive counterparts. But permit me to make a suggestion. An Education Week article reported that in the 2015-16 school year, &#8220;5.8% of the nation&#8217;s 3.8 million teachers were physically attacked by a student.&#8221; The Justice Department&#8217;s Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education&#8217;s National Center for Education Statistics show that in the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student. A National Center for Education Statistics study found that 18% of the nation&#8217;s schools accounted for 75% of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6% accounted for half of all reported incidents. These are schools with predominantly black student populations. My guess is that part of the reasons black academic achievement is greater in conservative cities is that schools are less tolerant of crime whereas schools in progressive cities make excuses.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Raising hands

WILLIAMS: Progressive Cities And Black Education

Education

Sen. Bernie Sanders said: &#8220;I believe that health care is a right of all people.&#8221; He&#8217;s not alone in that contention. That claim comes from Democrats and Republicans and liberals and conservatives. It is not just a health care right that people claim. There are &#8220;rights&#8221; to decent housing, decent food, a decent job and prescription drugs. In a free and moral society, do people have these rights? Let&#8217;s begin by asking ourselves: What is a right?
In the standard usage of the term, a &#8220;right&#8221; is something that exists simultaneously among people. In the case of our U.S. Constitutional decree, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our individual right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness imposes no obligation upon another other than the duty of noninterference.
As such, a right imposes no obligation on another. For example, the right to free speech is something we all possess simultaneously. My right to free speech imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference. Similarly, I have a right to travel freely. Again, that right imposes no obligation upon another except that of noninterference.
Sanders&#8217; claim that health care is a right does impose obligations upon others. We see that by recognizing that there is no Santa Claus or tooth fairy who gives resources to government to pay for medical services. Moreover, the money does not come from congressmen and state legislators reaching into their own pockets to pay for the service. That means that in order for government to provide medical services to someone who cannot afford it, it must use intimidation, threats and coercion to take the earnings of another American to provide that service.
Let&#8217;s apply this bogus concept of rights to my right to speak and travel freely. In the case of my right to free speech, it might impose obligations on others to supply me with an auditorium, microphone and audience. It may require newspapers or television stations to allow me to use their property to express my views. My right to travel freely might require that others provide me with resources to purchase airplane tickets and hotel accommodations. What if I were to demand that others make sacrifices so that I can exercise my free speech and travel rights, I suspect that most Americans would say, &#8220;Williams, you have rights to free speech and you have a right to travel freely, but I&#8217;m not obligated to pay for them!&#8221;
A moral vision of rights does not mean that we should not help our fellow man in need. It means that helping with health care needs to be voluntary (i.e., free market decisions or voluntary donations to charities that provide health care.) The government&#8217;s role in health care is to protect this individual right to choose. As Senator Rand Paul was brave enough to say, &#8220;The basic assumption that you have a right to get something from somebody else means you have to endorse the concept of theft.&#8221;
Statists go further to claim that people have a &#8220;right&#8221; to housing, to a job, to an education, to an affordable wage. These so-called rights impose burdens on others in the form of involuntary servitude. If one person has a right to something he did not earn, it means that another person does not have a right to something he did earn.
The provision by the U.S. Congress of a so-called right to health care should offend any sense of moral decency. If you&#8217;re a Christian or a Jew, you should be against the notion of one American living at the expense of another. When God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment — &#8220;Thou shalt not steal&#8221; — I am sure that He did not mean, &#8220;Thou shalt not steal — unless there is a majority vote in the U.S. Congress.&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Medicare for All sign

WILLIAMS: Rights Versus Wishes

Bernie Sanders

Free Speech

Health Care

human rights

Medicare for All

Here are a few headlines about an African tragedy: &#8220;Africa&#8217;s Worst Locust Plague in Decades Threatens Millions&#8221; (The Wall Street Journal), &#8220;&#8216;Unprecedented&#8217; Locust Invasion Approaches Full-Blown Crisis&#8221; (Scientific American), &#8220;Somalia Declares Locust Outbreak a &#8216;National Emergency'&#8221; (The National) and &#8220;UN Calls for International Action on East Africa Locust Outbreak&#8221; (Bloomberg Green). This ongoing tragedy is mostly man-made, according to an analysis by Paul Driessen, who is a senior policy adviser with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
Driessen says that billions of desert locusts have attacked the eastern Africa nations of Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia. According to the U.N., the locust attack in Kenya is the worst in 70 years and the worst in 25 years for other east African nations. Locusts are destroying crops and threatening tens of millions of Africans with lost livelihoods and starvation. These locust swarms can blanket 460 square miles at a time and consume more than 400 million pounds of vegetation daily. They reproduce fast, too, meaning locust swarms could be 500 times bigger in six months.
Africa&#8217;s locust plague is man-made. Economic development organizations and activist nongovernmental organizations have foisted &#8220;agroecology&#8221; on the poorest nations — an organic-style agriculture. They promote the virtues of peasant farming. So how do these poor farmers fight the locust plague? Driessen says: &#8220;Desperate Africans are responding with &#8216;time-tested&#8217; methods: whistling and shouting loudly, banging on metal buckets, waving blankets and sticks, crushing the bugs perhaps even roasting and eating them, under UN-approved nutrition programs. In Eritrea, they are using &#8216;more advanced&#8217; methods: hand-held and truck-mounted sprayers. In Kenya, police are firing machine guns and tear gas into the swarms!&#8221;
Antonio Guterres of Portugal, the U.N. secretary-general, claimed global warming as a cause of the problem. He said there is a link between climate change and the unprecedented locust crisis plaguing Ethiopia and East Africa. Guterres said: &#8220;Warmer seas mean more cyclones generating the perfect breeding ground for locusts. Today the swarms are as big as major cities and it is getting worse by the day.&#8221;
Guterres&#8217; suggestion that global warming is the cause of today&#8217;s plague is sheer nonsense. Locust infestations have been feared and revered throughout mankind&#8217;s history. Devastating locust attacks in Egypt around 1446 B.C. were mentioned in the Book of Exodus in the Bible. &#8220;The Iliad&#8221; describes locusts taking flight to escape fire. Plagues of locusts are also mentioned in the Quran.
Driessen concludes: &#8220;A primary reason this plague of locusts has overwhelmed East Africa — indeed, perhaps THE primary reason — is that the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, other UN agencies and multiple environmentalist NGOs have been extolling and imposing &#8216;agroecology&#8217; on Africa. This highly politicized &#8216;movement&#8217; rabidly opposes hybrid seeds, synthetic insecticides and fertilizers, biotechnology, and even mechanized equipment like tractors! Acceptance of its tenets and restrictions has become a condition for poor farmers getting seeds and other assistance, and their countries and local communities getting development loans and food aid.&#8221;
By the way, locusts are not only a threat to crops; they threaten people in another way. In early January, a Boeing 737 on final landing approach to Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, found itself in the midst of a massive cloud of locusts swarming above the airport. The insects were sucked into the plane&#8217;s engines. Their bodies were splattered across the windshield blinding the pilots to the runway ahead. The Boeing 737 climbed above the swarm. The pilot depressurized the cabin so he could open the side window and reach around to clear the windshield by hand. Diverting to Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, the pilot was able to land the plane safely.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Locusts

WILLIAMS: Another African Tragedy

Africa

Climate Change

Before former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg threw his hat into the 2020 presidential race, he defended the New York Police Department&#8217;s use of &#8220;stop, question and frisk&#8221; policing. At a United States Naval Academy&#8217;s 2019 Leadership Conference, Bloomberg said, &#8220;We focused on keeping kids from going through the correctional system &#8230; kids who walked around looking like they might have a gun, remove the gun from their pockets and stop it.&#8221; He claimed that as a result of his policy, New York&#8217;s murder rate fell from 650 a year to 300 the year he left office.
In the cases of Terry v. Ohio, Sibron v. New York, and Peters v. New York, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1968, granted limited approval to officers to stop, question and frisk, even though they lacked probable cause for an arrest, if the officer believed the subject to be dangerous. The Court&#8217;s decision made suspicion of danger to an officer grounds for a &#8220;reasonable search.&#8221;
The stop, question and frisk policy has taken on racial overtones because most of the people stopped are black men. Let&#8217;s look at the numbers. Last year, NYPD data showed that 93% of suspects arrested for murder were black or Hispanic. Ninety-six percent of those nabbed in shootings were also minorities. Eighty-eight percent of New York City&#8217;s homicide victims were black or Hispanic as were 96% of shooting victims. While these percentages have been roughly the same for decades, New York police have brought the absolute number of crimes, including homicides, way down from its 1990 peak at 2,245 to 289 homicides in 2018. Since blacks and Hispanics are the major victims of homicide, as a result of the NYPD&#8217;s proactive response to crime, possibly tens of thousands of blacks are living today who would otherwise be dead.
For a law-abiding black person to be stopped, questioned and frisked — in a word or two, be racially profiled — is truly insulting. However, to analyze the policy, let&#8217;s look at the origins of racial profiling or any other kind of profiling. First of all, policemen are neither mind readers nor are they equipped with X-ray vision. That means good policing requires learning how to use an easily observed physical characteristic as a guess or proxy for some other difficult-to-observe characteristic. Thus, the reason people profile is that information is costly and they seek methods to economize on information costs. One way to do that is through profiling.
The reality is that race and other behavioral characteristics are correlated, including criminal behavior. That fact does not dispel the insult, embarrassment, anger and hurt a law-abiding black person might feel when being stopped by police, being watched in stores, being passed by taxi drivers, standing at traffic lights and hearing car door locks activated or being refused delivery by merchants who fear for their safety in his neighborhood.
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a politician in pursuit of his own agenda. President Donald Trump is also a politician in pursuit of his own agenda. Both will deny their support for and talk down the policy of stop, question and frisk in an effort to curry favor with black voters. Most Bloomberg and Trump supporters don&#8217;t live under the horrible conditions that so many blacks live under in high crime cities like Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago and Detroit. Black people must ask what needs to be done to stop criminals from preying on them and making so many of their communities economic wastelands. If stop, question and frisk can contribute to that goal, so be it. They need not listen to politicians, academics, talking heads on the news and others.
I&#8217;ll add that even if the police, intimidated by leftists, are not doing their job to safeguard black residents in high crime communities, that doesn&#8217;t mean that black people should not organize to take independent measures to protect themselves.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

NYPD car

WILLIAMS: Stop, Question And Frisk

Crime

Donald Trump

Michael Bloomberg

Police

Race

Stop-and-frisk

A recent Pew Research Center survey finds that only half of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on our nation. The leftward political bias, held by faculty members affiliated with the Democratic Party, at most institutions of higher education explains a lot of that disappointment. Professors Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens document this bias in &#8220;Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges.&#8221;
Langbert and Stevens conducted a new study of the political affiliation of 12,372 professors in the two leading private and two leading public colleges in 31 states. For party registration, they found a Democratic to Republican (D:R) ratio of 8.5:1, which varied by rank of institution and region. For donations to political candidates (using the Federal Election Commission database), they found a D:R ratio of 95:1, with only 22 Republican donors, compared with 2,081 Democratic donors.
Several consistent findings have emerged from Langbert and Stevens&#8217; study. The ratio of faculty who identify as or are registered as Democratic versus Republican almost always favors the Democratic Party. Democratic professors outnumber their Republican counterparts most in the humanities and social sciences, compared with the natural sciences and engineering. The ratio is 42:1 in anthropology, 27:1 in sociology and 27:1 in English. In the social sciences, Democratic registered faculty outnumber their Republican counterparts the least in economics 3:1. The partisan political slant is most extreme at the most highly rated institutions.
The leftist bias at our colleges and universities has many harmful effects. Let&#8217;s look at a few. At University of California, Davis, last month, a mathematics professor faced considerable backlash over her opposition to the requirement for faculty &#8220;diversity statements.&#8221; University of California, San Diego, requires job applicants to admit to the &#8220;barriers&#8221; preventing women and minorities from full participation in campus life. At American University, a history professor recently wrote a book in which he advocates repealing the Second Amendment. A Rutgers University professor said, &#8220;Watching the Iowa Caucus is a sickening display of the over-representation of whiteness.&#8221; University of California, Berkeley, professor and former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich chimed in to say: &#8220;Think about this: Iowa is 90.7% white. Iowa is now the only state with a lifetime voting ban for people with a felony conviction. Black people make up 4% of Iowa&#8217;s population but 26% of the prison population. How is this representative of our electorate?&#8221; A Williams College professor said he would advocate for social justice to be included in math textbooks. Students at Wayne State University no longer have to take a single math course to graduate; however, they may soon be required to take a diversity course.
Then there&#8217;s a question about loyalty to our nation. Charles Lieber, former chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, was arrested earlier this year on accusations that he made a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement about work he did for a program run by the Chinese government that seeks to lure American talent to China. He was paid $50,000 a month and up to $158,000 in living expenses for his work, which involved cultivating young teachers and students, according to court documents. According to the Department of Justice, Lieber helped China &#8220;cultivate high-level scientific talent in furtherance of China&#8217;s scientific development, economic prosperity and national security.&#8221;
It&#8217;s not just Harvard professors. Newly found court records reveal that Emory University neuroscientist Li Xiao-Jiang was fired in late 2019 after being charged with lying about his own ties to China. Li was part of the same Chinese program as Lieber. A jury found a University of California, Los Angeles, professor guilty of exporting stolen U.S. military technology to China. Newsweek reported that he was convicted June 26 on 18 federal charges. Meanwhile, NBC reported that federal prosecutors say that University of Texas professor Bo Mao attempted to steal U.S. technology by using his position as a professor to obtain access to protected circuitry and then handing it over to the Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei.
The true tragedy is that so many Americans are blind to the fact that today&#8217;s colleges and universities pose a threat on several fronts to the well-being of our nation.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Graduation

WILLIAMS: Political Bias And Anti-Americanism On College Campuses

Leftism

Progressivism

&#8220;A More or Less Perfect Union&#8221; is a three-part series, produced by Free to Choose Network, that will air on various PBS stations across the nation starting in February. The documentary is a personal exploration of the U.S. Constitution by Justice Douglas Ginsburg, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit and is now a senior justice on the court. Ginsburg explores the U.S. Constitution and features interviews with and gains the perspectives from constitutional experts of all political views — liberal, conservative and libertarian. He examines the key issues of liberty in the U.S. both from a historical and contemporary perspective. Among those issues are freedom of the press and religion, slavery and civil rights, the Second Amendment, separation of powers and the number of ways that the Constitution&#8217;s framers sought to limit the power of the federal government.
The first episode is titled &#8220;A Constitution in Writing.&#8221; It examines the contentious atmosphere that arose among the delegates in that hot, humid Philadelphia summer of 1787. State delegates were sent to Philadelphia to work out the problems of the Articles of Confederation, which served as the first Constitution of the 13 original states. This part of the documentary examines some of the efforts to deal with the problems of the Articles of Confederation while maintaining its guiding principle to preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states. It also examines the compromises and struggles that led to the document we know as the U.S. Constitution. Some of the framers, particularly the Anti-Federalists, led by Patrick Henry, saw the Constitution as defective and demanded amendments be added that contained specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights and clear limitations on the federal government&#8217;s power. They swore that they would never ratify the Constitution unless it contained a Bill of Rights.
The second episode is titled &#8220;A Constitution for All.&#8221; One major emphasis of this episode is the examination of the Supreme Court decisions that undermined racial justice both for slaves and later ex-slaves for a century after the Civil War. Several constitutional scholars discuss how the courts and states ignored and weakened the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, known collectively as the Civil War Amendments, which were designed to ensure equality for recently emancipated slaves. There is also discussion of Bill of Rights guarantees to people accused of a crime. There is more exploration into the Bill of Rights guarantees of free speech, religious freedom and the notion that &#8220;due process of law&#8221; be part of any proceeding that denies a citizen &#8220;life, liberty or property.&#8221; This forced the government to compensate citizens when it takes private property for public use.
Episode three, &#8220;Our Constitution at Risk,&#8221; examines the many ways that our Constitution is under assault today. It points out that the framers would be shocked by how all three branches of government have grown as a result of what we the people demand from our elected representatives. There&#8217;s a discussion about how some of our Bill of Rights guarantees mean absolutely nothing today, namely the 9th and 10th Amendments, which reaffirm personal liberty by specifically limiting the federal government to its &#8220;enumerated powers.&#8221;
&#8220;A More or Less Perfect Union&#8221; is not just a bunch of academics and constitutional experts preaching. It features interviews with everyday Americans weighing in with their visions on the rule of law, the branches of government and the debate over originalism. There&#8217;s a companion book titled &#8220;Voices of Our Republic,&#8221; edited by Ginsburg. It is a collection of thoughts about the Constitution from judges, journalists, and academics. It includes the thoughts of Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Neil Gorsuch and Sandra Day O&#8217;Connor, publisher Arthur Sulzberger, professor Alan Dershowitz, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and historians Joseph Ellis and Ron Chernow, along with Jack Nicklaus, Gene Simmons and many others.
The most important audience for &#8220;A More or Less Perfect Union&#8221; is high school and college students. For it is they who stand a good chance of losing the liberties that made our nation the greatest and freest on earth.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

American flag

WILLIAMS: A More Or Less Perfect Union

10th Amendment

Bill of Rights

Constitution

Founding Fathers

Originalism

I have been teaching economics since 1967 — 40 years of it at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. During that interval, economic reality has not changed. Just as Galileo&#8217;s law about the independent influence of gravity on falling objects has not changed, neither have the fundamental principles of economics. Economics is fun and simple. It&#8217;s made complicated by some economics professors — fortunately, not by my colleagues at George Mason University. Let&#8217;s apply some simple tools of economics to reveal outright myths, lies and tricks.
Who is punished by tariffs on imported goods? Let&#8217;s go through the steps. The Canadian government imposes high tariffs on American dairy imports. That forces Canadians to pay higher prices for dairy products and protects Canada&#8217;s dairy producers from American competition. What should be the U.S. government&#8217;s response to Canada&#8217;s screwing its citizens? If you were in the Trump administration, you might retaliate by imposing stiff tariffs on softwood products built from pine, spruce and fir trees used by U.S. homebuilders. In other words, the U.S. should retaliate against Canada&#8217;s harming its citizens by forcing them to pay higher dairy product prices, by forcing Americans through tariffs to pay higher prices for wood and thereby raising the cost of building homes.
Many politicians, pundits and some economists would have us believe that corporations pay taxes, but do they? Economists distinguish between entities who ultimately bear the tax burden and those upon whom tax is initially levied. Just because a tax is levied on a corporation doesn&#8217;t mean that the corporation bears its burden. Faced with a tax, a corporation can shift the tax burden by raising its product prices, lowering dividends or laying off workers. The lesson here is that only people pay taxes, not legal fictions like corporations. Corporations are simply tax collectors for the government. Similarly, no one would fall for a politician telling a homeowner, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to tax you; I&#8217;m going to tax your property.&#8221; I guarantee that it will be a person, not the property, writing out the check to the taxing authority. Again, only people pay taxes.
Here&#8217;s a question: Are natural or manmade disasters good for the economy? Dr. Larry Summers, top economic adviser to President Obama, said about the Kobe, Japan, earthquake: &#8220;(The disaster) may lead to some temporary increments ironically to GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake Japan actually gained some economic strength.&#8221; After devastating Floridian hurricanes, it&#8217;s not uncommon to read newspaper headlines such as &#8220;Storms create lucrative times,&#8221; or &#8220;Economic growth from hurricanes could outweigh costs,&#8221; or &#8220;It&#8217;s a perverse thing &#8230; there&#8217;s real pain, but from an economic point of view, it is a plus.&#8221; Then there&#8217;s Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman who wrote in his New York Times column &#8220;After the Horror,&#8221; after the 9/11 attack, &#8220;Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could do some economic good.&#8221; He went on to explain that rebuilding the destruction would stimulate the economy through business investment and job creation.
One would never hear my colleagues in George Mason University&#8217;s economics department spouting such insanities. Just ask yourself whether the Japanese economy would have faced even greater opportunities for economic growth had the earthquake also struck Tokyo, Hiroshima, Yokohama and other major cities? Would the 9/11 terrorists have made a greater contribution to our economy had they also destroyed lives and buildings in Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles and Atlanta? The belief that a society benefits from destruction is sheer lunacy.
French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) explained it in his pamphlet &#8220;What is Seen and What is Not Seen.&#8221; He said, &#8220;There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.&#8221; That&#8217;s why my George Mason University colleagues are good economists.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Cash.

WILLIAMS: Economics Reality

Economics

Economy

During President Donald J. Trump&#8217;s impeachment trial, we&#8217;ll hear a lot of talk about our rules for governing. One frequent claim is that our nation is a democracy. If we&#8217;ve become a democracy, it would represent a deep betrayal of our founders, who saw democracy as another form of tyranny. In fact, the word democracy appears nowhere in our nation&#8217;s two most fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The founders laid the ground rules for a republic as written in the Constitution&#8217;s Article IV, Section 4, which guarantees &#8220;to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.&#8221;
John Adams captured the essence of the difference between a democracy and republic when he said, &#8220;You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe.&#8221; Contrast the framers&#8217; vision of a republic with that of a democracy. In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. As in a monarchy, the law is whatever the government determines it to be. Laws do not represent reason. They represent power. The restraint is upon the individual instead of the government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government.
Here are a few quotations that demonstrate the contempt that our founders held for a democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, wrote that in a pure democracy, &#8220;there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.&#8221;
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said that &#8220;in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.&#8221; Alexander Hamilton agreed, saying: &#8220;We are now forming a republican government. (Liberty) is found not in &#8220;the extremes of democracy but in moderate governments. &#8230; If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.&#8221;
John Adams reminded us: &#8220;Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.&#8221;
John Marshall, the highly respected fourth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court observed, &#8220;Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.&#8221;
Thomas Paine said, &#8220;A Democracy is the vilest form of Government there is.&#8221;
The framers gave us a Constitution replete with undemocratic mechanisms. One constitutional provision that has come in for recent criticism is the Electoral College. In their wisdom, the framers gave us the Electoral College as a means of deciding presidential elections. That means heavily populated states can&#8217;t run roughshod over small, less-populated states.
Were we to choose the president and vice president under a popular vote, the outcome of presidential races would always be decided by a few highly populated states, namely California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and Pennsylvania, which contain 134.3 million people, or 41% of our population. Presidential candidates could safely ignore the interests of the citizens of Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Delaware. Why? They have only 5.58 million Americans, or 1.7% of the U.S. population. We would no longer be a government &#8220;of the people.&#8221; Instead, our government would be put in power by and accountable to the leaders and citizens of a few highly populated states. It would be the kind of tyranny the framers feared.
It&#8217;s Congress that poses the greatest threat to our liberties. The framers&#8217; distrust is seen in the negative language of our Bill of Rights such as: Congress &#8220;shall not abridge, infringe, deny, disparage, and shall not be violated, nor be denied.&#8221; When we die and if at our next destination we see anything like a Bill of Rights, we know that we&#8217;re in hell because a Bill of Rights in heaven would suggest that God couldn&#8217;t be trusted.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

American flag.

WILLIAMS: Democracy And Tyranny

Democracy

United States

It&#8217;s nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips. Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence. So, I thought I&#8217;d begin this discussion by first looking up the definition of diversity.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, diversity is &#8220;the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.&#8221; The definition gratuitously adds, &#8220;equality and diversity should be supported for their own sake.&#8221; The standard definition given for inclusion is involvement and empowerment where the inherent worth and dignity of all people are recognized.
Here&#8217;s my question to those who are wedded to diversity and inclusion: Are people better off the less they have in common with one another? For example, women are less likely to be able to march 12.4 miles in five hours with an 83-pound assault load. They are also less likely to be able to crawl, sprint, negotiate obstacles and move a wounded comrade weighing 165 pounds while carrying that load. Would anyone argue that a military outfit would benefit from diversity by including soldiers who can and those who cannot march 12 miles in five hours while carrying an 83-pound load?
You say, &#8220;Williams, the military is an exception!&#8221; What about language? The International Civil Aviation Organization has decreed that all air traffic controllers and flight crew members engaged in or in contact with international flights must be proficient in the English language as a general spoken medium. According to UNESCO, there are about 7,000 languages in the world. The International Civil Aviation Organization could promote language inclusiveness by requiring language rotation. Some years, Cebuano (of the Malayo-Polynesian language family) and in other years Kinyarwanda (of the Niger-Congo language family) could be the language of pilots and air traffic controllers. Keep in mind that it is claimed that the great benefit of diversity and inclusiveness is that it promotes and fosters a sense of belonging. It values and practices respect for the differences in the talents, beliefs, backgrounds and ways of living of its members.
Another issue is what should be done when people who should know better praise nondiversity and noninclusiveness? Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said, &#8220;I applaud commissioner Adam Silver&#8217;s commitment to diversity and inclusion within the NBA.&#8221; During the 2018-2019 season, more than 33% of NBA teams had head coaches of color. The number of assistant head coaches of color was over 42%. The number of black NBA players was 82%. In the face of these statistics, Oris Stuart, the NBA&#8217;s chief diversity and inclusion officer said, &#8220;Diversity, inclusion and equality are central to every aspect of our game and our business.&#8221; I would like for Jesse Jackson and others who claim that there&#8217;s racial diversity and inclusiveness in professional basketball to make their case. The same question can be asked about professional football where 70% of NFL players are black, and 9% of team head coaches are black. The thornier question and challenge is what can be done to make professional basketball and football look more like the American population?
Most of the diversity and inclusiveness insanity has its roots in academia. An example is a paper titled &#8220;Equilibrium Grade Inflation with Implications for Female Interest in STEM Majors,&#8221; written by Naval Postgraduate School professor Thomas Ahn, Duke University economics professor Peter Arcidiacono, Duke University researcher Amy Hopson, and James R. Thomas of the Federal Trade Commission. The authors argue that science, technology, engineering and mathematics programs at colleges and universities lacking female enrollment can be attributed largely to harsh grading policies in these fields. Their solution to increase the number of women&#8217;s involvement in STEM is to standardize grading curves, in order to grade less &#8220;harshly.&#8221; The insanity of this approach is to not only weaken standards for women but to weaken standards across the board. This is more evidence that George Orwell was absolutely right when he said, &#8220;There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Graduation.

WILLIAMS: Diversity And Inclusion Insanity

Diversity

Criminal activity imposes huge costs on black residents in low-income neighborhoods of cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia and many others. Thousands of black Americans were murdered in 2019. Over 90% of the time, the perpetrator was also black. Leftists and social justice warriors charge that what blacks have to fear most is being shot and killed by police, but the numbers don&#8217;t add up. For several years, The Washington Post has been documenting police shootings in America. Last year, 933 people were shot and killed by police. Twenty-three percent (212) of people shot and killed were black; 35% (331) were white; 16% (155) were Hispanic and 201 were of other or unknown races. The high homicide rate within the black community doesn&#8217;t begin to tell the full tragedy.
Crime imposes a hefty tax on people who can least afford it. They are the law-abiding residents of black neighborhoods. Residents must bear the time cost and other costs of having to shop outside of their neighborhoods. Supermarkets that are abundant in low-crime neighborhoods are absent or scarce in high-crime, low-income neighborhoods. Because of the paucity of supermarkets and other big-box stores in these neighborhoods, some &#8220;experts&#8221; and academicians have labeled them as &#8220;food deserts.&#8221; That&#8217;s the ridiculous suggestion that white supermarket merchants and big-box store owners don&#8217;t like green dollars coming out of black hands. The true villains of the piece are the criminals who make some businesses unprofitable. By the way, these are equal opportunity criminals. They will victimize a black-owned business just as they would victimize a white-owned business. The high crime rates in many black neighborhoods have the effect of outlawing economic growth and opportunities.
In low-crime neighborhoods, FedEx, UPS and other delivery companies routinely leave packages containing valuable merchandise on a doorstep if no one is home. That saves the expense of redelivery and saves recipients the expense of having to go pick up the packages. In high-crime neighborhoods, delivery companies leaving packages at the door or supermarkets leaving goods outside unattended would be equivalent to economic suicide. Fearing robberies, taxi drivers, including black drivers, often refuse to accept telephone calls for home pickups and frequently pass prospective black customers who hail them on the street. Plus, there&#8217;s the insult associated with not being able to receive pizzas or other deliveries on the same terms as people in other neighborhoods.
Another often-overlooked impact of crime is lower property values. Homes that wouldn&#8217;t fetch $10,000, $20,000 or $40,000 suddenly fetch hundreds of thousands when large numbers of middle- and upper-income people purchase formerly run-down properties and fix them up. This is called gentrification, where wealthier, predominantly white, people bid higher rental prices thus forcing out low-income residents. As a result of gentrification, there is greater police protection and other neighborhood amenities increase.
Many make the erroneous assumption that black people don&#8217;t care about crime. But black people strongly disapprove of the day-to-day violence that&#8217;s all too common in their communities. What compounds that problem is a deep mistrust of police in poor black neighborhoods. This distrust, along with fear of reprisals by black criminals, causes an atmosphere of noncooperation with the police. It creates the &#8220;stop snitching&#8221; principle. This principle of snitches being worse than criminals themselves only exacerbates the crime problem in black communities by giving aid and comfort to the true enemies of the community — those who prey on the community and have little fear of being brought to justice. In some cities, less than 10% of murderers are ever charged.
For decades, the problems of blacks could be laid at the feet of racial discrimination. Our ancestors started a civil rights struggle and won. Today, the most devastating problems of blacks are entirely self-inflicted such as high illegitimacy, family breakdown and unsafe communities. These problems have little to do with civil rights. But as long as blacks buy into the notion that white racism is the source of their problems, the solutions will be elusive forever.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Two hands.

WILLIAMS: Unappreciated Crime Costs

African American

A voter may dislike a black, homosexual, or female candidate, but it&#8217;s not likely that he would openly admit it. However, diversity-crazed leftist/progressive Democrats have openly condemned the physical characteristics of some of their 2020 presidential candidates. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are leading the polls despite the fact that they have been condemned as old white men. While Pete Buttigieg is homosexual, something that pleases diversity crazies, he is also a white man, young and religious. With Kamala Harris&#8217; departure from the race, the Democratic field has lost one of its persons of color. Another, Senator Cory Booker, stands at 2% in the polls; his days are numbered. That means the only Democratic candidates polling high are those condemned as old white people — two men and one woman, Elizabeth Warren.
LaTosha Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said she was initially eager for Joe Biden to enter the race but now has second thoughts. Brown said: &#8220;I&#8217;m over white men running the country. I don&#8217;t know if him (sic) getting in changes the field. He has name recognition, but his strength is also his weakness.&#8221; Former presidential candidate Howard Dean lamented, &#8220;If we have two old white guys at the top of this ticket, we will lose.&#8221; The newest entry into the presidential sweepstakes, Michael Bloomberg, had to apologize for what some see as his diversity insensitiveness namely that of calling fellow presidential candidate Cory Booker &#8220;well-spoken&#8221; in a TV interview. The New Jersey senator said he was &#8220;taken aback&#8221; by what he saw as Bloomberg&#8217;s racist &#8220;trope.&#8221;
Michael Moore gave us his racist warning: &#8220;Two-thirds of all white guys voted for Trump. That means anytime you see three white guys walking at you, down the street toward you, two of them voted for Trump. You need to move over to the other sidewalk because these are not good people that are walking toward you. You should be afraid of them.&#8221;
This is the new racism, much of it learned and taught at our nation&#8217;s colleges. George Orwell said, &#8220;Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.&#8221; The stupid ideas about inclusion and diversity originate with academics on college campuses. If their ideas didn&#8217;t infect the rest of society, they might be a source of entertainment. But these cancerous ideas have infected society. Statements such as &#8220;I&#8217;m over white men running the country,&#8221; or &#8220;If we have two old white guys at the top of this ticket, we will lose&#8221; are examples of that cancer.
Last year, Philip Carl Salzman wrote &#8220;The War Against White People&#8221; in Minding the Campus. He declared: &#8220;Anti-white hate is now mainstream American culture. Not just by racial extremists such as Black Lives Matter, for whom statements such as &#8220;all lives matter&#8221; or &#8220;blue lives matter&#8221; are racist. Our highest leaders sing the same song.&#8221;
When Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency in 2008, he said of working-class white voters, &#8220;They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren&#8217;t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.&#8221; During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidate Hillary Clinton claimed that half of Donald Trump&#8217;s supporters were &#8220;a basket of deplorables&#8221; who were &#8220;racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.&#8221; Do you think Clinton was talking about Trump&#8217;s black, Asian and Hispanic supporters? No, she was talking about millions of Trump&#8217;s white supporters.
Then there&#8217;s Sarah Jeong, a member of The New York Times editorial board and graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Law School. She expressed publicly many anti-white opinions. Among them are: &#8220;The world could get by just fine with zero white people.&#8221; &#8220;Dumbass f—-ing white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.&#8221; It&#8217;s &#8220;kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.&#8221; I guarantee you that The New York Times would have fired any employee making similar statements about black, Hispanic or homosexual people.
The bottom line is that the new racism, born in academia, is just as ugly as the old racism.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Donkey pin.

WILLIAMS: The New Racism

Democratic Party

Racism

Colleges have been around for centuries. College students have also been around for centuries. Yet, college administrators assume that today&#8217;s students have needs that were unknown to their predecessors. Those needs include diversity and equity personnel, with massive budgets to accommodate.
According to Minding the Campus, Penn State University&#8217;s Office of Vice Provost for Educational Equity employs 66 staff members. The University of Michigan currently employs a diversity staff of 93 full-time diversity administrators, officers, directors, vice provosts, deans, consultants, specialists, investigators, managers, executive assistants, administrative assistants, analysts and coordinators. Amherst College, with a student body of 1,800 students employs 19 diversity people. Top college diversity bureaucrats earn salaries six figures, in some cases approaching $500,000 per year. In the case of the University of Michigan, a quarter (26) of their diversity officers earn annual salaries of more than $100,000. If you add generous fringe benefits and other expenses, you could easily be talking about $13 million a year in diversity costs. The Economist reports that University of California, Berkeley, has 175 diversity bureaucrats.
Diversity officials are a growing part of a college bureaucracy structure that outnumbers faculty by 2 to 2.5 depending on the college. According to &#8220;The Campus Diversity Swarm,&#8221; an article from Mark Pulliam, a contributing editor at Law and Liberty, which appeared in the City Journal (10/10/2018), diversity people assist in the cultivation of imaginary grievances of an ever-growing number of &#8220;oppressed&#8221; groups. Pulliam writes:
<blockquote>The mission of campus diversity officers is self-perpetuating. Affirmative action (i.e., racial and ethnic preferences in admissions) leads to grievance studies. Increased recognition of LGBTQ rights requires ever-greater accommodation by the rest of the student body. Protecting &#8216;vulnerable&#8217; groups from &#8216;hate speech&#8217; and &#8216;microaggressions&#8217; requires speech codes and bias-response teams (staffed by diversocrats). Complaints must be investigated and adjudicated (by diversocrats). Fighting &#8216;toxic masculinity&#8217; and combating an imaginary epidemic of campus sexual assault necessitate consent protocols, training, and hearing procedures — more work for an always-growing diversocrat cadre. Each newly recognized problem leads to a call for more programs and staffing.</blockquote>
Campus diversity people have developed their own professional organization — the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. They hold annual conferences — the last one in Philadelphia. The NADOHE has developed standards for professional practice and a political agenda, plus a Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
One wonders just how far spineless college administrators will go when it comes to caving in to the demands of campus snowflakes who have been taught that they must be protected against words, events and deeds that do not fully conform to their extremely limited, narrow-minded beliefs built on sheer delusion. Generosity demands that we forgive these precious snowflakes and hope that they eventually grow up. The real problem is with people assumed to be grown-ups — college professors and administrators — who serve their self-interests by tolerating and giving aid and comfort to our aberrant youth. Unless the cycle of promoting and nursing imaginary grievances is ended, diversity bureaucracies will take over our colleges and universities, supplanting altogether the goal of higher education.
&#8220;Diversity&#8221; is the highest goal of students and professors who openly detest those with whom they disagree. These people support the very antithesis of higher education with their withering attacks on free speech. Both in and out of academia, the content of a man&#8217;s character is no longer as important as the color of his skin, his sex, his sexual preferences or his political loyalties. That&#8217;s a vision that spells tragedy for our nation.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: Colleges Dupe Parents And Taxpayers

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam apologized for his medical school blackface stunt, but he will have much more to apologize for if he signs into law a bill that attacks Virginia citizens&#8217; Second Amendment rights. The measure is Senate Bill 16, which would ban &#8220;assault&#8221; firearms and certain firearm magazines. Since Democrats have seized control of Virginia&#8217;s General Assembly, they are likely to push hard for strict gun control laws. Those laws will have zero impact on Virginia&#8217;s criminals and a heavy impact on Virginia&#8217;s law-abiding citizens who own, or intend to own, semi-automatic weapons for hunting or their protection. As a friend once explained to me, &#8220;I carry a gun because I can&#8217;t carry a cop.&#8221;
I am proud of my fellow Virginians&#8217; response to the attack on their Second Amendment rights. Firearm owners in the state have joined with sheriffs to form Second Amendment sanctuary counties. That means local authorities will be required to protect Second Amendment rights in the face of any attempt by Virginia&#8217;s General Assembly to abrogate those rights. Eighty-six counties — over 90% — in the Virginia commonwealth have adopted Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions. Spotsylvania County&#8217;s board of supervisors voted unanimously to approve a resolution declaring that county police will not enforce state-level gun laws that violate Second Amendment rights.
Sheriff Chad Cubbage said, &#8220;Be it be known that the Page Sheriff hereby declares Page County, Virginia, as a &#8216;Second Amendment Sanctuary,&#8217; and that the Page County Sheriff hereby declares its intent to oppose any infringement on the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.&#8221; Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins made a vow during a board of supervisors meeting, where the board unanimously agreed to declare the county a Second Amendment constitutional county, to &#8220;properly screen and deputize thousands of our law-abiding citizens to protect their constitutional right to own firearms.&#8221;
In an attempt to appease citizen resistance, Northam suggested there would be a ban on only the sales of semi-automatic rifles. He would allow gun owners to keep their current AR-15s and similar rifles as long as they registered them. Otherwise, they must surrender the rifles. I&#8217;d urge Virginians not to fall for the registration trick. Knowing who owns what weapons is the first step to confiscation. Governor Northam further warned, &#8220;If we have constitutional laws on the books and law enforcement officers are not enforcing those laws on the books, then there are going to be consequences, but I&#8217;ll cross that bridge if and when we get to it.&#8221; Some Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill say that local police who do not enforce gun control laws should face prosecution and even threats of the use of the National Guard.
Virginians must heed the words and capture the spirit of their two most distinguished citizens, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. These resolutions referred to the federal government but are just as applicable to state governments in principle. They said: &#8220;Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government &#8230; and whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.&#8221;
Too many Americans view the Second Amendment as granting Americans the right to own firearms to go hunting and for self-protection. But the framers of our Constitution had no such intent in mind. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 46 wrote that the Constitution preserves &#8220;the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation &#8230; (where) the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.&#8221; Thomas Jefferson wrote: &#8220;What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.&#8221; Similar quotations about our founders&#8217; desire for Americans to be armed against the possible abuses of government can be found at <a href="https://walterewilliams.com/quotations/arms/">https://walterewilliams.com/quotations/arms/</a>.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Gun rights rally.

WILLIAMS: Virginia’s Second Amendment Attack

Gun Control

Guns

Ralph Northam

Virginia

Here are several questions for biologists and medical professionals: If a person is found to have XY chromosomes (heterogametic sex), does a designation as female on his birth certificate, driver&#8217;s license or Social Security card override the chromosomal evidence? Similarly, if a person is found to have XX chromosomes (homogametic) does a designation as male on her birth certificate, driver&#8217;s license or Social Security card override the chromosomal evidence? If you were a medical professional, would you consider it malpractice for an obstetrics/gynecology medical specialist, not to order routine Pap smears to screen for cervical cancer for a patient who identifies as a female but has XY chromosomes?
If you were a judge, would you sentence a criminal, who identifies as a female but has XY chromosomes, to a women&#8217;s prison? A judge just might do so. Judge William Pryor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit focused on a Florida school district ruling that a transgender &#8220;boy,&#8221; a person with XX chromosomes, could not be barred from the boys&#8217; restroom. Pryor suggested students shouldn&#8217;t be separated by gender at all.
Fear may explain why biologists in academia do not speak out to say that one&#8217;s sex is not optional. Since the LGBTQ community is a political force on many college campuses, biologists probably fear retaliation from diversity-blinded administrators. It&#8217;s not just academics and judges who now see sex as optional. Federal, state and local governments are ignoring biology and permitting people to make their sex optional on one&#8217;s birth certificate, passport, Social Security card and driver&#8217;s license. In New York City, intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual&#8217;s preferred name, pronoun or title is a violation of the New York City Human Rights Law. If I said that my preferred title was &#8220;Your Majesty,&#8221; I wonder whether the New York City Commission on Human Rights would prosecute people who repeatedly refused to use my preferred title.
One transgender LGBTQ activist filed a total of 16 complaints against female estheticians, with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after they refused to wax his male genitals. He sought financial restitution totaling at least $32,500. One woman was forced to close her shop. Fortunately, the LGBTQ activist&#8217;s case was thrown out by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, and he was instructed to pay $2,000 each to three of the women he attacked. The LGBTQ activist is not giving up. He is now threatening to sue gynecologists who will not accept him as a patient.
In 2012, an evangelical Christian baker in Colorado was threatened with jail time for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage ceremony. When Christian bakery owner Jack Phillips won a landmark (7-2 decision) U.S. Supreme Court case in June 2018 over his refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his religious convictions, he thought his legal battles with the state of Colorado were over. But now Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, 24 days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor, faces a new court fight. This fight involves a lawyer who asked him to bake a cake to celebrate the anniversary of her gender transition. There are probably many bakery shops in and around Lakewood, Colorado, that would be happy to bake a cake for homosexuals; they are simply targeting Phillips.
For those in the LGBTQ community, and elsewhere, who support such attacks, we might ask them whether they would seek prosecution of the owner of a Jewish delicatessen who refused to provide catering services for a neo-Nazi affair. Should a black catering company be forced to cater a Ku Klux Klan affair? Should the NAACP be forced to open its membership to racist skinheads and neo-Nazis? Should the Congressional Black Caucus be forced to open its membership to white members of Congress? If you&#8217;re a liberty-minded American, your answers should be no.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Non-binary sign.

WILLIAMS: Corrupting Our Social Norms

LGBT

Transgender

Dr. Richard Ebeling, professor of economics at The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and my longtime friend and colleague, has written an important article, &#8220;Business Ethics and Morality of the Marketplace,&#8221; appearing in the American Institute for Economic Research. Its importance and timeliness is enhanced by so many of America&#8217;s youth, led by academic hacks, having fallen prey to the siren song of socialism.
In a key section of his article, Ebeling lays out what he calls the ethical principles of free markets. He says: &#8220;The hallmark of a truly free market is that all associations and relationships are based on voluntary agreement and mutual consent. Another way of saying this is that in the free market society, people are morally and legally viewed as sovereign individuals possessing rights to their life, liberty, and honestly acquired property, who may not be coerced into any transaction that they do not consider being to their personal betterment and advantage.&#8221;
Ebeling says that the rules of a free market are simple and easy to understand: &#8220;You don&#8217;t kill, you don&#8217;t steal, and you don&#8217;t cheat through fraud or misrepresentation. You can only improve your own position by improving the circumstances of others. Your talents, abilities, and efforts must all be focused on one thing: what will others take in trade from you for the revenues you want to earn as the source of your own income and profits?&#8221;
For many people, profit has become a dirty word and as such has generated slogans such as &#8220;people before profits.&#8221; Many believe the pursuit of profits is the source of mankind&#8217;s troubles. However, it&#8217;s often the absence of profit motivation that&#8217;s the true villain. For example, contrast the number of complaints heard about profit-oriented establishments such as computer stores, supermarkets and clothing stores to the complaints that one hears about nonprofit establishments such as the U.S. Post Office, the public education system and departments of motor vehicles. Computer stores, supermarkets and clothing stores face competition and must satisfy customers to earn profits and stay in business. Postal workers, public teachers and department of motor vehicles employees depend on politicians and coercion to get their pay. They stay in business whether customers are satisfied with their services or not.
In a free market society, income is neither taken nor distributed. Income is earned by serving one&#8217;s fellow man. Say I mow your lawn. When I&#8217;m finished, you pay me $50. Then, I go to my grocer and demand, &#8220;Give me two pounds of sirloin and a six-pack of beer that my fellow man produced.&#8221; In effect, the grocer asks: &#8220;Williams, what did you do to deserve a claim on what your fellow man produced?&#8221; I say, &#8220;I served him.&#8221; The grocer says, &#8220;Prove it.&#8221; That&#8217;s when I pull out the $50. We might think of dollars as &#8220;certificates of performance,&#8221; proof of serving our fellow man.
Free markets are morally superior to other economic systems. To have a claim on what my fellow man produces, I&#8217;m forced to serve him. Contrast that requirement to government handouts, where a politician says to me: &#8220;You don&#8217;t have to get out in that hot sun to mow your fellow man&#8217;s lawn. Vote for me and I&#8217;ll take what your fellow man produces and give it to you.&#8221;
Ebeling says that those deserving condemnation are those who use government coercion to gain at the expense of others. There are thousands of such examples: government subsidies at taxpayers&#8217; expense, paying farmers not to grow crops or guaranteeing them a minimum price paid for through tax dollars and higher prices for consumers, regulations that limit entry into various professions and occupations, regulations that limit consumer choice, and corporate handouts and bailouts.
In a word or so, our protest should not be against capitalism. People should protest crony capitalism, where people use the political arena to buy government favors. If millennials and others want to wage war against government favors and crony capitalism, I&#8217;m with them 100%. But I&#8217;m all too afraid that anti-capitalists just want their share of the government loot.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Cash houses.

WILLIAMS: Morality Of Free Markets

Capitalism

Free market

Socialism

This year&#8217;s education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their children into colleges by cheating on entrance exams or bribing athletic coaches. They paid William Singer, a college-prep professional, more than $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators and to change test scores on college admittance exams such as the SAT and ACT. As disgusting as this grossly dishonest behavior is, it is only the tiny tip of fraud in higher education.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them. A 2018 Hechinger Report found, &#8220;More than four in 10 college students end up in developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of approximately $7 billion, and many of them have a worse chance of eventually graduating than if they went straight into college-level classes.&#8221;
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, &#8220;when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent.&#8221; Only 25% of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test&#8217;s readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).
It&#8217;s clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, &#8220;Good Grieve! America&#8217;s Grade Inflation Culture,&#8221; published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A&#8217;s. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation&#8217;s leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59).
The falling standards witnessed at our primary and secondary levels are becoming increasingly the case at tertiary levels. &#8220;Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses&#8221; is a study conducted by Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that 45% of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in &#8220;critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.&#8221;
An article in News Forum for Lawyers titled &#8220;Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent&#8221; cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75% of two-year college students and 50% of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20% of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30% of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in &#8220;basic English.&#8221;
Here is a list of some other actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years: &#8220;What If Harry Potter Is Real?&#8221; &#8220;Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,&#8221; &#8220;Philosophy and Star Trek,&#8221; &#8220;Learning from YouTube,&#8221; &#8220;How To Watch Television,&#8221; and &#8220;Oh, Look, a Chicken!&#8221; The questions that immediately come to mind are these: What kind of professor would teach such courses, and what kind of student would spend his time taking such courses? Most importantly, what kind of college president and board of trustees would permit classes in such nonsense?
The fact that unscrupulous parents paid millions for special favors from college administrators to enroll their children pales in comparison to the poor educational outcomes, not to mention the gross indoctrination of young people by leftist professors.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: Fraud In Higher Education

Former presidential candidate Beto O&#8217;Rourke said that racism in America is &#8220;foundational&#8221; and that people of color were under &#8220;mortal threat&#8221; from the &#8220;white supremacist in the White House.&#8221; Pete Buttigieg chimed in to explain that &#8220;systemic racism&#8221; will &#8220;be with us&#8221; no matter who is in the White House. Senator Cory Booker called for &#8220;attacking systemic racism&#8221; in the &#8220;racially biased&#8221; criminal justice system.
Let&#8217;s follow up by examining Booker&#8217;s concern about a &#8220;racially biased&#8221; criminal justice system. To do that, we can turn to a recent article by Heather Mac Donald, who is a senior fellow at the New York-based Manhattan Institute. She is a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. Her most recent article, &#8220;A Platform of Urban Decline,&#8221; which appeared in Manhattan Institute&#8217;s publication Eye On The News, addresses race and crime. She reveals government statistics you&#8217;ve never read before.
According to leftist rhetoric, whites pose a severe, if not mortal, threat to blacks. Mac Donald says that may have once been true, but it is no longer so today. To make her case, she uses the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018 survey of criminal victimization. Mac Donald writes: &#8220;According to the study, there were 593,598 interracial violent victimizations (excluding homicide) between blacks and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90 percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent. That ratio is becoming more skewed, despite the Democratic claim of Trump-inspired white violence. In 2012-13, blacks committed 85 percent of all interracial victimizations between blacks and whites; whites committed 15 percent. From 2015 to 2018, the total number of white victims and the incidence of white victimization have grown as well.&#8221;
There are other stark figures not talked about often. According to the FBI&#8217;s Uniform Crime Reporting for 2018, of the homicide victims for whom race was known, 53.3% were black, 43.8% were white and 2.8% were of other races. In cases where the race of the offender was known, 54.9% were black, 42.4% were white, and 2.7% were of other races.
White and black liberals, who claim that blacks face a &#8220;mortal threat&#8221; from the &#8220;white supremacist in the White House&#8221; are perpetuating a cruel hoax. The primary victims of that hoax are black people. We face the difficult, and sometimes embarrassing, task of confronting reality.
Mac Donald says that Barack Obama&#8217;s 2008 Father&#8217;s Day speech in Chicago would be seen today as an &#8220;unforgivable outburst of white supremacy.&#8221; Here&#8217;s what Obama told his predominantly black audience in a South Side church: &#8220;If we are honest with ourselves,&#8221; too many fathers are &#8220;missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.&#8221; Then-Senator Obama went on to say, &#8220;Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.&#8221;
White liberals deem that any speaker&#8217;s references to personal responsibility brands the speaker as bigoted. Black people cannot afford to buy into the white liberal agenda. White liberals don&#8217;t pay the same price. They don&#8217;t live in neighborhoods where their children can get shot simply sitting on their porches. White liberals don&#8217;t go to bed with the sounds of gunshots. White liberals don&#8217;t live in neighborhoods that have become economic wastelands. Their children don&#8217;t attend violent schools where they have to enter through metal detectors. White liberals help the Democratic Party maintain political control over cities, where many black residents live in despair, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago.
Black people cannot afford to remain fodder for the liberal agenda. With that in mind, we should not be a one-party people in a two-party system.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Handcuffs.

WILLIAMS: Who Are The Racists?

The absolute worst case of professional incompetence and dishonesty is in the area of climate science. Tony Heller has exposed some of the egregious dishonesty of mainstream environmentalists in a video he&#8217;s titled &#8220;My Gift To Climate Alarmists.&#8221; Environmentalists and their political allies attribute the recent increase in deadly forest fires to global warming. However, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture&#8217;s Forest Service, forest fires reached their peak in the 1930s and have declined by 80% since then. Environmentalists hide the earlier data and make their case for the effects of global warming by showing the public and policymakers data from 1980 that shows an increase in forest fires.
Climate scientists claim that rising sea levels are caused by man-made global warming. Historical data from the tide gauge in Lower Manhattan shows that sea levels have been rising from about the time when Abraham Lincoln was president to now. Heller says that sea levels have been rising for about 20,000 years. He points out that anthropologists believe that when the sea level was very low people were able to walk from Siberia to North America.
Hot weather is often claimed to be a result of man-made climate change. Heller presents data showing the number of days in Waverly, Ohio, above 90 degrees. In 1895, there were 73 days above 90 degrees. In 1936, there were 82 days above 90 degrees. Since the 1930s, there has been a downward trend in the number of days above 90 degrees. If climatologists hide data from earlier years and started at 1955, they show an increase in the number of above 90-degree days from eight or nine to 30 or 40. Thus, to deceive us into thinking the climate is getting hotter, environmentalists have selected a starting date that fits their agenda.
You might ask: &#8220;Who is Tony Heller? Does he work for big oil?&#8221; It turns out that he is a scientist and claims to be a lifelong environmentalist. From what I can tell, he has no vested interests. In that respect, he is different from those who lead the environmental movement, who often either work for or are funded by governments.
Once in a while environmentalists reveal their true agenda. Ottmar Edenhofer, lead author of the IPCC&#8217;s fourth summary report released in 2007, speaking in 2010 advised: &#8220;One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute de facto the world&#8217;s wealth.&#8221; U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said that the true aim of the U.N.&#8217;s 2014 Paris climate conference was &#8220;to change the (capitalist) economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.&#8221; Christine Stewart, Canada&#8217;s former Minister of the Environment said: &#8220;No matter if the science is all phony, there are collateral environmental benefits. &#8230; Climate change (provides) the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.&#8221; Tim Wirth, former U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs and the person most responsible for setting up the Kyoto Protocol said: &#8220;We&#8217;ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.&#8221;
Not all scientists are dishonest and not all news reporters are leftists with an agenda. But one wonders at the deafening silence where there&#8217;s clear, unambiguous evidence. For example, if ocean levels have been rising for some 20,000 years, why do scientists allow environmentalists to get away with the claim that it&#8217;s a result of man-made global warming? Why aren&#8217;t there any reporters to highlight leftist statements such as those by Edenhofer, Stewart and others who want to ride global warming as a means to defeat capitalism and usher in socialism and communism? I would prefer to think that the silence of so many scientists represent their fears as opposed to their going along with the environmental extremist agenda.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

iceberg

WILLIAMS: Scientists: Dishonest or Afraid?

Science

A recent survey conducted by the Victims of Communism and polled by YouGov, a research and data firm, found that 70% of millennials are likely to vote socialist and that one in three millennials saw communism as &#8220;favorable.&#8221;
Let examine this tragic vision in light of the Fraser Institute&#8217;s recently released annual study &#8220;Economic Freedom of the World,&#8221; prepared by Professors James Gwartney, Florida State University; Robert A. Lawson and Ryan Murphy of Southern Methodist University; and Joshua Hall, West Virginia University, in cooperation with the Economic Freedom Network.
Hong Kong and Singapore maintained their lead as the world&#8217;s most economically free countries — although China&#8217;s heavy hand threatens Hong Kong&#8217;s top ranking. Rounding out the top 10 are New Zealand, Switzerland, the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Mauritius. By the way, after having fallen to 16th in 2016, the U.S. has staged a comeback to being in the top five economically free countries in the world.
What statistics go into the Fraser Institute&#8217;s calculation of economic freedom? The report measures the ability of individuals to make their own economic decisions by analyzing the policies and institutions of 162 countries and territories. These include regulation, freedom to trade internationally, size of government, sound legal system, private property rights and government spending and taxation.
Fraser Institute scholar Fred McMahon says, &#8220;Where people are free to pursue their own opportunities and make their own choices, they lead more prosperous, happier and healthier lives.&#8221; The evidence for his assessment is: Countries in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per-capita GDP of $36,770 in 2017 compared with $6,140 for bottom quartile countries. Poverty rates are lower. In the top quartile, 1.8% of the population experienced extreme poverty ($1.90 a day) compared with 27.2% in the lowest quartile. Life expectancy is 79.5 years in the top quartile of economically free countries compared with 64.4 years in the bottom quartile.
The Fraser Institute&#8217;s rankings of other major countries include Japan (17th), Germany (20th), Italy (46th), France (50th), Mexico (76th), India (79th), Russia (85th), China (113th) and Brazil (120th). The least free countries are Venezuela, Argentina, Ukraine and nearly every African country with the most notable exception of Mauritius. By the way, Argentina and Venezuela used to be rich until they bought into socialism.
During the Cold War, leftists made a moral equivalency between communist totalitarianism and democracy. W. E. B. Du Bois, writing in the National Guardian (1953) said, &#8220;Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.&#8221; Walter Duranty called Stalin &#8220;the greatest living statesman &#8230; a quiet, unobtrusive man.&#8221; George Bernard Shaw expressed admiration for Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith visited Mao&#8217;s China and praised Mao Zedong and the Chinese economic system. Gunther Stein of the Christian Science Monitor also admired Mao and declared ecstatically that &#8220;the men and women pioneers of Yenan are truly new humans in spirit, thought and action.&#8221; Michel Oksenberg, President Jimmy Carter&#8217;s China expert, complained that &#8220;America (is) doomed to decay until radical, even revolutionary, change fundamentally alters the institutions and values,&#8221; and urged us to &#8220;borrow ideas and solutions&#8221; from China.
Leftists exempted communist leaders from the harsh criticism directed toward Adolf Hitler, even though communist crimes against humanity made Hitler&#8217;s slaughter of 11 million noncombatants appear almost amateurish. According to Professor R.J. Rummel&#8217;s research in &#8220;Death by Government,&#8221; from 1917 until its collapse, the Soviet Union murdered or caused the death of 61 million people, mostly its own citizens. From 1949 to 1976, Mao&#8217;s Communist regime was responsible for the death of as many as 76 million Chinese citizens.
Today&#8217;s leftists, socialists and progressives would bristle at the suggestion that their agenda differs little from that of past tyrants. They should keep in mind that the origins of the unspeakable horrors of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism did not begin in the &#8217;20s, &#8217;30s and &#8217;40s. Those horrors were simply the result of a long evolution of ideas leading to a consolidation of power in the central government in the quest for &#8220;social justice.&#8221;
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Hammer and Sickel.

WILLIAMS: Young People Ignorant Of History

Communism

Josef Stalin

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Walter E. Williams

Articles by Walter E. Williams