&#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

Crime

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

Education

Progressivism

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?

Climate Change

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

Jews have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 30% of those in medicine, 25% in physics, 20% in chemistry, 15% in literature and 10% of the Nobel Peace Prizes. Since the beginning of the 20th century, there have been just over 900 Nobel Prizes awarded. Since Jews are only 2% of the world&#8217;s population, instead of having 22% of Nobel Prizes, 206, they should have won only two, according to the proportionality vision of justice. There&#8217;s an even greater domestic violation of the proportionality vision. Jews are less than 3% of the U.S. population but 35% of American Nobel Prize winners. Several questions come to mind. Does the disproportionately high number of Jewish winners explain why there are so few black or Hispanic Nobel Prize winners? Who&#8217;s to blame for ethnic disproportionality among Nobel Prize winners, and what can be done to promote social justice?
Proportionality injustice doesn&#8217;t end with the Nobel Prize. Blacks are about 13% of the U.S. population but close to 70% of the players in the National Football League. Blacks are greatly overrepresented among star players and highly paid players. While the disproportionality injustice runs in favor of black players in general, they are all but nonexistent among the league&#8217;s field goal kickers and punters. Perhaps the only reason why football team owners are not charged with hiring discrimination is that the same people who hire quarterbacks and running backs also hire field goal kickers and punters. Proportionality and diversity injustice is worse in the National Basketball Association, with blacks being over 80% of the players. Plus, it&#8217;s not uncommon to watch college basketball games and see that 90 to 100% of the starting five players are black.
Most readers know that I teach economics at George Mason University and have done so for nearly 40 years. However, that doesn&#8217;t mean the field of economics doesn&#8217;t have its problems. Many see economics as neither a welcoming nor a supportive profession for women or blacks. Former Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen, in addressing a Brookings Institution audience said: &#8220;Within the economics profession, women and minorities are significantly underrepresented. And data compiled by the American Economic Association&#8217;s Committees on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and the Status of Minority Groups in the profession show that there has been little or no progress in recent decades. Women today make up only about 30 percent of Ph.D. students. Within academia, their representation drops the higher up one goes in the career ladder. The share of Ph.D.s awarded to African Americans is low; and it has declined slightly in recent decades.&#8221; Yellen says that diversity in economics is a matter of &#8220;basic justice.&#8221;
Had I been in the audience, I would have asked Yellen whether there&#8217;s basic justice in the nursing field, where less than 10% of nurses are men. What about the gross lack of proportionality in incarceration? According to 2015 figures released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the overall U.S. prison and jail population is 90.6% male and 9.4% female. The only way that I see to remedy such a gross disproportionality injustice is to either incarcerate more female prisoners or release male prisoners.
Back to Janet Yellen: It is pathetic and professionally incompetent that she can ignore decades of research — some of it by female researchers — that shoots down the idea that disparities prove discrimination. Moreover, if one carries the notion that disparities prove discrimination far enough, they&#8217;d look like true fools. According to a study conducted by Bond University in Australia, sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women. Despite the fact that men are 50% of the population, and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. Of those killed by lightning, 82% are men. One can only wonder what social justice warriors would do about these and many other disproportionalities.
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.

Scales of justice.

WILLIAMS: Disproportionalities: Whose Fault?

Nobel Prize

Social Justice

Gun control did not become politically acceptable until the Gun Control Act of 1968 signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The law&#8217;s primary focus was to regulate commerce in firearms by prohibiting interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers and importers. Today&#8217;s gun control advocates have gone much further, calling for an outright ban of what they call assault rifles such as the AR-15. By the way, AR stands for ArmaLite Rifle, which is manufactured by Colt Manufacturing Co. As for being a military assault weapon, our soldiers would be laughed off the battlefield carrying AR-15s.
Let&#8217;s look at some FBI statistics on homicide and then you can decide how many homicides would be prevented by a ban on rifles. The FBI lists murder victims by weapon from 2014 to 2018 in their 2018 report on Crime in the United States. It turns out that slightly over 2% (297) out of a total of 14,123 homicides were committed with rifles. A total of 1,515 or 11% of homicides were committed by knives. Four hundred and forty-three people were murdered with a hammer, club or some other bludgeoning instrument. Six hundred seventy-two people were murdered by a hand, foot or fist. Handguns accounted for the most murders — 6,603.
What these statistics point out clearly is that the so-called assault weapons ban and mandatory buyback plan that 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O&#8217;Rourke and others call for, will do little or nothing to bring down homicides. More homicides could be prevented by advocating for knife control, hammer control and feet and fist control.
Gun controllers&#8217; belief that &#8220;easy&#8221; gun availability is our problem ignores U.S. history. Guns were far more readily available yesteryear. One could mail order a gun from Sears or walk into a hardware store or a pawnshop to make a purchase. With truly easy gun availability throughout our history, there was nowhere near the mayhem and mass murder that we see today. Here&#8217;s my question to all those who want restrictions placed on gun sales: Were the firearms of yesteryear better behaved than those same firearms are today? That&#8217;s really a silly question; guns are inanimate objects and have no capacity to act. Our problem is a widespread decline in moral values that has nothing to do with guns. That decline includes disrespect for those in authority, disrespect for oneself, little accountability for anti-social behavior and a scuttling of religious teachings that reinforce moral values.
Let&#8217;s examine some elements of this decline.
If any American who passed away before 1960 were to return to today&#8217;s America, they would not believe the kind of personal behavior acceptable today. They wouldn&#8217;t believe that youngsters could get away with cursing at and assaulting teachers. They wouldn&#8217;t believe that cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis and Baltimore hire hundreds of school police officers and that in some schools, students must go through metal detectors. During my own primary and secondary schooling in Philadelphia, from 1942 to 1954, the only time we saw a policeman in school was during an assembly period where we had to listen to a boring lecture from Officer Friendly on safety. Our ancestors also wouldn&#8217;t believe that we&#8217;re now debating whether teachers should be armed.
Americans who call for stricter and stricter gun control know that getting rid of rifles will do little or nothing for the nation&#8217;s homicide rate. Their calls for more restrictive gun laws are part of a larger strategy to outlaw gun ownership altogether. You have to wonder what these people have in store for us when they&#8217;ve eliminated our means to defend ourselves.
Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro banned private gun ownership in 2012. The result is that Venezuelans had no way to protect themselves from criminals and government troops who preyed upon them. After Fidel Castro&#8217;s demand for gun confiscation, he said, &#8220;Armas para que?&#8221; (&#8220;Guns, for what?&#8221;) Cubans later found out.
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.

Guns.

WILLIAMS: Gun Grabbers Misleading Us

Beto O'Rourke

Last week, U.S. Attorney General William Barr told a University of Notre Dame Law School audience that attacks on religious liberty have contributed to a moral decline that&#8217;s in part manifested by increases in suicides, mental illness and drug addiction. Barr said that our moral decline is not random but &#8220;organized destruction.&#8221; Namely that &#8220;Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values.&#8221;
The attorney general is absolutely correct. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality. The left&#8217;s attack on religion is just the tiny tip of the iceberg in our nation&#8217;s moral decline. You say: &#8220;That&#8217;s a pretty heavy charge, Williams. You&#8217;d better be prepared to back it up with evidence!&#8221; I&#8217;ll try with a few questions for you to answer.
Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to such use, do you believe that there should be the initiation of force against him? Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no. For me the answer is no to both questions. I bet that nearly every college professor, politician or even minister could not give a simple yes or no response.
A no answer, translated to public policy, would slash the federal budget by no less than two-thirds to three-quarters. After all most federal spending consist of taking the earnings of one American to give to another American in the form of farm subsidies, business bailouts, aid to higher education, welfare and food stamps. Keep in mind that Congress has no resources of its own. Plus there&#8217;s no Santa Claus or tooth fairy that gives Congress resources. Thus, the only way that Congress can give one American a dollar is to first, through intimidation and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.
Such actions by the U.S. Congress 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 some other American. When God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment — &#8220;Thou shalt not steal&#8221; — I am sure that He did not mean thou shalt not steal unless there is a majority vote in the U.S. Congress. By the way, I do not take this position because I don&#8217;t believe in helping our fellow man. I believe that helping those in need by reaching into one&#8217;s own pocket to do is praiseworthy and laudable. But helping one&#8217;s fellow man in need by reaching into somebody else&#8217;s pockets to do so is worthy of condemnation.
We must own up to the fact that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society. Morality is society&#8217;s first line of defense against uncivilized behavior. Religious teachings, one way of inculcating morality, have been under siege in our country for well over a half a century. In the name of not being judgmental and the vision that one lifestyle or set of values is just as good as another, traditional moral absolutes have been abandoned as guiding principles. We no longer hold people accountable for their behavior and we accept excuses. The moral problems Attorney General William Barr mentioned in his speech, plus murder, mayhem and other forms of anti-social behavior, will continue until we regain our moral footing.
In 1798, John Adams, a leading Founding Father and our second president said: &#8220;Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.&#8221; I am all too afraid that a historian, writing a few hundred years from now, will note that the liberty American enjoyed was simply a historical curiosity. Then it all returned to mankind&#8217;s normal state of affairs — arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.
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, U.S. Capitol.

WILLIAMS: U.S. In Moral Decline

Charity

Morality

Religion

William Barr

If you need an accurate update on some of the madness at the nation&#8217;s institutions of higher learning, check out Minding the Campus, a nonprofit independent organization. John Leo, its editor in chief, says that <a href="https://tinyurl.com/yxww7gth">the organization&#8217;s</a> prime mission is dedicated to the revival of intellectual pluralism and the best traditions of liberal education at America&#8217;s colleges and universities. Leo&#8217;s most recent compilation of campus madness leaves one nearly breathless.
In a USA Today op-ed, Emily Walton, a sociology professor at Dartmouth University, said that all college students should take a mandatory course on black history and white privilege. She says that by taking her class, white students &#8220;come to understand that being a good person does not make them innocent but rather they, too, are implicated in a system of racial dominance.&#8221; Walton adds, &#8220;After spending their young lives in a condition of &#8216;white blindness,&#8217; that is, the inability to see their own racial privilege, they begin to awaken to the notion that racism has systematically kept others down while benefiting them and other white people.&#8221; This is inculcating guilt based on skin color. These young white kids had nothing to do with slavery, Jim Crow or other horrible racial discriminatory acts. If one believes in individual responsibility, he should find the indoctrination by Walton offensive. To top it off, she equates the meritocratic system of hard work with white discrimination against minorities.
If you thought integration was in, check out the University of Nevada. Based on a report in the College Fix, John Leo describes how integration on that campus is actively discouraged — and at taxpayer expense. The university provides separate dorms for different identities including Howell Town for black students, Stonewall Suites for LGBTQ students, the women-only housing of Tonopah community, the Healthy Living Floor for tofu and kale lovers and study-intensive floors for those who want to graduate.
According to a New York Post report, New York City school administrators have been taught that pillars of Western Civilization such as objectivity, individualism and belief in the written word all are examples of white supremacy. All school principals, district office administrators and superintendent teams were required to attend the anti-white supremacy training put on by the city Department of Education&#8217;s Office of Equity and Access. They learn that a belief in an &#8220;ultimate truth&#8221; (objectivity) leads to a dismissal of &#8220;alternate viewpoints or emotions&#8221; as &#8220;bad&#8221; and that an emphasis on the written word overlooks the &#8220;ability to relate to others&#8221; and leads to &#8220;teaching that there is only &#8216;one right way&#8217; to do something.&#8221; Administrators learn that other &#8220;hallmarks&#8221; of white supremacy include a &#8220;sense of urgency,&#8221; &#8220;quantity over quality&#8221; and &#8220;perfectionism.&#8221; Richard Carranza, New York City school superintendent, says the workshops are just about &#8220;what are our biases and how we work with them.&#8221;
Michael Bloomberg, former New York City mayor, says that political rage and increasingly polarized discourse are endangering our nation. Americans used to move forward productively after elections regardless of which side won. Now, we seem paralyzed by absolute schism and intolerance. Bloomberg pointed to colleges as a prime example of a rising level of intolerance for different ideas and free speech. Steven Gerrard, a professor at Williams College in Massachusetts, serves as an example of campus intolerance. Students declared Gerrard &#8220;an enemy of the people&#8221; after he suggested that Williams College join other schools in signing onto what&#8217;s called <a href="https://tinyurl.com/y7hxrgf9">the Chicago Principles</a>. The statement, published by the Committee of Freedom of Expression at the University of Chicago, calls for free speech to be central to college and university culture. Williams college students said free speech is a part of a right-wing agenda as a &#8220;cover for racism, xenophobia, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism and classism.&#8221; Bloomberg pointed out that fewer than 70 of America&#8217;s 4,000 colleges and universities have endorsed or adopted the Chicago statement.
State governors and legislators can learn something from their Alaskan counterparts, who slashed public spending on the University of Alaska by 41%. There&#8217;s nothing better than the sounds of pocketbooks snapping shut to bring a bit of sanity to college administrators.
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 cap.

WILLIAMS: Intolerance In Academia

Free Speech

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a new paper, &#8220;Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.&#8221; Keep in mind that many of the grossly wrong environmentalist predictions were made by respected scientists and government officials. My question for you is: If you were around at the time, how many government restrictions and taxes would you have urged to avoid the predicted calamity?
As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969) Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned: &#8220;The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you&#8217;re dead. We must realize that unless we&#8217;re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.&#8221;
In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at University of East Anglia&#8217;s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years winter snowfall would become &#8220;a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren&#8217;t going to know what snow is.&#8221; In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas. Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years. A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.
In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that &#8220;we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.&#8221;
Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: &#8220;Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. &#8230; By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.&#8221;
Ecologist Kenneth Watt&#8217;s 1970 prediction was, &#8220;If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.&#8221; He added, &#8220;This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.&#8221;
Mark J. Perry, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan&#8217;s Flint campus, cites 18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970. This time it&#8217;s not about weather. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990. Kenneth Watt said, &#8220;By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate &#8230; that there won&#8217;t be any more crude oil.&#8221;
There were grossly wild predictions well before the first Earth Day, too. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior predicted that American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight. Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous energy claims, in 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that as of Jan. 1, 2017, there were about 2,459 trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas in the United States. That&#8217;s enough to last us for nearly a century. The United States is the largest producer of natural gas worldwide.
Today&#8217;s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear&#8217;s. The major difference is today&#8217;s Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming. And the only result is that we&#8217;ll be much poorer and less free.
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.

Smoking earth.

WILLIAMS: Idiotic Environmental Predictions

Al Gore

Environmentalism

Global Warming

During my student days at a UCLA economics department faculty/graduate student coffee hour in the 1960s, I was chatting with Professor Armen Alchian, probably the greatest microeconomic theory economist of the 20th century. I was trying to impress Alchian with my knowledge of statistical type I and type II errors. I explained that unlike my wife, who assumed that everyone was her friend until they prove differently, my assumption was everyone was an enemy until they proved otherwise. The result: My wife&#8217;s vision maximized the number of her friends but maximized her chances of betrayal. My vision minimized my chances of betrayal at a cost of minimizing the number of my friends.
Alchian, donning a mischievous smile asked, &#8220;Williams, have you considered a third alternative, namely, that people don&#8217;t give a damn about you one way or another?&#8221; Initially, I felt a bit insulted, and our conversation didn&#8217;t go much further, but that was typical of Alchian — saying something profound, perhaps controversial, without much comment and letting you think it out.
Years later, I gave Alchian&#8217;s third alternative considerable thought and concluded that he was right. The most reliable assumption, in terms of the conduct of one&#8217;s life, is to assume that people don&#8217;t care about you one way or another. It&#8217;s an error to generalize that people are friends or enemies, or that people are out to either help you or hurt you. To put it more crudely, as Alchian did, people don&#8217;t give a damn about you one way or another.
Let&#8217;s apply this argument to issues of race. Listening to some people, one might think that white people are engaged in an ongoing secret conspiracy to undermine the achievement and well-being of black people. Their evidence is low black academic achievement and high rates of black poverty, unemployment and incarceration. For some, racism is the root cause of most black problems including the unprecedentedly high black illegitimacy rate and family breakdown.
Are white people obsessed with and engaged in a conspiracy against black people? Here&#8217;s an experiment. Walk up to the average white person and ask, &#8220;How many minutes today have you been thinking about black people?&#8221; If the person isn&#8217;t a Klansman or a gushing do-gooder liberal, his answer would probably be zero minutes. If you asked him whether he&#8217;s a part of a conspiracy to undermine the achievement and well-being of black people, he&#8217;d probably look at you as if you were crazy. By the same token, if a person asked me: &#8220;Williams, how many minutes today have you been thinking about white people?&#8221; My answer would probably be, &#8220;Not even a nanosecond.&#8221; Because people don&#8217;t care about you one way or another doesn&#8217;t mean they wish you good will, ill will or no will. They just don&#8217;t give a damn.
What are the implications of the people-don&#8217;t-care vision of how the world works? A major implication is that one&#8217;s destiny, for the most part, is in one&#8217;s hands. How you make it in this world depends more on what you do as opposed to whether people like or dislike you. Black politicians, civil rights leaders and white liberals have peddled victimhood to black people, teaching them that racism is pervasive and no amount of individual effort can overcome racist barriers. Peddling victimhood is not new. Booker T. Washington said: &#8220;There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.&#8221; In an 1865 speech to the Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, abolitionist Frederick Douglass said that people ask: &#8220;&#8216;What shall we do with the Negro?&#8217; I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us!&#8221; Or as Patrick Moynihan urged a century later in a 1970 memo to President Richard Nixon, &#8220;The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of &#8216;benign neglect.'&#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 .

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Walter E. Williams

Articles by Walter E. Williams