Friends, today I bring you two great articles. The first is a retrospective about Richard Nixon's 1969 speech about America's "silent majority". He added the line almost as an afterthought, but it became one of the signature phrases of the Nixon presidency. He was expressing an idea that has great salience today: that the great mass of the American people are not represented by elite opinion leaders and the most vocal agitators, who soak up so much of the media's attention. It was an homage to populism, at bottom, as well as to solid, middle class American values. Today, we hope that the Silent Majority is still lurking out there, ready to prove the pundits wrong in 2020!
https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/david-shribman/2019/11/03/Richard-Nixon-Silent-Majority-speech-50-years-later/stories/201911030044
The second article is about young Americans' seeming love affair with socialism. No one can deny that many youngsters have lost faith in capitalism, and perhaps even more alarmingly in democracy, free speech, and equal opportunity. I disagree strongly with the claim that forcing elite universities to spend down their endowments will make the slightest difference to our socioeconomic malaise -- in my view the problem is the deeply-rooted domination of extreme leftists over our popular culture and our education system. Changing our tax laws won't be nearly enough to dislodge the neo-Marxists from the commanding heights of American culture. I also disagree with the absurd suggestion that young Americans' disdain for capitalism is essentially rational and is based on their alleged suffering. Sure, high student loan debt is a kick in the pants, but last time I checked America is still a land of opportunity, and many youngsters are doing great. Simply put, no group of people in history has ever had LESS reason to give up on its political and economic institutions than Americans at the beginning of the 21st century -- we are BLESSED as no people before us -- and yet many of us seem to be writhing in mock despair. It's propaganda, people! The only way we'll ever beat it is by re-educating the young and acquainting them with the truth. And if we happen to send the cultural Marxists into metaphorical Siberian exile in the process, so much the better.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/11/01/why_kids_are_socialists_and_how_to_start_fixing_it_141640.html
Dr. Waddy: I read the Shribman article and your comments. I lived through this period as a perceptive American. In the '60' and '70's I was dismissive of President Nixon's policies and statements. I reject my stance then.
ReplyDeleteThe leftist explosion, fueled simply by my baby boom's unprecedented numbers and the presence on the campuses we flocked to in unprecedented numbers in 1965 of persuasive leftists (many of them motivated by the Depression in thinking that Capitalism was discredited) had a profound effect on the national polity, simply because there were so damn many naive boomers!
But! Nixon correctly perceived an America outside of that experience. It was based in young people who had never gone to college in the '60's, together with so very many from the Greatest Generation who were utterly stunned by the antiAmerican expressions of the early '70's left, their very sons and daughters in so many cases!
But it was new to the political process in the '70's,this group and its beliefs. It was very hard to comprehend.
But not so now!Try any manner of disrespect for U.S. vets returning from war zones. You would be mobbed because now the general public, including now the major vet's organizations ( as was NOT so for the Vietnam vets) would be there to meet you.
Of what import is this? Nixon's "Silent Majority" ( yes, silent before 1968 because it could not believe the country would degenerate that much; nothing in its experience prepared it for such as this)nonetheless, in voting for Nixon and Wallace, denied touchy-feely Hubert the White House.
And we have since empowered Reagan, Bush I ( at least better than knee jerk leftist Dukakis)Bush II and Trump against leftist dreamers Dukakis, Kerrey, and Hillary.
In 2020, the real America we embody will rise to the defense of the most resolute supporter of our principles - Donald Trump
Well said, Jack! I sincerely hope the Silent Majority lives on in America. Polls would certainly suggest that opinions have shifted since the early 70s on many key points. In some ways, they may have shifted to the right. In most ways, I suspect, they've shifted to the left. Be that as it may, there's still a strong vein of anti-government, pro-liberty sentiment in this country, and Trump can and will tap into it. America kept on ticking in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, despite the apostasy of the Boomers. To some degree, those Boomers even wised up with time. Let's hope that happens again.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy: We are not silent anymore. We have Rush and Fox and we practically own talk radio. Fifty years of leftist presumption and recklessness (most obviously today) have convinced us that there is actually a very powerful movement among some Americans to destroy America.
ReplyDeleteYeah, probably alot of the leftist boomers have been wised up by life off campus but the recalcitrant ones still gave us the ongoing disgrace of the Clintons.And there are still too many of them (or those polluted by them)in academia, the media and apparently business. Alot of leftists are betting alot of time and money that they will be a decisive factor next year despite a message so far left it would have been unthinkable to express it openly even seven years ago.
Dr. Waddy: As the father of two millenials who got quality college educations: one of them has reduced their overall college debt to a very manageable sum; the other has found it more burdensome but both will have them paid off within the next ten years at the outside. I'm convinced that for both of them a good university education was vital - they both have minds open and glad for the intellectual benefits. The measure, I think, of a college education goes beyond earning power for alot of kids. The university experience can be precious; I'm so glad I went, both for the associations and for the intellectual training I delight in to this day.It did also open the door to a good career, once I got a professional degree to complement my liberal arts bachelor's. It may well be that most liberal arts majors, in addition to the very redeeming cultural and intellectual experiences they have therein, should plan to obtain professional degrees thereafter. I think that not to much for a society in which opportunity is yet abundant, to ask.
ReplyDeleteThings of true quality must be commensurately paid for. Is the cost of a college education justified in and of itself? I dunno but I'm sure its reasonable that it cost alot. There is alot of quality there.
But:today's American academy has made of many universities and colleges swamps of leftist bigotry and incipient totalitarianism where young and (yes, still) impressionable students are lied to about America's economy and pressured to think socialism viable and moral ( it has proven neither). In states like NY and CA it may be well nigh impossible for citizens to get their governments to crack down on the funding for blatantly biased state schools but the Federal Government could do this, given the right political pressure, and so could the citizenry of many states in which their big state universities display a far leftist tack far out of keeping with their state's polities. Eg. Montana, Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin and very probably more.
Too, it would be worth it to try to persuade many high schoolers that a college education is not necessarily for them. As one who fluffed in high school but prospered in the very average colleges I attended, I'd advise caution on that but its certainly true that alot of young people would be far happier with a vocational high school or post high school education and that some of them are cut out from the start for business or mechanical fields for which they display early enthusiasm and ability. The great mechanic to whom I take my vehicles was described to me as one who always and only wanted to be an auto mechanic and who today is prospering and doing much good with his competence and honesty.
Those national politicians who urge free college for all have but one purpose: to indoctrinate as many socialists as possible to support a leftist totalitarian takeover of America. Its as plain and simple as that and just as obviously to be resolutely opposed.
True, Jack. The real Americans aren't silent anymore...but are they a majority? That's a little more dubious. You're right -- the positions that now count as "mainstream" would have been unthinkable in the 70s or 80s. Seems to me that right-thinking people have been battered into submission on a lot of fronts. Our victories, when we win them, seem hollow too. Isn't history moving relentlessly in the direction of MORE government, and LESS moral restraint and spiritual belief? Now I'm depressing even myself. I'll move on...
ReplyDeleteI agree (of course!) that college can be a very positive experience for many, and a vital step on the road to professional fulfillment and prosperity. College has always been wasted on a substantial number of those who attend, though, especially the ones who never graduate because they don't especially care to. Our mistake has perhaps been to see college as a one-size-fits-all solution to life's problems. It isn't, as you observe. It works best on those who value what it represents. You're a shining example of that!
I expect you're right that those who promote college-for-all do so partly to achieve the spread of academic leftism, partly to achieve a fairy-tale version of equality, and partly to line their own pockets and satisfy their own vanity. Academia strikes me as the perfect playground for leftists in so many ways -- foremost among them, the fact that the actual dynamics of academia are the precise opposite of the egalitarian wonderland that these neo-Marxists allegedly want. Can you imagine anything more elitist than an Ivy League college? And you imagine anyone more elitist than a leftist college professor? I know I can't.
Dr. Waddy: For most (not all)leftists the idea of their being elitist is absurd or productive of unbearably painful introspection. They are so very sure they are right; their embrace of undemocratic methods such as their onslaught on the duly elected President are indicative of a firm conviction on their parts that they cannot be mistaken in their intent. Why , how could they be? They became leftists in order to combat injustices committed by a privileged elite. Just as did the Soviet (yes), elite, many of them have invested their livelihoods in a tragically discredited creed and they cannot countenance discreditation or disempowerment. They must be politically overpowered.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy:Re - belatedly - your fundamental question: The popular vote in Presidential elections since 2000 might well show that, numerically ,the silent majority - if silent usually because they are busy leading productive lives unlike so many in the chattering class - is now a minority. That would of course mandate immunity from criticism, yes? Anyway, there may be more to it.
ReplyDeleteGeographically, those areas dominated by the convictions of Nixon's silent majority, which I refer to now as the real America, that the U.S. is fundamentally sound and just and that it DOES NOT need revolution, DOES NOT need fundamental transformation, Barack, are far more extensive than those infested by the antiAmerican, dreamy left. NYC occupies a small corner of NY State but its population is more than upstate. It is therefore able to force presumptuous leftist dictators like Cuomo on an upstate which is part of the real America.
Is the culture of the real America a majority culture? An alien perusing our media might think not so. But there is so much more to a culture. There are the volunteer fire associations - an heroic subculture themselves; I've had fire fighting training in the Navy, its terrifying, imagine volunteering to face it at 3am in January), the rod and gun clubs, the fraternal organizations, the neighborhood associations, the conservative and Republican organizations, the Catholic Church, the antiabortion movement, Concerned Women of America -the largest women's group -, the veteran's groups, the military itself, police and law enforcement and their supporters, groups like the DAR who promote patriotism, the veteran's pictures we see all over now in small towns where I live and so very, very much more! Is the culture of the real America NOT a majority culture? I think not !
Jack, you're so right -- to most leftists it's unthinkable that they could be anything other than the salt of the earth. Elitism is, though, the core of Marxism-Leninism (the "revolutionary vanguard"). I find it both amusing and horrifying how often liberalism produces exactly the opposite of its intended/advertised effects. Clearly, the Devil has a rich sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteYou make a strong case that the REAL America is a majoritarian culture. At the very least it's a very widespread and resilient culture. Excellent observation that the geographical extent of liberty/decency/traditionalism is far greater than that of statism/moral relativism/utopian socialism. The numbers of committed neo-Marxists are small. Their power is out of all proportion to their actual numbers. That gives us hope that, one day, the Silent Majority may reassert itself and sideline the Radical Left once and for all.
Dr. Waddy: Thanx and ditto to the max.
ReplyDelete